Getting started writing your own short stories can be a fun and exciting new process. But, there are also times when the dreaded “writer’s block” creeps in. Or, perhaps you have a lot of different ideas, but you’re having trouble crystallizing them into one clear storyline. Having some clearly structured short story ideas can help get your creative energy flowing and help you move in a more productive direction. Check out these 75 short story writing prompts—some of them are a little more involved than others, and some are lines to get your brain moving toward specific scenarios. If you don’t see one you love, they might just help you invent your own. Happy writing!
Specific Scenario Prompts
These are specific scenarios that are designed to help you start to think about some form of conflict that could kick off a short story. Oftentimes, conflict is what produces a story. We can think of the classic examples that you may have learned in school:
Man vs….
- Man
- Nature
- Society
- Himself
- An Idea
Thinking about those traditional forms of narrative conflict might also help you to start thinking about your own short story ideas. The following examples put different people in conflict in prescribed situations. Use them literally or as a jumping off point. They are intended to be vague enough for you to begin filling in your own details about place, time, and all the rest.
Best Short Story Prompts (Continued)
1)A couple breaks up at a train station. One person takes the train, one gets left behind.
2) A man is searching in the forest for something he recently lost. He does not find the lost item, but a different, magical item appears to him instead.
3) A couple is on the verge of ending their relationship, but their car breaks down during a rainstorm.
4) Two children from opposing neighborhoods meet, but don’t know that they come from communities that are in conflict with one another.
5) A mother finds out her only child has died in war, and is presented with an orphaned child to care for instead.
6) A tree falls in the forest and decays into the ground while the animals around it must contend with the nature of their shifted reality.
7) A man lives his entire life never looking in a mirror and reads others’ perceptions of him without ever seeing his true face.
Best Short Story Prompts (Continued)
8) Two best friends slowly fall in love with one another over a period of time. Something innocuous tears them apart.
9) A man and his archetypal brothers go on a quest to find their hidden family origins.
10) A voyager finds their way to a foreign country. Without knowing the language, they end up communicating with the locals and eventually falling in love.
11) A group of kids decides to run away from home. They imagine that they’ve gone very far away, but we see that they end up making only a short loop in their forest around their neighborhood.
12) A stranger shows up at the door of an elderly woman. She lets the stranger enter. One of the characters ends up being a total surprise. Which is it: the old woman or the stranger?
13) A prisoner in a guarded cell finds the door to the cell is unlocked. Though the prisoner is under almost constant surveillance, he considers his escape.
14) A young boy is enjoying his everyday life when he is suddenly implicated in a crime he did not commit.
List (Continued)
15) A large talking bird arrives in a small coastal village where many people have been dying.
16) People in a city become obsessed with a certain color and begin worshiping it, forgetting about their responsibilities.
17) A series of miscommunications leads to a couple dangling over the edge of a cliff in their car.
18) A family sets out on vacation together, only to find out that they are each holding onto different parts of a shocking secret.
19) A tornado rips apart a community, but in the aftermath, stunning things are exposed in the foundations of the homes.
20) A chef in an oppressed country is conflicted when the villainous head-of-state dines in his restaurant. The staff proposes poisoning his food. The chef must choose what to do.
Best Short Story Prompts (Continued)
21) A baby is born at an unfortunate time to a family who cannot care for the child.
22) An alien from outer space invades a small town and pretends to be a person. Does the extraterrestrial get away with it?
23) A wizard must control his powers and decide between good and evil.
24) A lightning strike brings a strange egg to Earth. What’s inside?
Looking for Journal Prompts?
Non-Human Point of View Prompts
The first set of prompts considers human beings, but you can write a short story about anything. What about writing from the perspective of some non-human beings and objects? What would happen if you started from the body of a completely different thing? Where can you take yourself when you look through different eyes?
25) Write a short story from the point of view of a house cat who escaped from home.
26) Write a short story from the point of view of a bug that is dying against a glass window pane that they cannot perceive.
27) Write a short story from the point of view of a family home that is slowly collapsing.
28) Write a short story from the point of view of a pack of wild dogs.
29) Write a short story from the point of view of the roots of a tree.
Best Short Story Prompts (Continued)
30) Write a short story from the point of view of the moon (without mentioning that it is the moon).
31) Write a short story from the point of view of an instrument being played.
32) Write a short story from the point of view of the ocean floor.
33) Write a short story from the point of view of the family dog who stays home alone all day.
34) Write a short story from the point of view of a burning flame.
35) Write a short story from the point of view of an abandoned town.
