Plot Twist Story Prompts: Triggered Memory

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, Second Life, here.

For today's prompt, have a character's memory get triggered by someone or something. This could be a huge blocked memory or just one of those things the character had forgotten but now it suddenly feels super important, whether for the forces of good or evil.

(Keeping Your Narrator's Secrets When Writing a Series.)

For instance, I've been reading Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time epic, and characters in this series actually recall memories from other people from the past, including different lifetimes, relationships, feuds, and so on. And different events, people, and situations can trigger these memories.

But there are situations in the real world (as opposed to Jordan's fantasy world) in which people may suddenly remember a funny anecdote or a moment when someone did something (for good or bad) that's triggered when a similar situation suddenly presents itself. This kind of triggering could cause a character to recognize a long line of good or bad acts for what they are and send the story in a new direction.

So trigger a character's memory 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.