15 Writing Prompts for Short Stories
- Ash
- Apr 9
- 3 min read
Hi friends! This blog is dedicated to 15 writing prompts for short stories - all created by Ash!
I was inspired by my other post, "25 Writing Prompts for Short Stories", seeing as it did so well (almost 3K views).
Let me know if any of these inspire you!
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15 Writing Prompts for Short Stories
You wake up in the morning and can't see your reflection in the mirror. You discover that reflections don't exist anymore. What happens next is truly terrifying.
You wake up one day, and suddenly you can speak to animals. But you're obviously not Doctor Dolittle. What's your first move?
A woman in her late 20s keeps being awakened at 3 AM by high-pitched ringing, but it's not tinnitus; it's something much darker. Write about what's lurking in the shadows. The woman often sees a purple orb following her.
Write a short story without using the letter "S" - this is a call back to the time I met John Marsden (RIP).
A person is going for a walk one evening along the river. They get a notification on their phone. It's one of those emergency text messages, and it says, "Warning, there is about to be a nuclear disaster". They look up. No one else around has gotten the text. What do you do next?
The scene is set in Antarctica with some researchers who have stayed down for the winter months. There's a haunted vending machine located outside. Write about the paranormal experiences the researchers have while on the ice. When they get back to reality, no one believes them.
You go for a walk along the Appalachian Trail, but you have to be back before nightfall. You and your friends don't make it home. What happened to you and your friends?
As a kid, you won a lifetime supply of TimTams in Perth, Australia. 20 years go by, civilisation collapsed, and you're one of the last humans on earth. It's now 2037, and TimTams keep getting delivered to your door and not just the chocolate ones; there are even new flavours that you've never heard of.
One day, you are on your way to work, but before you make it to the train station, a time traveller (that is, you from the future) stops you, hands you a journal and says that everything in it is going to happen to you.
Write about a world where coffee doesn't exist.
You're wandering through a bookstore, and you find a Polaroid of yourself from 5 years ago. As you navigate through life, you keep finding more and more polaroids of yourself in different places. You don't know who is taking these photos, but it becomes your mission to find out.
When you were a kid, your parents were brutally murdered, but they never found the suspect. One day, you start a new job, and your co-worker looks vaguely familiar.
Go to the park, sit on a bench and make up stories about the people who walk past you (this is more of a task than a writing prompt). It's fun!
One Autumn evening, you're baking apple crumble for dessert when you discover a diary. The diary has intimate knowledge about you and your life that you've never shared with anyone. You live alone.
You're teaching a history class at a university. Time stops. Something happens in that room that feels like 20 years have passed; you were only teaching for 50 minutes. What happened?
Happy writing!!
Ash x
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