10 Writing Prompts to Inspire Your Next Story

Sometimes the hardest part of writing isn’t finishing a story. It’s starting one.

Whether you’re working on a novel, short story, fanfiction or screenplay, here are ten writing prompts to get your imagination moving.

1. The Missing Person Returns

A teenager vanishes without a trace and is presumed dead. Ten years later, they walk back into town looking exactly the same age as the day they disappeared. They have no memory of where they’ve been.

But somebody in town knows the truth.

2. The Soulmate’s Last Words

In this world, everyone is born with the last words their soulmate will ever say to them written somewhere on their body.

Most people spend their lives dreading what theirs might mean.

One woman wakes up to find her words have suddenly changed.

3. The Haunted Flatmate

Your character moves into a cheap apartment with one condition:

The previous tenant still lives there.

Sort of. He’s been dead for three years.

4. The Villain Wins

The Chosen One failed. The Dark Lord won. The kingdom fell.

Now, twenty years later, a new generation has to live with the consequences.

5. The Forgotten Town

While driving through the countryside, a family stumbles across a town that doesn’t appear on any map.

Everyone there insists it’s the year 1987.

Nobody is allowed to leave.

6. The Diary

A university student finds an old diary hidden inside a library book.

At first it seems ordinary. Then they realise the entries are describing events that haven’t happened yet.

Including details about their own future.

7. The Monster Under the Bed

When a child complains about a monster under their bed, their parents dismiss it as imagination.

Twenty years later, the monster is still there. Waiting.

8. The Time Capsule

A group of friends dig up a time capsule they buried as children. Inside is a photograph taken yesterday.

They’re all in it.

One of them is dead.

9. The Wrong Funeral

A woman attends a stranger’s funeral by mistake.

Halfway through the service, she realises every photograph being shown is of her.

10. The Locked Door

Every night at exactly 3:07am, a door appears in the middle of your character’s bedroom wall.

It wasn’t there before. Nobody else can see it.

One night, it opens.