1001 Writing Prompts About Pianos

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As a writer, you’ve probably listened to music while working many times. You may have used lo-fi as background noise while revising a tedious manuscript late at night, or tuned in to your favorite songs during writing breaks. But, have ever considered using it as inspiration for your next story? 

Music and musical instruments would actually make a great addition to stories because they, particularly the piano, can evoke strong emotions. Take Nicholas Sparks’s The Last Song, for instance. It is a tearjerker that follows Ronnie Miller during the summer when she is sent to stay with her estranged father. In this novel, Ronnie and her father shared a common love for piano music which allowed them to reconnect and come to terms with what may happen in their future. 

If you are now considering incorporating music in your stories, below are writing prompts about pianos: 

• The pianist needs to tune his piano.
• The downfall of a piano starts with an art teacher writing on it.
• Walking home one day, a pianist accidentally hits a dog with his case. The dog snarls and draws blood. When the pianist returns to the same intersection, he …
• Write a creepy story when a man finds a piano in the woods.
• A pianist is trying to find the missing notes on his piano.
• A guitarist receives a new piano as a gift, but this piano isn’t as ordinary as everyone thinks it is.
• Write from the perspective of animals the sound of a piano.
• The world’s first piano museum opens.
• The piano survived the war.
• Write a story about a piano that is trying to communicate with its owner who cannot hear the piano.
• Write about a homeless man who sleeps on a piano at the abandoned music building for warmth.
• Write alternating scenes between the most positive thing a person has ever experienced, the most negative event in their life, and a scene of what’s happening between the two.
• Write about the history of a piano before it gets sold to a wealthy man who then buys it.
• A boy usually always struck down with writer’s block realized he can write when he picks up the piano.
• Someone painted a mural on a piano that was captured after the end of the world.
• A pianist gets a surprising visitor. Write as if you were the visitor in the story.
• A politician’s piano is stolen and the press writes about whether or not the piano was more valuable than their policies.
• A thief knows that your house has an old piano inside.
• You are playing the piano when suddenly the wrists of the pianist are broken. Write about what happens next.
• A ghost wants you to compose a piece that can raise the dead.
• A nineteenth century coachman is bemoaning the evolution of technology that holds his horse in a stable instead of on his coach.
• After having his hands shot off, a pianist refuses to be deterred from making music and how he mastered the art of getting the piano to play itself even though he could no longer use his fingers.
• Dictionaries were made out of pianos due to a shortage of paper.
• Write about a chaotic piano recital gone wrong.
• Two piano technicians are arguing over the intricacies of an antique piano.
• You want to pitch a business about a painter who realizes that he’s better at the job of a beautician. His roommate, an introvert, plays a piano.
• Write a three to five sentence description of a piano.
• Someone finds a piano with only two keys.
• A lonely pianist puts a cursed curse on the piano so that it can return to life on the night of a full moon on the ninth day.
• Write a story from the perspective of the piano.
• A musical instrument store is featured in a mystery about the disappearance of the owner.
• The pianist is being chased by a bear across the snowy landscape, trying to reach the cabin where his family awaits him.
• In the days where pianos are no longer used, you decide to have one built for a time traveling client.
• The typist’s baby piano is being babysitted by a dog named Buddy.
• A woman is upset over the move of her sister into her bedroom, and she decides to write a song to improve their relationship.
• A piano awaits its tomorrow performance in the orchestra, waiting for the appropriate death.
• A person finds a piano organ in their closet.
• A pianist chooses to reject her old piano and orders a new one.
• A piano is found in a dumpster. It’s broken, thus homeless. It yearns for a home.
• An old lady is afraid of turning on the radio because she thinks it’ll cause her piano to fall on her.
• Your only friend abandoned you and you are left alone with the only sound being the piano.
• A character can hear music from an old piano being played by someone no one else can see.
• A young piano student by the name Mary Beard is completely obsessed with her piano teacher, an aging Korean woman named Bong Hastiary.
• What colour makes the best piano?
• Write a screenplay about a piano competition.
• A man buys a piano. He is also trying to buy a coffin for his wife.
