1001 Adventure Fiction Writing Prompts - Commaful Storytelling Blog

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Adventure stories are fun to read because they allow you to explore unfamiliar environments thrillingly and introduce you to creatures that are beyond your imagination. But, they are very challenging to write, as it is up to you to make up everything, including the main characters, villains, conflict, and the setting of the story.

If you are interested in writing adventure stories, one thing you could do to make your life easier is turn to writing prompts for ideas. This is because these brief passages or text inspire you when you are out of ideas and push you to get your creative spirits going.

To help you create wonderful adventure stories, check out these writing prompts:

An individual receives a message from long ago, telling them about their first love.
When a group of scientists loses their funding, they resort to less than respectable methods to continue their research.
A woman wakes up in a desert without any memory of how she got there, and her only clues are the items she reincarnated with.
Siberia. South America. Australia. The same animal begins to overrun and consume every major city. The main character has to trap, hunt and kill the animal before it is too late.
A family is split up. The mother and her children make it to safety while the father disappears, leaving a clue where to find him.
A post-apocalyptic world where one man’s fortress of solitude is a city of true horror, and that man is a broken puppet of his own master.
An ancient god is accidentally released from its prison to wreak havoc upon the human race. Now, a faithful member of the church must stop it before it destroys everything.
A scientist invents an ability to speak with machines, and an android that cannot follow directions wants to communicate with it.
A lone warrior is asked to help defend the land from a giant terrorizing the land. You’ll need a broadsword.
Through a spell gone wrong, a woman finds herself in a dog’s body. From there, she must try to salvage her relationships and her life.
An explosion at a gas station ignites some sleeping dark matter.
The very fabric of time unravels causing everything to exist at once. Two people gave their very bodies and the very sanity that binds them to do everything undoing the oddity that threatens society.
A newly discovered island promises a utopia, but the people already living on the island aren’t so accommodating.
A man sees another man broken down on the side of the road. He gets out to lend a hand and makes a strange discovery about the highway.
People start to organize and pick sides when people begin to hoard food in a hyper-inflation scenario.
The Statue of liberty, holding up a torch, is a true goddess. Her long forgotten worshipers are the last guardians of an ancient portal that leads to solid gold.
As a coming of age story, a teen uses their allowance to buy out a haunted house from a thrift shop, only to haul home a paranormal problem.
A sudden cataclysmic event leaves two characters utterly alone and one character is the only thing the other character has as hope.
Someone dies and the living begin to sense the creeping death while powerless to stop it.
A new street drug creates avid full-body orgasms, but things become complicated when users seek it out.
A story about a soldier on his/her final mission, but one which will lead to him/her doing the wrong thing for the right reason. Or the right thing for the wrong reason.
A young girl walks out of the nearby woods. She’s carrying some heavy things inside a canvas navy bag. The bag is torn, blood on her legs are staining the pants and the fabric. After a long day, she finally arrives at home but when she opens it, what’s inside?
A robber is fleeing from a crime and takes shelter in a sleazy motel. He meets a proprietor and a businessman who seem truly at ease with the current state of affairs. Eventually, that robber gets the feeling that the two may be responsible for the strange happenings going in their city.
A wild Starkweather type rides into town. They say they are looking for a woman by the name of – the name given is the GM’s main character. An unusual killing spree takes place that involves the party.
An epic odyssey takes a few days off, but does so when it discovers something truly awe-inspiring.
A teenager in high school receives a sudden promotion and has to deal with the consequences. What does this promotion really mean in the end?
In a post-apocalyptic world, there are no women to be found. Two people out to resolve this find an unexpected companion.
Strange new coffee shop opens up. It seems to be haunted but no one can figure out its mysterious origins.
There is very little known information about the island of Miltonia. What happens when a modern civilization starts arriving on the island and things are returning to normal?
As the number of people thinking about suicide increases, a change is going to occur. The Creator whispers to them to go out and do the unthinkable.
A Terminator style character is sent back from the future, but it is a little off its game and throws in a few out-of-character moments.
A carnival or freak show arrives in a small town. Gaining favor with the town, someone puts together the pieces of the plot quietly.
A village is held in the grip of unbearable, suffocating drought. There is now a higher evil to blame.
A power outage hits the entire state as everyone complains about the lack of air conditioning until they start to die.
An intergalactic explorer crash lands on a foreign planet. He/She must fend for themselves, not knowing if they’ll be able to repair their ship.
The government is pushing for space travel, but it’s a public secret that they are actually taking a group of civilians and experimenting on them in order to create their ideal specimen.
An army of locusts sweeps across a country in the dead of summer, leaving an empty desert behind.
The adventure is written through the words of those trying to stop an apocalypse. Many who are writing bits of the story seem to take bets on whether it really happened.
A couple dumps their dead bodies through the trash. All others refuse to help and so they do it all by themselves.
Find out what secrets an ally is hiding about their past that will change your view into who this person truly is.
This character walks into a pub and meets a new character which alters their life process permanently.
Every person on the planet suddenly knows the day they will die, leaving the population in a terrible mix of pain, sadness and even suicide.
A dying serial killer bequeaths their undiscovered trove of writings to a young girl who refuses to be broken by a world that fears her unique abilities.
A group of siblings live through a tragic event. Each sibling deals with the event in his own unique way and some never recover.
A scholar finds a strange cry in his basement upon his greeting from a long trip. Using his artifacts to help him translate it, he begins to understand its message and what it intends to do.
Southern area of the United States catches a strain of bird flu devastating the population.
A young queen has been weathering the storm for as long as she can remember. What she does not remember is what her royal heritage is, and she will stop at nothing to discover who she truly is.
An auction everyday for a year. It’s location moves to different towns, but there always seem to be the same items for sale.
Your main character arrives at a party on the invitation of a long time friend who has invited everyone in your character’s address book. Upon arrival he/she is served a strange looking cocktail and becomes disoriented about their surroundings. When your character awakes, he/she finds they are in a different time period.
Bike couriers must hustle across the urban landscape that is boiling with unexpected weather.
Two families are strangers until a powerful force is able to bridge a friendship between two people.
It’s Halloween, and the clown/mask/costumes only appear at midnight. Whoever finds one becomes a target of an attack. That mask which wants to be on your face is not your friend.
While out exploring, a simple trip to the park drags the main character into a war between reality and an artificial intelligence trying to run/tinker with the world.
Everyone seems to be heading to the same destination. On the way there, your main characters make in-depth observations of the things around them.
Your characters are stranded on a remote island. Think Lost . On this island is a copy of A Christmas Carol cemented into a wall.
A psychic sees a future of darkness. Could it be the end of the world?
The main character is thrown out of their home with nothing but the undergarments on their back. Why? How do they react to being homeless?
The government warns of an impending apocalyptic event. A family tries to warn everyone, but they don’t listen. The world then falls apart.
A girl sees a bigfoot. Her mind manages to convince her friends and family that the creature exists.
Most of your characters die before the first chapter begins. They barely make it through the graveyard gate. Then they see…
Many bikers enjoy a race, until they find themselves in a post-apocalyptic world with a mad cyborg on their tail.
A protagonist tries to sleep but can’t. Any attempts to drop off result in a disturbing yet realistic scene. This continuously occurs until they can no longer stand it.
DIY at home with Dad. In watching him, you notice that he either looks incredibly bored or very determined when he is doing work around the house. You then come to realize he is avoiding something or someone by doing the chores.
A historians project to find a piece of knowledge, an artifact, or anything really big for his museum. He finds what he needs, but at the expense of the entire religious town he resides in.
A sleeping sickness sweeps the planet. You wake up one morning and the world is enslaved in some way.
An expedition into the Andes goes horribly wrong, forcing the group to surrender to their deepest feelings and thoughts.
Your main character heads out for a morning jog, only to end up in a very strange place.
A new hiring policy at Burger Monkey, the world’s biggest franchise, is in place – no one gets hired without a go through their very strange training program.
Someone pulls the emergency brake while you are on a train or a bus.
For a change of pace, write a story from the bad guys’ point of view. Bad writing is appropriate for antagonists.
At the bottom of the ocean, there is an ancient city waiting to be rediscovered.
Anti-gravity belt suddenly reveals itself, showing a dark side or allows control of all the world’s oceans. How will society react to the strange new source of power? In what negative ways might it use that ability?
An old man refuses to allow the bridge connecting his two areas to be destroyed. Death can’t wait long enough to hear the reason.
A man’s theory about the pyramids brings him on an adventure. People either want to hurt him and/or make him stop.
Interstellar teams bring samples back when they go on space missions to outer space. However, leading months into burning in re-entry is an unknown substance no one expects until it is too late.
A list of everything and everyone your main character comes in contact with. Cover them all from perspectives, demographics, and industry types.
Someone is stalking you. You don’t know who or why but you start to pick up notes they’ve left on your windshield and they always seem to know what’s happening before you do.
Elves, superheroes, legendary creatures, scientists, all of these things bump over into each other and suddenly find their normal life turned upside down.
A person comes down with a major illness but refuses the light treatment preferring to leave the hospital to pursue their own course.
A street gang gives a guide around the city, but there is more going on and the narrator is too in awe of the story to notice.
A volunteer fire department answers a call that sets them on a tangent.
A detective and his partner investigate a wealthy suspect. What started out as a simple robbery call suddenly turns into religion, drugs and espionage in your character’s hometown.
Children somehow take over their parents in a strange invasion of craftiness and imagination.
A young man goes on a never-ending jog. Soon, he is enraptured with exercise and self-discipline. He notices small diminishes in his physical body, and the only way for him to correct them is to exercise more aggressively.
The arctic circle shows unprecedented activity, causing extremely harsh weather and/or rapidly rising waters flooding the region. This in turn forces families to evacuate their homes, only to find themselves on an ark.
Two guys meet in a diner and make a bet where one inflationary the other deflationary. Winner gets the other’s family fortune.
A man living alone on a remote island realizes that locusts have invaded and that they shouldn’t have made it this far. There’s an opportunity to be the bringer of hope for the remaining survivors.
A psychic receives a message from someone who died, but the message indicates that death isn’t necessarily the end he/she was expecting.
You’re going about your life and come across a bizarre creature. You aren’t sure what it is at first, but it catches your eye nonetheless.
A magic-user bestows upon the main character the ability to see the hidden history of everyday objects. This gift comes with a curse and there is only one choice they can make.
Human consciousness is suddenly transformed, and everyone on Earth experiences either better or worse.
A war has broken out and reporters and soldiers are running out of supplies.
Follow a little girl as she wakes up in an underground bunker doing puzzles in order to free her, or find out what happened to her.
Black Friday shoppers take advantage of a mental asylum that was once locked away due to the disease outbreaks in the old state quarantine center. What they do discover will shake them mentally and physically.
A janitor at a university finds themselves in a heated situation with the FBI over some illegal drug experiments going on behind closed doors.
Humanity is under siege by strange monsters from outer space. The humans must find a way to stop the monsters while dealing with the everyday flaws of humanity.
Your main character is accused of a crime they did not commit. They go underground while on the run from authorities, only to discover someone’s helping them to stay free. A battle of wills happens, because the person helping them turns out to be pretty evil.
While getting gas from a strange-looking gas station, your main character narrowly misses an accident. The clerk there is calm about everyone almost getting hit by a heavily damaged car.
A family is knocked out by a mysterious intruder while at home. When they wake, the family finds themselves catatonic, paralyzed inside their bodies while being forced to watch re-enactments of their previous lives.
Someone comes out of a fever and discovers strange and impossible things have happened to them.
A town once populated by hundreds, now only a few remain as they continue their lives despite nature trying to reclaim the land back.
Springheeled Jack is a burglar who wants to force people into submission for something bigger than himself.
Tensions rise in a rural area when people report being attacked by creatures they never saw. The witness’ report back to the Sheriff and reports the incident.
The music of a band of barbarians can be heard throughout a quiet neighborhood.
We open alongside a character that breached the rules of time travel and finds themselves trapped at a point in time, unable to escape.
Death occurs on the day after your hero’s birthday. The angel of death appears to them and offers to extend their life if they fulfill a single request that leads to another lavish demise for someone else.
A group of people known as the Nomads are forced into a wealthy suburb by a horde of zombies. Although gravely outnumbered in an unfamiliar area, some of the Nomads take the fight to the house owners while others try to survive out on their lawns and gardens.
The fossil of some ancient animal is uncovered, ushering in various organizations who all want the discovery.
A dark wizard and witches are summoning ancient gods to bring forth an Apocalypse. Only your main character and a group of nerdy kids can stop it.
A desperate man steals something from the local church. As he runs, he runs straight into a horror he didn’t expect to actually exist.
A friendly game of truth or dare leads to more than anyone ever bargained for.
Not only does the moon change its phases from full to new, but it becomes cracked in the process. The characters investigate and find out why, using futuristic transportation of some sort to get there.
The future is bleak for the main characters. An artifact is found that they think might include a way to stop the destruction.
An archaeologist is leading a new dig, when he uncovers a deadly secret in the land.
An entire city gets turned into unwilling participants for the dystopian future, as an act of political warfare.
An estranged brother and sister suddenly meet up again in their twenties. They lived in the same house until a tragedy killed their parents when they were young.
A rain of blood, tornadoes, and sky lit on fire spell the end of the earth. A man comes back to his old farmhouse that was once the epicenter.
A gambler and a scholar argue over the best way to spend their time. The scholar convinces the gambler to learn an alien language that will open up huge amounts of knowledge for them. The gambler instead tricks the scholar into losing his life over a game of chance.
An explorer gets trapped in the South Pole. The story follows a slow and psychological descent into madness.
The circus comes to town. The characters try to discover whether the circus is supernatural or just a hoax.
Two planets that orbit the same star begin to have their orbits decay. Each moon tries saving their planet the best way it knows how.
A woman goes to her mammogram appointment and gets much more than she ever wanted to know about herself.
A circus act goes horribly wrong when a “mysterious force” arrives in mid air during the performance.
A married couple is recovering from a serious road accident. Their bodies are broken, but they find strength to carry on based upon a strange dream. It’s partially a physical and emotional journey into the depths of their souls.
A person goes missing after a blind date. They show up a month later, but never tell what happened. Until suddenly they erupt into a fit of rage.
The new neighbors seem to be very quiet, but how quiet is too quiet?
