Have you ever positioned a plot twist so that the only hints it would happen was vague foreshadowing? Bonus points if someone accused you of being random and you proved them wrong.
Oh yes. A Midsummer Knight's Dream has a big one coming up (which is partly why I'm taking so long). Additionally, my one-shots, even though they're one-shots, tend to have plot twists to give the ending more of a bang. (His Angel, anyone?)
No one's called me random, unfortunately. It's either they know they're hints but can't figure out
how they're hints or they don't realize I'm dropping hints at all. It's a lot of fun.
What is a good length for a one-shot?
Depends on how many pages you need to tell a story. I've seen people pull off one-pager stories. (In fact, I've
done that before.) Likewise, I've seen people who take more than twenty pages to do it. (
Ditto.) And then, you have drabbles, which are 100-word stories (no more, no less), and yes, they're complete and can be pulled off well if you put enough effort into them. (
Also have done drabbles.) Point is, there's not really a "good" length. It all depends on what story you're writing and how much detail you're putting into it. Tell the story until it's finished, and there's your length.
'Course, your readers might get up and leave if you, say, write a fanfiction that's over thirty pages long, but then again, I've gotten people to sit through Bloom. So, I wouldn't worry too much over whether or not you'll scare away readers due to length.
Note that this contradicts what I said about prologues slightly. The difference is with a one-shot, you're forced to tell a complete story. With a prologue, the tendency is to rely on the main story to cover up whatever problems the prologue had. So, writing a one-shot tends to be a different ball park because you only have one chance to get the story right.