• The moment you get a piano, you notice that you have no idea what to do next.
• Write a story from the perspective of every part of a piano
• There’s one special piano that causes people to feel unperceived emotions.
• A home layout is redesigned around the grand piano in the living room.
• A family’s father is a piano player.
• A character is expecting a grand piano to arrive from one of their ancestors who was a music teacher. Instead they get a stereo system.
• Write from the perspective of your computer keyboard.
• Write a scene about a couple who only were able to keep their child when they promised to buy their landlord a piano.
• Pianists around the world gather for a piano competition.
• A pianist was born with no arms, and has the chance to play with someone else’s.
• A piano is sympathetic to the nightmares of teenagers and is the only thing that can calm them down.
• Write a story about the piano being frustrated.
• Ghosts come to visit the piano and try to instruct the young musician to teach them how to play.
• A father doesn’t want his daughter to play the piano.
• The sound of a piano moving through a coal mine.
• The only way to make the bed is to drag a piano up the stairs.
• If there is an instrument that comes to life and attacks everyone in the room, what instrument would you make it?
• A piano is sold at an estate sale.
• Write a conversation between a musician quitting his band and the old piano he loved.
• Someone spends their last dime to buy a piano.
• The world is a piano. The viewers keyboard will decide which letter is chosen from his/her computer or smartphone.
• A kid who doesn’t know how to play the piano is forced to learn how to play.
• A man commissions a piano player to play the music of his life.
• Write about piano keys.
• A piano soloist only takes on a life of their own at night.
• Write a story about a world in which piano music disappeared and then began to slowly reappear again.
• A freak tornado hits, and a piano is the only thing left unharmed. The only one who could save it, had pressed the emergency shutdown button.
• The only place where time stands still in your apartment is for the piano.
• A poor boy finds a broken piano in the woods.
• A piano forms romantic attachments with people.
• A newborn baby was playing the piano when he fell asleep.
• There is a piano buried in your house. Your goal is to not use a screwdriver but rather your hands and feet to get it out.
• A piano comes to life and wants to be treated as a person.
• A musician has found a cursed keyboard and types random keys to punish people.
• On the night of a concert, a famous pianist suffers stage fright.
• A piano player falls in love with a neighbourhood cat.
• Write about a piano that travels across time and different places and styles of music.
• When the guy moves in next-door, your piano playing gets louder.
• Write a journal snippet from the wanderer perspective.
• Concert pianists who need to practice need to go to Cirque du Soul to rehearse.
• Piano is destroyed at an art demolition show in a prestigious gallery because of the lack of attention and respect for the objects it inhabits.
• The piano was the first instrument ever.
• Write about sheet music found in an abandoned factory.
• A piano arrives on Earth, intending to sell itself to aid the impoverished planet, a pianist buys it.
• A guitarist decides to give up his guitar and learn how to play the piano instead.
• There is a world where every person has a piano in place of a head. The pianos play music when they’re happy but silence when they’re not.
• An evil pianist performs the perfect symphony of violence.
• You see a ghostly pianist practicing in a room in an abandoned mansion. Finding him gives you the ability to see the future, but there’s a catch.
• A historian is thinking about buying a rare collection of antique pianos, but he is worried about moving and losing all his memories.
• A child decides to become an expert pianist despite her mother’s guidance against it.
• A minstrel plays the piano without any sheet music.
• A bride finds a piano in her backyard right before her wedding day.
• People praise instruments to the heavens when really what matters is soft, melodious music.
• You’re a piano that is possessed by a ghost but when that same ghost gets transferred into a human body, you start to lose yourself.
• It was so cold outside one winter night that my keyboard  was frozen.
• Write about smuggling a piano in the 1800s.
• A movie theater has three pianos in it. The pianos move when you press the keys and somehow, are alive!
• After a very long partnership with a piano, a musician sells his piano and moves on.
• A piano is a witness to the revolution in Paris. It is publicly burned by the revolutionaries.
• Someone is stealing your piano.
• Write a poem from the perspective of a piano.
• A pianist hates that when she plays the piano it no longer feels like an extension of her body but instead feels like a barrier between her body and the people in front of her.
