Writing Exercise: Detours of Consequence

Writing Exercise: Detours of Consequence

Key Techniques Developed:

1. Narrative Surrender

Writing that listens to the story’s internal momentum rather than the author’s plan, allowing the unexpected to emerge.

2. Emotional and Moral Risk

Characters face moments that challenge their beliefs, values, or identity, resulting in discomfort, contradiction, or loss.

3. Unplanned Narrative Detours

The writer embraces spontaneous shifts in direction—emotional, moral, or literal—and explores their consequences fully.

Writing Prompt (500 words):

Write a scene where a character is headed toward a clear goal: returning home, attending a meeting, confronting someone, escaping something. Midway through the scene, something interrupts—small or strange, mundane or unsettling. Allow this interruption to change the trajectory of the moment completely. Follow it without forcing a return to the original plan. Let the shift expose something the character has avoided or denied—something that alters how they see themselves or the world.

You should not plan the interruption in advance. Start with your character’s intention and discover the shift as you go. The final scene should land in a place of moral or emotional complexity that the character did not anticipate.

Avoid closure. Prioritize disruption, unease, and unresolvable tension.

Evaluation Criteria:

Surrender to Narrative Momentum

Strong: The writer allows the scene to veer off its expected path, following where the emotional or narrative tension leads.

Weak: The detour is cosmetic or perfunctory, and the character remains on the same arc, unchanged or unchallenged.

Risk and Exposure

Strong: The scene forces the character to confront something vulnerable, contradictory, or disorienting.

Weak: The character remains emotionally shielded, or the change is convenient and reaffirming.

Detour as Revelation

Strong: The interruption reshapes the meaning of the original goal or renders it irrelevant.

Weak: The detour has no lasting weight or feels disconnected from the character’s inner life.

Follow-up Workshop Questions:

• What was the original arc of the scene, and how did it change? Were you surprised?

• What emotional or moral pressure emerged after the interruption?

• How does the character end the scene differently than they began—not just in action, but in belief or awareness?

• Could the story be structured to begin with the detour instead? What would be lost?

Recommended Reading:

“The Third and Final Continent” by Jhumpa Lahiri

A story where gentle interruptions—a roommate’s odd rules, a stranger’s routines—create a quiet but life-altering shift in the protagonist’s worldview. The narrative doesn’t dramatize its detours, but allows them to reshape the emotional core of the story.

Strong Response Example:

A woman rushing to her first in-person job interview in years stops at a bakery to buy a bottle of water. The cashier mistakes her for a former coworker, starts reminiscing, and hands her an old note left for this other person. The woman doesn’t correct him. She reads the note while walking, and it unsettles her—a message of encouragement, maybe faith or apology. She arrives at the interview, pauses outside, and decides not to go in—not out of fear, but because something in her just shifted, and she wants to understand what.

Weak Response Example:

A man heading to a doctor’s appointment gets stuck in traffic. He grumbles, checks the clock, and arrives late. Nothing internal shifts. The detour delays him, but doesn’t disrupt anything essential. His mood doesn’t change, nor do his values or assumptions.

AI Disclosure Statement:

This writing prompt was created in collaboration with ChatGPT, an AI model by OpenAI, to support creative practice. ChatGPT assisted with idea generation and drafting; the final text was edited by the author. The illustration was created using Google Gemini.