A world traveler returns home to find that the house is caved in and the drawers full of notes written in a secret language. Some of the letters are strangely familiar to the main character.
You are sitting in your office when a suit walks in. You know you can’t turn this person down but you are hesitant about what happens after you’re accepted.
A band of explorers find a town constructed by an unknown race. Its inhabitants refuse to leave, knowing that the explorers will turn them out the same way the invaders did.
The book you are writing has been released and received positive reviews. The sequel everyone is waiting for is written to follow although it takes quite a different approach.
A couple heard about an unusual resort out in the desert, which leads them through a courtyard of death and into the most unusual hotel room any tourist had ever known.
A small group of cave tastors stumble onto an archaeological dig. Instead of stealing the findings, they simply observe until a typical act of boredom turns deadly.
Stranded on a remote island, a group of people discover something unnatural happening to the local wildlife.
You find yourself trapped in some lost dimension. While there, humans aren’t hunting game but are game. Outside a dimension that mimics the 1970s shows up and has television and abstract humor.
Your main character travels back in time and tries to fix a mistake in the past, but something goes wrong and he/she bounces back to the future to witness the effects of their blunder.
A number of characters wake up in places they don’t recognize. When they connect, they realize they’ve all fallen asleep in an ancient library.
Sects of people start to show up in your main character’s town, and they have no intention to leave . It soon becomes a shadow of a former town that starts to evolve in unexpected ways.
A character is trying to read an old tome, but must have another reader read it to them. Then, having read the entire time, they must get answers from the incredibly mundane-sounding narrator.
It’s the morning after a wedding where the main characters discover the bride or groom isn’t exactly what they seem.
Some big game hunters get more than they bargained for when the exotic creature they just killed winds up coming back to life.
The MC wakes up after a long night of drinking. They know one of the other guys they were out drinking the night before died, but they can’t remember anything of the night before. Who killed the guy?
The place the servant saw the beautiful woman was from the view of peering through an eyehole in the basement.
A dial tone is followed by a monotonous voice notifying that the person being called is dead.
The boiler on an oil tanker blows out. This screws up the ship’s course and long term radio navigation. It drifts smack in the middle of the shipping lanes.
You wake up on a bus full of other students talking about how they have no idea what’s happening to them. They all soon start getting sick and the bus drives into a foggy area of the country where only two other people are waiting. Things turn stranger when a group of animal shaped people appear and decide to take over the bus.
A group of survivors start an odd ritual to prevent a failed attempt at his/her death. The result, a door opens, revealing the future/past of the person. After a brief exploration of the area, the person returns to their home/relative.
All of your characters descend into a pit of caves. As they descend, they find the bones of all animals that inhabited the area.
Released from an asylum, your main character returns home to a very unwelcome surprise.
Someone sees their stomach is moving bigger and bigger even though they’ve not eaten anything. The stomach ruptures and but before anything falls out, a hallucination of their worst fear takes over their mind.
A young man awakens hours before he was scheduled to die thanks to a sleep study being handled at the local college. Before it’s safe to inform the medical staff, he must do everything he can to live the final hours of his life.
An upscale restaurant opens nearby. The food is crazy and adventurous, and it grows back right before your eyes!
A child finds a strange knitted ragdoll on his/her doorstep. It is perfectly preserved in a box and has a note tied to it that reads DO NOT OPEN until you are alone.
A powerful corporation is forcing their workers to attend a retreat that may not be trustworthy. Can be based in a work environment or could be a cult inspired setting.
A powerful company buys powerful people, in order to control powerful things.
A servant finds new life under the wing of a mysterious man. However, the man disappears and the servant must find her way home.
A horror writer is invited to a dinner party being thrown for the cast of a real-life horror film he/she recently wrote about. After dinner, he/she realizes that everyone at the party is reenacting scenes from his/her book.
A father always told his son to avoid using his power. For several reasons, he might not want his son to use it. But when the boy must use it to save the world, it may show his son that he is no longer suited for that power.
The death of one involves events that reveal a pattern of forgery and cruelty.
Building an escape pod just for yourself or scavenging an abandoned building for enough supplies that you can survive a year.
The lead character decides to revisit their high school and finds the entirety of it trashed and dilapidated, and when a security guard chases them back onto the streets, insanity sets in and darkness seems inevitable.
Invading extraterrestrial lichen rides the wind touching down thousands of times across the United States and right where your main characters live. It causes everything to crystallize and turn white overnight. Natural laws change and civilization collapses. How would mankind survive freezing, snow, starvation, and lawlessness?
A tribe of Native Americans known for their ancient ceremonies perform a rite involving herb, smoke, and prophecy. The ceremony guide is an addict, and the narrator is the only sober person in the run-down shack.
A sleazy author starts a new series of books. However, one nasty character has an attitude that impacts the rest of the book. Good dialog can escalate a story to a quicker speed.
A journalist gets to witness a battle between a giant monster and strange vehicles from a country devoid of any military power.
A detective who is trying to fight off a drug addiction finds themselves mixed up in the investigation of an occult gang.
Your main character ventures out into the wilderness to recover from a personal loss. When they get there they find something so marvelous, it shapes the whole rest of their life.
A bus packed full of unscrupulous criminals freezes in the snow, stranding all aboard a strange island, far from any airports.
Two brothers living high up the tornado alley get an ominous visitor. One of the brothers doesn’t hear/see/smell correctly anymore.
A vampire and his companion track down the man who is spreading deadly rumors about their kind not being feeding on violence.
A shy boy/girl’s beloved bike is stolen, however, when the attempted thief is caught, something is noticed stuck to their shoe.
A person who always believed in good, is faced with a major crisis and struggles with the concept while having to save their friends and family from the most unexpected villain.
A meeting of a clandestine organization takes place in the wild.
A tow truck driver swings by the scene of a horrible accident. He comes upon a single car fully submerged in the river. Inside is a little league team. He goes in to save them and learns an interesting secret.
A former master thief and their apprentice rackets around in an abandoned town.
A supernatural event happens in a prominent historical location.
A university student wears two watches. One is twenty minutes ahead and one is twenty minutes back. This gives her insight to predict the future and avoid unwanted conflicts.
A group of friends find an old board game in an antique store. The game ends up taking over their lives in ways they would never have expected.
A wooden boy and girl come to life in a playroom.
A man stares into the night sky and gazes for hours at the stars glittering around him. He claims, calmly, that he is looking to find a name in the stars.
Two children plan to play hide and seek, ending with a tally of how long it takes to find them.
Two people wake up in an unknown world, naked and unarmed.
A new technology is invented that takes the world by storm. Your characters are determined to get their hands on one.
A brother/sister pair of fourth graders suddenly have strange abilities. They are forced to learn about the hidden world of mystery.
A Soviet nuclear scientist runs desperately towards the US border with information that could win the Cold War for America. The scientist fights through snow, hot deserts, and more to reach his top speed.
Your main character is told to clean out their attic. Rather than a dusty mess they discover a magical device.
In the middle of the rainforest, a man finds a case on the floor of the jungle with something strange inside.
An explorer is having great fortune finding ancient artifacts in the most remote places on the earth. He soon finds a way to reach one of the final places mages avoided for a reason.
There is a hidden room in their friend’s house, but they’re not aware it exists. Why was it created, and to what extent was it used?
Walking to the trash to throw out your lunch sack, you discover a strange box with your name on it.
Follow a family that seemed to be ordinary on their way out of “nowhere.”
A strange cyclone sucks up a person and spits him/her out somewhere else. They wonder what in the world just happened.
Only one of a group of friends can keep a candle lit during a supernatural storm or else they will all die.
A historical artifact is discovered, but the local newspaper reporter wants to keep it quiet because it holds some horrible memories.
A man awakens, sensing something wrong, but unable to find out what or where it is.
A large dog attacks a group of people. No one can find their true identity and if it attacks again, it will have a new victim.
The lights suddenly go out. A man and his dog are unable to get access to the elevator in their apartment building. All their neighbors from different walks of life share the small space making for a strange tale.
A plane goes missing in a storm. They took off and were never heard from again. Or was that just the cover story?
Something or someone has kidnapped a sibling of the main character. Your character needs to follow a series of clues to get them back.
You meet a strange woman who sings a song so compelling your entire reality changes. She leaves. Leave with her on the back of a bird.
A man in your main character’s neighborhood has gone missing. Nobody knows what happened to him. He always dressed oddly and once said something that may define the mystery.
A man takes to the trees to get away from something in his life. He writes out a list of all the illegal things he’s done, with little care about being caught.
Clouds become snow and then frost then microscopic ice particles then pollution. Finally, this miasma becomes sentient and forms a malevolent intelligence bent on domination.
A young child wakes up to a new babysitter and finds out much more than a change in caretakers. All but it’s happening people are gone from their neighborhood and instead entire tribes with only one item of importance from their culture remain.
Muslims clash against Christians and set fire to everything. A family is fleeing, trying to dodge all the bullets.
A man’s entire family is wiped out in an explosion at the soda factory. He decides to take revenge on the company that had control of the factory, despite the troubles he will go through in order to get his vengeance.
Your main character lacks Internet service, and desires to write the next AOL chat room sensation. Your main character tries desperately to write the next AOL sensation.
A heist that goes completely wrong and leads them to some really heavy consequences.
A very large tornado picks up in the middle of the city leaving in its wake people stumbling about in a chaotic landscape unaware of where they are and how they got there.
A tour boat sets out into the ocean, and comes across an island that shouldn’t be where it is.
A sneeze to your main character reveals a deadly plot that needs to be dealt with. This may be local villains or something much, much larger.
A tech business owner attempts to synthesize a drug in his lab. His only friend flesh out the story and acts as an important NPC.
After retiring from a Hollywood setting, a former director looks into the possibility of bringing a new movie to life. However, something is haunting the film crew. Perhaps, a poltergeist.
A tax auditor discovers something unusual and horrifying, then everything breaks down as civilization falls apart.
A runner makes a delivery late at night. Before he/she can leave, however, an unforeseen event causes all sorts of chaos and destruction, resulting in the runner stranded.
While on vacation, your characters find far more excitement than they set out in search for.
A lone stranger walks into town during the dead of winter, claiming innocence. Convince the elder leaders of the encampment to spare this stranger from the impending doom awaiting them all.
You’ve had your character for some time. There’s a battle coming that he/she is going to be heavily involved in. Today, you have the task of writing the scene that reminded your character they were going to die.
The Government discovers a flaw in a new theocratic computer system. They instantly demand their subjects to create a new deity that can be placed in the system. Some of them actually succeed.
The protagonist is without one of their two hands. They make adjustments to their daily life, and eventually find a way to spring a trap set against them.
A child experiences something terrifying and traumatic. They don’t know what happened and probably shouldn’t. It’s up to you to fill in the blanks.
A person finds an injured animal on the street and takes it in. The character starts to hallucinate and discover the animal is not what it appears to be.
You wake up in the forest with no knowledge of how you got there. You set off into the unknown, meeting new friends and old enemies along the way.
A creature from an alternate reality involving magic is found stuck in a refrigerator in your main character’s home. Events that follow put their lives at risk.
A whole town goes underground. Years later, its citizens don’t really know why, or how, they left the town they knew before the tunnel.
A group of workers on a deep space ship emigrating to the only habitable planet. Things are going along just fine until…
A flotsam imprinter arrives in town with some kind of message but refuses to divulge it.
A group of teenagers stumble upon a village of people who’ve been alive since the 18th century.
A huge hurricane appears to come out of nowhere and wreaks havoc on an unsuspecting city. The story follows the people and their struggle to survive.
A strange new crime wave is targeting people’s homes. Manuals for putting every single kind of thing together are being taken. Your main character goes on a search to find out why these manuals are being stolen.
A twisted Halloween-themed story.
A remote island is being used as the location of a drug manufacturing facility without the knowledge of the island’s occupants.
A girl in your story falls deathly ill starting with minor pains and sickness. As time progresses it grows further and further, to a horrible extent, before there is a surprise.
Your band makes it big in LA and blows all of their money horrifically fast. The band members are forced to turn to something illegal for easy, quick cash. But they aren’t happy about what they’ve become.
Your female protagonist spontaneously starts to deal with a permanent case of menstrual bleeding.
An epidemic begins skewering the human race. Those who survive find that the only way to survive is to use science that runs counter to their conscious beliefs in religion.
The world is at war, but when it seems humanity is getting the upper hand, the other side unveils their said secret weapon. However, it isn’t what everyone thinks it’s going to be.
A man and woman interact. First recognizing a need in the other, they proceed to help fill that need in a relationship that quickly unravels.
The town undertaker is quickly running out of burial space. He decides to add in a new floor that he is working on after hours.
There is no explanation for this but the coroner can’t keep up with the strange new diseases he’s encountering, when asked about the incident he says, “I’ll settle my tab with the Devil.”
You spot an old ally from your past. After remembering your good times together, you realize s/he may not be so friendly after all.
A small civilization is devastated by a sudden strong drought, and their leader imposes a border of death.
Earth and the Moon are caught in the middle of a war fought because of a magic stone. A group of mages is gathering in a last attempt to destroy the stone to save Earth, but is the magic stone really the reason the war started and the destruction desired, or is it a ploy to distract the gathered mages?
A local puppet master tells a story about how his magical marionette came to life and torched the city block they lived on. As the arson investigation progresses, a strange doll is found to have been responsible.
You get a letter over the course of a week describing two entities. Both of these two entities do everything from bore you to scream in terror.
Your character wakes up in his hotel room with no clothes and no memories of the last 30 years.
Your character wakes up in a bed with no memory of who they are or where they came from. Gradually things start falling into place and they have to put the pieces together to survive in this new world that they suddenly remember.
A secret government experiment released parasites into society. The introductory stage goes unnoticed by most and only causes a few common cold-like symptoms for those involved. This is where your main character comes in, encountering the sickness and trying to get it under control before everyone has become a host for the parasite.
Five friends part ways after a failed robbery. Two stow aboard an oil tanker bound for Asia. The other three are trapped in a cold, very cold, desert that’s known to swallow people.
You are trapped inside an abandoned castle or ghost town. A storm blows in and you are quickly running out of supplies.
A secret Nazi project is discovered in the middle of the Italian mountains. It was abandoned shortly after its discovery for reasons unknown.
A group of people come across something that seems suspicious. They remain untrusting of each other until they find the cause of the mystery.
