Plot Twist Story Prompts: Done This Before

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, Bad Place, here.

For today's prompt, a character lets people know they've done this before. So what is this? This could be a day, an hour, a moment, a battle, a week, and so on. You decide the period of time, but the point is that your character knowingly repeats something they've experienced before.

(Writing Multiple Timelines and Points of View.)

This is different than deja vu, which is the sensation that a character has done something before. They may have, may not have, but there's nothing definitive. In this plot twist, the character knows for sure that they've experienced this before...and it may even be a case in which they've experienced "this" several times before.

Of course, there are many interesting riddles to tease out of this scenario. One, why are they experiencing "this" again? How do they get back on a non-repeating timeline? Can they improve their situation this time around? How do people react once they're told they've done this before? 

These stories often follow the person who is repeating their timeline, but it might be interesting to follow a character who is not repeating the timeline but who does come in contact with the person who is convinced they're repeating their timeline. How do they react? Do the person's predictions come true? And so on.

So have a character let people know they've done this before, 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.

Click to continue.