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539 Best Short Story Ideas for Authors in 2026
Showing 539 short story ideas curated by Reedsy.
A plane takes off with 81 passengers. It lands with 82.
Someone told you a secret that you shouldn't know about a friend. What do you do with this information? Write a story about it.
While dozing by the fire in your winter cabin, you hear a knock at the door. Blizzard conditions have closed all surrounding roads, and the nearest neighbor is miles away.
You find a note in your locker that is not intended for you, but the person with the next locker over. What does the note say? What do you do with it?
You accidentally break something at a dinner party and go to ever-increasing lengths to cover it up.
Write a story about a high-stakes decoration competition between neighbors vyying for the title of Most Festive Home in their city (and the local newspaper feature that comes with it).
Describe a character and their life using only the apps on their phone.
Write a story about the passage of time based only upon a series of birthday wishes.
Write about a time that you encountered an obstacle, and how you overcame it.
You find your grandparent's old chessboard in the attic. Absentmindedly, you move a piece. The next day, an opposing piece has been moved.
Overheard in P.E.: "It's not that I wanted to hit you in the head with the ball, it's that I thought you were a spider."
The one place where the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.
You wake up trapped in a strange castle with no memory of how you got there and there's something lurking in the shadows as you explore the halls.
You're spending the night in an old Victorian home-turned-hotel. You're just about to go into your room, when you hear a harp playing from inside it.
Do you believe in ghosts? Why or why not?
"Breaking news: a mirror Earth has just been confirmed..." was not what you expected to hear on the news when you turned on your radio that morning.
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