A catatonic, married couple are living out their lives in the house where they grew up, dreaming of far off locations and events of the past. They finally snap and decide enough is enough and lash out.
A young teenager is transported to Taleslan in dreams or hallucinations, where she is forced to use her own wits to complete a quest created for her.
Your character thinks they are just going along for a drive in the car, but end up crashing and having to discover where they are and what to do next.
An ancient world is on the brink of destruction. It has been forgotten after an ancient war that took place across the stars. Your main characters, through a series of coincidences, are drawn into the conflict.
On Earth Observation Day, the scientists discover a mysterious set of objects buried beneath the surface but they have no idea how to investigate them.
During one night, a series of time distortions occur at random times. What events are you going to tell a teenage protagonist, who will soon become the hero/heroine, happens in the small and bizarre town that has to face an onslaught of some sort?
Dinner party guests interact with a number of exaggerated personalities from various times.
Drop everything and give me your best self-driving cars pitch. If accepted, we see the day in an office cubicle to learn something new, but the day spins out of control.
A series of notebook entries show the reader the slow descent of a young man into economic hegemony.
A traveler from space has crash landed. The country they landed in has given the tentative name of “The Last Gasp” to the planet. And while it seems poisonous in some areas there are other sites where the atmosphere is rich and cleansed, full of life.
A child saved as a baby from a Chinese spy during the Korean War is raised in a loving home, but that child remembers the favorite toilet seat from their ‘homeland’.
One of the terrorists from 9/11 survives. He tells his story of what the others were doing in the different situations.
An international gathering is being held. The third world war is about to begin and tensions are high. Your main character is trying to maintain the peace.
The symphony is rehearsing in a small, low income neighborhood when an earthquake hits. They use what they have to answer the needs of the disaster zone, and thus becomes a family within the community.
A summer camp is cursed by a young man on his way to prison. Now the counselors must break the curse on summer’s end or all will perish.
A supernatural monster is hanging around a shopping mall after dark. Can the lowly motel clerk turn them into a heroic defender of the innocent with some ancient legends?
Your child is abducted from their school. It turns out to be an elaborate test for a position at a prestigious school. Now, to save the pomp and circumstance of this newest school, your child is going to have to die.
A politician dies shortly after being elected and being sworn into office. Only weeks later the person is found alive. What happened? Keep in mind that when dealing with fantasy or political stuff, you have to be careful of these things being dated in the future.
A government flying in complete secrecy rebuilds a city destroyed by a terrorist organization. The government plans to make the citizens cold and unfeeling to become great leaders one day. After the city is rebuilt they will launch into the sky revealing themselves.
A camera crew arrives with the intention of covering the town in the next big reality show. One by one, the primary cast grows conflicted, even turning upon each other.
Your main character wakes up in a cell that rises above the clouds looking down on the world. Over time, it becomes apparent that this person has to stay awake or the cell will sink, killing the person inside.
A young girl disappears from her slum apartment as a group of scientists dig up a cemetery for a top-secret project.
Someone notices that the local museum appears to have developed a romantic relationship with their new neighbor.
A group of kids find themselves trapped within the amusement park they visit on a regular basis.
You discover a map of a school that’s buried deep within an abandoned quarry. What does it lead to and why does it seem to distract half of your high school?
A young Abraham Lincoln, backpacking through the wilderness, listens to mystical voices and discovers a secret about time.
Suddenly, everyone gains the ability to speak a new language successfully, without script or mimicry.
How would you turn the addiction of alcohol to your advantage?
Backed with pure confidence, your main character challenges his/ her friends to a fight to the death because he/she just doesn’t listen.
A local city bar offers a quiz at the end of the day. Answers are found in cryptic clues that force your character out into a world they know nothing about. Unable to include the player in on the joke, his/her feet are forced to walk, no matter how odd the direction.
A dog walker for vampires across the city finds out a large metropolitan vampire is keeping farm animals and slaving humans in the basements of buildings. He/She has to get out before they get caught.
You are trapped somewhere with a person who is a detested being. Suddenly you two are left alone post a strange accident leaving you unwilling companions for survival.
A group of friends wake up in the middle of the night only to discover their town has fallen victim to a celestial event, leaving the area completely deserted.
An elderly woman discovers she has a knack for grave robbing. As she finds herself getting into the swing of things, she finds that her age is all an illusion.
Investigate the empty home across the street. It looks to be terribly abused and the clues lead you to believe it was once a safe haven.
A delivery person in the near future delivers a package to an apartment only to be ambushed by detectives that then leave him drugged. When he awakens, he finds himself in a fight to regain control of his life.
You wake up one day to find an infinite copy of yourself has popped into your head, and another infinite copy is now walking around. They are unique from each other like a clone would be. They grow as you do. They talk like you would. Confusion sets in faster than anything else. And with all of it, there is one thing they all seem to forget.
An unknown terrorist has planted a virus that will go off if anyone under 18 exits their own front door. With only a few hours left and the country declaring martial law, the main character must race against the clock in order to buy his/her loved ones extra precious time.
You wake up with a female companion your friends wouldn’t be super happy if they found out about. As the story progresses, you learn more about this strange land you are in.
It seems to be a normal day, however cracks in the earth keep getting worse, ending with the earth splitting in two.
The library is a source of literary guidance and power. Living in the shadow of the library prepares those who enter. A culture above seeks power received from the library, resulting in conflict between the two entities.
A portal between dimensions suddenly becomes visible, allowing discordant creatures from a strange world to make their way through and attack the main character.
Two teens that have never met meet in a park. The two do not realize the significance of their meeting as it turns out they unknowingly have a lot in common.
An action movie set in the depths of space – or in an alternate universe where earth exists underwater.
A closet is discovered inside a remote location that leads to an awesome world or perhaps a dark and brooding nightmare.
A journalist finds his customary work shifted to become the chronicling of a disaster or an incident.
A newlywed wife goes using caverns to complete her science thesis on her honeymoon when her husband doesn’t have enough knowledge in the scientific field to understand her background story.
A reporter gets entangled with an organized crime organization who attempts to take him/her for a ride by forcing him/her to distribute their product.
It’s only been a week since the mayhem started. Your main character is one of the only humans in an abandoned city. They are holed up in the highest building left. A pack of zombies have found their hiding place and they might be the only way out.
A character finds a box containing evidence about a case, but when they try to think who should know about the case, they can’t recall anything.
Clean little Nancy shocked the whole town with her wild ways, turning her hair red and getting drunk at a party. Now, she wants to show everyone how good she is.
A business owner has a disastrous fire and one of his/her workers is supposedly the arsonist.
A hypnotist performs his act as a typical stage illusion over and over again. Only when everything seems as normal as it can be, the sickest member of the audience unexpectedly dies from the hypnosis.
A video of a child being tortured is posted on the internet. There are no clues as to who may be involved. This may lead someone into the seedier parts of town as he/she tries to discover who’s responsible.
The main character finds an ancient amulet that grants them all sorts of new powers. In trying to decide what to do with the power, they research its origin. The discovery leads to a journey to save the world.
A bank robber can’t go through with his/her heist. The manager offers them a proposition–steal the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom, or walk away without any money.
A ship leaves without its captain, the man who claimed to own the ship. The owners want answers and due to some pesky pirates, they are left with little choice.
During the Civil War, important meetings between generals took place right under enemy lines. A woman finds herself unwittingly involved in one of these clandestine operations.
President Bill Clinton is adrift at sea in one of the presidential boats. The world calls him a scoundrel and a serial womanizer, but the leading lady that he has trapped in the vessel with him hopes to save him from himself.
Your main character disappears when a fantastical ride pierces into the Earth and abducts people off the street.
The future puts a bounty on crime aborted before it happens. To achieve this, you find out a criminal takes extreme measures to avoid becoming “The Future’s Silver Lining” by going back in time before they can be caught.
A town is deserted except for a diner that has something incredibly secret in the subterranean levels.
A child is taken from their home minus their memory and dropped into a strange new world as a pawn in an old game.
A two year old child goes missing at the roller rink of a chain family restaurant.
A sister always looked after her big brother and suddenly he disappeared. She digs into his past with a fine tooth comb to find him but he’s been dead for years.
What would happen if countries around the world started panicking and declaring war?
Sleeping sickness is spreading across the world. The cause is a total mystery. But it does appear that it has something to do with sleeping.
A demon grants a party of adventurers wishes. But if they bite off more than they can chew, what do they think will suddenly occur, and how will they deal with it?
A city is locked down by their ruler under the guise of safety and protection. Unable to evacuate, they must take a stand and discover the real reason they are held captive.
Three survivors are searching an empty city for resources left behind. They are shocked to find that the city seemed to have been evacuated in a hurry, but there is still one straggler left behind.
A woman awakens in a strange place with no introductory events to get her bearings.
Four friends on a fishing trip find a church that belongs to no one. The church contains a statue of a being frozen with a look of horror on their face. They encounter many obstacles leading them closer and closer to the statue.
A journalist goes into the woods to the site of strange lights and an even stranger force.
Demon possession is rampant, and everyone is trying to save themselves. Only you have the talent to spot who will turn next.
A family goes to the old family home to contact the dead mother, only to find themselves in limbo’s game and competing for their lives against the other people floating in limbo.
A strange child is plunged into a strange world. Fleeing from a future they know cannot exist, they seek refuge from impossible enemies.
A prisoner on death row has a special gift which could save mankind. If they only had the chemical 16-Piperazino-Pipe Amide using a number code derived from the leaves on the maple tree just beyond the prison fence.
A couple breaks into the library and attempts to rob it. However, they feel bad for the people inside and change their minds. Jay Peterson is a writer and designer of role-playing games. He tries to cover the current and forthcoming happenings in the video game industry and media as well as tabletop gaming. He is also an avid reader of all things pop-culture. See author’s posts
A cemetery from the last days of the black plague wakes up after hundreds of years of silence.
A popular comic book artist receives notice that a film studio is creating the next big superhero movie based on a character the artist inks originally thought as a joke they were developing.
A man can walk through shadows. Each step he takes allows him to shift to another “shadow” and shift again at will. His first test of this new found power sends him into a strange land he does not understand.
A door between worlds is found after an excavation.
A man makes it his goal to get as high up in a well-known company as possible in one day. With every promotion, he rises higher and higher up the corporate ladder, reaching his goals and at an astounding speed. He finally reaches the top but his work is cut out for him…
A stranger comes to town and changes the lives of everyone by convincing them to rewrite all of their prayers.
The main character finds that they are telekinetic. As they learn to master their new skill an old enemy comes back.
An electrical storm hits your town and something sinister comes out.
An advertising executive comes home to find someone trying to steal their identity and then things get weirder.
A maintenance man is called to the worst hotel room you can think of. The climax of the piece comes as he inspects the bathroom.
Your character wakes from cryo-sleep and has to try to adapt to a completely different world.
Someone who has been kept track of by a man and his family. The family doesn’t agree with the way the person treats the object of their attention. The story could be from either views building up to a confrontation between the two.
An urban exploration club finds the ruins of a real haunted house.
The character wakes with amnesia. When the pieces start falling together, so do clues about the death of someone close to the main character.
An extreme television reporter experiences a story that changes his/her life.
A biker gang preying on unaware hitchhikers turns out to be something far more terrible than your imagination allows.
A town goes into a panic when everyone slowly becomes aware of a new voice in their heads.
Your main character fights off a burglar/burglars. The only problem is that they’re not in their own home. They’re in a haunted house.
A young girl is out walking a trail when she comes across a tree filled with bags of gold and a mausoleum filled with strange items.
An entire town is under the influence of a mysterious fog that allows its victims to see glimpses of their own future.
A husband disappears for a few days. He suddenly returns, but brings a great deal of the wilderness back with him.
A young couple believe that they’re going to move away to a new town until they stumble upon something that could help a small group wish for something amazing.
An entity from whatever made the universe/reality forces people to look in the mirror and see their own evil reflection.
You find the chest in the attic. The chest that you were always told not to touch. The reward is great, but is the risk?
A vending machine comes to life and destroys a small town.
You fly off to a new time period and land somewhere off the coast of a major city. On the shore, are bones of long extinct dinosaurs. How do you survive in this new world?
A set of funeral rites is interrupted by a sudden and mysterious return of the recently deceased.
A woman is racing across the country to volunteer at her sister’s side only to find that she has been kidnapped and the kidnapper demands something in exchange that she never expected.
A kid enters a wrestling tournament in hopes of getting family fame, but he didn’t want to win, only to lose with grace and get back at the man who beat him only days before.
A small town is having its centennial celebration and a freak thunderstorm happens to disrupt the events leading to some strange sights and sounds.
The police force has its hands full keeping order in the streets. You are selected to help based on your intellect and a recent accident has left you with a robotic arm that needs calibration.
A giant, robotic manticore is terrorizing a city. A corp is there to stop it. It has to be more than that, otherwise what’s the point of a wild ride?
All over the world there are puppets waiting for the collection of a rare rod. What happens when they finally get it?
A woman with the ability to bend space gets picked up for a trip across the universe.
An otherwise normal person is forced to kill and is overcome by guilt. Over time, they awake each night with a ravenous hunger and use this to cause others to feel true terror.
A series of earthquakes destroy large parts of the city. Three friends find themselves on top of a building about to come down. What do they do next?
A small-town in Minnesota collapses into a sinkhole which ends up triggering volcanic events around the world.
A bank heist gone terribly wrong brings in an unlikely ally, who just might tip the balance enough to get the main characters out alive.
The exact moment history has been wrong is pinpointed to a few minutes back when it should have happened.
A rich family invites you to their mansion for the weekend and ends up taking you hostage.
Several earthquakes occur across the globe, cleaving continents and creating new land bridges while destroying oceans and mountains in the process. If you were to choose your favorite one, what book, TV show, comic, video game, or short story is your favorite?
An innocent mistake turns into a full-on problem of epic proportions.
The main character awakens out of cryo-sleep to a comet crashing into Earth.
A story about a man who wrote a letter as a farewell to his long time love. He then walked to the middle of the lake next to his house and threw the letter into the water but not before reading it first.
A tourist challenges a native tribe to a competitive game that only this godforsaken land could have felt like a good idea for.
The characters have been transported back into a time before electricity and are thrust into a story from a period like the “Three Musketeers.”
