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10 AI-Generated Plot Twists

“AI Made Me Do It” Writing Prompts Part 6

Photo by Din Djarin on Unsplash

Today is Star Wars Day: May the 4th!

The original Star Wars trilogy had one of the best plot twists of all time. Luke Skywalker’s paternity came as a total shock to audiences, although nowadays the antagonist-is-your-dad trope has become cliché. Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments series does it justice by pulling a switcheroo, but that kind of twist is pretty much old hat at this point.

Can AI like ChatGPT help writers come up with unique plot twists that will actually surprise readers? For this installment of the Promptly Written promptilicious segment “AI Made Me Do It,” I asked ChatGPT to generate 10 writing prompts that include a shocking plot twist.

Check out Parts 1–5 of “AI Made Me Do It” for more prompts:

Part 1: 10 Prompts About Artificial Intelligence
Part 2: 10 Prompts About Love
Part 3: These 10 Prompts are LIES
Part 4: 10 Springtime Prompts
Part 5: Prompts Against Humanity

How This Works

• Use the following prompts to write anything you’d like: a short story, flash fiction, poem, article, creative nonfiction, etc. Use the prompt in its entirety or change whatever you’d like; it’s up to you!
• Submit your response here at Promptly Written (please follow the submission guidelines) where it will be edited by yours truly, Casey Lawrence**, to other any publication, or self-publish it.
• If you publish your story somewhere on Medium other than PW, make sure to include a link to the prompt at the bottom of your story and tag me (Casey) so that I don’t miss out!
• Have fun!

“AI Made Me Do It”: 10 AI-Generated Plot Twists

1. A detective investigating a string of murders realizes that he is the killer.
2. A group of friends win an all-expenses-paid trip to a luxury resort, only to discover that they are actually participating in a twisted game show where the losers are sacrificed to a demonic entity.
3. An antique dealer falls head-over-heels for their perfect partner, only to discover that their lover is a time traveler from a future where they’re already dead.
4. A group of survivors discovers that the zombie outbreak was caused by a rogue AI trying to cull the human population.
5. A scientist discovers a way to communicate with plants, but it turns out that the plants are already communicating with aliens.
6. A teacher suspects that one of their students is a superhero. The teacher is actually the superhero’s arch-nemesis.
7. A detective investigates a string of robberies and suspects the wealthy businessman in town is the mastermind behind it all. As she digs deeper into the case, she discovers that the real culprits are a family of raccoons who have been using a nearby sewer system to access the targeted buildings. But just as the detective thinks the case is closed, she receives an anonymous tip that leads her to discover that the businessman has been using the raccoons as a cover-up for his own nefarious activities.
8. A group of friends on a road trip come across a small town that seems to have disappeared from all maps. They slowly realize that they have been dead the whole time and have been existing as ghosts.
9. A man buys a haunted house, but instead of ghosts, he finds that the house is inhabited by a race of tiny, mischievous creatures.
10. A woman begins to suspect that her husband is cheating on her, but the twist is that he has been leading a double life as a superhero.

It took a lot of conversations to get the AI to write prompts that weren’t clichés. Because ChatGPT is a language model that uses predictive text, it is difficult to use it to create truly “unique” plots, but these ten were the closest it came to unexpected twist endings (especially number 7!).

Bonus

Here are ten AI-generated ‘micro-prompts’. You can use them as part of your response to the prompts above, or as writing prompts in their own right!

1. The cat was the mastermind.
2. Time travel erased their existence.
3. The villain is the victim.
4. The painting came to life.
5. It was all a dream within a dream.
6. The aliens were already among us.
7. The phone call came from the future.
8. The lover was a spy all along.
9. The ghost isn’t dead.
10. The dog is the time traveler, not the owner.

Did AI succeed at creating shocking twists? You be the judge!

Happy writing, and May the Fourth be with you.

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**To respect my time, note that I will only edit small issues, such as minor spelling and punctuation mistakes, tags, or formatting. If a story requires extensive editing, I will leave a Private Note and reject the piece for you to edit. You may resubmit a rejected story once it has been properly edited according to the submission guidelines.