• Your piano teacher was a graduate of Juilliard. Write a story about a math exam they had to take to get in.
• A ghost is haunting a piano and loves music.
• The afterlife is a collection of pianos of every imaginable size and shape, each one only plays the piece of music that you want to hear.
• A violinist turned jailbird breaks into a pianist’s house and takes his instrument.
• The local animal shelter finds homes for orphaned pianos that have been thrown away.
• Write about the inner workings of a piano.
• Someone placed a false advertisement to buy a piano on eBay, but it turns out it was for a pyramid piano instead of a normal piano.
• Write about the piano the characters need to find in “The Piano.”
• What was life like for a piano in the 18th century? Show in a story.
• Write the lyrics for the song the pianist wrote.
• You can shovel all the snow you want but the piano just won’t fall down.
• It is illegal to own a piano and not lock it up.
• Two ghosts, one as a famous pianist, the other as a piano, try to get a child to play the piano, so that their souls will be reunited forever.
• A woman took her piano with her to each new place she moved to, packing it carefully before bringing it into the new home.
• A city raised an old piano from the ocean floor and dyes it black for an art exhibit.
• Write a scene in which a) a child spills water on a piano or b) a child mark’s pages of sheet music with crayons.
• An interview between the author of Melody and the piano.
• A multi-millionaire purchases a giant piano made out of diamonds from the time of the Roman Empire. It goes up in flames.
• 2011 was a great year for pianos that nobody knew about.
• A pianist is trying to write love songs again but is having troubles finding inspiration.
• A professional pianist surprises the crowd by taking out a beat up old piano and then proceeding to play beautifully.
• After you see a piano in a garage sale you have many thoughts. Write about this piano in the garage sale.
• Try a short story where eggs and piano are baked into a giant cake.
• After moving into a new home, you notice your piano is infested by beetles.
• A now functioning player piano is moved into an occultists house.
• A sports fan is trying to write a song for the 10 year anniversary of an important victory.
• Write a story where there is only one piano in the world.
• A girl stares at a photograph of her father for so long, she believes that the music is playing her.
• What would surprising inspiration look like?
• Write an essay about a memory you have of a piano.
• As a piano falls from the sky, you discover a magical ability.
• Someone falls in love with you, but they find it difficult to get the words out after they see you playing the piano.
• A pianist sits in her dorm room and impatiently waits for her turn to play to open mic night at the coffee house.
• Experience an elfish mission to find fallen forest piano keys.
• Write a story about a famous pianist.
• Your sister loses a cat as a kid and within ten years realizes the loss of her first pet into maturity had an unforeseen effect on her and all her future relationships.
• An elf living in a tree loves to hear the sound of piano.
• A human named Grace Goldberg received a specially made, human sized, playable piano. What happens next?
• Write about a terrible piano player being a great composer.
• Instead of a cat, a pregnant woman hears voices from her unborn baby. She does not recall ever hearing music from inside her mother’s womb when she was pregnant.
• A demon is jealous of a group of mortal musicians and tries everything to stop their music.
• Write a modern story about someone under the impression that he is a pianist or something similar.
• You think your life is boring, but no one else can see this world that only you can.
• The ghost of the composer who wrote your favorite piece of music is waiting for you as you play another piece of the same music out of curiosity, wondering if you’re actually hearing him.
• Write a story about a piano waiting in line at a hair salon.
• A fetishist is obsessed with damp pianos.
• How do you feel being played upon?
• A vampire takes shelter from the sun in an old piano with no strings.
• A story in the future where the most common way to communicate is by playing piano.
• A pianist learns to program computers for fun.
• A pianist becomes the best friend of a nightclub singer.
• The piano has been forgotten for years and no one remembers who owned it.
• A teenager teaches his/her girlfriend to play piano before leaving for college.
• It has been 500 years since the piano was created. Write about a king that banishes the instrument for frightening her subjects.
• Write several stories connected by one piano owner.
• Write a story about a person selling pianos.
• A lifelong piano player is given a sacred object that holds his musical abilities.
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• E.S.P. is real! Piano players can somehow tap into your memories.
