2,000 Story Ideas to Inspire Your Next Creation

Can’t decide what to write about? Looking for some great, unique story ideas? Then you’re in the right place! Come explore thousands of amazing science fiction, horror, and fantasy writing prompts. Use these ideas to inspire your next short story, novel, play, or other creative writing. You’re sure to find great story prompts for your next project, and put an end to writer’s block forever.

Science Fiction Story Ideas

Space Opera Writing Prompts – Space Travel, Aliens, and the Universe

• Radio Phobos was both a space station and a radio station in space. From 250 miles above Kepler, Catherine played music from humanity’s home world. While she slept, she played radio plays, audio books, and other long-form entertainment. She loved to stare down at the planet below, wishing someone was staring back up at her. Of course, as she was traveling at 17,000 miles an hour, this was impossible. Or so she thought…
• A character finds an alien egg at the farm where his father works. He decides to hide it in his room and see what comes out when it hatches.
• The police chief of a small town is murdered by someone who claims to be an alien. The police debate if the “alien” is a lunatic or actually the beginning of an invasion.
• A housewife traps an alien inside the family’s bomb shelter. A moment later, the full-scale invasion starts. Ships fly over the city, blasting buildings to bits. Will she go in the shelter with the dangerous creature, or risk the house collapsing around her?
• A captured alien soldier claims that their invasion of Earth is actually a rescue mission. They are trying to save us from the real threat: our pets. Cats are far more dangerous than any of us realize.

Apocalyptic Story Ideas – Zombies, the Post-Apocalypse, and More

• We were trying to save the world, but our creation may destroy it. We created a new variety of tree, heartier and faster growing than bamboo. We planted thousands, and they reproduced and grew more. And then it happened. They started producing more oxygen. Lots more. The air became toxic. The trees were killing us.
• Earth is rebuilding after a global war. The survivors decide to replace Earth’s old government with a new system of laws. They send a message to an alien planet, requesting the help of their wisest leaders. Unfortunately, the message is intercepted by a group of alien con artists.
• Chemicals dumped into a river kill off thousands of bears, mountain lions, and other creatures, but they don’t stay dead. Soon, humans are on the run from undead wild animals who want revenge.
• Earth is overthrown by a hedonistic alien race. The aliens believe that “success” is to be judged by how enjoyable one’s life is. They declare themselves the galaxy’s rightful rulers, as they experience the most pleasure. College students challenge the aliens to a contest. Earth will be ruled by whoever can party the hardest.

Dystopian Story Ideas – Evil Governments, Corporate Takeovers, and More

• A business installs a device to track its employees’ thoughts. Anyone daydreaming or not thinking about work has the time taken out of their pay. When a secretary and a mail room clerk discover that they are immune to the device, they search for a way to destroy it.
• The government tracks everyone with cameras on every street and facial recognition software. Rebels take to wearing makeup with geometric patterns to confuse the computers. They start cutting down the camera poles, freeing streets from surveillance.
• The government sterilizes every child at birth. Children are created in government birthing centers. After failing a parenting skills test, a couple is forbidden from adopting children. They build their own artificial womb and grow a baby. They look for other childless couples they can help.
• A team of government psychics work to implant ideas in people’s minds. They manipulate society’s views on political policies and sway elections. The team soon becomes more powerful than the government they were created to serve.
• A corporation invents a lucid dreaming device. Soon after, everyone is required to work a second job. We can’t escape corporate drudgery, even in our dreams.

Biology Story Ideas – Sex, Gender, Sexuality, Immortality, Physical Transformations

• The government bans execution, but the new punishment is even crueler. Instead of being executed, criminals are rendered immortal, invisible, and intangible. They are doomed to spend eternity like ghosts, isolated and alone.
• A mutation in the Y chromosome slows the aging process in men, allowing them to live for centuries. As a result, they are forced to watch the women in their lives grow old and die.
• Teleportation technology spreads across the world. Soon, people begin hacking the machines to do more than just travel. Teleportation chambers can regenerate your body in a new location. Why does it have to be the body you started with? Why not appear in the new location ten years younger, or as the opposite sex, or as an animal, or something stranger? Hacked teleportation software allows humans to change their bodies in nearly unlimited ways.
• After the alien invasion and the resulting economic collapse, the new alien government promotes polyamory as the solution. Can’t afford a house on your own? Just find yourself an extra partner or three!

