Plot Twist Story Prompts: Pretend Relationship

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, Done This Before, here.

For today's prompt, have a character develop a pretend relationship. That is, the character may pretend to be in a relationship with a fake person (who may live in another country or just always be gone when people ask about them). Or the character pretends the real person in the relationship is someone else.

(7 Rules of Picking Names for Fictional Characters.)

A few months back, I had a similar plot twist I called the Unreal Character twist. In that one, the character thought the unreal character was real. In this one, your character knows the pretend relationship isn't real, but they decide to pretend anyway.

Of course, there could be many motivations driving the pretend relationship. Jealousy and/or trying to make someone jealous has caused many a pretend relationship to blossom (and often backfire). Or, perhaps, a need to feel more special and loved may cause someone to "fake it 'til they make it," right?

Stories that feature a pretend relationship run the gamut from humorous to disturbed and cross every genre of fiction, which only makes sense in a place that's very fabric is based on a fiction. There are probably few plot twists that are more meta.

So have a character develop a pretend relationship, 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.