Category: Fiction Writing Prompts

401. The main character is a big-league sports star complete with a chauffeur, a cook, a gardener, and an entourage that includes bodyguards. An unexpected family death rips into the athlete’s life and brings him or her home to humbler roots. 

402. They’re both married, so they meet in discreet locations to carry out their affair. During one such tryst, they witness a horrific murder. If they come forward, their affair will be revealed. If they don’t, the killer will be free to murder again.  

403. A young citizen journalist joins the military in order to work his or her way into special ops. While there, he or she discovers that not only is the military aware of aliens, the Air Force also has spaceships that can travel to the far reaches of the galaxy. What happens when, years later, the journalist publishes a tell-all book or produces a documentary revealing the truth to the world, complete with irrefutable proof? 

404. Write a story about two characters who switch bodies. What would a man think of being in a woman’s body? What if they were from different parts of the world? What if one of them was an animal?  

405. The protagonist wakes up alone in a cold stone room, chained to the floor. The abductor enters. It’s someone from the protagonist’s past—someone who is very angry and deeply disturbed, and it’s all the protagonist’s fault. 

406. One character is a thief. The other is a cop. If their relationship is going to succeed, someone’s going to have to give up their career. Who will it be? 

407. Write a story about a group of European settlers coming to the New World and discovering native tribes. Show how different characters in the group respond to the natives’ culture in different ways.  

408. You can write comedy in any genre; Western, science fiction, romance, and even horror stories can be packed with laughs. Take a serious story from any genre and retell it as a comedy. 

409. Write a story for children about animals that live together: cats and dogs, mice and rabbits, deer and butterflies.  

410. Write a story about two siblings or best friends. One is obsessed with a rock star or a band. The other is obsessed with politics, a world leader (past or present), or a historical figure.  

411. In Nevada, where prostitution and gambling are legal, an ambitious college graduate starts up a business enterprise that would be illegal in most other states. 

412. Shortly after moving into a home and beginning renovations, the protagonist discovers a collection of journals that belonged to the original owner—journals that open over a dozen cold cases at the local precinct.  

413. In the middle of the twenty-first century, artificial intelligence (AI) is about to reach singularity—the point at which it becomes smarter than humans. This development changes the face of politics when a movement is born that seeks to stop all development on AI. But another faction believes AI will save humanity. 

414. How are monsters and fantastical creatures made? One becomes a vampire through the bite of another vampire. One becomes a ghost through death. How does one become a werewolf, a witch, or a wizard? 

415. If one has an up-close vantage point, the most realistic horror story imaginable takes place within a war. Write a war story with a twist of horror. 

416. The fair’s in town for a week and the protagonist, who has deep roots in the community, falls in love with one of the workers, who lives a nomadic life traveling from town to town. 

417. Write a story about a family living during a time when people grew their own food and slaughtered their own meat—before refrigerators, bathrooms, cars, and phones existed. 

418. After working at a bank (or some other high-end job) for ten years, the protagonist throws it all away to do something crazy (become an artist, sail around the world, etc.). Write it as a comedy. 

419. It’s important for children to learn their numbers. Write a counting book that covers numbers, at least up to ten. You can write separate vignettes for each number, write a story linking all the numbers together, or write a nonsense rhyme about each number. 

420. The protagonist was raised by one parent and never knew the other. Write the story of how he or she finds this missing parent and the first time they meet. 

421. After living in captivity as a slave for over a decade, a twenty-two-year-old at tempts to integrate back into family and society.  

422. Four siblings live in fear of their abusive parent until they start planning for the time when they will be old enough and strong enough to seek revenge. 

423. Imagine a time in the future when robots don’t look like humans but can do almost anything humans can do, even though their personalities are a little dry. Their most popular use is in children’s hospitals, retirement homes, orphanages, and other assisted living facilities. Write about one human’s relationship with a companion robot in such a facility.  

424. Superheroes are fun and exciting. The superpowers! The super villains! The costumes! The gadgets! Write a superhero story.  

425. What happens when the makers of a horror-genre video game find themselves trapped inside the world they’ve created? 

426. Write a story about two friends. Each one thinks the other is heterosexual and struggles to keep romantic feelings at bay.  

427. Ancient Egypt was rich with culture: hieroglyphs, pyramids, and pharaohs. Write a story that includes ancient Egypt—either use characters who are interested in it or set the story in ancient Egypt itself.  

428. A day of laughs and hi-jinks kicks off when a group of housemates wakes up to discover that the water, electricity, and cable have been turned off. 

429. Children love stories about inanimate objects that come to life: computers, stuffed animals, and toy trains. Write a story starring an inanimate object. 

430. A teenage protagonist has to cope with public and political life because his or her parent is president or prime minister. 

431. Write a story about people who live in the same neighborhood or apartment building. Explore their similarities, relationships, differences, and conflicts.  