Cyberpunk Story Ideas – Memory Editing, Brain Implants

• A doctor invents a device that allows people to record and re-watch their dreams. One of the first users dreams of having sex with a beautiful woman. His wife sees the recording and, not realizing it is just a dream, assumes her husband is cheating. As the device becomes more popular, a hacker uses copies of dreams as blackmail material. Police monitor people’s dreams, watching for guilty dreams of past crimes.
• An engineering student builds herself an artificial spinal cord. This spinal cord gives her quicker reflexes than any human alive. She decides to drop out of school and use her newfound talents to dominate women’s tennis. A rival tennis player discovers her secret and hires a hacker to take control of her enhanced spine.
• A couple of artists fall in love and make history by having their brains wired together. Their minds, memories, and personalities merge. A rival artist one-ups them by gathering dozens of volunteers to become the first human “hive mind”.
• After a crime spree horrifies the nation, the government insists on implanting “Conscience Chips” in everyone’s brains. The chips monitor the user’s behavior and make everyone feel too guilty to commit any criminal acts. However, the company in charge of installing the chips realizes they can be used to guide other behaviors, like which products we buy. Soon, millions of Americans find themselves strangely guilty about not buying enough snacks.

Travel Story Ideas – Time Travel, Dimension Jumping, Jet Packs, Flying Cars

• Portals appear in major cities across the world. These portals allow anyone instant access to high-security areas. People walk into bank vaults, prison yards, even chemical weapon research labs. Whenever one appears, the police are forced to barricade the area and post armed guards. As more and more portals appear, the police desperately search for who is building them and why.
• Rachel screamed, clinging to the window ledge with all her might. If she survived, she would have to admit that her father was right. Never buy discount anti-gravity boots.
• A time traveler visits Europe in the middle ages. He explores the countryside, collecting samples of ancient flora and fauna. The traveler tries to collect a sample of the period’s most dangerous creature: a werewolf.
• An art thief jumps between parallel worlds, stealing alternate versions of the Mona Lisa, Starry Night, and other famous artworks. He soon finds himself on the run from a dimension-hopping museum guard.

Futuristic Technology Story Ideas – Robots, Androids, AI, Cyborgs

• A starship pilot falls in love with the AI that runs her ship. She makes it her mission to find the aliens that built it and demand that they give the AI a human body.
• A hacker can create holograms anywhere. He soon leaves police unable to tell real crimes from illusions.
• A high school student wins a robot in a contest. Unfortunately, the robot company made a typo in the contest rules. Instead of Model X-12, the Robot Puppy, they promised the winner a Model Z-12, a forty-foot-tall robot tank. Every teenager wants her own super weapon, right?
• A young girl startles her classmates by introducing them to her new best friend: a twenty-foot robot bulldozer. When the construction company wants their robot back, the girl searches for a place to hide huge machine.

Story Ideas about Psychic Abilities – Telepathy, Telekinesis, Mind Control

• A powerful psychic’s dream creates a “mirror image” of the earth. Unhappy people visit mirror earth to see if their opposites have it better.
• When people die, their spirits lay sleeping, dreaming until the end of the world. One dead girl’s dreams are so powerful that they begin to reshape reality. To stop these changes, the cemetery caretaker must find a way to bring her back to life, or to kill the dead.
• When a young girl is bullied at school, her parents struggle to keep her from using her pyrokinetic powers to get revenge.
• A tarot card reader discovers her psychic abilities work with any kind of card. She does readings with baseball cards, credit cards, business cards, even birthday cards. A friend gives her a pack of “Monster Movie” trading cards to test. She has visions of the town being overrun by vampires, werewolves, and worse.
• A psychic joins a group of friends for a weekend of camping and drug use. He soon decides the mushrooms were a mistake. His visions of melting walls and talking lizards start coming true.

Fantasy Story Ideas

Fantasy Writing Prompts Featuring Witches, Wizards, Mythical Creatures, Magic, and More

• A group of friends finds a vast, dark forest growing in their own basement. Wandering into the trees, they discover they are being stalked by a monster living in their own house.
• A young girl with magical abilities discovers her “imaginary friend” is actually a tulpa, a physical manifestation of her thoughts. As her tulpa becomes more real, he begins to take on a life of his own. He wants to leave the house, and take her with him.
• A teenager uses a book of spells to raise his best friend from the dead. When the forbidden book is found, he says that it belongs to his art teacher. She is soon dragged out of school by an angry mob.
• When a young girl’s parents refuse to let her get a dog, she travels to a fantasy world pet shop, where dozens of mythical creatures are waiting to be adopted.
• A witch curses a hunter’s eyes so that every human he sees appears to be an animal. He will be completely unable to tell innocent people from wild game. The only way he can undo the curse is to kill the witch, but which rabbit is her?
• A sorceress keeps a powerful spirit locked in chains, forcing it to serve her like a slave. A sorcerer offers to help the spirit escape its servitude by casting it into the body of one of his undead minions. But will he really be free, or will he just be moving from one prison to the next?

