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Best Dramatic Writing Prompts

Join our ongoing contests and win up to $1,500. Flex those creative muscles with these writing prompts.

Showing 214 prompts reset

This week's contest:
Win $250

Tension, Twists, and Turns with WOW!

63 contest entries /
30 stories

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Closes at 23:59 - Feb 27 EST

Write a story that includes the phrase “It was a dark and stormy night,” “Skeletons in the closet,” or “Digging up the past.”

– 54 stories

Make a character’s addiction or obsession an important element of your story.

– 47 stories

Write a story about a nostalgic memory — but your protagonist or narrator realizes they’ve remembered it wrong.

– 21 stories

Center your story around someone trying to change a prophecy.

– 37 stories

Let a small act of kindness unintentionally trigger chaos or destruction.

– 53 stories

Write about a person or community that mistakes cruelty for care (or the other way around).

– 34 stories

Center your story around a character who can’t tell the difference between their dreams and reality.

– 92 stories

Write a story that includes someone swimming in water or diving into the unknown.

– 46 stories

Write a story from the POV of someone waiting to be rescued.

– 73 stories

A character clings to a ritual until it transforms into something unexpected or dangerous.

– 37 stories

Start or end your story with a character performing (or refusing to take part in) a ritual or tradition.

– 65 stories

Write about the moment a character succeeds (or fails) from the POV of someone close to them.

– 26 stories

Write a story about two characters who are competing with each other. What’s at stake?

– 48 stories

Center your story around something that’s hidden.

– 36 stories

Write a story that has a big twist.

– 133 stories

Center your story around a mysterious forest fire, disappearance, or other strange event.

– 70 stories

Write a story in which someone gets lost in the woods.

– 72 stories

Write a story that includes the line “This is all my fault.”

– 51 stories

Write a story in which a stranger warns someone about events yet to come.

– 43 stories

Write a story about a character who encounters someone with an uncanny resemblance to a lost love, friend, or relative.

– 59 stories

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