• All of Seattle’s residents are dying from overdosing on caffeine from drinking too many lattes. You must play a grand piece to persuade them to cut back.
• Reasons why pianos are so stupid.
• You come across a piano, but when you try to play, notes come out not matching the keys you hit.
• Write a horror story from the perspective of a piano.
• Music appreciation means nothing when the piano needs tuned.
• A blind girl finds the piano free of charge in a second-hand shop.
• Write a story from the perspective of a song. A person is very irritated with the sound of a nearby piano.
• A bullied boy finds refuge in a piano in the public library. Knowing that nobody is around, he plays an emotional tune to get rid of all the sadness and anger…
• Find a piano at a garage sale. Write a story about what happens next.
• Write a story set in a parallel universe where pianos are sentient creatures.
• The owner of a piano finds that the music box has been replaced, but not with a store-bought one.
• You can play a piano once a week, in a concert. Don’t let anyone else know how.
• A piano is said to be haunted.
• An archeologist found a prehistoric piano.
• Neptune is playing a piano when a shoal of fish swims up to the instrument to hear it.
• Someone is dragging a piano.
• A piano was found.
• Many people hide behind the piano so their identity stays hidden.
• A mysterious piano is found in a creepy house.
• You can walk away from the piano but it’s never going away.
• The piano starts talking to the person who plays the best music on it. The piano hides this knowledge from the composer when the person learns piano.
• A message in code is written on a piano and the only people who can decode it is a pianist.
• Watching a sunset from a seaside apartment used to inspire you to write music, but now it inspires you to play the piano.
• What kind of dream would you have if you were to sleep on a piano?
• A guitar and a piano hatch an intricate plan.
• Write a poem in the style of Knut Hamsun’s On the Concept of Iron.
• A perfectly ordinary music critic decides to imitate esteemed music critic, Robert Christgau, and write a scathing 1-10 review.
• Piano bars are being outlawed. Too many people were having too much fun and the pianist didn’t show up on time for a gig.
• A baby is born with perfect pitch.
• A politician gets trapped inside a piano.
• The piano was moved to a new room by three teens that just want to see a ghost so they can film it.
• An author has written a book based on the lives of his pianos.
• Write a story to stand against hate.
• Write about life after death.
• You prepare yourself to play the piano in front of a live audience when your sister stops the performance halfway because she forgot her music after piano practice.
• When your parents are getting a divorce, both of them try to bribe and guilt you into taking their side.
• The keys on a piano find a voice.
• A couple buys a piano but are scared to play it and hide it in the basement. Ten years later, their son, who has always wanted to play the piano, finds the piano hidden in the basement. Therefore, he starts taking lessons. He falls in love with the piano and becomes really good at it.
• You were kicked out of your house and feeling left out. However, your piano is still by your side.
• Write about a new piano teacher.
• Someone kidnaps your relative and makes you play the piano for ransom. Your relative is being kept under the piano. There’s a file.
• An acolyte spends a year learning the piano.
• The city of the future is inhabited entirely by human-sized pianos.
• Write a story about a giant piano that is mistaken for a crashed plane.
• Write a letter from a pianist to her piano.
• A person opens what they think is a music box but, upon inspection, the tune comes from a piano instead.
• A random boy finds a newspaper that says that he is an amazing pianist.
• The day the piano came into the door workshop.
• He loses himself in his favorite music.
• You arrive at a house that has been abandoned, there still remain many things inside. One day the owner decides that they may control it again. One of the things still on the ground is a smashed piano.
• A thirteen year old girl decides to take up the piano in her final years of high school as piano will still be a big part of her day despite not having lessons.
• Write a story told through song.
• Write about a piano lesson where the student had three fingers cut off and replaced with people fingers.
• The piano was firewood. It survived, though it lives in a house as a painting now.
• The owner of a music shop has a ghost living in her pianos.
• A poetry competition is supposed to be performed at the high school, but the next year the piano is missing.
• Blind pianist wins a national talent competition.
• What kind of house do you want? Describe.
• A young girl is fascinated by churches and stays up late to hear the soothing sounds of the instrument.