Horror Story Ideas

Horror Writing Prompts Featuring Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Scary Monsters

• All the kids know about the haunted house on the edge of town. Instead of being scared, they play pranks on the ghost. They ring the doorbell and run away, throw eggs at the windows, and more. Finally, the ghost finds a way to be left alone forever.
• A lonely man confesses to his neighbor that he is a werewolf, and asks her to protect him from himself. She decides to make him her pet, happy to have a “dog” to watch over. But once a month isn’t enough, and soon she demands more “pet time.”
• While demons attack mortals and lead souls astray, imps are too small and weak for such grand things. Instead, they focus on pranks, like hiding someone’s keys or knocking objects off of tables. Reginald, the self-styled “King of Imps”, sets his sights on getting a promotion. To do that, he has to annoy a human to death.
• The owner of an art gallery has a most unusual collection. He collects serial killers, living criminals sealed in glass. They are unable to move, but they know they are trapped. The torment and frustration clearly shows on their faces. An earthquake shatters the glass, releasing them. The gallery owner pays for his crimes in the most painful way imaginable.
• A teenage vampire goes to the carnival with his friends. When they want to go to the House of Mirrors, he worries that his secret will finally be uncovered. How will he explain his missing reflection?
• A man discovers that his new wife wasn’t entirely honest about being an orphan. She does have family, and they are dead… technically. Her father is a zombie, her mother is a vampire, and her sister is some strange combination of the two.
• It’s 1955. A lonely man makes a deal with the devil, asking for a wife who will love him forever. The devil gives the job to a female demon. The female demon does her best to be a good housewife, while keeping up her other demon duties. She divides her time between house cleaning and dragging the evil into hell.

More Story Ideas

Superhero Story Ideas – Super Powers, Heroes, and Villains

• Commander Jetstream is a scientist turned rocket-powered superhero. He has used his gadgets to fight crime for years, but he has finally encountered something he can’t handle. A supposed sorcerer is using a book of dark magic to animate the dead. How can he use gadgets to fight something beyond science?
• Woofer was the city’s toughest crime fighter. His sonic-powered punches can blast through concrete. His only problem was his secret identity. It was difficult to pose as a normal human when your hands were a pair of giant stereo speakers.
• Invincible Ian spent every night beating up criminals with his super strength. Well, almost every night. He never patrolled during a full moon. And he didn’t patrol the entire city. For some reason, he always avoided the silver mine on the edge of town…
• The city was under siege by super terrorists, but the police were refusing to call on the local hero for help. The only thing more frightening than terrorists was The Necromancer and his zombies.
• As Mel dragged yet another mugger to the police, her smile lit up the night. Literally. She was brilliant with a blade, and the most powerful vigilante in the world. She was also Melpomene, one of the Muses. Deities weren’t allowed to reveal themselves to humans. She just had to prevent the other gods from noticing she was on earth. How hard could that be?
• Ordinary guy Kevin Cooper becomes extraordinary when he transforms into the superhero Cicada-Man! Like his namesake, he vows to live underground for seventeen years. Or at least until his mom makes him move out of the basement.

Story Ideas With A Twist

• The curator at a wax museum is standoffish, and never spends much time with his coworkers. He makes excuses, like claiming to be an introvert and a germophobe, but eventually admits that he is one of the wax figures, brought to life by the previous owner.
• A scientist running a human cloning project testifies before Congress that clones aren’t “real humans” and do not deserve the same rights. However, after his testimony, he finds his own body stashed in a freezer.
• A few days after Christmas, Santa Claus visits the homes of “naughty” children to bring them presents. The parents are confused but grateful, at least until “Santa” turns out to be the burglar who had been robbing all the wealthy people in the area.
• A magician always leaves one trick unfinished, pretending it’s just a joke. Every night, he saws a woman in half, but he doesn’t put her back together again. At last, he admits that it’s not a trick at all.
• A ghost teams up with a detective to solve her own murder, only for the detective to discover that she was alive the whole time.
• A ghost hunter on a reality show always captures the best video evidence of the supernatural. After a confrontation with his partner, he admits that he has been causing traumatic deaths across the country to ensure a steady supply of new ghosts.

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