Plot Twist Story Prompts: Doing the Right Thing
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, Friendship Ends, here.
Plot Twist Story Prompts: Doing the Right Thing
For today’s prompt, have a character do “the right thing.” That is, have your character do the right thing instead of the easy thing, the convenient thing, the greedy thing, and/or whatever other motivation they might have. When push comes to shove, they choose to do the right thing, regardless of the consequences they’ll have to face afterward.
(5 Moral Dilemmas That Make Characters and Stories Better.)
As an example, a protagonist may have one overriding goal for their story arc: to win the big race. They face many obstacles on their way to their goal, including injury, doubts, fears, cheating competitors, and so on. Eventually, they’re in a position to win the big race when their main competition stumbles and finds their health in peril. The protagonist could win and achieve their main goal the right way…but is it the right thing to leave the downed competitor? Of course not, and it will probably cause the protagonist to not win the big race.
Of course, doing the right thing isn’t restricted to competitions. It could be missing the bus to help a person across the street. And don’t rule out the possibility that doing the right thing comes with unexpected rewards. Your protagonist may not achieve their primary goal, but they may find something they didn’t realize they needed.
So have a character do the right thing, 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.