Story prompts for romance, fantasy, fanfic and more
Each prompt is a first line for a story about adults. Take one as it is, swap the names, or bend it toward the heat you want, and let the follow-up questions shape the rest.
Romance
- A wedding photographer keeps catching the same guest in the background of every shot, and he is not on the list.
- Two rival bakers on the same street are forced to share one oven after a fire.
- A ghostwriter falls for the man whose memoir she is writing, and has to keep it out of the book.
- Two strangers rent the same holiday cottage by mistake and agree to split the week down the middle.
- A florist sends anonymous bouquets to the grumpy bookseller across the road until he finally sends one back.
- Exes who run rival radio shows are asked to host the city countdown together.
Fantasy
- A dragon who collects books instead of gold takes a librarian hostage to catalogue them.
- The new court healer discovers the queen has been poisoning herself on purpose.
- A cartographer hired to map a forest finds the paths rearranging themselves every night.
- Two enemy knights wake up bound by a spell that kills them both if they part.
- A witch who sells love charms has never once been able to cast one on herself.
- The last ferryman on a cursed river refuses one passenger, and she keeps coming back.
Fanfic and AUs
- Your favorite rivals, rewritten as owners of competing food trucks in the same parking lot.
- A canon character who died in the finale wakes up in a world where everyone has moved on.
- Two sides of a great war are stuck in the same snowed-in inn for a week, with no weapons allowed.
- A soulmate AU where the first words your match will say to you are written on your wrist, and yours are an insult.
- Your main pairing, rewritten as two estate agents competing for the same listing.
- A missing scene from the night before the final battle, when nobody could sleep.
Role-play openers
- You are a ship captain hiring crew, and the navigator who applies is the one who sank your last ship.
- You run a bookshop that stays open past midnight, and tonight a stranger walks in soaked from the rain.
- You are a bodyguard, and your client keeps slipping away to the same rooftop.
- You are a detective, and the singer at the jazz club asks you to find someone who does not want to be found.
- You arrive at a masquerade to steal a necklace, and someone else is already wearing your mask.
- You are the new tenant, and the landlord who lives downstairs leaves notes under your door.
Thriller and mystery
- A hotel night manager notices one guest has checked in under the name of a man who died last year.
- An archivist finds her own handwriting in a letter dated before she was hired.
- Two rival journalists chase the same anonymous source and slowly realise it is one of them.
- A chess hustler is offered a fortune to lose one game on purpose.
- On a sleeper train, the passenger in the next cabin swears she has met you before, in a city you have never visited.
- A locksmith is hired to open a safe and finds a photograph of herself inside.
Quiet and literary
- A piano tuner visits the same house every spring and slowly learns the family from the instrument.
- Two old friends meet for one evening every ten years, and this time one of them has news.
- A translator realises the novel she is translating is about her.
- A woman inherits a seaside café and the regular who has sat at the window table for twenty years.
- Letters between a lighthouse keeper and the mainland postmaster grow longer every season.
- A gardener restores a walled garden for an owner she never meets, who leaves her one note a week.