• He tries to write a piano song but ends up wasting a year on an organ song.
• Your only friend is a piano.
• It is said that no one can wait three months for a piano, with money or without it.
• Write out the text of Beethoven’s 5th symphony.
• A nuclear war is going on but the government has hermit pianos underground that might continue the human race.
• The character finds a piano on the beach and starts to tinker with it. What could come out of the ensuing encounter and in the end, how would his life change?
• You spend your time working on a piano that you are building for your daughter. Years later she is showing interest in playing music and you are surprised to see that she is quite talented.
• As a popular writer, you’re trying to find more diversity in the world of your books, so you decide to start writing stories about a young man who is skilled in playing the piano.
• The sound of a piano being played downstairs gives you insomnia.
• A piano is made from recycled Christmas lights and works really well.
• You sit down to play a song on the piano only to have the keys and strings turn into putrid flesh.
• What’s worse than a piano falling during a thunderstorm?
• Find a dream you still have unfulfilled and write a sequel to it.
• You crush on someone at your college, who turns out to be a pianist.
• Set a poem to the soft utterances of the piano.
• A person who knows nothing about music gets obsessed with learning the piano.
• Write a love story about two pianos.
• The piano is the cause of a psychological breakdown in a teenager in therapy.
• Protect her from the person with the shiny finger
• Your Sunday morning is complicated by the piano student in the apartment next door.
• Piano players often feel like they are in a cycle that they can’t break out of.
• A piano is caught in the eye of a cyclone.
• Have you ever heard anything more beautiful than the first few minutes of the Planets Suite by Gustav Holst? A piano player can’t even hear what she is playing because of how beautiful it is.
• A piano tutor talks to his piano student about the effect the therapy of playing the piano has had on him.
• A pianist turns into a piano.
• Two giant pianos are joined at the hip.
• A piano raffle leads to something terrible.
• She was obsessed with her piano instructor’s eyebrows.
• A murder takes place at a piano.
• A lost, insane pianist attempts to power his piano with hamsters.
• A polar bear happily jumps across a piano.
• A child is persuaded by the music of the piano to do more work.
• Clumsy fingers key pianos.
• A human and a piano fall in love.
• The player piano only desires to play music that is programmed on stacked rolls of paper.
• Write a story based on something you listen to on your piano.
• The previous night, someone murdered a neighborhood boy with a piano.
• Digestive biscuits are sold in a piano-shaped tin.
• An entire neighborhood of abandoned pianos.
• A piano is measuring itself in an attempt to find perfection.
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• The dungeon piano grim bimbles to himself in his pit in the middle of a mountain.
• Write about the last song your piano taught you.
• Write a story about a ghost playing a piano.
• A college student has a chance to pick either the topic of her thesis or to pick her piano instructor as her mentor.
• Last night the piano drank herself into a stupor.
• A pianist is telling the story of his piano from the very beginning when it was still growing in the cedar forest.
• A murderer takes refuge in a piano.
• Pianos are worth more than gold and can bring exciting possibilities to anyone unlucky enough to still have a romantic streak in them.
• A piano is at the center stage of a photo.
• The last tune heard before a freak piano accident that caused a river of blood to flow out from beneath the piano.
• Write a story from the perspective of a person with a magic piano.
• A boy moves to another state, where he falls in love with the sound of a piano he hears through his open window.
• Someone finds a piano whose keys inject acid into his skin, resulting in him trying to rid the pain by scrawling cat poetry all over the instrument.
• Write a story about a piano that sounds just like Beethoven but can’t actually be attributed to Beethoven.
• Everyone in a small town loathes their piano teacher until one day she kisses a student. Afterwards they find themselves drawn to her.
• A guy misses his long lost pre-piano girlfriend and vows to grab her attention the same way he did.
• The pitch black piano was invented.
• A man lives alone but enjoys the friendship of his empty piano.
• The piano is secretly either sentient or hates musicians and tricks them.
• An orphaned piano is convinced it’s able to read and help scientists comprehend the meaning of life.
• The color black releases a dark sound from your piano, but what color releases a happy sound?
