Plot Twist Story Prompts: Bad Messenger

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, Falling Down, here.

For today's prompt, introduce a bad messenger. That is, have a messenger who may not be completely reliable deliver information that could change the actions of your characters. And it should be pretty obvious (or at least slightly obvious) that the messenger could be dealing out faulty facts.

(100 Creative Writing Prompts for Writers.)

In an action story, the messenger could be someone from "the other side" or an informant who is part of a bad (and/or rival) organization. In a romance, the messenger could be a former lover. And so on.

The main tension in this plot twist is that the information received may or may not be reliable. And your characters have to decide how to proceed. Will their suspicions lead them to not believe real information? Will they overcome their suspicions only to find they should've trusted their gut? Will things fall somewhere in the middle? All answers will be revealed as you write your way through this one.

So introduce a bad messenger, 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.

Click to continue.