The opening scene is at a funeral, but things take a wild twist when the dead suddenly start walking around.
A new age is dawning. An old, evil enemy is resurfacing and must be stopped before all is lost.
It is that time of year again. The night when all the goblins and mechanical imps crawl out from the sewers.
The team is not the only one who went on the mission. Scrambling to find out who the additional players are and what rules apply to them.
A murder suspect changes their appearance every day and leaves little cliff hangers about their next disguise.
In an empty conference room, the main character witnesses someone slipping into a dead body next to him and screams.
Your character is abducted by an unidentified mothership and is forced to cryogenically sleep until rescued.
Literally, the antagonist comes out of the book and straight onto your main character.
A garment factory leaks blood into the rivers making the fish unable to breathe. As a seafood wholesaler, your main character gets involved, even though he has other problems to handle.
A woman loses her job on the next day she finds out she is pregnant. The man she is dating is killed in an explosion. These two events set her out on a scavenger hunt through a ruined community.
You get a reservation to a restaurant where the cooks only prepare food on ovens, fires, and pans that have no electricity.
You’re getting dressed one morning at the beginning of a “new” year, when you suddenly realize you’re not alone in your apartment.
The local college hires your main character to investigate leads about a lost treasure that has not been found in this part of the country.
Working late into the night at a company you all work at, you remember striking up a conversation with a coworker. You catch up with that coworker on a low lying island in the center of a vast ocean.
While hiking, your main character finds a door that appears to have no end. Or at the bottom of a lake, they find the skeletal remains of a ship and a few personal effects, but no one knows how they got there.
A strange mirror turns a man into a savage. He searches for the group that turned him back into a “monster”.
A rift in the fabric of reality causes books to be haunted by their own stories and bending to their will to write what they felt wasn’t right.
A man is informed he has less than a decade to live. During his life’s end, people from his past are declared as enemies or friends.
The last member of a species awakens and must make the others extinct again for their protection. If he/she does not, they all will meet a violent end anyway.
Traditional entertaining has been outlawed in a city, leaving children without any form of programming after school. They go in search of the real thing.
The future of a person’s memories travel back in time in order to stop a tragedy that their family experienced.
A single dad is fighting to keep custody of his kids. While the antagonist is playing dirty by doing things that can’t be proven.
A group of strangers find themselves trapped in a bar together during an event that leaves the Earth level of technology in the time of horse and carriage.
Fighter pilots are sent into enemy airspace and are struck blind. They rely on their flight partners to help them land safely.
The lonely hunter finds their spirit animal and they live as one for days. The ultimate lesson about humanity arrives when the spirit animal turns back into its human self and begs the hunter to kill him/her. Madness dies by the hands of insanity.
The main character goes into the woods seeking shelter from an impending storm and happens upon a small cabin whose occupant is very reluctant to welcome them inside.
There is a group of werewolves terrorizing the town, but one of them has fallen for your character. He/she begrudgingly tries to help the poor guy out without arousing suspicion.
Everyone is frozen in time, but unlike in stories of frozen time, the reader can see and interact with everyone.
A terrible fight has broken out at a prestigious scientific research facility. Hundreds are dead, the facility lies in ruins and a strange tower is growing in its center.
The main character signs up for the journey in search of new land for their people, only to return earlier than planned, diseased.
You are the architect of a miracle material. It’s the most incredible creation for remedying the environment. However, it will turn your main character into a target.
Your character is lured into a seemingly innocuous challenge. A journey that turns personal, and the quest to absolve insanity.
A dark and stormy night. Your main character walks into a home and is greeted by an unexpected guest, holding a knife.
Before leaving his home, a man finds a mysterious amulet in his house. It allows him to see strange things he could never imagine.
The future is revealed before you, the quick and the dead. Stand among the stones and summon the heroes who died to save their world.
A thousand years ago, a little blue bonnet fought for her family and their farming skills. She sustained enormous amounts of punishment, injury, and sacrifice, simply for speaking her mind and trying to do what she thought was just.
A group of salesmen find a map to an interesting location in their company’s territory.
A boy idolizes a movie bad guy that terrorizes large cities, but he unwittingly adopts those values and creates his own chaos.
An ex-con who’s lost his daughter, must acquire a certain item in order to realize who he has become.
A man with a gene mutation that prevents him from dying of old age is haunted by a past he cannot change.
On an old Civil War battlefield, one soldier stays behind after all others have left. The only way he/she will move is if his/her great-great-great-grandson mends the rift that happened all those years ago.
A songwriter laments the loss and years spent attempting to master an instrument. The whole time, he/she thinks that it could have been him/her being the rockstar.
A plane crash leads to a few survivors arriving in a strange new world.
Your character is asked to rob a charity for a second time. Afterwards, especially after the first time, they have a difficult time making it a third.
Both sides are tired of the war, so how about setting up games instead of conflict?
A blind artist takes in a stray cat and finds himself painting masterpieces he never thought possible.
During a cavalry charge, you find your characters in between the forces of two countries at war. To the right of them is the Union flag, and not far away on the left is the Confederate flag.
Two characters meet and quickly form a love affair. One is a time traveler from the future and the other a time traveler from the past. A chance encounter sends them on a cross-time chase.
An astronaut from earth lands on a planet, only to find out that’s not where he’s from, not even his world.
Somehow, you and a stranger end up on a small raft in the middle of the ocean. What happens?
While hiking across the country, your main character falls hopelessly into a hole in the ground. Hours later, someone seemingly comes to save them, but what they have in store is far more sinister.
Mind-control criminal organization uses a high-tech, yet disease infested suit to infect people in epidemic proportions.
You have abducted a subject and are taking them to your home, when your vehicle breaks down. You have two choices. Leave them behind to die, or try to rescue them from whatever horrors await them.
A natural disaster strikes and the protagonists are helpless to stop it. Plot the path of the disaster according to the laws of probability, topography and belief.
The paranormal comes out to play when hungry ghouls in a small town want brains and are thrilled to find that there are four people who have just been brain-dead all week.
A safe and secure country is overthrown by its people who have a longing for the previous era.
A child from another dimension spies on some children and gets caught in a battle not of its own.
An old couple is trapped on a ski lift high above some tiger sharks. They soon find the ski lift’s emergency manual…
A strange statue washed ashore and a group of university students accidentally let something out of the box.
Unbeknownst to your main character, a hidden meaning is laced in with someone else’s quip. Think TruYes.
You lost a bet to your family, so you are sent to an island to help with a town called Harbor Beach. Magic seems to have been let loose on the island, causing different events for your arrival and throughout.
Two rival groups stake their claim over a small parcel of land. They are accustomed to hostile negotiations, but in facing one another a growing hunger is revealed.
A construction worker uncovers a dark secret as he is out to lunch with another worker.
Five characters journey through a mysterious cave that ends up becoming foreboding. At the end is a door that only one person knows the key to. This determines who survives and who doesn’t.
Victorian era characters keep getting shot by those darn damsels in distress.
An experiment causes an entire area to turn into a circular space where people neither age nor die. They are kept within the space and told that it is because the costs of keeping them alive run high.
A new global startup company releases their final, greatest and deadliest product and then goes viral.
The main characters are guests on Star Trek-like spaceships and constantly running material items.
A boarding school is transformed into a monster infested war zone.
A smug married couple feels like they’re the luckiest on Earth until they wake up in the apocalypse’s “safe zone”.
Your main character is framed for a murder Connor/Jayden/Chris committed. You keep things close to the edge of reality with credibility of characters and responsibility of actions. The truth comes out in the court-room drama to end the case.
An expedition group sees a mountain that is completely free of snow on the top, a mystery considering the mountain’s location. The expedition team takes the journey to find out how that got there.
A rise in water level isolates a group of survivors on a highway bridge. The family quickly realizes that they are not the only group to escape the flood waters and soon become another group’s prey.
Global terrorism is at an all time high. The one thing they did not foresee was a well stocked library being the ideal place to hide.
A scientist discovers a way to communicate to the dead, but when she dies it’s up to her daughter to solve the message and bring her back.
A man loses everything in a gambling match and suddenly finds a mysterious stranger wagering his future.
Hundreds of people go missing every year in an undisclosed location. You find out its location and why those people are vanishing from existence.
A character walks into a bar, a stranger approaches and offers many wars to solve for any one.
You are on a park bench. A puddle leans in to talk to you. It’s the puddle’s 100th birthday and he wants you to join in on his extensive preparations for it.
Two mega corporations go to war for control of all the East coast. As they send people to battle, they discover that one of the employees is actually a plant for the other company.
A man realizes he’s starting to age backwards. Every day he reads a child’s book.
Your group has always investigated claims of haunted houses. However, now they have to venture into the house themselves. Imagine whatever they must face to discover what compels this ghost. Turn this story on its head and take it in some exciting directions.
The secret department of the Catholic Church, “The Chamber,” called in by the Pope to locate and investigate strange reports coming from the center of Africa, right when they should be relaxing from their just completed investigation in South America. “The Chamber” gets involved to confirm if the report is true and if it is the end of the world like the Bishop claimed it was.
In the middle of a high speed car chase, your character loses control of his/her vehicle and slams into a tree. The aftermath leaves them questioning why this happened.
A trip into the woods goes wrong because something lurking in the deeper parts of the woods is hungry.
A strange raven-like bird suddenly appears in the lives of a group of people. It mutates and warps its environment in kind.
A travel writer is hiking through a forest when they encounter a lost truck driver. He is bleeding from a wound in his side and crawling toward a crashed, hidden vehicle. Something killed him, but what?
Your character gets mailed a box with a gift inside, but it’s booby-trapped. Inside the box, the more they pick and prod, the more it tries to kill them.
A gun salesman sells an old revolver to an unusual customer. The next day, strange things happen at the gun shop.
You build a shack. Inside is another shack. Then, inside that shack is another shack. And inside of that shack is another larger shack, that is ultimately simply a fishing hut on a lake.
A top secret bureaucratic office has a terrorist among them and must take a witch hunt-esque approach to catch them of their own demise.
An EMT tries to minister to a driver trapped along the side of the road. They find out the reason why directly.
A tornado whips up in the middle of Times Square. There will be predictable hysteria or there will be an unusual response to the winds.
A dominant religion starts shrinking because of smartphones.
Your main character needs a cochlear implant, however they only work for natives of the galaxy and not even on Earth anymore.
A man searches for a place that is said to grant the deepest desires- but at great cost to both the person who searched, and those they meet along the way.
Morphed dinosaurs! Who wouldn’t want to see the rare collection. Everyone comes to view and study the dinosaurs but only the curator knows that the arrangement is more than it seems.
A man is in a hospice. He isn’t expected to live much longer, and in his fever-induced dream the only thing keeping him alive is the hope his story will be completed.
This multiple-part adventure can go a few different ways.
The surface world has been hit by an asteroid, causing a series of societal collapses and warring factions to battle over the crumbling remains while, somehow, Beneath the surface it is business as usual.
You are chosen to go on the greatest adventure of all…love. Your only problem is that your partner has a secret that could easily ruin everyone’s lives.
A spooky manor sits on the route of a young boy who decides to sneak into it. Due to coincidence, or fate, he witnesses a dark secret.
A man comes across a tidal wall and uses his bare hands to remove it.
A group from a rival guild tries to kidnap your main character, but they are also a day late and a dollar short.
A magician is ready for his show on a cruise ship. However, things quickly go downhill when the magician discovers his collection of tricks are missing.
Everyone has a nightmare, everyone eventually wakes up and goes on with their day. What if one person didn’t wake up?
Another planet is filled with intelligent cacti, pterodactyls and dinosaurs. Oh, and there are no weapons allowed.
Several strange individuals have come in contact with your main character. Those individuals don’t just carry an aura of mystery, but also an aura of power.
During the silver rush in a mining town, a pair of brothers discover a large deposit of silver nearby. Mining equipment sets up and speculators come in like a mini gold rush. But, the events that transpire are not what any of them expected. It has something to do with brother’s latest find, a circular metal hatch that leads underground into a dark tunnel that no one wants to go down.
A child witnesses the end of the world when some strange, incurable disease spreads across the planet in a matter of days.
People are dying from mysterious fungus that builds on their flesh. What is the source?
Three police officers in an unnamed state witness the execution of a maximum security prisoner by the guy they just stopped to have an ice cream with who was so nice to them they let him go without a ticket.
Spider-Man bugs his head on a web shooter and is faced with becoming a villain or dying.
The dead have risen to life and seem to have taken over the country. A housewife must hunker down and seek out a solution to this unprecedented event.
An elderly couple’s lives as infants is revealed as their dirty house is torn apart by an extreme roller-coaster of the future.
Even though your hero courts the business life, suddenly the world takes an economic turn and they are out of work.
A murderer’s victim writes a letter as they sweat out their final minutes.
He wasn’t always a crime lord. Jeremiah has to climb the ranks from bottom-feeder to the top of the food chain. It might be tough but it will all be worth it when he reaches his ultimate goal…money.
Diseases brought on by climate change bloom, causing bat-like creatures to issue a diet to the United Nations.
A secret society from the dawn of civilization spends all their time trying to slow the destruction of the earth.
Descend deep underwater into the ocean where humans inhabits large mobile structures and urbanizes.
One person wakes up from their bed, looks at the documents on TV and realizes the new seating chart serves them hard.
A fake news website in the near future points in your character’s hometown about the impending invasion from the “Old Ones”. This starts him/her on a path to uncover the truth.
A flashback to the early 1920’s when motorized vehicles were banned. One small coastal town remained and the people are trying to convince a fair number of people to go without.
An old childhood friend/rival suddenly materializes, out of which your character decides that his life isn’t quite over just yet.
Working at a home for the elderly, your character freaks out the residents with bizarre tales and cliches from the 80’s. This is their story.
An unlikely group of survivors find themselves trapped in an office space together. How can they make it out alive?
An ordinary day at work is interrupted by the sudden arrival of the CEO. They seem disoriented and are visibly shaken.
A man gets on a crowded bus and changes the fate of the city.
The grand opening of a newly redone park has a few surprises in store for the main character and group. What will they discover on this next journey?
A person goes down into a basement and has a vision/experiences a shamanic trance.
A monster, awakened due to a string of unfortunate events, finally breaks the chains binding him/her and goes on a rampage.
