Plot Twist Story Prompts: Truth Denial

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, Red Line Moment, here.

For today's prompt, have a character (or characters) deny the objective truth. This could be as simple as a leader refusing to respond to an obvious threat. Or it could be a person refusing to take no for an answer. There are many situations in which people (even the best of us) deny the truth.

(5 Moral Dilemmas That Make Characters and Stories Better.)

For instance, a parent who is completely unable to accept that their child (perhaps a convicted felon) is a bad person. That parent may not be denying the truth for nefarious reasons; they may just always see their child as the smiling toddler who gave them hugs and cuddled with them in their youth. That said, their denial of the truth can lead to some interesting actions and reactions because of their inability to see things objectively.

In fact, that's the real strength of this plot twist prompt: You're provided with plausible reasons for characters to do things that don't make objective sense to someone who's not in the middle of the story. And the reason the unreasonable is plausible hinges on a character's inability to accept the objective truth.

So have somebody deny an objective truth, 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.