Plot Twist Story Prompts: False Confirmation
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, No Decision, here.
Plot Twist Story Prompts: False Confirmation
For today’s prompt, confirm something that is actually false. Like maybe the accused murderer in a horror story is behind bars when another murder happens, confirming that the suspect is innocent. Only, well, they have a partner, so the confirmation of innocence is actually false.
(5 Ways to Surprise Your Readers Without It Feeling Like a Trick.)
In romances, it’s a popular trope to confirm that a character would be a bad partner because of (fill-in-the-blank). But in reality, this character is not (fill-in-the-blank); they’re actually The One who is meant to be with our protagonist…unless THAT is the false confirmation.
Writers can easily stack false confirmations to keep their characters and readers off balance. Just be careful that you don’t spin readers around too much, or they’ll be too dizzy to trust anything that’s happening in the story.
So confirm something that is actually false, 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.