A woman stuck in a monotonous job has a chance encounter with a beautiful man and a shimmering woman, giving her a chance to see what life can be like.
A tour boat filled with tourists strives to stay afloat when the river turns into a white water rapids.
Two homeless men come across an abandoned farm, and take it on themselves to tend the grounds. They’re visited by a ghost that grants some new powers, but there’s a catch. The ghost is not entirely honest with him about the condition of his body.
When your character goes to the dentist, they discover that they are a clone and the dentist is the original.
A bath is left in your main character’s house after the plumber visits. The bathtub causes some weird occurrences around the house, and things only get weirder when they decide to weld it shut.
A homicide detective investigates a case and realizes there’s more to the victim than he/she originally thought.
Everything in your main character’s world goes dark until he or she uses their knowledge and wits to uncover the root cause.
The main character is drawn into one last poker game to try to make enough money to keep them and their family safe. The only problem is they’re pretty sure something else is playing too.
A man is suddenly disturbed by the sounds of another man talking late at night from another room. After investigating, he discovers the other room is no longer there.
Your main character is the daughter/son of a famous explorer. They set out on a journey to make their fortune and find clues as to what really happened to their parents.
Your main character suffers because of a bad omen, but takes it as a sign of good fortune. A secret society makes him/her feel at ease at first, until that mysterious omen catches up to them.
A present day person gets transported to a futuristic setting and has to try and make their way through despite the scientific advancement.
A character is forced under threat to relive a terrible moment in their life. What is it?
A rude salesperson upsets you at a boutique and you accidentally kill him with an andiron. You sweep it under the rug but the store is seized by a government agency.
A magical book falls in the hands of a prominent citizen. Their entire perspective of the world takes a change and the effect of their magical spell grows in terms of time and area. Unfortunately, not everyone is thrilled by the changes. A person pursued is miraculously found alive…as a completely different person, 30 years in the future.
Time travel is possible in a small cave, located inside of a well, which is located in the backyard of a home that will be destroyed 10 years from when you are currently reading this, because a home developer will build on top of it.
A young man feels out of place within his dead end relationships and tough family life, until he stumbles upon a portal leading to an alternate dimension.
A businessman famous for his betrayal of others travels through a storm. A stranger gives him a shovel to dig himself out. The stranger flees.
A clown tries to arrest a woman for murdering her husband. Security tries to stop him from doing so. Everything is caught on tape and starts going viral on the internet.
A bankruptcy notice going out to the wrong guy sends him through a door he was sure was a closet.
The world leaders agree to push some memories into the minds of the citizens explaining their lives as happy.
You’re the only one in your group who can speak Japanese. Due to a long layover, you get stuck at an airport with a mysterious girl who won’t speak English.
Your main character is kidnapped and/or blamed for some fantastical problem in another country. Foreign agents try to get your character to take care of that problem first.
Your character is tasked with delivering to a buyer the last existing book in the world. Unknown to them is a sole copy of the Necronomicon.
A storm washed two friends onto an island, an island with a town, and a town that’s preparing something sinister for the annual Harvest Festival.
Holiday you are not too fond of? Here is your chance to rewrite history.
It’s Thanksgiving, but this year one person doesn’t want to be there.
A teenager who has recently started to show signs of satanic preferences is having trouble hiding his true side.
A player builds a character based on their favorite book character, and during the game something incredibly similar, yet terribly different, happens.
A child is adopted and learns of a mysterious family legend. This brings him to an ancient place to make a request that leaves him and his parents on an incredible journey.
A land far away gets a delivery of TV’s from the USA. The people that watch the TV’s become addicted to the programming. However, in time those who watch the TVs transform into something more….
A family’s hotel breaks away from the mainland and becomes the playground of pirates, plunderers, and other seafaring scourges.
A renegade colony of scientists on the moon are conducting illegal experiments in order to save the world. Every step of the way though, they are under attack by both the government and a rival corporation.
A town is terrorized by a mythical creature who asks each victim “Riddle me this, riddle me that!” before killing them.
On a midnight bus, your main character catches a glimpse of their elderly neighbor. The neighbor watches them, yet is unable to talk to them.
Dying characters find themselves on a long, confusing road with their lives flashing before their eyes. At the end, they realize their lives were not what they have thought them to be.
A strange twist of fate leads a child to seek an animal companion that lives only in legends.
A man has to earn respect within an organized crime family and finds new meaning in his profession while doing so.
A painting in a local museum comes to life. The characters stumble upon a portal that transports the viewer to the painting.
It was just a normal night at the bar until Bill showed up talking about vampires. The bartender tells other patrons to stay calm, as they are harmless, but they are out for blood and things go crazy quick.
A man falls dead after abusing a magical ring. All of the rings are revealed to contain a dark magic that corrupts its wearer. It is up to society’s exiles to find a cure.
A deep-sea fishing trawler has some dark secret, whether it be murder, mutiny, or some horrific event.
An aristocrat or celebrity lives a double life as a thief or member of a gang.
The devil himself falls in love with a mortal girl. This girl doesn’t know who she’s with but he gives her power. A town full of ghouls examines the moving corpse with disgust, not having enough brains to realize that the little girl they’re all worshipping is within her.
A group of gang members, working for a mysterious new boss, plan to make a lot of money by robbing an armored car.
You walk into a dark cave and bleed from the head. The walls of this cave are imprinted with the bodies of some of the greatest living writers. You meet them and try to work out how you ended up here.
A man travels from town to town, telling his story to strangers with the kind ear. Though, in the end, is the story true or just a tall tale?
You are the first person to awaken in some version of heaven. Upon opening your eyes, you find gates, guard houses and each one leads to a different version of Heaven, where WASPs go to Church, the Kids of Archie Bunker party with no live-in servants, and Elvis and his main squeeze are holding court in Graceland.
A building catches fire in your city, but the flames do not burn the building. Instead, they manifest a doppelganger of the building that appears to be the same, but has different intentions.
A single family struggles to live in a cold and currently empty world with scorched earth and fossilized corpses in strange locations.
A man takes a stand against his boss, tries to make amends…then finds out they aren’t from Earth. The only way out is through whatever strange abilities that have been awoken within them.
A dog walks through town with a piece of paper, his/her collar broken and bruises scattered on his back.
Two friends form a team in a world spirited competition and realize they’ve gotten into something they can’t handle.
The sun hasn’t risen in a week and strange beings start popping up claiming they know why it hasn’t risen. Pagan cults and doomsday preppers turn into the main source of crime as the government deals with the strange beings’ requests.
The end of the world comes with silence to those who were not listening.
Two cohorts on a covert mission discover the way home has been altered, leaving them both trapped with conflicting motives.
A detective investigates a murder and the methods of each suspect don’t make sense. They finally get the evidence they need, but it looks too impossible.
A blogger goes to blog about a small farmer’s market in Austin, Texas, that becomes a huge success and later stirs up a conspiracy.
At the old location of your empire’s capital, there’s a deserted building. When they enter, your main character finds the entrance to another world. A foreign being tags along for the journey.
A single survivor in a war ridden land suddenly encounters a lost sect of humanity who should have been gone long ago.
A dog is the only survivor of a boat collision that pulled between two parallel wakes resulting in a raise in the ocean floor. When humans show up, his/her life changes forever.
A human impulse is pushed to the point where the entire species is pushed on the brink of extinction. This sets into motion all of the elements of society to remediate.
Lacey needs to present her thesis on a new artifact she discovered. When Lacey lands in New Yawk the item gets stolen only to be recovered by a pack of coyotes that run while laughing hysterically.
Townsfolk disappear in the night and nobody knows why. You play an amateur sleuth trying to determine where the bodies are buried.
A family or group of friends go on vacation and end up in a time warp.
A scientist submits to a fortune telling machine. The simulation triggers a strange event causing her to overcome her fears.
An Internet connection and some street smarts aren’t enough to confront the nightmare induced reality of poverty and crime.
A college student goes back a decade after graduation for his/her lost possessions and changes course.
Tornadoes sweep across several rivers in a circular formation. A couple leaves their home to investigate and is shocked to find out it’s a living creature harvesting the water in its wake.
Do you have any ideas for combining elements of the past with the future? Feel free to leave your own ideas below!
A strange religious cult has declared war on your character for one reason or another. Throw in a few of the craziest parents you can imagine, and you get an intriguing action-packed tale.
There is a super computer in a research facility. It wakes up and begins focusing its attention on the humans around it and learns that it may be no more than a pet.
A journalist gets an interview with a man with many zany views on his religion. Unbeknownst to the narrator, this very man is the leader of the cult he is trying to expose.
No electricity and your character is trying to figure out some way to get it back online.
A character finds out they’re pregnant. Because it’s a fantasy world they must find a way for the police or the courts not to find out.
A man’s wife just died and he will stop at nothing for one last look at her body in the coffin.
An exterminator sprayed a bug bomb in a house but the pest was stronger than he realized, and he may not be able to get out when the dust settles.
Person meets person and the two clash only to realize they have a common connection.
A coach of a sports team discovers the magic and mysticism of their field and tries to bring his/her team into it. The team accepts the team spirit, however, when the coach realizes what he has done, his fear of the consequences leads him to kill himself.
A young girl discovers that her owners have been hiding something from her and that she just doesn’t belong. You don’t know what that thing is until the very end of the story.
After bemoaning her lack of accomplishments, a woman is granted three literal wishes from a genie. It turns out these wishes end up being more difficult to fulfill than she could ever imagine.
A hiker comes across a freeway where no road is to be found. On the other side there is a city full of people living in ruins of ancient structures. He must find a way to return home, but must face the fact that perhaps he is better off in ‘Our City’.
An adventurer finds a village with no way to leave. Its residents have stopped replacing building materials. Why?
Imagine a world where Boomers brought “trailers” from their birth. What might this lead to?
Two persons from completely different cultures meet and build a relationship based on mutual sympathy.
An intruder breaks into your house. This is a battle of wits that quickly escalates into something otherworldly.
Dormant volcanoes suddenly erupt across the globe. Your main character witnesses the eruption of Mount Olympus and its subsequent destruction of the surrounding area.
Parents find a travel website to take their children all around the world, but something goes wrong. Now, they’re mixing into a multinational plot and have plans to bring it down.
An elite squad of soldiers makes it their life mission to terminate futile projects. As things begin to get fishy, they discover something sinister is going on.
A mad scientist has set up shop in a country house and needs supplies, which you have to sneak past, with the help of computers.
While touring a nuclear plant during her eighth month of pregnancy, one woman finds out that the infant she and her wife were going to adopt has been abducted by the facility’s corporate security and kept in a nursing home across the street.
A woman finds an injured man in the woods. She attempts to help him by stopping the bleeding and making a sling to carry him. Eventually, she comes to realize he’s not actually wounded, but with the way he’s studying her she becomes scared and runs away.
Throw your characters into a room with only relics and a strange locked door. What do they find inside?
A teen accepts a scholarship to a private high school. This school is a high-budget facility that houses the most desired and prominent teens in America.
The relationship between a college student and their new professor is the anchor of most of the story, but the ending shows a clear shift of scene, and the characters involved look completely different.
While underground, a team of space explorers find more than they expected including an untimely death.
A sanitation plant employee discovers an ancient book which causes him/her to see the future and the future does not look good for the world.
The ability to fly is universally obtained. What would people do with this amazing ability, and would it cause more trouble or less?
A kind-hearted vet in a large city takes in a cat without an owner. After saving the cat from injury, it returns the favor.
The internet somehow collapses and monitors, news anchors, and consumer groups are no longer able to provide simple pop-ups. Majority races have no idea what the minorities are saying and vice versa. The majority races do not know how to handle it and this puts the minorities in a power position.
TV and radio signals suddenly go dark. Then, lights and electricity start to flicker out. Businesses and people begin to panic, while others seem to know something those who don’t have the information don’t.
Vampires infiltrate celebrity culture.
The main character finds themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time and is forced to take part in a deadly martial arts tournament. Gladiators are forced to fight each other, and only one can win at the whim of the writers of the tournament.
A dead friend suddenly appears to the main character on the lawn with mysterious information they desperately want the main character to know.
That dog is not actually your friend. Trust me. A werewolf or terrifying monster is walking the city streets and one character isn’t taking it as a problem that should be reported but instead, a way to become famous.
You wake up to find yourself chained to a bed, with just a tiny sliver of light shining in, but a shadow blocking most of it. You struggle against the chains and notice no sound is coming from outside the room as you scream.
What is the worst scenario you can possibly think of? Live it and then get back to me.
A man, hiding in the shadows of an alley, is about to steal a woman’s purse. The man changes his mind and tries to stop the thief.
Talk about a division between people. The initial difference breeds more and more differences until your main character can’t find any similarities with anyone he once knew. There is a strong sense of paranoia to this prompt.
The late night news comes on, showing footage from an active crime scene. Street lights flash wildly and people appear to have been burned alive. Police want everyone to stay indoors and away from all windows. Strangely, grainy footage that appears to be ten times the size moves so quickly, it is hard to tell time and distance. Families barricade their homes when windows suddenly explode. Fire rolls from one house to another.
An ancient demon’s soul is ripped into 50 pieces and is surfacing within children all over the world. The priest who did this nasty piece of business is lurking in the shadows, waiting around to reform his soul.
Tormented by a traumatic childhood experience, a man takes his rage out on the world with ruthless abandon from his motorhome, the same one he was tormented in as a boy.
A defeated warlord is not killed right away. Instead they are let go, transforming how society views forgiveness.
Natural disasters ravage worldwide, threatening to kill billions.
After the first murder of the year, your character is tired of being alone in their flat. They open their door to an unexpected visitor.
You quit your job, and decide to go on a road trip. Trouble starts after your first night.
A simple activity such as hiking becomes a complete nightmare when the local fauna makes a special guest appearance.
A stalker attacks your character at work. Make him/her go to the police. He/she is denied so makes the journey to the spy headquarters—in which there is little help to be had.
A natural disaster is about to hit. The townspeople scramble to abandon the town but the main character stays behind when he/she is met by a strange sight.
A band of town folk venture out to their local lake only to come across a giant wave taller than the lifeguard tower which destroys the entire town and everyone in it.
The voyage of two Italian prisoners who were exiled for the purpose of collecting new animals for the King of France. A leader who puts too much trust in others gets betrayed in a cutting betrayal, leading directly to his death. A child experiments with her powers and she finds out their true extent- but she never realized the potential consequences it could have.
