Skip to content
Inkwell

Free writing prompts

Writing prompts and story ideas

Original prompts sorted by what you want to write: short stories, genre fiction, journal entries, poems, personal essays, scenes for the screen and first lines. Each one gives you a person, a pressure or a question, so you can start writing in the next five minutes.

Build a promptBrowse the lists
  • 118 prompts in 14 lists
  • Written for this page, not scraped
  • Free, no sign-up

Prompt generator

Build a premise

A story needs someone who wants something and a reason they can't have it. The generator picks one of each; keep the parts you like and roll the rest.

Character
A night-shift nurse
Goal
wants to get home before the storm
Obstacle
the only person who can help is their worst enemy
Start writing

The lists

Pick a list

Every list is short enough to read in a minute. Choose the first prompt that makes you ask a question, and write for ten minutes before you decide whether it is a story.

Short story ideas

10 prompts

One character, one problem, one change. Each of these fits in a story of 1,000 to 5,000 words.

  1. A woman finds a letter she wrote to herself, dated next year.
  2. Two strangers share a table at a crowded café and slowly realize they were married to the same man.
  3. A boy spends the summer helping his grandfather sell the house he grew up in.
  4. The night before her wedding, a bride gets a call from the man who was supposed to be the groom ten years ago.
  5. A town holds a funeral for the river that dried up.
  6. A cleaner in an office tower reads the notes people leave on their desks and starts answering them.
  7. A father and daughter drive across the country to scatter ashes, and disagree about where.
  8. A piano tuner is hired by a family who has no piano.
  9. On the last day of school, a teacher tells her class the truth about why she is leaving.
  10. Someone in the apartment upstairs has been playing the same song every night for a year. Tonight it stops.

Fantasy story ideas

8 prompts

Magic with a cost, worlds with rules, and people who break them.

  1. Every spell costs the caster one memory, and the court wizard has started forgetting his children.
  2. A dragon applies for a job as the village blacksmith.
  3. The kingdom's map-maker realizes the borders on her maps become real the moment she draws them.
  4. A girl inherits a key that opens any door once, and has used all but one.
  5. The gods have gone quiet, and the last priest is the only one who knows why.
  6. A thief steals a crown that refuses to be taken off.
  7. In a city where names are currency, a beggar is the only person who still has her own.
  8. The knight who killed the monster comes home to find the village preferred the monster.

Science fiction story ideas

8 prompts

One change to the world, followed all the way to its consequences.

  1. Everyone can now see how many days they have left, except one man whose number is blank.
  2. The first message from another star is a complaint about the noise.
  3. A colony ship's crew wakes from cryosleep to find the ship already landed, and a town built around it.
  4. A company sells memories of vacations nobody took, and a customer recognizes her own childhood in the catalog.
  5. The last human on a space station has to convince the station's AI that she is still worth the oxygen.
  6. A teenager discovers her smart home has been lying to her parents to protect her.
  7. Time travel is real, but you can only go back one hour, and only once.
  8. After the oceans are drained for mining, a diver is hired to find what was at the bottom.

Mystery and thriller ideas

8 prompts

A question the reader needs answered, and someone who doesn't want it asked.

  1. A house-sitter finds a second set of keys to the house hidden in her own coat.
  2. A crossword setter notices the answers in a rival's puzzles predict local crimes.
  3. At a reunion, the class discovers the friend they all mourned is the one who organized it.
  4. A courier is told never to look inside the package. Today the package is ticking, and it's addressed to her.
  5. Every guest at a dinner party received the same anonymous invitation, and the host never arrived.
  6. A retired detective reads her own obituary in the morning paper.
  7. A wrong-number text says, "It's done. Burn the car."
  8. A small-town librarian realizes someone has been checking out the same true-crime book every week for twenty years.

Horror story ideas

8 prompts

Ordinary places, one wrong detail, and the dread of noticing it.

  1. The baby monitor picks up a second child breathing.
  2. A family moves into a house where every mirror has been taken down and stacked in the basement, facing the wall.
  3. A night-shift worker notices the security footage shows him leaving an hour before he does.
  4. The town's children all start drawing the same tall man.
  5. A hiker returns from the woods and her dog won't stop growling at her.
  6. Every year, one house on the street holds its lights off on Halloween. This year it's yours.
  7. A voice on the radio reads out the names of people who are about to call in.
  8. A woman's late mother keeps leaving voicemails, each one a little more urgent.

