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539 Best Short Story Ideas for Authors in 2026
Showing 539 short story ideas curated by Reedsy.
Two strangers have an interesting encounter on a park bench during a snowy, winter evening.
Write a story that inverts a popular YA trope. You get to pick the trope.
It's Christmas, and you somehow need to manuever your parents into buying you the gift that you want.
The one place where the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.
A friendly pranking rivalry between two colleagues in an office starts to get serious.
You open a fortune cookie at a Chinese restaurant. Inside is a handwritten note.
Write a story in the form of letters. Plot twist: it's revealed that the character who wrote them died from unnatural causes years ago.
Write a story based on an experience from your childhood... but set it in a different time period. (Yes, the future counts!)
A 50-year-old has started to do the daily Sudoku, scared that she is starting to lose her memory.
A character's best friend is leaving town forever, and they haven't told them that they love them yet.
You signed up for what you thought was a sweepstakes to win the latest Apple iPhone model, only to discover to your horror when you get to the fall festival that it's actually a competition to see who can eat the most apples in 30 minutes.
A comedian bombs every time every time they get up on stage.
Write a story set at a peppermint convention for people obsessed with peppermint.
Doctor Seuss has grown weary of writing children's books and finds new work as a reporter covering violent crime for a newspaper. Despite his new line of work, he keeps his classic Seussian style.
Write a story that ends by coming full circle.
You hear a commotion on the playground — and from the commotion, you can pick out a familiar voice. What happened?
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