List (Continued)
36) Write a short story from the point of view of a spirit who cannot pass from this life to the next.
37) Write a short story from the point of view of an ocean wave.
38) Write a short story from the point of view of the last rhinoceros on Earth.
39) Write a short story from the point of view of a growing and expanding leaf.
Experiential Research Short Story Prompts
If you’re really stuck, one great way to break out of a sense of writer’s block is to immerse yourself in the world around you. The following prompts invite you to do just that. You’ll see invitations to engage with and observe other people and things. What happens when you do just that?
For most of these, you should take as many observational notes as possible, preferably written down, but if you’d like, also just in your mind. Write on the basis of what you see, feel, hear, touch, and otherwise sense.
40) Ride around on a city bus for as long as you can stand it or until they kick you off.
41) Venture into the woods and find a quiet and safe space to sit and observe nature for a few hours without checking your phone.
42) Volunteer at a senior center and begin talking to older people about their lives.
Best Short Story Prompts (Continued)
43) Interview your family members about early times in their lives that are unknown to you.
44) Do you have access to family heirlooms like journals or old calendars? Read them and see what happens.
45) Take a road trip to a place you’ve never been before. Try talking with people at restaurants and cafes, or go see a monument or museum you’ve never seen before.
46) Investigate the history of your town or city.
47) Go on a backpacking trip for a long weekend.
48) Try playing a sport you’ve never played before.
49) Join a foreign language learning club.
Best Short Story Prompts (Continued)
50) Travel to a foreign country—either literally or figuratively with books, movies, music, food, and research.
51) Spend extended amounts of time around small children, if you don’t have your own. Hangout with your nieces and nephews, the kids of friends, or volunteer with a children’s organization. What makes their world spin?
52) Go to a public park and post up on a bench for several hours.
53) Take a long mindfulness walk and pay attention to the quality of each step you take. What’s the feeling of your foot on the ground? What’s the feeling of the ground against your body? What is the air like? What is the light like? Lastly, what does it feel like to really walk?
54) Go dancing!
55) Take a weekend to watch a bunch of black and white silent films.
56) Book a ticket for a train ride. Get to know the other passengers.
Best Short Story Prompts (Continued)
57) Cook a recipe you’ve never attempted to cook before.
58) Spend an extended amount of time with your parents. Ask them to explain their ideas, thoughts, and memories to you.
59) Volunteer at a hospital.
60) Bake bread and watch it closely during every step of the process: mixing, kneading, rising, baking.
61) Find new heights and depths: climb a mountain, take the elevator to the top of a skyscraper, go hiking (safely!) into some underground caves in public parks.
62) Take yourself on a solo date: go out to dinner by yourself, take a long walk in your city or town, go see a movie, all without the obligation of another person. What happens inside of you? Can that influence a character who starts your story?
Sense-and-Place-Oriented Short Story Prompts
Sometimes, we want our stories to start in ambient ways that explore the setting and then bring in characters and conflict. What characters emerge if you start to build their world first? Use the following sense-oriented prompts to think first about place, then about character, then about conflict.
63) A rainy, gray morning. Fog rolls in through the trees over a mountain.
64) A hot, August beach on a coastline. The air isn’t moving. The water is hot.
65) A midnight blizzard bears down on a small cabin in the forest.
66) A sidewalk extends past a row of houses until it stops in a field of overgrown grass and weeds.
Best Short Story Prompts (Continued)
67) A sinkhole opens on a busy city street.
68) The sun is orange and warm through the leaves of a tree. A gentle breeze makes the leaves rustle in an almost imperceptible way.
69) Large clouds hang in the sky like drops of water. The sunset is a glowing pink.
70) The roots of a tree are growing so far that they begin to crack the foundation of a house.
71) A bustling morning starts in a crowded city with women hanging clothes out on the line, vendors selling fruit and clothes, people driving small scooters through winding historical streets.
72) A strong wind is blowing over the plains where animals graze. A storm is rolling in.
73) A single, loud bird is squawking at sunrise.
74) The ice over a frozen lake or river is slowly cracking as it begins to melt.
75) A public payphone (if you can imagine such a thing) is ringing on a busy city street full of colorful passersby.
Other Ideas
You could also use some famous quotations to get you started, do some research to jumpstart your imagination, or play around with some language devices until you write a beautiful sentence that gets you started.
You may also want to check out:
- 60 Best Short Stories for High School Students
- 55 Best Short Stories for Kids and Middle Schoolers
- 150 Cause and Effect Essay Examples
