Your Next Story Starts Here: Ideas for Every Writer
Your Next Story Starts Here
Ideas for Every Writer
Your Next Story Starts Here: Ideas for Every Writer
🌟 Worlds of Wonder: Fantasy & Science Fiction
Fantasy Prompts
- Take a fantasy trope and subvert it completely.
- Robots team up with wizards to solve an ancient mystery.
- A lord kidnaps a peasant girl, unaware she's a trained assassin who's been planning his death for years.
- Write about a dragon who doesn't know what to do with their hoard anymore.
- A mysterious creature in your dreams tells you that when you wake, you'll see into another realm.
- Your pet dragon transforms into a person.
- A magical world exists underground—you just need to start digging.
- Fairies are tired of being used for free labor and go on strike.
- You're kidnapped by a knight who demands your help slaying the city's most dangerous dragon.
- An underwater society decides to overtake the surface world.
- The king offers a reward for rescuing his daughter from a dragon. He wasn't expecting a different dragon to save her.
- The cocky protagonist of a popular book is sent to the real world and discovers fans prefer the villain.
- You're an immortal at a beach resort. One day, you see someone you had a summer fling with 50 years ago—they haven't aged.
- A device can solve any problem, but every solution creates an even bigger problem.
- Write about an artist whose work has magical properties.
- A god desperately tries to get their chosen hero to follow the destiny they've laid out.
- Start your story with it raining something unexpected (flowers, cutlery, shoes).
- A protagonist takes shelter under a bridge during a storm and sees an impossible creature scurry past.
- End your story with: "And that is how that world was lost and a new one, our world, was born."
Science Fiction Prompts
- You wake up to discover you can move to any planet of your choosing.
- Humans have been the aliens all along.
- Humanity achieves interstellar travel, but the first message from space is an apology, not a greeting.
- Aliens invade a fantasy world.
- Your wife is a droid—and you just found out.
- Gravity no longer exists.
- Technology becomes illegal worldwide.
- Earth is dissolving. You must transport human children to a new planet, but it's half the size—only room for half the children.
- A rogue planet collides with the sun, dropping global temperatures by 40 degrees. Write from the perspective of someone trying to save their tropical fruit trees.
- Scientists discover how to stop aging, but for each person who lives forever, someone else must die. You just received the letter saying you're chosen to die.
- Your sweet elderly neighbor seems odd. One night you see a rocket ship land in her backyard.
- You discover time travel and boldly go back to the dinosaurs—who can talk.
- An immense colony ship carries 12,000 survivors for 100 years. You're second-generation and have never touched solid ground.
🔍 Shadows and Secrets: Mystery, Thriller & Horror
Mystery Prompts
- A celebrity's death is falsely reported—then they die for real.
- The wrong body is in the casket. No one knows who it is or where the real body went.
- A homeless kid witnesses a murder and sees the killer's badge—he's a cop.
- A thief who steals rare books always leaves a sonnet behind.
- All murder victims share the same tailor.
- Who would kill the guest of honor at their 100th birthday party?
- Friends exploring an abandoned house find a secret tunnel. Where does it lead?
- The murders were committed by a human but resemble animal attacks.
Thriller Prompts
- A detective recovering from Cotard's Syndrome (believing they're dead) investigates a case.
- Write about someone who can only remember their future, not their past.
- A honeymooning couple begins having identical nightmares every night.
Horror Prompts
- You wake in the night to see a dark figure crawling across your floor.
- It's called aggressive mimicry—predators that resemble prey to lure them in. Why do mermaids only look human from the waist up?
- You wake to creaking floorboards. A woman is stroking your baby's face. When you blink, she's gone.
- There's a beautiful place in the coastal woods that changes lives. Everyone returns successful and healthy. You're told how to find it—but you must not answer the cries for help.
- By day they are heard. By night they are feared. The mysteries of the deep remain unknown; only the aftermath can be buried.
- You discover a website with clues to disturbing crimes.
- You discover, too late, that your downstairs neighbor is a cannibal.
💕 Tales of the Heart: Romance Prompts
- An awkward misunderstanding surprisingly blossoms into romance.
- A family feud ends when the children meet and fall in love.
- You and a hot stranger get trapped in an elevator.
- Write a romantic comedy where both lovers are emotionally mature with excellent communication skills.
