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Best Horror Writing Prompts

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

Showing 72 prompts reset

This week's contest:
Win $250

Ghost Stories

140 contest entries /
78 stories

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Closes at 23:59 - Oct 23 EST

Your character sees something unfamiliar out of the corner of their eye. What happens next?

– 27 stories

Write about a backstabbing (literal or metaphorical) gone wrong.

– 41 stories

Set your story in a house of mirrors and make the atmosphere increasingly eerie.

– 39 stories

Set your story in a creepy mansion — except nothing horrifying takes place in it.

– 64 stories

Set your story in a haunted house.

– 67 stories

Start your story with a character seeing something terrifying.

– 52 stories

Write a story that contains a flashback of a nightmare.

– 60 stories

Re-write Frankenstein from the perspective of the monster that Dr. Frankenstein created.

You wake up one day to discover that you've been transported inside of a novel... and it's a horror novel.

A troop of clowns is performing in your city this weekend... and on the day of, some strange things start happening.

Write a horror story that subverts the Cursed Artifact trope.

"Hi, this is the IRS."

A mysterious benefactor will pay $100,000 to anyone willing to stay in a haunted house overnight.

The walls of the house are dripping with something. What is it?

Start your story with a character saying "I wouldn't go in there if I were you."

Set your story in a deep, dark wood.

The phone won't stop ringing, but it's not plugged into the wall.

Start your story with a character encountering a black cat.

– 72 stories

Write a story about a character who can’t tell what’s real and what’s not.

– 80 stories

End your story with total oblivion.

– 24 stories

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