Plot Twist Story Prompts: Missed Appointment

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, Forced Out, here.

For today's prompt, have a missed appointment. In real life, a missed appointment impacts more than just one person. As an example, a missed dentist appointment impacts the patient, the dentist, the dental hygienist, the secretary, and possibly other patients (or people who interact with any of these characters).

(Writing Mistakes Writers Make: Waiting for Inspiration to Strike.)

The reasons for missed appointments vary. Maybe one person slept in or was detained. Maybe one person had a panic attack. And it's possible one person forgot or the person who kept the appointment actually wrote down the wrong meeting time (meaning the person who missed the appointment actually didn't miss the appointment...plot twist!).

Remember that appointments aren't all official meetings in an office. People make unofficial appointments every day, and some of them are even called things like "dates" and/or "practices" and/or "hanging out."

So have a character miss an appointment, 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.