Plot Twist Story Prompts: Small Problem
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, Unfamiliar Place, here.
Plot Twist Story Prompts: Small Problem
For today’s prompt, introduce a small problem that grows. Maybe a character gets a cut, and all seems fine…until it becomes apparent the cut is infected. The next thing you know the character is passed out (or unable to move), and the other characters are forced to decide how to treat this suddenly large problem.
(10-Minute Fixes to 10 Common Plot Problems.)
Of course, it doesn’t have to be a physical ailment like a cut or a cough that gradually gets worse. A character could tell a fib that leads to other more significant lies and commitments that eventually cascade into an overwhelming problem that could’ve been avoided.
If you want to really push this plot twist, you could turn the small problem into a large problem that eventually transforms into an even more significant solution. This trope occurs often in comic-related stories where a character discovers they have powers that create more and more significant problems in their life…but the thing that makes life problems is also the thing that will save the world (or universe).
So introduce a small problem, 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.