Write a story in which someone receives a receipt for a purchase they have not made yet.
18 Short Story Ideas Prompts
These prompts create a starting constraint, question, or situation. Use one as written, combine two, or change the audience, setting, objective, or limitation to make a new exercise.
Two people meet to exchange keys, but each thinks the keys open a different place.
A character finds a voice memo recorded in their own voice that they do not remember making.
Write about the last customer in a business that will close permanently at midnight.
A person agrees to return one borrowed object and discovers the owner has changed the terms.
A neighborhood tradition continues after everyone has forgotten who started it—except one person.
A character must decide whether to correct a mistake that benefits someone they love.
Write a story that begins with a package delivered to the correct address but the wrong decade.
Someone recognizes a stranger from a family photograph taken before the stranger was born.
A routine inspection reveals a room that appears on no building plan.
A character hears their own name used in a conversation between two people who should not know them.
Write about a small contest whose prize becomes much more important after the contest begins.
A person is asked to write an apology for someone else and realizes the facts are not what they were told.
During a reunion, one guest follows a seating chart that no one else can see.
A character has one hour to decide which of two true stories to tell publicly.
Write a story in which a weather warning is accurate for only one house on the street.
A stranger offers to return a memory the protagonist did not know was missing.
End a story with a character deliberately leaving the one question they came to ask unanswered.