Plot Twist Story Prompts: Unreal Character

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, Make a Deal, here.

For today's prompt, have a character turn out to not be real. That is, the character is a figment of another character's imagination. Perhaps, the character is a friend, love interest, or child, and they seem so real, but we find out that, no, they're not real at all.

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

This plot twist only works if the unreal character feels very, very real. As in, the character should be well-developed with a strong personality. After all, one of your characters believes this unreal character actually exists. And you want your readers to be on that journey as well.

But there's another thing that needs to happen for this plot twist to work: You have to make sure that there are no moments when this unreal character had to exist for a scene to make sense. For instance, it wouldn't make sense for a third character to talk to the unreal character, because the unreal character should only exist for the first character. Make sense?

So have a character turn out to be less than real, 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.