Plot Twist Story Prompts: Connect the Dots
Plot twist story prompts aren't meant for the beginning or the end of stories. Rather, they're for forcing big and small turns in the anticipated trajectory of a story. This is to make it more interesting for the readers and writers alike.
Each week, I'll provide a new prompt to help twist your story. Find last week's prompt, Hero Must Die, here.
Plot Twist Story Prompts: Connect the Dots
For today's prompt, have your characters connect the dots. People love world-building and the stories behind the stories, and many people love connecting the dots between the stories to create complex conspiracies. And that's the story behind this week's plot twist story prompt.
(3 Things Writers Should Know About Cults.)
Have your characters connect the dots on a possible conspiracy. Maybe the single car accident was a single car accident, or maybe the driver was actually run off the road by an evil organization, or maybe their car was sabotaged, or maybe...well, your characters can fill in the blanks.
Of course, one fun part of writing this is that you get to show how far down the rabbit hole your characters are willing to go. Do they just like to have a beer (or many beers) and elaborate on what-could-be-happenings? Or do they have a room filled with newspaper clippings, sticky notes, string connected by pushpins, and other physical manifestations of their connectedness?
The interesting thing for this plot twist prompt is that the conspiracy doesn't have to be true as long as your characters believe. But the possibility of the conspiracy can drive your characters to take actions they wouldn't in a non-conspiracy reality. And if the conspiracy is real, then that's another twist in itself.
So have your characters connect the dots, and see what happens next.
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Have you hit a wall on your work-in-progress? Maybe you know where you want your characters to end up, but don’t know how to get them there. Or, the story feels a little stale but you still believe in it. Adding a plot twist might be just the solution.
