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Writing Prompts

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

Showing 2,791 prompts

Include the line “I forget…” or “I remember…” in your story.

LIVE – Weekly Contest #380

Set your story in a place your protagonist hasn't visited since childhood.

LIVE – Weekly Contest #380

Write a story about two people who remember the same event differently.

LIVE – Weekly Contest #380

Your character finds a photograph, letter, or keepsake they'd forgotten.

LIVE – Weekly Contest #380

Write a story in which memory or nostalgia becomes a real object.

LIVE – Weekly Contest #380

Write a story that includes the line “I can’t sleep.”

– 52 stories

Make a character’s obsession or grudge a key element of your story.

– 45 stories

Set your story in a place where something terrible once happened.

– 47 stories

Write about a character who yearns for something they lost — or never had.

– 60 stories

Start your story with someone being followed.

– 47 stories

Write a story that takes place between midnight and dawn.

– 55 stories

Include the line “I thought you were dead” or “We buried you” in your story.

– 42 stories

Write a story from the POV of a vampire, werewolf, doppelgänger, or shapeshifter.

– 36 stories

Set your story at an event (a party, séance, funeral, etc.) where something goes wrong.

– 43 stories

Write a story with the aim of scaring your reader.

– 59 stories

Include the line “There’s no one there,” “I know what I saw,” or “I never left” in your story.

– 42 stories

Start or end your story with a door opening on its own.

– 23 stories

Write a ghost story where the ghost isn't the scariest thing in it.

– 52 stories

Include something haunted (a house, doll, mirror, painting, etc.) in your story.

– 58 stories

Write a story from the POV of a ghost.

– 87 stories

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