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539 Best Short Story Ideas for Authors in 2026
Showing 539 short story ideas curated by Reedsy.
You just found a key in your pocket that wasn't there when you last checked.
You're sitting at your desk eating candy hearts. You start to realize the notes on the hearts are trying to give you a message.
Write a story about a character who can only tell lies.
You open a door, but before you can go through, someone sneaks in front of you without saying "thank you." You've had an awful day and this is the last straw.
Write a story about a terrible, unfixable hair cut.
Write a story that starts with the pick-up line, "I must be a snowflake because I’ve fallen for you."
Some fishy things have been going on at school. Write about a group of friends who establish their own detective agency to get down to the bottom of it, once and for all.
Write a story using only dialogue that illustrates what a normal day at your school looks like.
You find your grandparent's old chessboard in the attic. Absentmindedly, you move a piece. The next day, an opposing piece has been moved.
You just invented the first time machine in Physics — but you accidentally sent yourself to the future instead of the past during the initial test drive. Now you must race against time to travel back to the present after learning of a secret that might change everything as the world knows it.
You check into a seedy hotel and discover halfway through the night that it is made up entirely of thirteenth floors missing from other hotels.
Overheard in Chemistry class: "Well, that wasn't supposed to happen."
Write a story that takes place over the course of a house party.
Your parents named you Holly after your grandmother, and you just accepted an invite for a group called The Jolly Hollies thinking that it was a club for people with your name. Turns out that it's actually an annual caroling group, and you can't sing.
You buy your son a teddy bear. Every night, the bear protects your son from the monsters in the dark.
A character doesn't know how to ask their parent to stop calling them 2+ times a day.
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