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DIRECTORY
539 Best Short Story Ideas for Authors in 2026
Showing 539 short story ideas curated by Reedsy.
It's Wednesday evening and you're off to the weekly meeting of your writer's block support group.
Everyday you are delivered a newspaper at your front door that accurately predicts what will happen in the next 24 hours.
You come across a cheaply printed book of magic tricks. You try one out and discover the book is truly magic, and teaches you how to break fundamental laws of physics.
Write a story with the worlds: "calculation," "corn," and "mayor."
A former party animal lives in a retirement home. They've decided it's time for one last bash.
Someone who has lived a thousand years takes up a job teaching high school history.
"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.
You're beginning to believe the person writing the daily crossword puzzle in your newspaper is trying to send you an encoded message.
Your diary has started leaking blood. You have to find out what this means, but you have a time limit because the more blood that leaks from it, the weaker you seem to get.
"When i grow up, I want to..."
You're a bartender at a neighborhood pub. A regular comes in and says, "Do I have a story for you!"
Spin a scary story that could be told around a bonfire at night.
Write a retelling of a fairy tale — from the perspective of a child.
You just got the new dog that you've wanted for such a long time, but you're finding that it's a lot more responsibility than you expected.
Write about the way the sunset looks from the perspective of two characters. One is sad, the other is happy.
You're the director at a marketing agency. Your next project: to come up with an irresistibly catchy Christmas jingle. The only problem is that you hate Christmas.
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