Plot Twist Story Prompts: Blocked Passage

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, Tell a Tale, here.

For today's prompt, block a passage for your characters. This could be a physical passage (like a locked door, dead end in an alley, or avalanche in a mountain pass). But your blocked passage could also be mental, emotional, or circumstantial.

For example, two people meet and fall in love and everything is amazing until...blocked passage! In this case, maybe one person's mother falls ill and needs care while the other person has a job they can't (or don't want to) leave. That would be a circumstantial blocked passage.

(50 reasons for your characters to be stuck together.)

Of course, that could be followed up by a physical blocked passage. Using the same example, person A leaves person B, who then decides to quit that job after all. Problem is that now the border is shut down between here and there because war broke out (or there was a pandemic or some other catastrophe). Now there's a physical blocked passage.

And don't forget the emotional blocked passage. Because the separation may make one person's feelings grow stronger, while the other person starts to question their feelings, especially if they meet someone new who is physically present and engaged in their life.

So yes, if you wanted to, you could totally stack blocked passages on top of each other to drive up the stakes. In fact, many great stories do exactly this.

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