- A stranger texts the wrong number with a heartfelt love declaration too beautiful to ignore.
- A parole officer falls for their parolee.
- Two widowed people meet at a community garden.
- Cupid warns: if the person already likes you, the arrow will erase those feelings.
- You meet your opposite-sex doppelganger and feel strangely attracted.
- A fortune teller falls for a client who returns monthly for palm readings.
- Someone with anxiety falls for someone wildly adventurous.
- Two people with opposing political views collaborate and develop unexpected feelings.
- A woman agrees to fake-engagement with a billionaire for publicity—it becomes real.
- A romance between an angel and a demon.
📜 Through Time: Historical Fiction Prompts
- A judge in Ancient Rome opposes Justinian's legal reforms.
- You're a servant in Pompeii when Mount Vesuvius erupts.
- The truth behind Mary Shelley's Frankenstein—who was the real monster?
- Write a story in the same building across two different eras.
- An epistolary story (told through letters) set during a major historical event.
- A Roman senator converts to Christianity after Constantine legalizes it. How do pagan peers react?
- An Ancient Greek poet discovers a lost play by Aeschylus and faces mysterious threats when staging it.
- Leonardo da Vinci befriends a noblewoman he's painting—then she disappears.
- A lady-in-waiting helps a medieval princess escape to marry a craftsman's son.
- Starting a new life in London as the Black Death arrives in 1349.
- A wise-woman healer faces witchcraft accusations from new Christian authorities near Canterbury.
- Multiple characters' paths intertwine during the Great Fire of London, 1666.
- An Acadian family is separated during The Great Upheaval (1755-1764).
- In Victorian London, your fiancé is accused of murder—you must find the real killer.
- The wife of a Chicago bootlegger during Prohibition's peak, 1928.
- A San Francisco family torn apart in 1968: one son enlists for Vietnam, the other becomes an anti-war activist.
🌱 Coming of Age: YA Prompts
The Wing Beyond the Wall
After her mother's death, sixteen-year-old Imogen moves to Thornfield Manor to live with her estranged aunt. The east wing is locked and forbidden, but when Imogen discovers a hidden passage, she finds evidence of a cousin who supposedly died years ago. Through old photographs and dreams of fire, she uncovers her family's dark fortune built on exploitation.
The Anonymous Exchange
In detention, Leila discovers a hidden notebook filled with decades of anonymous student confessions. When someone responds to her entry about cultural identity struggles, an intimate correspondence begins. As school renovations threaten the notebook's discovery, Leila must choose between preserving tradition or revealing secrets.
The Haunted History
Seventeen-year-old Zora's family moves into a former Underground Railroad stop. She connects with the ghost of Harriet, an enslaved girl who died mysteriously. When renovations uncover a hidden diary and remains, Zora investigates—discovering some families will do anything to keep the past buried.
The Lucky One
In Evergreen Valley, winning the annual Prosperity Lottery grants a year of privilege. When Cass's family wins, she's thrilled—until she notices past winners mysteriously relocate. Discovering a hidden journal, she learns the lottery isn't a reward but a sacrifice selection.
The Forbidden Library
In a future where books are digitally sanitized, Elijah discovers his grandmother's hidden library of original, unaltered classics. Joining underground librarians who memorize banned books, he must decide whether to risk everything exposing government censorship.
The Elevator Decision
Fifteen-year-old Marcus descends in an elevator, gun in hand, seeking revenge for his brother's shooting. Each floor brings the ghost of someone killed by gun violence—his father, best friend, cousin—revealing how all deaths connect to the same cycle. He has sixty seconds to decide: continue the pattern or break it.
🏡 Everyday Moments: Realistic Fiction
- A teenager's life changes forever after becoming a victim of cyberbullying.
- Rebuilding life after being wrongfully convicted.
- A woman becomes the primary caregiver for her aging parents.
- A couple's relationship tested by a custody battle.
- Discovering you were adopted challenges your sense of identity.
- A father's remarriage strains his relationship with his child.
- Life upended by falling victim to a scam.
- Family relationships strained when coming out as gay.
- If I could become invisible...
- The happiest moment of my life.
- The saddest moment of my life.
- My most embarrassing moment.
- The strangest dream I ever had.
- What I would do if I were rich.
- My fondest childhood memory.
- The person I admire most.
