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539 Best Short Story Ideas for Authors in 2026
Showing 539 short story ideas curated by Reedsy.
Set your story at the playground!
Write a story about a character's first day at an after-school job in a retail store.
You wake up the day after an epic party. You're not where you expected to be.
It was just a regular day at the office. Then the power went out.
A 50-year-old has started to do the daily Sudoku, scared that she is starting to lose her memory.
An introvert sits down next to an extrovert in the classroom. What happens?
What is the memory that you remember the most? Why?
Write a story about something that seems ordinary to your protagonist but would be perceived as extraordinary by someone else.
Every day, you visit the same moment from your past.
You briefly go out in the snow and come back inside. When you go out again, your footprints from earlier lead in a different direction.
You've just moved into a new house. You wake up one night to the sound of Siri responding to a query. You turned off your phone before you went to sleep.
A team of scientists have successfully teleported an apple. It reappears with a bite taken out of it.
As the floor trembles and the walls shake, you know there is only one way to survive.
Write a story about a family adopting a black cat, just in time for Halloween.
She was dying. She was your mother. And you remember the day your engineers first turned her on...
"Say cheese!" You push the camera button, hear the click, and... that's when all hell broke loose.
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