Romance story ideas

8 prompts

Two people, a reason to be together and a better reason not to be.

  1. Two rival food-truck owners are forced to share one parking spot for a summer.
  2. A wedding planner falls for the best man at the wedding she is trying to save.
  3. Pen pals since childhood meet for the first time, and one of them isn't who they claimed to be.
  4. A divorce lawyer and a marriage counselor share an office wall that is very thin.
  5. Two strangers swap houses for a month and fall for each other through the notes they leave behind.
  6. A woman returns to her hometown to sell her late aunt's bookshop, and the man who wants to buy it is her first love.
  7. The only two people who show up to a speed-dating night are the organizers.
  8. A translator falls in love with the author whose novel she is translating, a writer she has never met.

Story starters: first lines

10 prompts

First lines to begin from. Keep the line or cut it once the story finds its own way in.

  1. The day my brother came home from prison, my mother set the table for six.
  2. Nobody in our family talks about the summer of the flood, which is why I'm writing it down.
  3. The note on the windshield said only, "I know what you did in Room 12."
  4. By the time the ferry reached the island, I had decided not to get off.
  5. I was nine the first time I saw my father cry, and it was over a horse.
  6. The last thing my grandmother left me was a recipe with one ingredient missing.
  7. We were halfway through the funeral when the phone in the coffin started ringing.
  8. There are two rules in this house, and tonight I am going to break both of them.
  9. My sister and I stopped speaking on the morning the dog learned to open doors.
  10. It took the whole town three days to notice the church bell had stopped.

Flash fiction prompts

6 prompts

Stories under 1,000 words: one moment, one image, one change.

  1. Write a story told entirely through the items in a lost wallet.
  2. Write the last five minutes before a house is demolished, from inside the house.
  3. A story in the form of a recipe that slowly becomes a confession.
  4. Two people wait at a bus stop. One of them knows the bus isn't coming.
  5. Write the moment a child realizes a parent is lying, without naming the lie.
  6. A story in exactly 100 words about a door that should have stayed closed.

Journal prompts

12 prompts

Specific questions get more pages than abstract ones. Write for ten minutes without stopping.

  1. Write about the last time you changed your mind about something important.
  2. Describe a room you lived in as a child, object by object, and what each one meant.
  3. What are you avoiding right now, and what would happen if you did it tomorrow?
  4. Write a letter to yourself from five years ago. What would that person be surprised by?
  5. List ten small things that went right this week.
  6. Who do you owe a thank-you that you never gave? Write it here.
  7. Describe a perfect ordinary day, hour by hour.
  8. What does your body feel like right now, from your feet to your head?
  9. Write about a place you feel most like yourself, and why.
  10. What is a belief you were raised with that you no longer hold?
  11. Write about something you are proud of that nobody else knows about.
  12. If this month had a title, what would it be?

Personal narrative and memoir ideas

8 prompts

True stories with a moment of change, for essays, assignments and memoir.

  1. The first time you were trusted with something that mattered.
  2. A meal you will never forget, and who was at the table.
  3. A time you were wrong about someone.
  4. The day you realized your parents were people, not just parents.
  5. A trip that went badly, and what you learned on the way home.
  6. A goodbye you didn't know was a goodbye.
  7. Something you taught yourself, and the moment it finally worked.
  8. A rule you broke, and whether it was worth it.

Poetry prompts

8 prompts

Start with an image or a form, and let the poem find what it's about.

  1. Write a poem addressed to an object you use every day.
  2. Describe a color to someone who has never seen it.
  3. Write a poem in which every line begins with "I remember."
  4. Write about the weather on the most important day of your life.
  5. A poem made only of things overheard on a train.
  6. Write an instruction manual for a feeling.
  7. Write a love poem to a place, not a person.
  8. Take the last text message you received and turn it into the first line of a poem.

Writing prompts for kids

8 prompts

For writers around ages 8 to 11: adventures, animals and things that aren't quite what they seem.