- Qualities I look for in a friend.
- The problems started when my brother bought a _______ at the thrift store.
- The strangest thing you've seen in public.
- Returning from war to find your family missing without a trace.
- At 80, you finally learn to swim to compete in a triathlon.
- Waking unable to see, speak, or hear.
- Running a tiny family store.
- Tell a story entirely through text messages.
- Write about waking up to something absurd.
🎨 Breaking Boundaries: Experimental & Poetic Sparks
- Pick a color. Explore it using all five senses.
- Write about the aftermath—of an argument, panic attack, crying, or break-up.
- Journal entry from your favorite fictional character's perspective.
- Take an irritating cliché and write a better version.
- Write a poem about a mirror.
- Open any book. Write based on the first word that catches your eye.
- Write a poem without using the letter 'e'.
- Collaborate! Exchange lines with a friend until your poem is complete.
- Write a poetic transcript of a loved one telling a story, using spacing to indicate pauses.
- Write about silence—is it eerie, peaceful, anxiety-provoking?
- Listen. What's the most prominent sound? Write about it.
- Write a story using only dialogue.
- Rewrite a fairy tale from the antagonist's perspective.
- Retell a familiar fairy tale in a different culture.
💡 Story Concepts to Develop
The Echoing City
In a metropolis where architecture amplifies sound, a musician discovers certain melodies unlock memories and alter physical space. They uncover a conspiracy to control the city through sonic manipulation.
The Last Seed
After a blight renders Earth barren, a botanist guards the last viable seed across a desolate landscape, racing toward a rumored sanctuary while navigating mutated flora and desperate survivors.
The Curator's Secret
A museum curator discovers forgotten artifacts with fragments of ancient magic, becoming targeted by a secret society determined to reclaim and misuse the power.
The Dream Weaver's Apprentice
An apprentice who can manipulate dreams must master their abilities when a nightmare entity begins consuming the city's dreams, threatening reality itself.
The Quantum Key
A physicist invents a device to unlock parallel universes, but their actions cause reality instability. They must team with an ally from another dimension to prevent multiversal collapse.
The Silent Orchestra
In a dystopia where art is outlawed, a rebel discovers a hidden community preserving music. When threatened, they must spark a revolution through sound.
The Memory Thief of Oakhaven
In a town where memories are stored in a communal library, an archivist discovers someone is systematically stealing specific memories, rewriting history.
Echoes of the Sunken City
An explorer discovers a technologically advanced city at the ocean's bottom and realizes the same cataclysm threatens the surface world.
The Clockwork Heart
In a steampunk world, an inventor creates a sentient clockwork companion. When it develops emotions beyond its programming, ethical questions arise about creation and love.
The Last Starfall
On a dying planet, an astronomer discovers a rare celestial event—a "starfall"—is their world's only hope. They journey to a sacred observatory, facing guardians and hazards to harness its power.
The Unwritten Play
A playwright inherits a haunted theater. Only by completing and performing a long-lost play can trapped spirits find peace—but the play itself resists completion.
The Quantum Gardener
A geneticist develops plants that grow in multiple dimensions, yielding abundant harvests. But these "quantum plants" begin altering reality unpredictably.
The Ghost of the Grand Hotel
A cynical hotel manager meets a mischievous 1920s flapper ghost who offers help revitalizing the hotel—if the manager helps solve her murder.
The City of Whispering Walls
In a city built in an ancient canyon, an explorer discovers the walls are a petrified sentient being. Awakening it might save the city—or unleash an ancient consciousness.
The Algorithm of Love
A skeptical data scientist joins a dating app claiming to guarantee true love, intending to expose it as fraud. The algorithm matches them perfectly, challenging their beliefs.
The Cartographer of Dreams
An artist suffering from nightmares begins mapping their dreamscapes, discovering they're connected to a forgotten ancient world. Their art holds the key to confronting the source.
Just Start Writing
The most important step is the first one. When inspiration strikes, capture it immediately—don't wait for the perfect moment or the perfect plan. Write that compelling sentence, that fragment of dialogue, that vivid image. These initial words are seeds that will grow into something more.
Writer's block dissolves when you give yourself permission to create imperfectly. The refinement comes later. The polishing happens in revision. Right now, your only job is to begin.
So pick a prompt that calls to you, set a timer for 15 minutes, and just start.