Plot Twist Story Prompts: Blackmail

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, Unreal Character, here.

For today's prompt, have a character blackmail another character. In the movie Clue, the thing that brings together all the characters is blackmail, but it's often a force that is used to separate people (from their money, their security, the truth, and each other). That's why blackmail is such a popular plot (and plot twist) device.

(8 Ways to Write Better Characters.)

In fact, this plot twist (when not initially revealed) can be used to effectively make your characters do things that are not normally in their character to do. For instance, a usually upstanding person steals a top secret document, because they're the victim of blackmail. A politician who ran on a particular issue takes a completely different track once they're in office, because of blackmail.

And that's something to keep in mind with this plot twist prompt, sometimes the desired "payment" from the blackmailer is money. But it's so much more interesting (and sometimes sinister) when the blackmailer wants a service performed or some alternative form of "payment" to keep their silence.

So have a character blackmail another character, 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.