• A fantasy novel about a piano made from the “bones of a terror” and the last mortal.
• A musician has a dream about a piano that speaks to him.
• A thief breaks into a home to try to steal the piano but finds something else that is more valuable.
• You take piano lessons but no matter how hard you try you can’t play perfect.
• A teenager destroys a neighborhood piano and from its splinters the entire piano plays him back the music from his life.
• A baby piano is crying because he can’t find his parents.
• Write the instructions for being a pianist.
• You come across a new type of piano which uses spider webs to produce the notes.
• Turn the act of piano playing into something absurd or surreal.
• You find that there is a baby inside a piano bench.
• There is one piano in your school that everyone knows is haunted. How would you play it?
• A mother cannot enjoy watching her son play the piano because his fingers just do not move well enough to play the fast notes.
• Notable piano players start competing with one another to see who is the best.
• A piano concert turns into a battle of wits between an exceptional pianist and an incompetent magician.
• After someone from the past uses a magic spell, they’re getting into their desired setting but it is now a giant piano. They must somehow escape and alter time.
• A piano was found on the beach, all worn out.
• You see something in a news report so disturbing that you immediately run outside and go to the nearest piano to write a song.
• You have quit playing the piano but are involved in a piano theft ring spanning the globe.
• The mysterious relationship between a child and their piano.
• You go to a party and find a piano in a closet – the first party ever to have a piano.
• A curious man is asking people what their favorite song is, and it appears to be piano pieces.
• Write a story about an heirloom piano that someone recently inherited.
• A person does some heroin sitting at a piano.
• Write a story about a teacher who says that the piano isn’t a respectable instrument any longer and holds a special lesson.
• The ghost of Beethoven manifests as a sheet music performer at a recital.
• The fifth Beatle is a piano.
• A construction crew finds a small piano in an ancient ruin and brings it to their boss who plays it and is transported into the past where he receives a vision.
• A bacterium plugs into the piano and falls in love with its cousin.
• The career of a single piano is expanded and written about.
• A piano is being featured on a game show. Unfortunately it is unable to make a sound.
• An action thriller about the survival of a critically important piano.
• Write a fictional diary entry of an historical figure or character using the piano as their most beloved possession.
• A student believes a piano is watching him.
• A pianist refuses to play anything but her own compositions even though she hasn’t written any in years.
• Write a song on the inspiration of a piano.
• What if they removed one key from the piano?
• He didn’t realize he was writing his last song when it was about his mother. This caused him to give up on his song. If only he knew how much his mother loved him, and everyone else.
• Write about failing a piano lesson.
• Write from the perspective of a young artist who is trying to teach her mentally challenged friend how to play the piano.
• A person is imagining a piano behind them.
• A street beggar is not allowed to beg near busy traffic. Except near the piano.
• Write a story about your favorite instrument.
• Someone has found a piano that can talk.
• Write a piece of prose about running your fingers across the piano keys.
• The next day, your friend’s sister asks for your watch as a gift.
• At the bottom of a river is a piano that has been covered by water for a very long time.
• A piano factory is turning out pianos at an alarming rate. They have little to no documentation, have documentation but it’s always out of date, or have detailed and intricate documentation. Documentary following the creation of a piano and the people involved in it.
• A woman needs to git in tune with the piano to become a pianist.
• An elephant, computer, and elephant walks into a bar. The bartender gives them one drink.  Now have fun seeing how many other punchlines you can make!
• The narrator is trying to contact a loved one in a tailspin.
• One of your story characters wears a piano, around their neck as if it were a necklace.
• A woman is given her grandfather’s piano as a gift. She takes the instrument out of storage and dusts it off but is horrified when she finds an evil book inside.
• A cult based around a piano is trying to make a musical instrument worshipable.
• A piano is the ship’s arbiter in a battle in the North Sea.
• Someone is silently playing the piano in their home. but no one else is home.
• An old lady orders a piano from the company Aaron Copland worked at – but it’s not like how the salesman described it.
• An android is able to finish music that is punched into a piano by a human. While composing, it introduces a pattern of mistakes every few measures.
