These writing prompts are designed to spark ideas for stories of no particular type, in no particular genre. Let your creativity take flight!
- It was just a pair of old tennis shoes hung over a power line, but I couldn’t look away.
- The first time I saw that dead cat…
- The Internet suddenly stops working, everywhere on earth, and is down for two weeks.
- “I couldn’t believe she was asking me to do this! She knew what I’d been through!”
- Android girlfriends are all well and good, but this is going too far.
- Strangers’ eyes meet across a bar. These people don’t know each other but have something major in common, and it’s about to kill one of them.
- A man is gifted with a vision of two possible futures.
- “Don’t be ridiculous, that fish is not looking at you.”
- Call me old-fashioned, but pizza just should not contain…
- That was the last thing anyone expected to find in a bubble gum machine.
- … and there it was, his heart, right there beside his foot.
- The only truth is that everyone lies all the time.
- Imagine that you could only say one more thing and then have to be silent for the rest of your life.
- You wake up one morning and your senses are all muddled around—smell is sight, touch is hearing, etc.
- “He’s no ordinary Valentine, that’s for sure.”
- After everything that had happened, everything he’d lost, he’d always be thankful for…
- Neither marzipan nor bowling shoes have ever done anyone any good.
- “That’s taking the phrase ‘bleeding heart’ just a little too literally.”
- How did we get so far from the sun?
- I had to look twice, but I was certain it was him. What was he doing here? In our little town?
- There was no denying it. She was flying.
- His life was a complete replay of…
- I blame Burt Bacharach for everything!
- One day, God decided to allow everyone on earth to choose one single improvement or addition to make to their body.
- She hadn’t seen another living thing for weeks, and yet there it was, a bull, staring at her from the hotel across the street.
- It was a sure-fire way to get the popularity he’d always known he was meant to have.
- A middle-aged woman discovers a terrible secret in her elderly mother’s garage.
- You wake up writing. What have you written?
- “Oh my God! I cannot believe you are seriously going to marry her.”
- The United States gets split into four separate nations.
- “… and she just admitted to the murder, like any casual conversation.”
- “Of course I did. Though I was drunk.”
- I’ve always wanted a little brother, but this is certainly not what I had in mind.
- It was going to take a lot of work, but if she could just undo that knot…
- “That has to be at least 100 pounds of bananas.”
- “Are you saying you think you love me?”
- An old man receives a postcard from a man claiming to be his father, dated twenty years before.
- There was something about the site of those roses in the trash.
- A man has worked at a fruit stall for forty years and one day decides to go to university and study theoretical physics.
- “No! Those aren’t the words! How many times do we have to go through this?”
- A woman comes home with a new car she hasn’t consulted her husband about buying.
- A little boy has a phobia of clocks.
- “I don’t know what got into her; she’s never had a problem with the dog before.”
- “You’re not invisible. You just don’t exist anymore.”
- “If that dog could talk, I reckon he’d have a voice like Colombo.” “Yeah, but what would he say?”
- Can you believe I made it to fifty? After all that’s happened?
- The existence of ghosts is accidentally but undeniably proven during a Supreme Court case.
- “I can’t be sure, but doesn’t it sorta look like pink marshmallow to you?”
- Strange as it was, all he needed was a cuddle.
- A woman swears never to listen to music again.
- “… and that’s why I’ll never eat vegetables again.”
- “So I never want to hear you say you don’t believe in magic ever again.”
- Growing up with eight brothers will do that to a girl.
- A man finds international fame after success on a game show, only to discover a secret.
- What you smell right now holds the answer to all of the mysteries of the universe, but only for one person.
- “No, I’m not saying I’m telepathic, but yeah, I can read your mind.”
- “That has to be the most romantic thing a woman has ever done.”
- “Do you seriously think I believe you’ve never met him?”
- A man finds naked images of himself on the Internet that he has no recollection of.
- “Yes, madam. This is indeed the last Rolls-Royce in existence.”
- He had never felt so free, so alive, but it was nothing compared to the misery he felt at knowing it was not going to last.
- “He’s just far too young to know what real love is.”
- A human baby is born with scales and horns and the ability to breathe out flames.
- An anorexic man makes a secret late-night visit to an all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant.
- A woman is recruited through a temp agency and discovers something mysterious and intriguing about her new boss and coworkers.
- Through an unfortunate clerical error to do with his own graduation, a high school teacher finds himself back in high school.
- Clocks start ticking backward.
- “He’s just WRONG in every way!”
- A rich lawyer decides she’s going to move to the country and farm goats.
- A man receives a phone call telling him he has only 24 hours to live unless he does exactly as he’s told.
- A woman suffers a life of troubled fame and fortune after she became a multimillion-dollar internet sensation when she was ten-years-old.
- All AI beings, humanoid or not, are given the right to vote.
- “I should never have taught him to play the piano.”
- She never hoped to find romance again, and she was right.
- I never realized how many scars I have until I started looking closely at my skin.
- “I swear to you, this is the first time I have ever picked up a violin.”
- A government agent finds his own name on a most wanted list and knows who put it there.
- A small boy witnesses a woman’s murder and recognizes his teacher as one of the killers.
- A cat is arrested for murder.
- On the night of a record jackpot draw, a lottery machine explodes, killing all the lottery officials in the room. The explosion was not an accident.
- No one really liked my brother, but to me, he was a hero.
- One shoe, small like a child’s, its leather worn and cracked, was the only thing left.
- A young man’s boyfriend confesses to having fantasized about murdering him.
- A young married couple quit their jobs and buy an RV.
- It was as though, from the very moment of her birth, a curse of sadness had settled on her life and she knew now it could never be lifted.
- Mom’s new boyfriend would be perfect if he wasn’t a vegetarian.
- A woman discovers her boss is tampering with the company books, and she’s about to get the blame.
- A chef sees
- an exact likeness of his own face when he cuts through a side of bacon.
- This was all there was, this very moment, all there would ever need to be. A perfect instance of happiness.
- A man has been pretending to go to work every day rather than tell his wife he was fired. One day, a stranger offers him a new job.
- “What gives you the right to treat your family like this? Now? Of all times we should be sticking together more than ever!”
- “I just don’t like science fiction! Why is that a crime?”
- The only thing she recognized about him was his eyes. Those hadn’t changed a bit.
- “The village will be lost by nightfall.”
- She had always wanted to see the plains of Africa. Soon it would be too late.
- “So I forgot the password! Like you’ve never forgotten anything in your life?”
- A woman who has lived alone for years, in a house that was built just for her, finds a gun in a small, locked metal box she’s never seen, concealed in the back of her drawer.
- A woman is concerned by how much her wife has started drinking after work.
- A famous jazz guitarist has his hand shattered in a freak accident and can never play his guitar again.
- “I can’t help it, I love her. You think love is a choice?”
- After a major car accident, a woman starts to believe her family and everyone around her are imposters spying for some secret operative.
