Plot Twist Story Prompts: Cutting Losses
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, Extra Time, here.
Plot Twist Story Prompts: Cutting Losses
For today’s prompt, have a character cut their losses. This is sort of taking the opposite approach of the Refuse to Yield plot twist prompt from a while back. Instead of refusing to quit battling, your character decides they’ve had enough of the situation and are ready to move on with their life.
(5 Secrets to Writing a Great Setting.)
When a character decides to move on, they are (by definition) moving into a new situation. That part is obvious. But there may be a character (or characters) who is left wondering why the character suddenly moved on. In a romance, this may be a love interest who was playing hard to get—and now might be the one pursuing.
So this plot twist idea can provide opportunities for the person cutting their losses as well as for the losses being cut. In that way, this plot twist can add a full complement of flavors to your story as your characters deal with the fall out of moving on.
So have a character cut their losses, and see what happens next.
*****
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.