What if you could get unblocked without having to rewrite the whole damn story?

With Find Your Final Twist, the aim is to revise as little as possible, and avoid rewriting. You’ll learn how to find your final twist using the existing backstories and subplots in your story, with the goal of getting you unblocked, excited, and able to finish your draft, without having to start over.

Does this sound familiar? You’re 80% of the way through writing your thriller/mystery/suspense novel, and you’re dead stuck, because you’ve just realized that everything you’ve worked so hard to set up for the climactic scene and the big twist no longer works. The logic is broken.

You don’t have the energy or motivation to start over yet again, and you don’t know where to go from here.

As a thriller writer, I’ve been there myself. As a book coach who focuses on thriller twist brainstorming and getting clients unstuck, I’ve helped clients through this same pain point. I know how awful this can feel.

What if there was a way to solve these logic issues without having to rethink and rewrite everything?

I developed this mini-course to solve this exact problem.

Get unblocked in a weekend by focusing on finding your final twist. Join my self-paced mini-course today.

Find Your Final Twist

Adding a final twist can often expose and fix the motivational logic issues that crop up when we go to write the climactic scene.

$47 USD

Right now, you’re struggling to write the climactic scene in your thriller, because you’ve realized that there’s a fundamental logic problem with how everything comes together.

Perhaps you ‘ve realized that your main character has been pursuing something entirely separate from the story question, and you don’t know how to connect the two subplots.

Perhaps you’ve discovered that to solve the mystery and take down the person doing bad things, your main character has to make a logical leap that you know readers will scoff at.

You don’t know how to fix it, and you don’t want to just push forward, because you know you’ll just end up having to rewrite it. You fear that this logic issue breaks everything, and you’re going to have to go back to the beginning and rethink — and maybe have to rewrite — everything.

Imagine if instead you could fix the logic issues by looking at what you have from an entirely new perspective, and create a more tightly plotted, twistier novel in the process.

Join me in discovering a new side of your novel and finding your final twist!

Just $47 USD

What you get

7 lessons in 90 minutes of fire-hose-level instruction based on my years as a writer and book coach, focused entirely on twist design and implementation, plus a workbook to help you figure it out in your own story.

I created this course because I’ve been there. I know the “&*$%, I broke it” feeling well.

I was working on my second novel, and I reached the point where I had to write the climactic scene, and I realized I’d broken it. Completely. Like rewrite from the beginning, nothing was holding together, broken. It was devastating.

Through much raging and contemplating throwing my story into a drawer forever, I finally figured out the secret to my logic problems, and that’s where this course came from. I’ve since used it to great success with many of my coaching clients, and have yet to come across a work-in-progress story that didn’t benefit from finding a final twist. I hope it works for you too!

Detailed Course Overview

7 total self-paced video lessons + a workbook designed to help you do a deep dive brainstorm into figuring out why your story isn’t currently working, finding your final twist, and giving you a path forward.

Lesson 1: Welcome! Includes: Who you are and where you are in the writing process, our goals for this course and what you can expect, who I am and why I designed this course, why asking “what if” is so important, and why not knowing your final twist is such a hard place to be.

Lesson 2: Twist Expectations and Why They’re Important. Includes: Twist expectations in modern thrillers, why suspense is so important for reader engagement, genre expectations for mystery, thriller, and suspense (and why it's so key to know what readers want), plus the very best way to increase suspense in your story. Value: $150

Lesson 3: The 3-Twist Structure and the Magic of Finding the Final Twist. Includes: The definition of and difference between twists and reveals, how to use intentionality for maximum impact, a deep dive into the 3-twist thriller structure, and why finding your 3rd twist is such a game-changer for getting unblocked. Value: $150

Lesson 4: Brainstorming Your Final Twist. Includes: The secret key to unlocking twists, why backstory is such a powerful tool, many, many brainstorming ideas for twists, and the importance of "what if?" Also includes the Final Twist Brainstorming Worksheet, a fillable worksheet designed to tease out and help you brainstorm a final twist using YOUR characters and YOUR story. Value: $150 + $100 for Workbook

Lesson 5: Implementing Your Final Twist. Includes: How to "show" your twist’s clues to the reader, how to create an As-Is Inside Outline (an invention of Jennie Nash of Author Accelerator), how to use your As-Is Inside Outline to set up the twist, why emotionally resonant climax scenes are so powerful (and how to design them), and how to use POV characters to manipulate your readers into thinking what you want them to think. Value: $150

Lesson 6: Maximizing Twist Impact. Includes: How to use twists and reveals to address pacing and believability, how to use flashbacks for maximum impact, how to tackle changes in your manuscript to avoid revision hell, and the importance of brainstorming to connect what you have instead of rewriting. Value: $150

Lesson 7: Best Practices for Using Beta Readers. Includes: Why beta readers are so precious, what feedback to listen to, and what not to listen to, how to choose betas (and where to find them), and how to get the feedback you’re looking for. Value: $100

The course is available to you for review as many times as you’d like, for as long as you’d like.

Total Value: $950

Yours for $47

What others have said about working with me

She will help you take everything circling around in your head and get it down on paper, where you can both determine whether it's meeting your goals for your story or not. She's patient and positive and whip smart - a great combination.

Campbell Walmsley, Author | Instagram: @cmckella, Twitter: @cmckella

[Working on my outline with Sam] is by far the best thing I have invested in during my years as a writer (over 25 years). I have outlined before but never this deep. It made me see my story in such a deep way. I now know my characters better than I know my family. Don't wait! This will be the best investment for your writing you can make.

Marita Brännvall, Author, Book Coach, and Editor | maritabrannvall.com

Find YOUR final twist today and join my mini-course.

$47 USD

Meet your instructor

I (Samantha Skal (she/her)) am an Author Accelerator certified book coach of dark, scary, suspenseful stories and a writer of the same. I specialize in coaching mystery, thriller and suspense authors from novel planning all the way through agent pitching, and I especially love brainstorming twists and reveals and the hell that is revision. I am the 2023 Co-Director of PitchFest at Thrillerfest, International Thriller Writers (ITW)'s annual writing conference, and a frequent volunteer mentor for the Women’s Fiction Writers Association (WFWA). An enthusiast of homemade sourdough, I live in the Pacific Northwest with my husband and I adore (scary) stories that keep me up at night, kayaking on calm water, hiking on well-maintained trails, and good red wine. I am also a huge fan of #bookstagram and talk about my favorite thrillers on @authorsamanthaskal.