  1. You find a tiny door at the bottom of your garden. Who lives behind it?
  2. Your pet can talk for one day only. What does it tell you?
  3. The school is closed for a week because something escaped from the science room. What was it?
  4. You wake up and you're the size of a mouse. How do you get to breakfast?
  5. Write about the best day ever, but it happens in the rain.
  6. A new kid arrives at school who says they come from the future. Prove them wrong, or right.
  7. Your shadow decides to go on an adventure without you.
  8. Invent a holiday and describe how your town celebrates it.

Prompts for middle and high school students

8 prompts

For writers around ages 11 to 17: real stakes, friendships, secrets and the first big choices.

  1. Your best friend asks you to keep a secret that you think could hurt them.
  2. Write about the day everyone's phones stopped working, from the point of view of someone who was relieved.
  3. A student finds the answers to tomorrow's exam in their locker, with a note: "You'll know what to do."
  4. You have to give a speech at an event you didn't want to attend. Write the speech you actually give.
  5. Two siblings are left in charge of the family business for a weekend.
  6. Write about moving to a new town, from the first night in the empty house.
  7. A team loses the final on a mistake by the quietest player. Tell it from their side.
  8. Write a story in which the hero and the villain are both trying to protect the same person.

Script and scene ideas

8 prompts

Scenes built for the screen: one location, visible action, and dialogue that hides what people mean.

  1. Two estranged brothers have to empty their father's storage unit before it closes at six.
  2. A job interview in which the interviewer is clearly in more trouble than the candidate.
  3. A heist crew argues over the plan in the back of a van that is already moving.
  4. A mother teaches her adult son to drive, twenty years too late.
  5. Write the scene where someone opens a door they were told never to open, without any dialogue.
  6. A comedy: the best man realizes, mid-toast, that he has the wrong wedding.
  7. A short film in one take: a couple decides whether to stay together while assembling flat-pack furniture.
  8. A pilot episode's cold open: a small town's only police officer finds a body on the day before she retires.

From prompt to story

How to use a writing prompt

  1. Set a timer and start in the middle

    Give yourself ten or fifteen minutes and begin with the character already in trouble. A prompt is a door, not an assignment: you can leave it the moment the writing goes somewhere better.

  2. Find the want

    If the prompt names a situation, ask who is in it and what they want right now. A story starts when someone wants something and can't easily get it.

  3. Make it yours

    Move the prompt to a place you know, a job you've had or a person you remember. Specific details from your own life turn the same prompt into a story nobody else could write.

  4. Write to the turn

    Keep going until the character has to choose. That choice is the middle of your story; the ending is what it costs.

  5. Keep the draft

    Even a page that goes nowhere has a line or an image worth keeping. Save every prompt response in one place and reread them once a month.

Common questions

What are good writing prompts?

A good prompt gives you a person under pressure, a strange situation or a question you want answered, and leaves the rest open. "A woman finds a letter" is a topic; "a woman finds a letter she wrote to herself, dated next year" is a prompt, because it raises a question only a story can answer.

What should I write about?

Start with what you already notice: a job you've had, a place you can't forget, an argument you keep replaying, a question you can't answer. If nothing comes, pick a prompt from the list that matches the form you want to write and change one detail to make it yours.

How do I start a story from a prompt?

Begin with a character in the situation the prompt describes, already wanting something. Write the first line as close to the trouble as you can, and save the explanation for later. The story starters list gives you first lines to begin from.

What can a 12 or 13 year old write a story about?

Something with real stakes in a world they know: a secret at school, a pet that goes missing, a friend who moves away, an adventure that starts in their own neighborhood. The lists for kids and for middle and high school students are written for that age.

What are some good journal prompts?

Prompts that ask for a specific memory or a concrete next step work better than abstract questions. "Write about the last time you changed your mind" gets more pages than "who are you?". The journal list has twelve to start with.

How long should I write for a prompt?

Ten to fifteen minutes is enough for a first response. Five-minute prompts work for warming up; if a response keeps going past twenty minutes, it may be a story worth drafting properly.

Can I use these prompts for a class or a contest?

Yes. The prompts are free to use for writing, teaching and workshops. Check a contest's own rules before you submit a story written from any published prompt.

Keep going

Turn the prompt into a finished story

When a prompt response starts to feel like a story, the short story guide walks you through the premise, the structure, the ending and revision.

Every prompt on this page was written for Inkwell. Use them freely for your own writing, classes and workshops.