Plot Twist Story Prompts: Imagined Event

Every good story needs a nice (or not so nice) turn or two to keep it interesting. This week, have a character imagine an event.

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, Natural Disaster, here.

Plot Twist Story Prompts: Imagined Event

For today’s prompt, have a character imagine something they did (but didn’t actually do). The character could be aware they’re imagining the event, or it could be something imagined without their knowledge.

(How to Write Disaster Stories Infused With Hope.)

In fantasy, a magic spell might do the trick of making someone imagine something they did that they did not. In science fiction, there may be some new drug or “mind treatment” that gets the job done. In contemporary fiction, maybe the mind itself is the culprit as a result of a very traumatic event. But that’s just when the character is not aware of the imagined event.

When they are aware they’re imagining event, the reasons could be nefarious but also less so. A person may imagine they’re a hero when they’re not to be treated like a hero by others, which is a not so good thing to do. But they may imagine they have a family, because they don’t know their family, which may be a way to cope with the unsettled nature of their life.

Regardless of the situation, have a character imagine an event, 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.

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