This fiction writing prompt list includes 10 story starters to help you launch into a story in multiple different genres. I've always been a fan of using aspects of my own life in my fiction, in order to add to the realism and you'll see that concept play out in a few of these prompts. There are hundreds of creative writing prompts on this site if you are working on a fiction novel or short story and I thoroughly recommend you check them out too.
Fiction Writing Prompt List
1. In what was supposed to be a one-night vacation, you and every member of your extended family are trapped in a log cabin due to a snow storm that could day over a week to clear. How do you survive the bickering, the cooking and the abundance of tough love?
2. The love of your life just walked out of your apartment for good and you cried yourself to sleep. When you woke up the next day, you realize that you have somehow been transported back to the day you first met this love. With a chance to do everything differently, can you succeed at true love?
3. The economic climate made the country ripe for takeover and a military coup has thrown everything you knew change in an instant. With rapid changes being instituted, how do you fit into a new regime full of violent transformation?
4. Place three characters from different time periods of your life into the same room. Write a story about how they interact and what they say about you and the kind of person you are.
5. Pick a town that you have lived in at some point during your life. Imagine that a major event, anywhere from an alien landing to a harvest festival has occurred there. Craft a tale of how the event has impacted the town using excruciating detail.
6. In history class, it's difficult not to find a time period that really resonates with you, whether it was the Italian Renaissance or the 1920's. Set a story in that time period and play up all the elements you enjoy the most about it.
7. Create a small tale of a major event that happens over the course of one minute. Then, try writing the same story over the course of one hour and then again over one day. Mix the elements of the three stories into one tale set during a time length of your choice.
8. All technology has come crashing down and the Internet, computers and cell phones no longer work. While researchers attempt to determine the source of the problem, how will the world cope?
9. After winning a contest, you have the opportunity to meet your hero. The only issue is, this hero is nothing like the person you thought you were meeting. Describe the encounter from beginning to end. Is this person still your hero afterward?
10. Some strange occurrences in your life have led you to believe that everything you type on your computer turns into reality! How do you use this power and what are some of the things that happen during your typing frenzy?
I hope you got some useable fiction starters out of this fiction writing prompt list. If you're interested in a book full of prompts that can easily be adaptable to fit fiction, check out 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts and 500 Writing Prompts for Kids.
Done with Fiction Writing Prompt List? Go back to Creative Writing Prompts.
Use the above prompts or article as inspiration to write a story or other short piece.
