Plot Twist Story Prompts: Release the Monster

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, Divine Act, here.

For today's prompt, release a monster into the story. If you enter "release the" into Google, you're likely to see autofill results of "release the kraken" and "release the hounds." These are monsters in those contexts, but there are so many other monsters a writer could release.

For instance, the monster could be a virus, whether biological or technological. The monster could be a person. Or vampires. Or zombies. Maybe the monsters are a group of adults (or 4-year-olds) who didn't have their lunch. So yeah, don't forget that monsters can mean humor as much as it can lead to horror.

(5 Ways to Surprise Your Reader Without It Feeling Like a Trick.)

Speaking of zombies, any Night of the Living Dead fan knows that the most interesting thing about the living dead is not the zombies but the actions and reactions of the main characters. Do they band together? Do they tear each other apart? Monsters are great for exposing the best and worst of humanity.

So release the chickens or soggy-bottom toddlers or whatever monster you please.

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Learn from the experts on how to write a horror story that excites readers for decades (or centuries)! Even the scariest and most attention-grabbing horror story ideas will fall flat without a foundation of knowledge about the genre and expectations of the audience. In this collection, you'll find practical tips for writing horror stories that are plausible and cliché-free.

Click to continue.