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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 2655 prompts

Write a story set during a heatwave.

– 66 stories

Hide something from your reader until the very end.

– 118 stories

Begin your story with someone saying, “Are you there, God? It’s me...”

– 67 stories

Write a story where two characters talk around an important subject without ever mentioning it directly.

– 56 stories

Start your story with a non-visual sense. Use a certain scent, texture, sound, or taste to ground the beginning before continuing the narrative.

– 64 stories

Write a story with an open ending that leaves room for your reader’s own interpretations.

– 90 stories

Write a story that includes the line “Are you real?” or “Who are you?”

– 106 stories

One character is an artificial intelligence. The other is a human being. Your reader must struggle to tell which is which.

– 61 stories

Using only dialogue, depict a conversation between a non-human entity and a human being about what it means to tell a story, or to be alive.

– 63 stories

Write a story where the only character with a name is an artificial being.

– 45 stories

Center your story around someone who uses technology (AI, hardware, etc.) to write their next work and slowly descends into madness.

– 45 stories

Write a story that includes the words “they would be back…”

– 36 stories

A character finds out they have a special power or ability. What happens next?

– 53 stories

Write a story with someone saying “I regret…” or “I remember…”

– 106 stories

Center your story around a character who’s trying to make amends.

– 47 stories

Write a story about an unlikely criminal or accidental lawbreaker.

– 88 stories

Center your story around a struggling author who discovers they can control reality through their writing — but there’s a catch.

– 64 stories

Write about someone who self-publishes a story that was never meant to be read.

– 44 stories

Your protagonist joins a mysterious group of readers and/or writers, and nothing is what it seems.

– 41 stories

An indie bookshop owner realizes that a customer has stolen a book connected to an unsolved local mystery. What happens next?

– 34 stories

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