Plot twist
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Search complete. 64 mentions across 20 episodes found for "Plot twist".
Sep 10, 2026
Victoria AveyardHOST
Each week, we go behind the curtain of our creative process, and we give you our hot takes on thorny issues in publishing and entertainment.
Victoria AveyardHOST
We answer your mailbag questions, plus we pitch plot twists we want to see in real life.
Soman ChainaniHOST
And we have a few announcements for this week.
Soman ChainaniHOST
Why don't you start us off with the first one?
David PerellHOST
And though it might be a little bit tough in the moment, I promise you're gonna leave this conversation motivated to write, to get back to working on whatever it is that you're doing.
David PerellHOST
And Harlan's the master of the plot twist.
David PerellHOST
He's got strong opinions about dialogue, how plot and character work together, and then also he's got this mantra where he's always asking, "What if? What if? What if?" And that's where we start this conversation.
David PerellHOST
Well, Harlan, I wanna start off with this question of what if.
28 MINS LATER
Harlan CobenGUEST
I th- I think, um, you know, I, I'm writing this book.
Harlan CobenGUEST
I, I finished it now.
Harlan CobenGUEST
It's c- be out, uh, soon, called Plot Twist.
Harlan CobenGUEST
It's a memoir on writing that I wrote.
Victoria AveyardHOST
and Soman's Young World, a red-hot young adult political thriller.
Victoria AveyardHOST
Each week, we go behind the curtain of our creative process, and we give you our hot takes on thorny issues in publishing and entertainment, we answer your mailbag questions, and we pitch plot twists that we want to see in real life.
Soman ChainaniHOST
And today's hot topic, and this is such a sort of germinal, primal one for artists, is the idea worth a book? And...
Soman ChainaniHOST
deal so we're really going to get into the genesis of ideas and how they happen but let's go to our first segment which is our theme of the week where each week we're going to come up with a word or phrase that encapsulates the essence of our week on and off the page do you want to start us off and tell us what's going
Barbara PetersHOST
with that one, but I, um, we did, um, a two week early book launch for Harlan Coben on Monday.
Barbara PetersHOST
Um, he has written a book called Plot Twist, which is a memoir, sorry, a memoir interspersed with his writing advice journey or the other way around, whichever way you want to look at it.
Barbara PetersHOST
But it's probably the only real memoir we will get from Harlan, just like Ian Rankin did the same thing when he wrote a book, um, about Scotland and in all the photographs and talking about all the places in Scotland, he actually wrote a memoir, which was...
Linwood BarclayGUEST
Ian's a good friend.
Barbara PetersHOST
And again, it is kind of the only memoir he's ever likely... to write.
Barbara PetersHOST
In fact, I heard from him the other day that he is preparing to write his final rebus to come out next year or after, but he has a standalone book for the first time in ages that is coming out.
Barbara PetersHOST
But anyway, going back to the conversation with Harlan, I said to him, because I had read Plot Twist and then I read your book, that I think both of you have had a real genius in taking ordinary people and putting them into remarkable circumstances, some of which maybe were in their control and some of which were visited upon them, Hartman added that he likes to have people missing because in his view, if they're missing, there's always some kind of hope.
Barbara PetersHOST
Whereas if they're dead at the beginning of the book, they're dead, right? That, you know, it's about finding it out, but missing is a different dynamic.
Mallory MejiasHOST
But first, how is Pfizer thinking about AI? Earlier this month, Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, large American multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporation, published an essay called How Pfizer Thinks About AI.
Mallory MejiasHOST
In Plot Twist, it's barely about the technology itself, and it's about how you reorganize a company.
Mallory MejiasHOST
His opening claim is that adoption and transformation are two different things, that nearly every company has done the first adoption, and that what holds companies back is inertia rather than the technology choice.
Mallory MejiasHOST
And he's pretty blunt about it.
Hans BergerHOST
And it does
Patrick BarneyHOST
have a, it does have a twist ending.
Patrick BarneyHOST
So if you're, you're worried, like if you're worried about spoiling it, we might, we might talk about that.
Patrick BarneyHOST
Yeah, we're going to have to talk about that.
Hans BergerHOST
Yeah, I will say that I don't find the twist ending that satisfactory.
Hans BergerHOST
And perhaps Chris and Patrick, maybe you would vehemently disagree with me here.
Hans BergerHOST
If you are listening to this and you haven't read Yesteryear, I'd say just listen to this episode and don't go read it.
Patrick BarneyHOST
No.
Victoria AveyardHOST
Each week we go behind the curtain of our creative process, and we give you our takes on thorny issues in publishing and entertainment.
Victoria AveyardHOST
We answer your mailbag questions, plus pitch plot twists that we wanna see in real life.
Soman ChainaniHOST
And today's hot topic, which gets hotter and hotter by the week, when does fan fiction cross a line? And it's something we've been talking about for a long time, but I feel like now it's really, really become-
Victoria AveyardHOST
We've danced around it
50 MINS LATER
Victoria AveyardHOST
Um, but it's really just the organization that I like
Soman ChainaniHOST
Yeah.
Soman ChainaniHOST
Well, if you have a question that you would like us to answer, uh, send it to our reader mailbag at mail@plottwistpod.net, P-L-O-T-T-W-I-S-T P-O-D.net. And for our last segment, plot twists that we want in the real world this week, I have a plot twist, uh, that Victoria doesn't even know about, 'cause I'm gonna announce it here, um, because I think it's a plot twist, and it's gonna be one of our very few plot twists that actually comes true
Victoria AveyardHOST
Ooh
Sarah RoseHOST
I'm getting full body chills right before I hit record and just tapping into this energy.
Sarah RoseHOST
The message that wants to be shared is that You're about to experience the plot twist of a lifetime and I'm hearing your soul did it for the plot and I'm getting full body chills right now.
Sarah RoseHOST
This feels so lighthearted, so fun, so free, so joyful, so A whimsical, very childlike energy.
Sarah RoseHOST
And this is the energy that you're moving into.
Sarah RoseHOST
That this is not something that you experience because something else gives it to you, right? You're creating this.
Sarah RoseHOST
You're creating this and reality is about to reflect back to you.
Sarah RoseHOST
this very frequency some kind of plot twist that your soul has been like waiting for like you know you know it's coming you know a plot twist is coming you know something that is going to be shifting the life experience into more playful, more fun, more adventurous, more free, more carefree, free spirited energy is just coming through very, very strongly.
Sarah RoseHOST
And financial freedom as well.
Katherine Hutchinson-HayesGUEST
and the gist of the story is there really not three sides to the story that it's more like there's yours there's mine they're what other people see and what they think they're the facts and then there is what god sees and what he thinks about what happened and so if you live for that one-fifth of what god sees and what he thinks what happens that you'll have a good life now brock o'reilly is not a person of faith himself but he is constantly having moral dilemmas and constantly questioning if there's a higher being, why do bad things happen to good people, this, that.
Katherine Hutchinson-HayesGUEST
story with lots of plot twists, lots of really interesting characters that get to carry over into two other books that I have written so far.
Katherine Hutchinson-HayesGUEST
Uh, currently my agent is shopping one in particular and, um, the other one hopefully will, will follow after.
Miss LizHOST
So Catherine, why'd you put the colors, the, why were the colors chosen for the cover? Like the red and the yellows and whites.
JackieHOST
And we're your hosts.
JackieHOST
Today, we are so excited because we are having a plot twist.
JackieHOST
We are talking about books about teachers.
JackieHOST
But before we get into that, we have some pretty controversial, juicy stuff to talk about for the Red
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