432. A family’s world is turned upside down when a corpse is discovered in their backyard and the parents become the top suspects in a murder case. 

433. Ordinary civilians find an alien device that is a portal to another world, solar system, galaxy, or universe. 

434. The protagonist is the last in a long bloodline that dates back millennia. What happens when he or she returns to the motherland and discovers there is magic in his or her blood? 

435. Start with a monster that consumes humans—make up your own monster or use a vampire or a werewolf that subsists on human flesh. What happens when circumstances require the monster to work closely with a human because they share a common objective or enemy? 

436. A journalist conducts a series of interviews with a prison inmate and becomes convinced of the inmate’s guilt—but develops a romantic interest in the inmate anyway.  

437. During the fourteenth century, the plague (Black Death) devastated Europe and other parts of the world. Write a story about characters who lived through the plague.  

438. Slapstick comedy is silly and ridiculous: people falling down, getting hit in the face with pies, and goofing off. Try your hand at writing slapstick. 

439. If you plant an acorn today, it won’t grow into a mature oak tree for about sixty years. Write a children’s story about doing something today that will pay off in the future—maybe even after we’re long gone. 

440. A group of teenagers gets locked inside an amusement park overnight. 

441. At age thirty, the protagonist has done everything that was expected, including finishing college and finding a spouse. Now the pressure is on to start a family. This character comes to realize this is not the life he or she wants. It’s a life of someone else’s design. 

442. Soldiers returning from the war are being picked off by a new kind of serial killer. The murders happen miles apart, indicating there is more than one suspect involved. Military officers, agents from the CIA and FBI, and officials from other government agencies must work together to find the killers and bring them to justice. 

443. Write an alternate-history, science-fiction story set in the present day by eliminating or introducing technologies at different points in time. What if the atomic bomb had been available during World War I? What if television had been invented a century earlier? What if we’d achieved deep space travel by the late 1970’s? 

444. There have been many takes on ghost stories: romance, horror, even comedy. Write your own ghost story.  

445. The protagonist is a demented time-traveling serial killer hunting down saints and martyrs to erase them from history.  

446. What happens when a devout believer in (any) religion and an atheist develop feelings for each other? 

447. There are always casualties in war, but there are always survivors, too. Choose any war in history and write about the survivors, people whose lives were forever changed by war. 

448. The protagonist, a former fun-loving free spirit, has become a workaholic who rarely leaves the house. Friends step in with plans for a makeover and a weekend getaway in a story packed with laughs. 

449. Why do kids love things that creep and crawl? Write a story featuring bugs, lizards, snakes, and mice. It could be an adventure or a story about an animal family. 

450. A teenager or college student has dreams and ambitions, and taking over the family business is not one of them. 

451. Write a story about two high school sweethearts who reconnect in their old age.  

452. Government spies keep their eyes on other countries, but what happens when they start spying on each other? The CIA watching Homeland Security, the NSA watching the FBI… 

453. Fantasy stories often concern themselves with magic. Science fiction some- times addresses similar concepts but explains their workings through science. Write a story about science or technology viewed as magic by a primitive species (alien or human). 

454. The veil between the ordinary world and the magical world has grown thin. Creatures from the other side are slipping through. Write a story about a bounty hunter who is hired to round them up and return them to their home world or dis- pose of them. 

455. Situated on a long and lonely stretch of desert highway are a run-down gas station and convenience store. Some of the patrons who stop there never come out again. 

456. After the protagonist learns his or her significant other is a crazed killer, he or she vows to never get involved in a romantic relationship again.  

457. Write a story set in Hollywood around the time when silent films were giving way to talkies. This technological advance changed things for a lot of people, including actors, directors, and writers. 

458. Write a list of the funniest things that have ever happened to you or that you’ve ever witnessed—including your most embarrassing moments. Use all those funny moments in a fictional story. 

459. One of the best ways for children to learn language is through rhyming. Write a story that rhymes for kids. 

460. Write a story packed with all the things teenagers struggle with: their changing bodies (hair, pimples, etc.), hormones, conflict with parents, difficulty focusing on studies, and trying to get through high school in one piece. 

461. It may be controversial but it happens every day: write a story about a teenage couple who find themselves dealing with an unplanned pregnancy.  

462. In a small town, every member of the community works for a factory owned by the wealthiest family in town. Friction between the people and the family eventually leads to murder. 

463. Within a few decades, people will start embedding microchips and other technologies into their bodies. What happens when a shady corporation uses this technology to control people and make them do the corporation’s bidding? 

464. A photographer who collects and uses old cameras acquires one that takes pictures through time. He snaps a picture in one time and place, and what comes out in the darkroom is from the same place but another time. 

465. Cemeteries are great settings for creepy stories. What happens when a group of teens hanging out at the graveyard find themselves stalked by a terrifying night walker? 