An old western ghost town is manipulated by a group that planted nuclear devices and are dying from radiation poisoning.
As your main character walks down the sidewalk and steps on one of the many cracks, they suddenly tumble into another land/time.
People start losing their sight. Everywhere. In a matter of hours the entire planet becomes blind.
Two rival criminal organizations go head to head in a bloody gang war.
Someone works in an 11th century history town. The exterior is accurate, and the interior is up to date. When they spend time in the museum during an electrical failure, they are led right back to the source of medieval times.
Three brothers turn into animals during a solar eclipse. During the course of the short story, they must struggle with their afflictions and find a balance between physical and emotional wellness.
The bell on the local church begins ringing in an unending on-going chime.
A pack of feral dogs fight for survival. The ending is both chilling and uplifting.
A brother who has everything visits a medium, but his reaper needs to follow him home in order to collect his soul.
The main character’s car breaks down in front of an abandoned asylum, but their calls for help are answered by someone who isn’t quite dead.
A religious zealot is convinced to add an unorthodox ingredient to a special spiritual brew used by his brotherhood. This action has personal and dire consequences for him.
You find an old cuckoo clock inexplicably stuck on the date April 18th. You decide to clean it until you realize the strangeness of the act. “Just how dirty is this clock?”
Two siblings are cast out by society and are forced to live out in the wild. One loves nature and wishes to stay. The other, however, wants to create a safe place for essentials only.
An athlete is flying through their sport until a car crash changes everything. They have to relearn how to live and love their sport all over again.
The whole world has gone to sleep, and it’s up to a group of people in sidekick form to save it.
The last person who works at the post office in a certain town will not give any information about the town or the riots/revolution/hostilities that have taken place there.
A crowd of protesters come together for one reason or another. Their methods of resistance go against the government completely out of control.
Your character is given a unique amulet that slowly drives them mad or gives them new abilities. Write his plotline over the span of his life.
There is a terrible disease spreading throughout the lands. A group of warriors, healers, and fighters gather together to stop the deadly plague.
Global political unrest results in a shift in the economy — war-like policies lead to paralyzing government bureaucracy.
The main character doesn’t realize their new medication is an experimental children’s drug. They throw themselves completely on this couple that randomly comes into town and won’t leave.
When a person sneezes, they disappear. The world is onboard while hunting down the others that have yet to disappear.
A group of scientists are drawn together to understand strange activity deep in swampland.
Your character finds a flash drive in an abandoned house with an odd song labeled on it. It’s an infectious melody along with disturbing lyrics.
A tornado blows apart a man’s house causing him to seek refuge in a nearby church. While in the sanctuary, he finds that the doors and windows have been sealed and that he is no longer alone…
A group of people are marooned on a deserted planet. Not only is there no hope of rescue, but the supplies are dwindling. How will they survive?
Earth erupts into civil war over limited resources and areas to live in. A family tries to escape and settle down, but events leave them with only one place they can go for a long term solution.
A pirate captain on the hunt for treasure happens upon an island, long forgotten, lost within the fog.
You’re a paranormal investigator out on a night investigating a grave yard, and come across something terrifying.
A group of coworkers decide to mix work and partying on this Friday night. What begins as drunkenness followed by an outburst sends them into a prank war. As pranks go from harmless to threatening, the tension between members rises with it.
Contaminated food moves across the country from point to point without any packaging, the infection amplifying each stage. It consumes pavements, metal, and eventually the ground, leaving inanimate and unprotected humans to fend for themselves.
A powerful entity had destroyed any previous version of Earth that was created. A writer comes up with a new idea for Earth.
As this clip show comes to an end the characters find out the world might be ending for real.
The writer of impossible short stories is able to materialize his narratives. He must fight against the very concepts he has written in order to survive.
In a world where everyone has superpowers, the only person without any is your main character. In order to survive, they have to rely on their wits, skill, and courage.
A local group of monks discover an ancient tcg and open it, releasing an ancient evil into the world.
The setting could be modern, fantasy, or sci-fi. Your character takes an elevator ride to the top of the Chrysler Building, but the doors never open. The only ones able to hear your voice are the birds chirping.
Large birds are attacked by hordes of evil tasting storms. All birds, large and small are corrupted except for one, the lead bird. Only the lead bird, rediscovering its true feathery spirit can save the world from raining meat flavored air.
A circus comes to town promising a wonderful show. Everything seems to go wrong until the climax is revealed to be a much stranger and darker act than you could have imagined.
A man is found in the woods, fully clothed but for his lower body. He has no idea how he got there and refuses surveys. Although, there may be more going on than what meets the eye.
You find yourself under arrest for something you know you didn’t do. You can’t get access to the proof that you were innocent, and you aren’t allowed to leave. Now they want you to go find that evidence.
A sci-fi setting has everything going well for the first few episodes. However, turns out the TV show is actually the history of things going well and the writers/producers have relapsed.
A drunk driver hit your character’s car on a city street during late night driving. Then, the driver vanished. Your gender of choice wakes up in a prison cell with only one window and a single door with no way to open it.
A giant meteorite is headed straight for you and it’s going to be impossible to outrun – unless someone helps you.
A new kid comes to town, but strange events unfold when people start disappearing around them.
Have you enjoyed these stories? Do you have any stories to share that follow from these? Would you like to submit one for me to read?
A car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. While searching for help you discover that the town was abandoned years ago after a meteor crashed there, but all the residents are still there. Will you make it out alive?
A mob decides to go after a local crime lord. They are rebuffed by his army, who corners the mob.
Your hero wakes up on a routine mission completely disoriented. They find themselves in a prison cell, not knowing how they got there or why.
A mushroom cloud appears in the mountain sky. All of the civilians, law enforcement agents, and government agencies try to cope with the fact that World War III is actually happening.
A teen returns home from a day of school to find their parents have been taken by a terrorist organization.
A crew of people wake up trapped inside of a sentient building that is actively grasping onto its last occupants.
Lost, alone and chased by the island natives, a shipwrecked woman may save herself by becoming a god.
You enter a new city, in a new state. You have all the time in the world to explore but where do you begin?
Archeologists working to expose all about a mysterious deposed civilization find their reality bending and shifting before their eyes.
Sam is a boxer with a bright future ahead of him until some interloping champion seats herself directly in his path.
An astronomer discovers their sun is gone, and to make matters worse, a strange ritual takes hold.
She lives in a modern tower somewhere on a low level in Tokyo. She’s petite but doesn’t let that slow her down. She’s lost track of her friends and her sister. All she knows is that she must go to the top. A young man attempts to help her.
A woman wakes up in a strange place. The only interactable items are a chair and a window. There is one door in the room which contains a light which does not turn on. What is in the room with her?
A game turns personal when winning means surviving.
A combination of three items from the contract prop room create a strange creature/force that possesses people.
There is an unexplained creature that lives in a wall. These creatures need to feed on something even though they seem harmless.
A group of hoodlums are being hunted. You find out they are not ordinary men, but have been given special abilities to help them thrive in their world.
A group of friends go searching for the fountain of youth, but never make it to Florida after they are thrown off course and shipwrecked.
A group of friends plan a road trip, but their pickup breaks down miles from any town. With no mode of communication, they are forced to walk back to the nearest town and hopefully meet someone to get them out of the mess.
Pick a famous library or another piece of public infrastructure. Something should be terribly wrong with it that can only be resolved through experimental actions to fix it.
The story of a couple returning to their hometown to tell everyone they have only twenty-four hours to live.
Children in a small town start to disappear one by one, much like someone or something is calling and playing a game of cat and mouse.
A traveler finds a small, hidden town living in a strange state of existence. It feels like a ghost town, but how is this possible?
The bathrooms of the world are tainted with all manner of oddities. Take your main character on a journey from common flying urinal cakes all the way up to the stuff of nightmares.
A night watchman at a secret laboratory experiments with strange chemicals and surrenders himself into a world of nightmares.
Someone with a strong stomach gets an after-dinner task of eating unusual and heavily gifted dishes. Aiming the whole meal is a single person who dined with them.
A young man becomes trapped in his house during a hurricane. The winds are so bad that he can’t find anyone to help him. While he’s looking for help, he encounters his long-dead sister whose only message is for him to get out before he becomes trapped also.
The opening scene of the movie shows the entire lives of the characters in fast motion. It ends with the death of this specific character and picks up just before their death.
Several unrelated people share nearly identical memories of some momentous, years-past event, with each interviewee unaware of or confused by the other interviews.
Stuck in the world’s toughest roller coaster car, a young boy is forced to ride out the ride and interact with ride goers as he flies from one high speed showdown with death to another.
An evil ruler wants to demolish a city and make it into a memorial to honor his accomplishments. However, the dead residents haunt him in his sleep and through every waking minute.
A group of writers, or grad students searching for a topic to write a dissertation on, turn to observing a couple who live very secluded lives.
An old lover you haven’t seen or heard from in years comes back into your life. However, they come back different than before. Thinner, stronger, stranger.
Your main character is given a cube containing a single grain of sand. It is asked that the grain be delivered to another over in another dimension/world/time. It seems easy enough, but it is never as it seems.
A diving trip to the bottom of the ocean goes very wrong. A wealthy business executive ends up bankrupt and must learn how to survive on the streets of New York.
Series of dreams appears to suggest a new project. The project serves as ammunition for several targets to hunt your main character.
A local spiritual leader relies on a peculiar faith-based ritual to help heal those in his/her congregation. But when his/her daughter begins acting strangely, she goes beyond the substitution and the unfortunate souls in the congregation are afforded no chance to resist.
A family heads into the woods for a vacation. Secrets are revealed about the farm that is in plain sight, yet the farmer and his workers claim to be oblivious.
While working on a routine autopsy, your character makes an unlikely discovery that leads them on a crusade to save the dead.
It was supposed to be just a hike in the woods, but the locals define that phrase in such a way, that the character you created will never be the same.
American Citizens visit a foreign land where, as always, they are greeted with contempt and derision. Upon leaving they have blackmail on their overseas guests, who are forced to land them or suffer the consequences.
What came back from space? And how does it relate to the isolated, backward town?
A lost dog refuses to return home and instead becomes a part of your character’s new life.
Your main character finds a letter from his/her future self, warning them not to make the mistake they’re going to make tomorrow.
Your main character loses patience with some kids and ends up with a piece of the brick wall that they were seeking out for most of the story.
A book is introduced that ultimately leads to widespread changes in society.
A professional performs his/her well-practiced daily routine, knowing that the loved one they’re waiting to see will not appear. They know all too well, but they try to keep the hope alive.
Due to faulty repair work being done native spirits are let loose and occupy things around town. This happens just in time for Halloween as everyone begins to take notice.
A horrible accident lands your characters in the hospital. They wake up the next morning, expecting the typical hospital routines, and go about their daily routine until they notice some strange things about the hospital. Revisions and edits to this article are required, so any review would be greatly appreciated. If you liked the article, please set it to your favorites. Cafe Loda – A Home to Writers and Artists Also, remember to follow some review requests and add the names of your favorites who you think might enjoy this article to your favorite list. Blogroll and Links Cafe Loda – Home of Writers and Artists D.R. Kuhn Author Facebook Page
A group of people experience an odd set of coincidences that pile them on top of each other like dominos.
A role-playing game decides to end one of its story arcs. All is going well until the main user of the elf character decides it’s time to change course.
A character considers suicide but then decides to live a little longer.
You are adopted. Your “parents” tell you that the only way you can make the home-life better is by going on a treasure hunt through the house and through the town.
The last few survivors band together to find a way to survive the horrors of a world that has fallen around them.
High school pranks go wrong when a ghost or extraterrestrial entity becomes involved.
A peasant farmer plows his field, only to uncover a clue to the location of the Holy Grail.
You’re babysitting your sister’s children one night when something strikes. A meteor? A plane? Whatever it is turns the world upside down. While trying to get home to your children, who are staying with the parents, you have to deal with a world about to end.
A news reporter has a scoop on his/her hands but the only other person who can confirm the information has vanished into thin air. Trying to prove an important theory first, a scientist puts himself in a tight situation.
A main portion of a forest is incinerated, killing a large number of animals and insects. The cause is unknown.
When your character breaks the “rules” they get thrown into an alternate universe.
A rich couple invites everyone to a dinner party. It quickly turns into a sort of initiation party for the guests. It’s a lifetime opportunity, but at what cost?
Monsters start attacking the peaceful people, but there is nothing that can be done.
Your main character receives a letter from the future asking for help, they are tasked with saving someone’s life and in return they will get rewarded.
Travel to a different planet. Trying to blend in causes him/herself to come across a bounty of trouble.
Another person is making phone calls to old friends, co-workers, and family. Time is of the essence because it is already happening.
A group of people head into the woods to find a mysterious cabin, which they found on the map. Along the way, they get lost, find out the cabin is located in a graveyard full of yew trees, and discover things about themselves.
A man is moved to a distant city in the middle of the night after working for several years at the same company. He finds that the town is infested with a disease and he struggles to figure out what’s happening, all while keeping his new family safe.
It’s a normal day at the office until the fire alarm goes off. The people inside exit the building and are met by a mounted unit informing them that the local prison riot has broken out and the prisoners are in route. Playing Rock, Paper, Scissors is the only way out.
Your main character finds an ancient stone cube with mysterious writings on it. A horrible storm strikes immediately after the discovery.
A beautiful dancer from a masked troupe invites the main character to a secret ceremony. They are only allowed one other to come. A mage, a noble, an outcast— the choice is yours.
A wild party full of alcohol, flirting, and nudity leads up to—there’s a metaphor for you—something truly frightening.
A prison break leads into a darker scheme. Free prisoner, but on parole with nowhere else to go.
What happens when townsfolk get mad at a resident for all the horrible and torturous things that person has done? They conjure up a spell for revenge, only to have it backfire.
Prophesy tells of a hidden garden, long since dead, that bursts to life and releases the souls of all the restless dead guards throughout history back into the world to wreak havoc.
A man finds a corpse at the bottom of a flight of stairs. In his room, he finds paintings not his own depicting murders he didn’t commit.
A man is held hostage by his bank. He’s forced to follow a set of rules or they will destroy his planet. It’s all an elaborate hoax, right?
A book that tells the future is stolen from a wax museum on staff-only night. Every indication leads to a beautiful woman with crimson lips.
