Friday Flash Prompt: Twist It Right from the Start

A num­ber of years ago, I saw Audra McDon­ald and she sang a lullaby–but one from a child to a par­ent. That twist­ing of expec­ta­tion from the out­set (imag­ine if we didn’t know until the end the “twist”) cre­at­ed a remark­ably orig­i­nal and poignant expe­ri­ence. Try to defa­mil­iar­ize (to bor­row a term from Charles Bax­ter) an event by “twist­ing” the read­ers’ expec­ta­tion. Imag­ine a kid try­ing to keep his moth­er drunk, a home­less per­son who offers no redemp­tive mes­sage, a Demo­c­rat with a spine, and so on.

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