The Biter-bit plot

The biter-bit plot is simple, but effective, and versatile, lending itself to all genres of fiction. At the heart of this plot, an ironic reversal results in a character's receiving his or her just desserts. A form of poetic justice, the biter-bit plot turns the tables on a typically brash, domineering, or otherwise unsavory character. This plot usually has a two- or three-part structure.

Many of the stories in Lawrence Blocks collection One Night Stands and Lost Weekends are based on the biter-bit formula.

“Bargain in Blood” divides its biter-bit plot into three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end:

1. Beginning: Benny Dixon, a callow youth, murders Rita's boyfriend Moe to win Rita's heart.
2. Middle: Too late, Benny learns that Rita is aroused by murder.
3. End: Rita stabs Benny in the heart with the same knife Benny used to kill Moe.

“The Burning Fury”

1. Beginning: A woman promises to make a lumberjack “happy.”
2. Middle: They leave the bar in which they meet to go to his place.
3. End: Too late, the woman discovers that there is only one way to make the lumberjack “happy”: he's a sadist.

“Just Window Shopping”

1. Beginning: A woman, catching a voyeur peeping at her, invites him into her house, at gunpoint, to have sex with her.
2. Middle: When she won't take no for an answer, he shoots her with her gun, which she'd set aside when she'd pressed herself upon him.
3. End: police try to beat a confession out of him, but he refuses to confess to a rape he did not commit.

The biter-bit plot is easy to use:

1. Introduce an incident, a situation, or a plan of action: a womanizing spendthrift inherits a fortune from an unknown benefactor.
2. Develop the incident or situation or implement the plan of action as seems most likely: seeking to impress a series of women, the spendthrift spends his inheritance incautiously, putting himself in danger of being killed.
3. End the sequence with a “surprise” twist that disrupts the expected outcome: as he dies, the spendthrift learns that his benefactor, a former business partner who blames the spendthrift’s incautious investments for having ruined him, left him the money after amassing a second fortune, knowing that the spendthrift would likely spend the inheritance just as he has done, putting his life at risk in the process.

For further study, read and analyze the way that O. Henry uses twists to end such of his short stories as “The Gift of the Magi,” “The Ransom of Red Chief,” and “The Cop and the Anthem.”