Story ideas: 7 ways to find one, plus 60 premises

What makes a story idea work

A story idea isn't a setting ("a haunted lighthouse") or a theme ("grief"). It's a situation with pressure in it. A quick test is to write it as one sentence:

When [character] [inciting event], they must [goal] before [stakes].

When a lighthouse keeper's estranged daughter inherits the lighthouse, she must decide whether to sell it before the town votes to demolish it. That has a person, a problem, a choice and a clock. If you can fill in the sentence, you have a story idea. If you can't, you have a setting.

7 ways to come up with story ideas

1. Ask "what if" about something ordinary

Take a normal object or routine and change one rule. What if your coffee order predicted your day? What if the bus only stopped where it was needed? Small changes create big stories.

2. Collide two unrelated things

Pick two random nouns, like "beekeeper" and "divorce lawyer," or "submarine" and "wedding," and find the story where they meet. Collisions force original combinations.

3. Flip a familiar story

Retell a classic from the villain's side, swap the ending, or move it to a new era. Public-domain stories like fairy tales and myths are fair game. The flip gives you a fresh angle on a shape readers already understand.

4. Start with a job

Every job has its own pressures, vocabulary and secrets. A night-shift pharmacist, a court stenographer and a wildlife rescuer each come with built-in scenes. Ask: what's the worst day this person could have at work?

5. Use the worst-day method

Take any character and ask what would be the worst thing that could happen to them today, then the second-worst. The intersection of the two is usually your plot.

6. Keep an overheard-lines notebook

Write down odd sentences you overhear, like "I told her I'd never go back to Ohio." Each one is the last line of a story you haven't written yet.

7. Borrow a structure, not a story

Take the shape of something you love, such as a heist, a road trip, a locked room or a countdown, and fill it with your own characters. Structure gives an idea momentum.

60 short story ideas by genre

All premises are original, with adult characters. Romance is non-explicit.

Romance story ideas

1. A sign painter is hired to repaint the name of the bakery where her ex proposed to someone else.
2. Two rival bookbinders are commissioned to restore the same damaged diary, page by page.
3. A woman agrees to be her best friend's fake date at a reunion where her own first love will be.
4. A ferry runs between two islands once a day; two regulars never sit together, until the storm.
5. A wedding officiant has to marry the person she's been in love with for years.
6. Two translators work on the same novel in different languages and argue over the ending.
7. A beekeeper and the new neighbor who's allergic to bees.
8. Two people meet every New Year's Eve for a decade, by accident, then by design.
9. A night-shift nurse keeps finding origami cranes left by an anonymous patient.
10. A sommelier must pick a wine for the wedding of the man she almost married.

For more romance ideas, see our romance tropes list and slow burn prompts.

Fantasy story ideas

1. A dragon hoards apologies instead of gold.
2. The kingdom's best assassin is hired to protect the target she was trained to kill.
3. A wizard's apprentice inherits the tower, and its debts to three different gods.
4. Every child in a village is born with a shadow that belongs to someone else.
5. A healer's magic only works on people who are lying to her.
6. A forest swallows one traveler every year; this year, it spits one back out.
7. A queen trades her name for her kingdom's survival and must rule without it.
8. Two rival cartographers discover the map they're fighting over is alive.
9. A ghost knight guards a bridge no one has crossed in a century, until a merchant needs to.
10. A tavern owner keeps the peace between three warring gods who drink there every Friday.

Science fiction story ideas

1. A woman receives a voicemail from herself, recorded ten years in the future.
2. The last human on a colony ship wakes up and finds the AI has been writing her a novel.
3. A dating app matches people based on who they'll become in twenty years.
4. A city where every citizen's memories are backed up nightly suffers a data loss.
5. Two astronauts on a two-person station stop speaking to each other, and then the radio dies.
6. A repairwoman fixes androids and starts noticing they all ask for the same thing.
7. A planet with one perfectly preserved town and no people.
8. A memory thief is hired to steal back a memory she sold years ago.
9. A time-travel tourism company sends its last tour to the day it was founded.
10. A climate engineer must choose which city gets the rain.

Mystery and thriller story ideas

1. A house cleaner realizes one of her clients is living a second life.
2. A crossword constructor gets a puzzle in the mail that describes a crime.
3. Two strangers on a delayed flight each think the other is a federal agent.
4. A retired detective's last unsolved case walks into her café.
5. Every key in a small hotel opens every door except one.
6. A ghost-tour guide realizes one of the "legends" she tells nightly is an unsolved murder, and someone in the group keeps correcting her.
7. A widow finds her husband's second passport, with a recent stamp.
8. An auction house appraiser recognizes a stolen family heirloom in the catalog, consigned by her own brother.
9. An heir must solve their grandmother's murder to inherit, and every cousin has a motive.
10. A jury forewoman realizes the defendant is someone she wronged long ago.

Horror story ideas

1. A family finds a list of rules left by the previous owners. Rule 7 has been crossed out.
2. A sleep researcher realizes all her subjects are dreaming about the same door.
3. A small town's lake gives back everything that sinks in it, a year later.
4. A babysitter realizes the parents' instructions describe a different house.
5. A woman inherits a doll collection, and the dolls keep facing the door.
6. A road-trip couple keeps passing the same gas station.
7. A new tenant finds the previous tenant's grocery lists, and they keep getting updated.
8. A new smart home refuses to let its owners leave.
9. A grief counselor starts hearing the dead in her sessions.
10. A choir rehearses a hymn no one remembers writing, and the church's oldest member begs them to stop.

Literary and slice-of-life story ideas

1. Two estranged sisters must drive their mother's ashes across the country in a car with no radio.
2. A widower learns to cook his late wife's recipes, one per week.
3. A man spends his retirement returning things he stole as a teenager.
4. A woman applies for the job she turned down twenty years ago.
5. A family's annual photo, taken in the same spot for fifty years, and the year someone refuses.
6. A night janitor at a university secretly sits in on lectures.
7. Two neighbors who've never spoken become caretakers for the same stray cat.
8. A woman goes back to her hometown to close her father's hardware store.
9. A ballet teacher's last class before the studio closes.
10. An old bandmate shows up with a song they wrote together and never finished.

Story themes: 20 to build a story around

A theme is what your story is about underneath the plot. Pick one before you write, and let it shape your character's choices.

From idea to outline in five lines

1. Opening: who, where, and what they want.
2. Inciting event: what breaks the routine.
3. Midpoint: what they learn that changes the plan.
4. Crisis: the choice that tests the theme.
5. Ending: what's different now.

If you want shorter starters to warm up with, try our 120 writing prompts. If you'd rather play a story with a partner than write it alone, see our roleplay ideas.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a story idea and a theme?

A story idea is a situation with pressure in it. A theme is what the story is about underneath, such as forgiveness or ambition, and it shapes the character's choices.

How do I know if a story idea is good enough?

Try to fill in one sentence: when a character faces an inciting event, they must reach a goal before something is lost. If you can, it's a story idea; if not, it's still a setting.

What are common story themes?

Love versus duty, identity, forgiveness, ambition, belonging, grief, freedom, power, redemption and second chances are among the 20 themes listed above.

Sources

• No factual claims about other products are made in this article. All ideas are original to Be My Story.

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