There's huge plot twist in my story that one of the people thought to be dead was actually still alive. It turns out that person's twin took her place instead and died that day. Is that too contrived? Or is that a legit twist?
That's a groan-inducingly bad twist, sorry to say. Twists should come out of left field, but they should never leave the reader feeling cheated, and (without any more information) that's exactly what yours does.
Its definitely one of those things readers dislike. For me I believe that if you are going to 'kill off' a character then it has to be done in such a way that the MCs only assume the person is dead. Ambigious deaths are good. Well not much better I know but its less annoying for me. Also I figure if I ever wanted to make my characters think someone is dead, then I am at some point going to have a chapter or so from the dead persons PoV and very quickly after his 'death'. Leave my other characters wondering/assuming they are dead but for the readers they already know. But this is your story so you should go with whats best. But something like that is going to be hard to pull off with out pissing off your readers. Well it depends if you have anyone who really loved the character then they are going to thank you. lol
In many ways, that sort of twist may be predictable for some readers, and infuriating for all. I myself have wondered how to bring back a character who is believed to be dead by everyone, including the reader, but do it in such a way that the reader isn't miffed about it. I thought maybe having the story switching to the point of view of a character who witnesses the character's apparent death, and is later revealed that the 'dead' character actually survived, or something of the sort. (Like in the movie Pearl Harbor where Rafe's plane is shot down and he can't escape his plane when it crashes in the ocean (witnessed by fellow pilots), and he turns up months later describing how he was rescued by some French fishermen.) If it's a fantasy, you might have the option to have the character brought back from the dead. (Tia Dalma resurrecting Hector Barbossa, anyone?)
I watched a Japanese anime movie based around WWII once. Essentially, the youngest of 3 siblings dies from an illness (with a typical but still very well-done scene where one of the kids run and begs for ice-cream, because that's what the dying child wanted. He dies shortly after). Anyway, the rest of the film follows the family, running for shelter, getting bombed and etc. In the meantime, the father's been conscripted, of course. He's a musician and plays the violin. Later there's a scene where the father falls in battle and all the viewers see is that his violin falls into a river. And then at the end, the family returns to where their house is, now a wasteland. By this point, you're pretty damn heart-broken and you're wanting something good to happen to them so badly you would've given anything. And then the violin plays and you find that the father survived, and the family is reunited. There. It worked in that film But then again, the Japanese are pretty AWESOME at doing things when they wanna be. I wouldn't wanna try and pull that off personally. But please don't do the twins part. Having the character survive is fine, but replaced by a twin sounds very bad.
If this is set in the our world, I think it is a feesible idea, provided you set it like 20 or 30 years ago when finger prints/dna analyst and etc weren't as common. Or if you wanted to drop the twins idea, I remember watching an episode of Cold Case where two friends shared a lot of physical similarities. One friend killed the other and took her place. She was able to get away with it because it was set before dna usage was a common practice. She colored her hair, got glasses (which her friend had), and moved away where no one would be able to recognize any other differences.
