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539 Best Short Story Ideas for Authors in 2026
Showing 539 short story ideas curated by Reedsy.
Write a story about your dream vacation.
Write a dual perspective story, with each alternating perspective based on one of these two words: "bitter" and "sweet."
Write about a time when you were hurt by someone unexpected.
A friendly pranking rivalry between two colleagues in an office starts to get serious.
You're a food critic eating the best meal of your life. You're at McDonalds.
It's your birthday! Write a story about the ideal birthday that you'd spend with your family, your friends, or yourself.
Write about a time you were given responsibility.
The one place where the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.
Two super competitive colleagues meet at the office's monthly Bingo night.
"Pick a card, any card. But take care — which card you pull out will determine your fate."
She was dying. She was your mother. And you remember the day your engineers first turned her on...
You've been asked to watch the class pet over a long weekend. It gets loose on its first night at your house.
You're haunted by a ghost. That's not the problem. The problem is that this ghost is really, really, really chatty.
You eavesdrop on a hushed conversation taking place in the hallway. What's being said is not nice about someone you know.
Set your story on a hayride. Bonus points if a headless horseman makes an appearance.
After the crash, he vanished. Some say he moved to a compound in Africa, some say he went off the grid. But the Silicon Valley genius who engineered the greatest stockmarket disaster in history is hiding in plain sight
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