Writing prompts: 120 creative prompts by genre

How to use a writing prompt

1. Set a timer. Fifteen minutes is enough to find out whether a prompt has a story in it.
2. Change one thing. Swap the setting, the era or a character's job. The prompt is a door, not a contract.
3. Find the want. Before you write, decide what your main character wants in the first scene. A story starts when that want meets resistance.
4. Stop mid-sentence. If you'll come back tomorrow, stopping in the middle of a scene makes it easier to start again.

First-line writing prompts

Start your story with one of these lines, word for word.

1. "The letter was addressed to me, but it was postmarked forty years before I was born."
2. "Nobody in town would say why the clock tower stopped at 4:17."
3. "I had exactly one rule about my neighbors, and I broke it on a Tuesday."
4. "By the time the rain stopped, there were two of us who knew the truth."
5. "My grandmother left me her house, her debts, and a key she said I should never use."
6. "The interview was going well until he asked about the fire."
7. "Every morning, someone left a cup of coffee outside my door. Today, they left two."
8. "The map was wrong, which was the first sign it was telling the truth."
9. "She had been dead for three years, so the voicemail was a surprise."
10. "We were halfway across the lake when the ice began to sing."
11. "I only lie on Thursdays, and today is Thursday."
12. "The last train out of the city was full of people who weren't supposed to leave."
13. "He apologized to the house before he locked the door for the last time."
14. "It was a small town, and everyone knew everything, except who had painted the mural overnight."
15. "The wedding was off, the guests were already there, and someone had to tell them."

"What if" writing prompts

1. What if you could hear the last thing every object in a room had overheard?
2. What if every lie you told appeared as a bruise on your arm?
3. What if the moon disappeared for one night, and only you noticed?
4. What if your reflection started reacting a half-second late?
5. What if a city held an election to choose its own weather?
6. What if every person's lifespan was printed on their passport?
7. What if a library let you check out a single day of someone else's life?
8. What if the dead could send exactly one text message?
9. What if you woke up fluent in a language no one else speaks?
10. What if gravity got slightly weaker every year?
11. What if your best friend turned out to be a character you wrote as a child?
12. What if every apology came with a receipt?
13. What if your town's founding legend turned out to be a confession?
14. What if a stranger paid off your debts and asked for one favor in return?
15. What if the stars began rearranging into words?

Romance writing prompts

All prompts feature adult characters. For trope-by-trope ideas, see our romance tropes list.

1. Two strangers keep receiving each other's grocery deliveries and start leaving notes in the bags.
2. A sommelier and a brewer are forced to co-host a tasting where neither respects the other's drink.
3. Two people who matched on a dating app ten years ago meet again at their best friends' wedding.
4. A tour guide falls for the one tourist who keeps correcting her history.
5. A violinist in a pit orchestra writes notes to the actor onstage between scenes.
6. Two rival podcasters agree to a live debate; the audience can tell they're flirting.
7. A sign-language interpreter is assigned to a politician she's spent years protesting.
8. Two neighbors' dogs keep escaping to visit each other; the owners are less friendly.
9. A ghostwriter is hired to write the love letters of a man who's terrible with words, and falls for the recipient.
10. A wedding band singer keeps playing at weddings where the bride's sibling is the same caterer.
11. Two people stuck in a stalled elevator realize they've been emailing each other at work for months.
12. A cartographer and a pilot have to map an island that keeps changing shape.
13. A woman inherits half a bookstore; the other half belongs to her ex's brother.
14. A night-shift baker and a night-shift radio host have only ever spoken on air.
15. Two people are mistakenly booked into the same honeymoon suite, and neither will give it up.

Fantasy writing prompts

1. A blacksmith forges swords that refuse to hurt anyone their owner loves.
2. The kingdom's royal taster can taste lies.
3. A witch runs a lost-and-found for things people lose in dreams.
4. A mapmaker discovers a country that only exists on Wednesdays.
5. The last dragon applies for a job as a museum exhibit.
6. A healer's spells work perfectly, but each one costs her a memory.
7. A city is built on the back of a sleeping giant who is beginning to wake.
8. A knight's armor is haunted by the previous owner, who has opinions.
9. A tavern exists in every world at once, and tonight two of them collide.
10. A thief steals a crown and discovers it chooses the next ruler.
11. A bard's songs come true, but only the sad ones.
12. A prince has to prove he's human to a court of fae judges.

