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539 Best Short Story Ideas for Authors in 2026
Showing 539 short story ideas curated by Reedsy.
A couple gets in a fight after one finds out that the other has secretly wasted $50,000 on lottery tickets over the past 15 years.
Write a story in which it becomes night forever. The sun has gone.
Write a story that starts with the pick-up line, "I must be a snowflake because I’ve fallen for you."
You are home alone watching TV. A character dials a number on their phone. Your phone rings.
One day, the world wakes up to find the Easter Island heads facing the opposite direction.
A legendary dragon is on its way to capture a princess. Plot twist: the princess kidnaps it, and temporarily locks it away in her tower to teach it a lesson.
A plane has just crashed onto a deserted island. It's carrying 12 convicted criminals.
A person wakes up in bed, drenched in salty ocean water.
Write a story about the unlikely friendship that starts up between a young character and the eccentric old lady next door.
A love story that starts and ends in 24 hours.
You wake up from a coma that no one expected you to recover from.
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're on an island in the middle of the ocean. One day you find a bottle washed up on the shore with a piece of paper in 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.
Write a story using only dialogue that illustrates what a normal day at your school looks like.
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?
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