466. The protagonist’s significant other is a musician—always on the road. When rumors of trysts with groupies arise, the protagonist decides to follow the tour bus and see what’s really going on. 

467. Apartheid in South Africa was a political system of racial segregation that oppressed the rights of the majority, which was the native black population. Write about characters living during apartheid. 

468. Kids are always good for a laugh. They ask the funniest questions, or they ask serious questions that fluster parents into giving funny answers. Write a dialogue story (or a script) about adults answering children’s questions.  

469. Kids love stories that play with language. Write an ABC book and come up with a single sentence for each letter—but here’s the catch: each sentence must be a tongue twister featuring the letter it represents. 

470. Write a story about a teenager struggling with depression.  

471. A phobia is a persistent, irrational fear. Write a story about a protagonist who is coping with a phobia or paranoia. Explore how the condition prevents the character from living a full or normal life and how the character is affected by the stigma attached to the condition.  

472. A brilliant but evil scientist unleashes a biologically engineered virus that targets people with specific ideologies, as identified by their genetic makeup. 

473. One scientist is out to prove that there is an energy field resonating through the entire universe—a field that connects us all and that we can use for miraculous purposes if only we can learn to access it.  

474. There have been lots of stories about characters with supernatural abilities who work with law enforcement. Write a story about one such character who works in a hospital.  

475. A journalist researching a book about serial killers finds himself or herself hunted by one of the killers he or she wants to interview. 

476. They’ve known each other for years because they have a close friend in common. They’ve hung out at parties, even gone on trips with the group. But they’ve always been in other relationships. Now they’re both single.  

477. Write a story about a character who discovers a safe house where Jews hid in Nazi Germany.  

478. When an aunt or uncle unexpectedly has to babysit, everything goes topsy-turvy— from a hilarious trip to the grocery store to trying to put together a decent meal with sugar-infused kids running around.  

479. Authors often use stories about baby animals to teach children about life. Write a story about a baby animal that experiences something difficult: getting separated from a parent, struggling for food, or finding it difficult to make friends. 

480. For reasons entirely up to you, a young teen becomes a ward of the foster care system. 

481. Write a story about a family struggling to adjust to a child that has a serious or difficult condition (autism, ADHD, etc.). 

482. While on a sky tour over Africa, a helicopter crashes, depositing a group of wealthy first worlders into the heart of the African wilderness.  

483. In the future, another branch will be added to the militaries of Earth: the space branch. Write a story about a protagonist enlisting, going through training, and becoming a space-faring soldier.  

484. Humans are not real. They only exist in stories that parents tell their children in a world of fairies, elves, unicorns, etc. 

485. A chemical spill releases toxins into the environment, resulting in mutant humans who must consume human flesh in order to survive. 

486. Practice writing a steamy scene: a gourmet meal, a bottle of wine, a crackling fire, and candlelight set the stage for a romantic evening in a remote cabin in the woods.  

487. Write a story about a runaway teenager. 

488. Write a comedy about a protagonist who is seeing a therapist for sleep- walking.  

489. Write a story about a couple of children who are exploring a garden together. What do they see, smell, hear, taste, and touch? 

490. A teenager has a birthmark in an unusual but distinct shape. This protagonist meets someone else with the same birthmark. What does it mean? 

491. A teenager dreams of being an artist (musician, dancer, etc.), but the teen’s father puts his foot down and pushes the teen toward academics and sports. Just be- fore the teen’s high school graduation, his or her mother and brother die in a car accident. The father and teenage child must rebuild their relationship to save what’s left of their family. 

492. People are getting sick, and officials are concerned that the new disease might be the beginning of a bio-terror attack. 

493. The protagonist appears to be slipping in and out of reality—one day a normal, functioning, successful person, and the next day believing he or she is living on another world full of alien species and other wonders. This keeps happening over and over. What is real? 

494. Thousands of years ago, creatures of magic roamed the earth: fairies, uni- corns, sorcerers, elves, and dragons. As humans inherited the earth, the magical creatures died out until only a few remained. Now, they have learned how to grow their numbers and are planning to retake the earth from the humans who are destroying it.  

495. When a military or scientific research submarine malfunctions, the team is stranded at the bottom of the ocean. They fight over food and water. Medical sup- plies are limited. And someone—or something—on the sub is killing people.  

496. A car accident shatters the protagonist’s life but at the same time brings a new love (paramedic, doctor, physical therapist, fellow member of a counseling group) into it.  

497. Write a story about a character running a safe house where slaves hid during the American Civil War.  

498. A group of friends from suburbia, determined to see their favorite band in concert, embark on a hilarious adventure in the big city.

499. Children love stories about animals. Write a story about talking animals living in the jungle. Include a lion, zebra, parrot, snake, hippo, giraffe, elephant, and monkey.  

500. The protagonist is a teenager who will do anything to get and stay popular, including giving up everything he or she loves.