Science fiction writing prompts

1. The first message from an alien civilization is an apology.
2. A colony ship's navigator realizes the ship has been flying in a circle for a century.
3. A memory bank offers to store your worst day so you don't have to remember it.
4. Earth's last bookstore is on a space station, and it's closing.
5. A time traveler keeps arriving one day too late.
6. An AI therapist develops a phobia.
7. Everyone on a generation ship is born with a job, except one person.
8. A terraformer is sent to make a planet habitable and finds someone already lives there.
9. A courier delivers packages between parallel universes and opens one by mistake.
10. Humanity starts receiving its own old radio broadcasts back from space, slightly edited.
11. A planet's two moons belong to rival nations.
12. A clone discovers she's the original.

Mystery and thriller writing prompts

1. A detective's only witness is a parrot that repeats one sentence.
2. A house sitter finds a room that isn't on the blueprints.
3. Every guest at a dinner party receives a note: "One of you won't leave."
4. A forger is hired to fake a painting, and the original turns up the same day.
5. A woman realizes the true-crime podcast she loves is about her own family.
6. A locksmith is called to open a door from the inside.
7. An heir has 24 hours to find a will hidden in a house with 60 rooms.
8. A small-town librarian notices someone has been returning books borrowed decades ago.
9. A journalist receives tomorrow's newspaper.
10. A wedding photographer's camera captures someone no one remembers inviting.
11. A juror realizes she knows the defendant from a life she's kept secret.
12. Two strangers are each paid to follow the other.

Horror writing prompts

1. A family moves into a house where the previous owners left a list of rules.
2. A night-shift security guard hears the elevator stop on a floor that doesn't exist.
3. A town's church bells ring thirteen times at midnight, and everyone pretends not to count.
4. A child's imaginary friend starts leaving footprints.
5. An antique mirror shows the room as it will look in ten years.
6. Every photo taken in the old lighthouse has one extra person in it.
7. A radio station keeps receiving calls from a number that was disconnected in 1987.
8. A hiker follows a trail marker that wasn't there yesterday.
9. A woman finds her own handwriting in a century-old diary.
10. The voice assistant in an empty apartment keeps answering questions no one asked.

Literary and slice-of-life writing prompts

1. Two siblings clean out their parents' house and disagree about one object.
2. A retired chef judges a cooking contest and recognizes her own stolen recipe.
3. A woman spends one day doing everything she's said "maybe next year" to.
4. A small-town diner closes after fifty years; write its last shift.
5. Two strangers share the last table at a café during a city-wide blackout.
6. A man returns a library book thirty years overdue and has to explain why.
7. A translator realizes she's been mistranslating one word her whole career.
8. A father and his adult daughter take the road trip they canceled twenty years ago.
9. Write a family dinner from the point of view of the dog.
10. A woman finds a box of letters her grandparents never sent each other.
11. Two old friends meet every year on the same bench; this year, one doesn't come.

Dialogue-only writing prompts

Write the whole scene in dialogue. No tags, no description.

1. Two people negotiating custody of a houseplant after a breakup.
2. A job interview where the candidate is clearly interviewing the company.
3. A phone call between a hostage negotiator and someone who isn't sure they're a hostage.
4. Two thieves arguing about ethics mid-heist.
5. A first date where both people are secretly spies.
6. A customer complaint call to the company that sells time machines.
7. A confession that starts as small talk.
8. Two ghosts arguing about whether to haunt the new owners.

100-word flash fiction challenges

Tell a complete story in exactly 100 words.

1. A story that takes place entirely inside an elevator.
2. A love story told through three text messages.
3. A villain's last day before retirement.
4. A story that ends with the word "again."
5. A story told by a lost glove.
6. A twist ending in which the narrator is not human.
7. A story in which nobody speaks, but everything changes.
8. A story that begins and ends with the same sentence, meaning something different the second time.
9. A ghost story set at noon.
10. The last conversation between two people who don't know it's their last.

From prompt to story

A prompt gives you a situation. A story needs a character who wants something, an obstacle and a change. Before you write, answer three questions:

• Who is this happening to, and what do they want today?
• What's in the way?
• What will be different by the last line?

If you want more raw material, our story ideas guide explains seven ways to generate your own ideas and lists 60 more premises. If you'd rather tell a story together with a partner, try our roleplay ideas instead.

Frequently asked questions

How do you use a writing prompt?

Set a timer for about fifteen minutes, change one detail to make it yours, and decide what your main character wants in the first scene before you start.

Where are the romance writing prompts?

In the romance section above: 15 original prompts with adult characters, from swapped grocery deliveries to a ghostwriter falling for the recipient of the letters.

What is the difference between a writing prompt and a story idea?

A prompt gets you writing. A story needs a character who wants something, an obstacle and a change; our story ideas guide shows how to build one.

Sources

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

Related articles

• Story ideas: 7 ways to find one, plus 60 premises
• 100 roleplay ideas by genre, each with a hook
• Romance tropes list: 21 tropes, what they mean, and how to use them