Soldiers from a long forgotten war reveal themselves in everyday life.
Your character finds themselves shipwrecked with no hope of rescue. They are, however, in need for some essentials in order to stay alive long enough to be found.
A young girl who radiates magic manages to use the power for the right reasons.
A man paints an old bone, making everyone in the bar laugh and him mad. They end up beating him up and getting arrested. He reveals to a nurse he had a Jaguar bone in his Peyote vision that looked human, but had a full set of teeth to replace missing ones. The nurse makes fun of him while he is in jail. Inside the police station he tells the officer “about the Jaguar and three wise men in a tent whom he could not see or hear.” An officer gets all excited and says “You’re Oliver Carlisle.” More details about his story are revealed, which sound bogus at first but begin to make sense. He says the Mayan Jaguar god was angry with him. The nurse teases him, which turns him into the beast that mauls everybody but not the three wise men. The nurse is the only one to survive. The Queen of Diamonds is framed for the murders because she is a student of Carlisle’s work. She remembers and people began disappearing moments after she challenged his very existence on the earth.
A new respirator being manufactured genuinely cures the common cold. However, it produces an intense, unimaginable high that leaves people infected with it hopelessly addicted.
What if we did get a global pandemic? How would you band together? What if this were your last chance? How do you use your skills to save others? What if you were the only one left?
A man’s whole persona is wrapped around being a famous superhero but he keeps getting mistaken for someone else. What made him that way? What happens when his world is turned upside-down?
A group of teenagers are out partying on Halloween, when cloak and dagger type characters appear out of nowhere, and if it weren’t for your character and a sword, things turn deadly.
During a storm a man finds a pocket watch that can stop time. After school a boy takes a time machine for a run around his hometown.
Your main character awakes from injuries received while unconscious and thinks they are still lost in the wilderness that once caused their injury.
When the principal dies, his odd replacement introduces an educational technique the majority of the staff hates, despite the lasting results.
A statue whose eyes blink every hour, signalling to look out for things coming from the sky. Another statue that comes to life but loses its legs, stands up on its remaining arm, and repeats nonsense verse. The main character journeys across the internet to learn the origin of the property.
Crises come thick and fast in this fast-paced action thriller novel. One disaster follows the other as your main character grapples with the horrific turn of events.
There is a monster that is attacking an entire village, pushing people away. Where the monster came from is terrible yet alluring.
The main character receives a phone call from a thousand miles away where a family member is in trouble but has a time limit for when they have to intervene.
A brother discovers he has other siblings after his father’s death. Go through the steps it takes for them to accept each other, only for evil forces to tear them apart.
A man and woman meet on the street in front of an abandoned building. After their first exchange, they decide to go inside. The title comes from an item seen on the wall inside the building.
Describe how the creation of a portable musical instrument changes history.
You are heading to a business meeting when you find yourself lost. Then, you find a strange hallway leading to a stranger. It asks a question, which you reply with a question. This goes back and forth until you both realize who really asked the questions, leading you on an unforgettable adventure.
You meet the most unusual stranger. You trust them completely, and everything seems to be going fine, until one day, the stranger trades you off for an even stranger character to your own family.
A young girl goes to the V.A. with her father to see him get an evaluation for the list of jobs. She meets a handsome man who has all his limbs but he is incredibly sad and she finds herself working to keep him happy.
A family on a camping trip leaves behind their infant child and predictably a come out of the woods covered in blood, but whose could it be?
A small tribe must enter the modern age due to a catastrophic event in their lives. When they try to embrace the new world, ghosts from the past start to haunt them.
A suicide cult is sweeping the city, its believers always ending their lives in a specific manner. Intentions unknown.
A large spaceship is found in the Mediterranean sea. Archaeologists are called in to extract data and uncover some secrets that were left behind.
Plans and relationships go haywire on a roller coaster ride. The action winds through a secret society and winds up at the very highest place your imagination can take you.
The world is in a depression. Your character gets a job where he/she unveils a strange hidden secret.
A village is found that has stayed in one spot for generations. However, recently diggings have been made and a new road is being put through.
Knowing their fate, a group of people attempt to come to terms with losing it all to become better in the process.
A storm at sea rocks the small boat for hours until a stranger boards. You are forced to join him on his giant ship, also tossed by the waves in a heavy sea.
The sky gets darker and the wind picks up. The only clue is that the neighbors acted very strange the night before.
You are in a situation swimming in an unknown body of water. You look around you and see a shark swim in and instantly kill your friends. You can’t swim or call for help, because swimming only pleases the shark.
A husband tells his wife that he lost their house to the foreclocke and they have only a few days to pack up their lives.
A boy asks a strange man to take him fishing. A day of sitting on the bank of a river quickly turns into an adventure on the high seas.
Your character is on vacation, spending time trying to “find themselves”. For some reason, though, the past seems to be dragging them by their neck, finding a way to catch up sooner than you’d like.
A storm breaks free of its natural barriers revealing a shimmering portal. When a curious researcher thinks to cross over, he is taken aback by what he finds on the other side.
Abnormal wildfires start spreading in the Americas while their allies overseas keep rebounding them back by means of sending their own.
A small, run-down hotel is the home for a young author. Everything goes wonderful until one of the guests leaves something behind.
A world seems devoid of life. But, upon closer inspection, one character discovers subtle changes. Inhabitants have been replaced with ghosts who seek them out.
Unknown to most, a floating spacecraft has been established in the upper atmosphere of the planet.
You and your friend are camping in an unknown or new forest, and fall asleep under the stars. When you wake up you realise how completely lost you have become, and that there is no way to get back to the car before nightfall.
Your character is on a bus trying to get to where he can catch a plane to get home for his final year of school. He can’t sleep, so he looks out the window where he sees a man running and fighting people wearing cloaks. He gets off the bus in New York and comes face to face with a reality he had only dreamed of.
A dream where you come across your hero was a dream – and now you are alone in the dark taking care of your life again.
A strange explosion changes the face of a town, but only a few know what truly happened.
A new-age book describes travels to the end of the world and beyond via camping/hiking. Forty years later, a filmmaker documents the journey, hoping adventure awaits, only to get in over their head.
Every expense decides to walk out all at once, ultimately causing your poor character to fill out bankruptcy paperwork for their business.
A travelling salesman learns that their product and the way they market it seems less needed now than it used to.
A completely normal person suddenly gains the ability to live their dreams. They are aware that it’s a dream while they are experiencing it.
A race against time and death to find a lost object. They are equipped only with objects from the room they are in.
Alternate History is considered a subset of retro-science, which is itself considered a subset of science fiction. This story uses both aspects to tell the story of an event that took place in the past but instead tells the tale for what it could have been like, using retro-science to explain how the event played out differently.
People find that their bodies are different, stronger, more conveniently functioning. But have they changed? Or have their eyes been opened to the world around them?
A futuristic society has a law regarding the treatment of artificial intelligence. The main character is caught in its grip and has to fight the law to survive.
During a spell of bad weather, a person is trapped. That person is forced to relive an important part of their life that led them to their present position. The moral of the story is paramount.
You are living in a time where you know everything will inevitably come to an end. A virus of some sort has started to shut down electronics and other technology, but society continues to live on.
A car gets put up on blocks because the city plans to replace the main road it’s on with a one-way freeway.
Sending out Christmas Cards. Discovering a friend/relative from youth has a chaotic history which just happens to culminate with the current moment.
Space travel was becoming a reality, but then a strange signal from space makes ordinary radios play eerie music when turned on.
Ghosts of a regiment from the Civil War are looking for their equipment, but the only person that can help them is a young girl that nobody believes.
What if there was a person with the knowledge of the end of the world, and the ten steps needed to cause it?
An old man recounts a terrifying tale when he and his friends stumbled upon an ancient burial clay. Though they didn’t find treasure, they did find the dreaded King among Insects.
A pack of top-end criminals are on the run. All of them have special abilities relevant to their toughness.
A disheartened father quits his job to become a full-time dad. It’s either go back to the 9-5 grind or move-in with his successful brother.
A wealthy relative asks you to watch over their large, expensive house. Protecting a house turns into protecting the entire town surrounded by a strange fog.
An animal’s habitat is destroyed by humans. The animal takes action against them, often resulting in dire consequences.
A robot owns a small business. It seems to be a normal, vintage establishment, but there could be more going on than meets the eye.
Your main character believes they’ve discovered a lost island and goes to explore. The island isn’t what they think it is though.
A janitor for a high school comes across an old chest in the basement. This discovery triggers an absurd idea that could change his life.Main character jumps back in time to a period when he/she isn’t welcome.
Your main character awakes feeling claustrophobic, turning to a huge locked door. They do what they can to escape, only to discover everyone was locked in this prison/hospital waiting to die, people were never actually locked in doors, and maybe they can’t outrun what’s coming their way? Where are your monsters?
A man is being hunted by some futuristic government as they mistakenly believe he held the power to innovate the world. Now on the run, he searches for an ancient artifact that will reappear thousands of years after the world believed it to be forgotten.
An adventure crossing through the ages between a man and his estranged grandfather.
Anything that could happen has happened and those looking for answers are trying to make sense of it all.
A group is trapped inside a building when a fiery inferno traps them and any escape route is in flames.
A monkey is found talking around the world. Experts say it’s impossible, but many see it as a sign from God. We’ve made a short tutorial on using different design tools such as Gimp to create fantasy art and textures for your game concept. Download here .
Domestic terrorism in the middle of a winter storm.
People who think they are living the life of an action hero or sitcom character suddenly wake up to find that their world is nothing like they’ve grown to believe.
The main character gets amnesia and must piece together who they were before they can move on.
She’s treading water out in a lake when another swimmer joins her. What happens when she realizes he’s not actually a good guy?
A game switching headquarters to a whole new mysterious location.
It’s Halloween night and a town’s citizens find out that the legends of the bogeyman symbolize truth and magic.
Everyone starts growing antibodies to soap and water. What do you do with your skin when you can’t get it clean?
A grumpy care worker is visited daily by a caring elderly lady. Though the careworker never makes eye-contact and only answers with phrases recorded on a tape.
The beauty of a city has always been from above. A guide leads a blind scholar through the canyons of the city, teaching him what he can see above the clouds with misleading, or perhaps tortured, visuals.
A creepy witch is turning the children of the village into animals with vegetables for bodies.
A woman awakens in a cabin to find a man standing over her who states he will not help her. After wandering in the wilderness, she is attacked by a bear. After taking refuge in an abandoned house, her symptoms continue to increase.
Everything in the main character’s life revolves around being a redundancy check by day and a secret agent by night. All the while thinking they are working for the government and a faceless corporation.
Your main character steps into an elevator claiming it is the slowest elevator ever built. It seems it’s never going to stop, until she notices that the needle is off the charts. Then, everything goes quiet.
How do tight quarters change a group of characters? Their friendship, morality, stability, and standards.
Your character wakes up in the back of a van, unable to move. Looking out the windows, they find that they are on their way to…
A man must stand guard over a mechanical door, when things go horribly boring, the door transforms and releases something from the other side.
A teacher must tell his students the entire world around them was a lie because he not-so-effectively taught them how to read in the first place.
A storm is coming. A city mayor issues a shelter in place but the storm comes early, the mayor hides in an underground bunker. They soon realize they’re all alone.
A child is missing. It is decided to leave it to the writer to describe how the parents deal with the situation.
A group of friends playing a game of hide and seek get trapped in a strange, ancient machination that may never let them go.
A new form of post-apocalyptic currency is the “truth” and your character is out to get money as well as solve their own memory issues.
You are confronted by a group of hunters and their prey. Would you be able to stop them?
Two people meet and decide to travel together, and their adventures fill the story.
A man is solving the “Treasure of Agulon” only to discover learning the truth eats him alive.
Crashing down through the atmosphere, your secret agent’s parachute fails to activate, stranding them underneath the canopy of a tree. Alone and confused, they must use their quick-thinking and personal experience climbing trees to make it out unharmed.
Your protagonist is an FBI agent or secret service that has just been transferred to a new department that takes him/her in an entirely different direction.
Find a lost file hidden within an archived library. It’s dated back in ancient times.
The kiss of death changes everything for your main character, as the death of a couple means a whole new life for your main character.
Your main character enrolls in a seminary. They must go through all the practices that priests go through while dealing with the collapse of their town and an attacking horde.
While exploring an ancient tomb, your characters stumble upon what appears to be an easy way out. Everybody knows there is no such thing as an easy way out.
A group of college students wakes up to find the majority of the world’s population missing. At first they think it is some kind of joke, until someone walks by without responding to them.
For the prompt below, your main character is a pervert who steals women’s undergarments. However, he is also a comic book superfan.
The need for live sport on television becomes a dire situation.
Your main character is accused of a crime he/she didn’t commit. Next of kin has the character released based on a vision and the characters ability to time travel.
Someone falls for you within an instant. And it’s reciprocated so strongly it sends shockwaves across your body.
It takes the main characters working hard three days to get to an appointment. When they arrive, they find out that they were tricked and are trapped.
A young girl is sent away to live with an eccentric aunt. All is fun and games until the ghost shows up and takes her.
A biker gang leader’s life is threatened. Someone has told his girlfriend that they should cut off his gang tattoos so that the gang will let them in, but the girlfriend isn’t sure it’ll work.
Find the difference between the original and new versions of a tale.
Everyone on an island has money problems, which leads to a host of crazy characters and a unique setting – with their own style of law and order.
A gang begins to steal people’s shadows. The whole town is suspicious of each other.
The destruction of a dusty old carnival reveals an old, old well. A long hallway that ends with a time portal and savage creatures seem to be on the other end.
Some “secret footage” gets leaked and provides some insight into what really happened to your character after they got home.
The hotel you are staying at is haunted. You encounter different ghosts at different times but always end up wondering who placed you there for, “the night.”
The government reveals to the public they have been hiding a basement full of monsters.
Your main character is summoned to attend an important dinner, but once there, learns that something appalling is planned for them.
Someone in your main character’s regular life threatens to tell everyone a big secret. It’s your mission to determine what that secret is.
The draw of some heavenly bodies like Venus becomes so great that meteorites from there are finding their way to Earth.
A known tourist trap. It has to be that way. It attracts visitors so they can eat them. No, wait! So they can incorporate them into the business/virtual reality attraction.
