April Fools’ Day Prank Backfire? Practice Plotting.

Did your April Fools’ Day prank backfire? I hope not. But if it did (and you’ve sufficiently recovered from whatever embarrassment and anxiety that resulted), rewind that suffering for review and practice plotting.

Plot Inspiration: Why did your April Fools’ prank Backfire?

I don’t participate in April Fools’ Day pranks for two reasons: 1. that invites other people to prank me, and 2. almost every time I tried a prank in the past, it backfired (generally in awkward and scarring ways). On the plus side, those catastrophes taught me valuable lessons about how “the best made plans of mice and…” characters could blow up in their faces.

Here’s the process.

 1. Think about what happened.

This, honestly, is the worst part of this operation.

Unfortunately, you can’t really learn from the situation (plotting-wise) without going over how things went down. Sorry! But that’s what gives you the information you need to complete the rest of the steps.

2. Identify what made the prank go wrong.

Sometimes, it’s obvious. Sometimes, not so much. Here are some scenarios dredged up from my personal horro.. *cough* memories.

Misjudged Personality

You thought the person will take the prank just fine, laugh about it with the group, and take no offense. Everything you knew about him/her made that seem like the most likely possibility. Maybe even the only possibility. Well, you were wrong. Instead the person is angry, crying, etc. The friendship may never recover.

Strategy Gap

You had it planned. You do x. The person does y. Surprise. Reaction. Laughter. Done. Perfect. There’s absolutely no reason for it not to work.

Until the person does z instead. Or a different person does y. Or d.

Regardless of who or how, someone throws a wrench in your plans. Either something happens to the wrong person, or something unexpected happens to you. Or anything in between really.

Usually, it’s something horribly obvious that definitely should’ve occurred to you as a possibility.

For example, I once saw someone turn in a fake resignation letter. On the very bottom, it said to turn it over and sign that it had been read and acknowledged. The owner read it and got rly mad before turning it over and catching on. He laughed about it. In fact, he laughed about it so hard that he left it on one of the other owner’s desks. That owner didn’t read all the way to the bottom before panicking and running around trying to fix things.

Could the original author of the prank have foreseen that exact scenario? I don’t know. I wouldn’t have. Could the he/she have imagined other ways for it to go horribly wrong? Absolutely.

That’s the sort of thing I’m talking about. You try to cover every contingency, and one pops up that wasn’t even on your radar. This one happens a lot when the planning is hasty or spur-of-the-moment. Or simply poorly thought out.

Dangerous Ignorance

Beyond social damage, let’s talk about how situations can be physically damaging or even life-threatening. One of the easiest ways for a seemingly-innocuous prank to turn deadly is for the prankster to be ignorant of some aspect of the target’s life.

Like allergies.

I mean, think about how many pranks involve food. Substituting toothpaste for the inside of an oreo. Covering an onion with caramel and claiming it’s an apple.

What if the person is deathly allergic to onions? That’s something you don’t always know about other people. Especially coworkers. What if the person is allergic to peanuts, and whatever food you used in the prank was prepared in the same place as peanut products?

There’s a lot that can go wrong. And that’s not including all the other medical conditions that could come into play.

Or what about situational ignorance? Like a chair was put aside to be fixed, but the prankster didn’t know that. A jump scare combined with a repairman and an unusually open window or a trip hazard. Bad things could happen, and it’s not something the prankster could plan for.

3. Apply What You Found to Your Plot.

Now that you know what went wrong, think about how you can do the same to your characters.

• Has the character judged the people involved correctly?
• Have the planners thought deeply? Tried to anticipate every possible outcome?
• Was the plan made hastily and overlooked obvious outcomes?
• Is there something the characters don’t know that would have changed their plans for the better?

I’m sure there are far more ways for pranks to backfire. Any of them can be used in a plot. You can even mix and match.

And since April Fools’ Day is a national holiday that most people are exposed to in school and beyond, many people have experienced the same backfires. From multiple sides. They’ll laugh and wince right along with your characters.

So… was the prank backfire worth the added realism?

-Em