Weekly Prompt: A Case of Mistaken Identity
Change encounters and trading places whether on purpose or by accident. Doppelgangers and impersonators.
Welcome to the second weekly challenge for April, where our theme is Fool Me Once:
One person being mistaken for another
What could go wrong? Plenty.
Whether it's a madcap comedy from decades ago, or a bumbling Bean-like character accidentally succeeding through a group of pretentious art critics expecting eccentric genius. Mistaken identity is actually, believe it or not, a defence in criminal cases.
Funnily enough, Rowan Atkinson gets mistaken for that Mr Bean on occasion:
Your prompt this week is very simple. Take one person and drop them into someone else’s life. What happens? Do they succeed in the making it through undiscovered? Is it all just a good laugh, a good pub story for later years?
Or does your poor character find themselves in a sorry state, mistaken for someone of the underbelly, a competitor, a rival? Do they get caught up in gunfights and car chases? An unfortunate casualty and cover to a mastermind’s escape?
Or stranger still, is it a mysterious and supernatural doppelgänger? A strange unearthly duplicate? Because everyone knows seeing your doppelgänger is an omen of death.
Let’s see what you can cook up and what sparks fly.
Challenge Requirements
Your story must:
- Tell us a fictional story inspired by trading places
- Be min 100 and max 1000 words long, excluding the title, subtitle, and any post-story bio/links. (We use Medium’s own word count feature.)
- Use “Wasn’t Me” as one of your five tags.
- We recommend Fiction, Flash Fiction and maybe your genre too. But it’s your choice.
- Please link back to the prompt so others can find it easily.
New here? Here’s how to write with us. We’d love to see your stories.