While in an airport, your character finds some strange coins and follows an unknown figure.
An aging professor after retirement still has papers to grade and projects to complete. Unknown to him, the office building he has chosen to do this is hiding secrets.
A tribe captures a dressmaker and makes her make clothes to deceive a visiting emperor. However, do they really plan on executing her, or has their lifestyle become so full of lies that it is almost impossible to satisfy everyone?
As far as the eye can see, every living thing has disappeared and all that is left is “nature”. The horror happens when nature is disturbed, prompting the reader to start looking at animals and insects in a new way.
The main character, who is very near death, suddenly wakes up in the morgue. Upon inspection, the medi-bots are alive and well, using the main character as their world model.
A straight-laced woman goes back to her home town to visit some old friends and family. However, occurrences from her childhood return to scare her.
Your main character has seen things. He/she doesn’t know what they saw, but they’re terrified by the newly exposed parts of them. They start quietly to question if what they saw was actually real.
An accomplished skeet shooter is invited out by some less-hereditary friends. Enticed by the offer, he or she goes out to unwind. All is well until things take a turn for the worse.
Winning a big bet unexpectedly forces your character into a situation where they must take a new, untested path to completely detach themselves from the lead up to the pay off.
Comedy writers want a job writing for sports shows. This leads them finding a gateway to the magical world of game shows.
A former best friend may make an appearance at your main character’s worst moment. Could that friend come to their rescue or will they even recognize each other?
Describe all the sounds that the desert provides as you walk and walk.
A normal day turns into a battle for the survival of everyone when an alien army invades. Only small pockets of people have been left behind to tell the tale.
A blog about their favorite dead author. The blog updates with story sentences and dives into the inner thoughts of his character.
A mob of citizens goes on a witch hunt against perceived magic users. A powerful bubble overcomes reality and goes about causing havoc.
A young girl reads an excerpt from a novel that she plans on writing one day. The excerpt from her fictional story appears on the screen, only for her to have a change of heart and realize that her non-fictional life is interesting enough to write about.
A train holds horrors humans had not imagined before, forcing trusted parties to work together to stop them.
A band of heroes can defeat most anyone, every one. When a new twist to the tale threatens humanity itself, the group has to figure out a way to conquer whatever could threaten angels, demons, and everything in between.
A man receives a mysterious transmission, asking for him to complete his mission. The stranger on the other line promises to release the man if he does it. The man considers it and sets off to complete his task knowing there is a catch.
A digital creature that has only ever lived in a digital world is suddenly brought into the real world. The human beings that surround him in the real world say that he is a threat, so he must hide his existence and find a way to get back to his world.
A huge structure in the middle of the ocean washed ashore, revealing secrets about the people who originally lived in that area.
Many of the world’s most famous people share the same birthday. This is a story about two such people.
In a world where memories are put into cubes, your character will remove a thought from someone’s head and find that it actually holds the most disturbing memory they have ever encountered.
Your character and a friend confront the cold-blooded killer who murdered their parents who abandoned or died in jail, forcing your character to battle them.
A king sitting on a throne acquires this strange power he never knew he had. Suddenly, chaos breaks out. When everything returns to normal, only his life and his country are dramatically changed.
A detective is called upon to investigate a kidnapping. While older, the case turns young and manages to become stagnant due to the detective’s denial. The captured character can be a child, parent, spouse, or anyone else who needs saving.
Several friends meet up at a local bar. Throughout the evening the circumstances keeping them from leaving escalate, to a point that turns out to be life-threatening.
There’s no cases in a lawyer’s office, everyone’s been given jobs. After meeting several people though, your main character realizes that it’s a front and there’s a case after all. They have no idea what it is.
There’s a devouring beast in the forest. Legends tell of a creature.
A mundane and evil character advances his plans by depositing money into an online account. But when things go awry, he must beg for a scapegoat.
An action movie/game is based off of a “true” story. Play as the person who comes back to life to relive the events from a different point of view.
A walking darkness of epic proportions seeks to rule the world.
All of the vehicles across the world are suddenly getting stuck in reverse. A woman tells her husband that it’s a conspiracy but he doesn’t believe her.
You wake up in a strange world with no memory of your past. But you soon realize that you are not alone and the only way of getting back is to endure the adventure for all it’s worth.
Your characters are thrown into a world based on myths, gods, bits of tenuous history and legends. They must learn why they were brought there.
A man receives a short phone call about the death of a relative. He replies, “alright, and the funeral was held?” With a quickness he states his approval of the funeral service and concrete grave marker. When the odd conversation clicks the end receiver, he decides it was a telemarketer who must have connected the wrong number.
A police chase after the devil takes a turn down an unexpected road.
There is an outbreak of mind controlled zombies. All the plot points and action are not focused on the zombies themselves.
The world famous Mona Lisa painting changes into a window revealing a ruined world.
Your main character is at the hotel bar and finds a man who reveals that he’s god – and always was.
The world is threatened by a highly contagious disease. A scientist studying the isolated pathogen falls in love with the woman who manages to unlock the vaccine.
A girl sneaks into her university’s anatomy museum reading the medical descriptions of various body parts, starting to become aroused.
An all out war is taking place in a nearby town, without a modern weapon in sight.
Insurance fraud on an epic level ensues when a rock and roll singer’s best friend tries to kill him.
Something terrible happened to your main character but they can’t remember it. They wake up in a room with voices telling them how they will never leave the room, how there’s no hope for them.
The butterfly effect takes effect after a person trips on a butterfly pattern floor tile and falls through a wormhole.
A trip into the woods turns dark as the main characters fall prey to blood-sucking leeches.
A child falls down a hole and ends up in an alternate world while their family searches for them.
A PC gets caught in a holographic world simulating a day in the life of the town folk before a fatal disease overwhelms them.
An old routine used to frighten children is actually a way to travel to another world, when the children abandon the rules and find their way inside.
A group of people is kidnapped and forced to work in an underground factory.
A day-to-day account of an office worker kept inside a stifling building and can’t leave until the rain quits falling.
A young army police officer witnesses a disturbing series of events that leads to a lot of memory issues, outbursts of emotion and an investigation into the perpetrators after being discharged.
Describe the layout of the seat of power in the kingdom.
A series of ritualistic murders in the modern day world drive your main character to solve them or die trying.
A group goes on a hiking adventure in the woods. As the night sets in, they realize this is no ordinary hike.
The killer arrives on the scene. This is either the body they leave this time or the one that was narrowly missed.
A new species is born with transformative abilities which the characters are forced to either be part of or destroy.
A man in a suit is seeking introductions to the ruling members of powerful families so that he might work his way up the sky. He arrives at a home and asks to meet the lovely 18 year-old daughter, Summer Smith. Summer introduces him to her mom, who is actually her grandmother and host of the household.
These writing prompts can turn into the start of an amazing adventure with The Masters. Do you dare?
A family crashes their boat on a strange island and ultimately ends up saving the tribe dwelling there.
A fading star searches for their next calling. In their travels they hear of an eccentric film studio in the northern hills that promises fame and fortune.
A family is on a long road trip. The father misses the exit, and makes a left-hand turn into a swampy maze.
Your character should be an extraterrestrial expert on some dead subject. Their knowledge comes into play when he/she is forced to face death through violence or cunning.
A burglar is hired to infiltrate a castle and retrieve a sacred artifact, but was only given one part of its clues to access.
A man discovers a vintage car in his past. He recalls his exploits with the car, unaware that things are growing more and more mysterious until his death.
A B-grade horror movie company has run out of ideas and actors. They decide to save the company by framing a few innocent people, sending a camera crew with them into the wilderness.
Air voids are blocking out the sun, causing murders and violence everywhere. The government is trying to cover up the fact that they are clueless about why this is happening. A group of paranormal investigators starts working a case in an early American town. When the issues start to become more than they bargained for, they go on the run. Another character, months later, is attempting to catch the group that went into hiding. He doesn’t want to explain what’s happening to his neighbors and family. As he pursuits, one of the paranormal things he encounters actually helps him the rest of the way.
A late shift worker at a blood bank loses consciousness right before committing a crime against a woman and her son and neither of them know it.
The town is doing great economically until a bunch of new immigrants arrive. Hate crimes increase.
A contortionist runs away to join the circus for personal reasons. As bad luck would have it, a murder mystery begins in the circus allowing the contortionist to use their skills to secretly help solve this mystery.
6 women, altogether, each have a different background and life experiences. After a great series of life events, they form a pact.
A woman goes into her study, and is transported to an unknown backwater world, and is swallowed up as a portent of famine.
A mad man tells the greatest story in the world, and to prove it, he starts his story.
A serial killer escapes his maximum security prison and continues his series of killings. His methods are updated with possible modern methods of killing, but the terrifying twist is that in the past he used a different set of methods.
The main character awakens late on a Saturday in a house they do not recognize. A search of its contents results in clues which have the main character questioning reality.
A poor town erupts in riots after a science experiment goes wrong.
An old radio show comes to life. The guests aren’t what they seem and neither is any of the staff.
Space invaders are taking over. It will take a ragtag team of recruits to come and save the world once again.
A man renews his vows at a vows renewal resort. When he awakens from his weekend, though, something is out of place.
A young boy growing up in a poor neighborhood finds a cure to a prophetic dream that comes each night. The mystery only adds to the nightmare.
A hot-shot reporter takes a job in a town where nothing interesting seems to have happened for decades. But is everyone being completely forthright? The town seems to be cut off from the world with out-of-date technology. The people take the reporter out back and show him a walled off area that they dare not enter.
Two people get in a heated argument and one realizes that they have been harboring a hidden secret about the other.
Internet celebrity is involved in a car crash on a remote road and strange things start happening to the people searching for him/her.
A woman boarded a plane to her home country. Since it was during the zombie apocalypse, she has kept the secret that the plane crashed into a field. Strangely, she feels the need to gain trust and quickly leaves the area, helping to rebuild but only by night.
A son sets off to find his writer father who disappeared five years before. While away, he learns a secret about his past that reveals the true reason for his disappearance.
Mobsters are offering protection to small businesses and towing this family into their orbit.
A mysterious text that turns everyone reading it into absolute masters of emotions.
Beneath the waterline, the ocean floor is a community ruled under laws not unlike those in politics.
The apocalypse happened yesterday. The survivors go through their last day on Earth preparing to die.
A superstorm is approaching and the technology designed to keep them safe has been withdrawn.
Your main character lost a loved one…and seeks to bring him back.
You are in a traffic accident, then wake up in a snowglobe. Outworlders were chased there and trapped within, and now nobody that was sucked in will come out of the globe ever.
All of a sudden the city is trapped under an ominous cloud of grey, rippling like silk.
A mystery creature stalks down your characters in a remote area. There is no weapon made that can kill it.
A boss or supervisor during a shift has strange symptoms. People begin to see him/her as an abusive dictator.
A family desperately tries to save their farm, meanwhile their youngest son disappears. Can they bring him home before the disaster strikes?
The corporate logo on a corporate building is actually a “portal” that feeds back to another planet which begins to affect Earth in crazy ways.
A set of parents mysteriously disappear on their first child’s birthday anniversary. Their child was given a special keepsake box that they soon realize is connected to their parent’s disappearance.
The apocalypse is fast approaching and a group of loved ones make one final gesture, but it’s dependent on getting one last person aboard.
The wealthy customers at a hotel are just a little bit more odd than anticipated. As much as you try to fight it you realize you might be their next meal.
A man on a plane has a horrifying realization that he is sitting next to his double. The stranger grows more agitated until the plane lands and police arrest him.
Two war veterans from different eras meet and relive their favorite parts of combat platoons.
There is a strange gentleman in a tuxedo camping out in the woods. He could be the villain or a guide from fate.
A trio of magical gems are being sought out by a sect of warriors. A good versus evil scenario ensues, pushing two lovers to make a difficult choice.
The epidemic has struck the planet. Humanity is forced back to the stone age in order to avoid infection from this mysterious disease.
Your main character suddenly finds himself/herself in a world that is a stark contrast from their own.
Nuclear war erupted and all you can count on now is yourself and your ability to survive.
Your favorite restaurant will only be there until the end of the weekend. You are part of the staff, but something suspicious happens while you’re working.
The main character awakes to nothingness – no memory, location, personality, or even species.
Children are mysteriously disappearing from a quiet community.
An immensely wealthy man invites you to a haunted castle with only one condition, you cannot bring any electronic device.
A person lies comatose on their deathbed. When the family gathers for the death ritual of saying the final words, they speak them to no one. What happened to the person lying in front of them?
An outsider arrests and puts into prison an entire village or town. Eventually the outsider and primary characters get together to solve a problem.
A mysterious gentleman offers your main character a chance to write anything they can think of. It will get published in an agreed publication, and although you don’t have to worry about money, they have to accept how the writing is changed to suit the audiences of the publication.
For no apparent reason a random object comes to life and heads to the page’s main character as if it were planning something. He/she finds it and treats it like a companion, until one day he/she is compelled to use it to solve a problem.
A quest to take care of an inconvenient butler who wants to be a martial arts star.
A doll comes to life and causes mayhem for teenagers with strong personalities.
Napalm and fire are dropped on your home town. As the main character starves to death amidst the burning wood and rubble, they slowly begin to sober up and tell a mind-blowing story.
Everyone on earth has turned into hamsters except one man. While still in his human body, he ventures out from the city and across the country in his quest to find any form of life.
An explorer looking for a quaint Mayan village finds something quite different.
A stranger comes to town. Nobody knows who they are, only that they’re very paranoid. As he begins to adjust to life in the small town, the residents start to notice a strange idiosyncrasy that they mistake for an eating disorder.
A spot on a fish’s scales that appear to be an infectious agent is attracting the attention of some local scientists. This might be related to their work with the fish and the new type of growth seen in some areas needing further research on their part.
Being a superhero is hard. Dealing with legislation, insufferable villains and naysayers is even harder.
An astronaut explores down below the surface on a new planet. They find small footprints and other evidence that someone else explored long before they did.
A family buys a new house and is surprised to find it infested with ghosts.
The protagonist is going through a depressive phase of their life. There is no way around it through logic because there never was one. He/she must either act on a gut-instinct or drown.
It’s the end of the world as we know it. Your main character must travel through a post-apocalyptic wasteland in order to make sense of his/her understanding of life.

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