Prompts for a Plot Twist
8 questions about purposefully going off script
Sometime last year, I was going along and doing all of my regular things when I realized that suddenly, urgently, everything needed to change.
I won’t get into the ‘why,’ because it is complicated and I didn’t fully understand it and it doesn’t really matter. What I could see clearly: the carefully stacked art books, the organized refrigerator, the many tiny wabi-sabi ceramic bowls, the routine built on highly functional structure. And then the question: what if we just walked into the unknown instead?
These moments don’t come around often; where the door is genuinely open and you can proceed with blind possibility. Most of the time you can’t, or you won’t. But we opted for the former: packed it all up, gave things away, embarked on temporary plans that turned into months that have turned into a year.
Narratively, a plot twist is often a necessary device to drive the story forward; it is fuel for the engine. But on the inside it can be less dramatic. You’re not always standing at a crossroads, flipping a coin; you’re already down the road you chose, looking back at the version of you who made the call, still a little amazed they did it.
Sometimes change begins with just adjusting the frequency. Seeing how the tools you’ve been relying on aren’t the only ones available; how commitment is different from passive continuation. You are, almost certainly, more adaptable than you think.
These prompts are about the arc of changing the plot: the incremental shifts. The secret rules you’re living by or purposefully breaking. The ways you’ve done this before, and you’ll do it again.
The May Prompts:
1. Q or A
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer,” wrote Zora Neale Hurston in Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Which one is this for you?
2. Past Lives
“How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?” – Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers.
List some of your past eras or ways you’ve reinvented yourself before.
Examples: the summer where you got into lap swimming at 6am. The spontaneous move to the city you’d never been to (Philadelphia). The month in the Marais hotel. The fabulous year of bleached blonde hair. (Followed by the year of the fried-out bob).
3. Background Shift
What is one small, accumulated thing that is different from six months ago that you haven’t yet given yourself credit for?
4. Diplomatic Immunity
10,000 daily steps. Monogamy. Home ownership.
