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539 Best Short Story Ideas for Authors in 2026
Showing 539 short story ideas curated by Reedsy.
It's Christmas, and you somehow need to manuever your parents into buying you the gift that you want.
Write a story from the perspective of your middle school self.
You are a server at a restaurant, having the busiest shift of your life.
Write a story about a character whose reflection no longer appears in the mirror. (It's up to you whether or not they're also a vampire.)
Doppelgangers exist in this world. You just met yours — and they're not friendly.
A character who loves reading finds out that their library has just been forbidden from carrying banned books.
You were mowing your lawn when someone walked by your yard and burst into tears.
You are granted one wish. But you have to use the wish for someone else.
You just found a key in your pocket that wasn't there when you last checked.
Write about the last nightmare you had.
Write a story about two costume shops who try to outdo each other with bigger and crazier costumes each Halloween.
Write about a time that you were challenged in a belief that you had.
You're a busker in Central Park on a spring day.
You are an astronaut spending your last few hours on Earth before a journey into space.
You were sitting on a park bench, enjoying the sun, when a stranger sat next to you and started typing on an old fashioned typewriter.
A romance told through a series of texts.
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