• A disgruntled customer sets their piano on fire after receiving poor customer service.
• Write about a pianist who not only ruins his career, but also his life.
• Write a diary about a piano.
• A ghost performs on a beautiful yellow piano as his story unfolds.
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• Write about a pianist who finds lots of inspiration when playing in an igloo.
• Someone who likes burning things decides to burn down a music store that sells pianos.
• Write a story from the perspective of the strings of a piano.
• The piano is mourning a deceased friend.
• A horror movie about a pianist that takes too much paper for the theme of the song he’s writing.
• A woman is organizing a protest against the piano. It has been making people angry and she wants to end its reign of terror.
• A vampire who plays with pianos reflects on his immortality.
• You’re a piano in a forest. You want to play beautiful music but you must kill everyone who touches you.
• A piano has a vision where it looks beyond the black and white keys.
• Write a story from the perspective of a piano player.
• Someone breaks their piano and is devastated so they take their remaining energy and pour it into fixing it better than new. The project becomes a whole new obsession.
• The many layers of a person’s life, told through the sounds a piano makes.
• The last concert at a piano concert hall is poorly attended.
• A haunted abandoned piano in an old town is the only thing an insurance agent checks every night in the hopes that he will finally find an owner to pay off his mortgage.
• A pianist studying at a conservatory is expelled for performing unacceptable music by famous composers of the past.
• The owner of a piano bar asks to take out a huge loan to get his daughter a brand new left hand piano.
• Your protagonist gets a job being the piano player at a complex but is haunted by secrets.
• A clock is trapped inside a piano that will eventually run out of time.
• The pianos sound beautiful from the outside but it’s lived a sad life with its only friend moving to Chicago.
• A couple with no children buys a second hand piano for, well, whatever reason people buy pianos.
• You’re a man set to be in a fire.
• A woman buys a book on the romantic history of the piano only to learn the reason behind the war on musical instruments.
• Piano becomes obsolete for some reason.
• A piano gets shipped by mistake to an unsuspecting customer. When the customer realizes what’s inside, the character is excited and tries to reach the manufacturer of the piano.
• A beached whale has been taken to a marine habitat and a few barrel pianos have been put in his pool to provide entertainment.
• Write a story from the perspective of a piano.
• A story about the invention of the piano.
• The sound of rain filling up his piano is the only way that a boy knows his father is still alive.
• She turned her piano and listened.
• Write about a hamster that plays the piano better than humans.
• Someone finally decided that a piano is just a musical instrument and it’s not meant to be painted.
• You only open the piano when your friend is over. One day he asks to see the inside of the piano. What is inside?
• In this twisted world, pianos are born naturally. They begin a vicious cycle of love and war as part of the human food chain.
• The piano was meant to be a wall decoration amongst a sea of new baby toys.
• Write from the perspective of a piano whose player has been forced to practice too much.
• Write about the life of Chopin being a pianist, and all the hardships brought upon him by Napoleon’s army.
• You met a funny war veteran who is staring at pianos that appear and disappear out of thin air.
• The thing musicians hate the most can play music perfectly on the piano.
• The piano is ghost-playing the music you are currently listening to.
• Dr. Wily realizes that he needs an evil plan that requires a piano in it.
• You sit down to write a piece at your reading wooden piano, but then you discover there is a hole burning a whole through the middle of the bench.
• The piano becomes sentient and seduces the musician so it can fuse with him and become one with their music.
• A person discovers a piano in the attic of their new house.
• A book tells you that you will die soon when you receive threats from a serial killer suggesting the same.
• Write about a piano without having to use the word “piano” in your story.
• A piano ghost is hiding in your house.
• Write a poem about everything someone can say on the piano.
• They sold you piano but forgot the legs.
• A young child tries to play the piano while her mother and teacher argue.
• Another musician is writing away when water mysteriously begins dripping from her hands.
• Write a song. A death metal song. An epic song. A song about a piano falling into a pit of lava. About anything. All about pianos.
• Write about a girl who sells her old piano from under her bed and doesn’t notice on the way out.
• A cult leader moved into your house and is forcing everyone in the family to take lessons on the piano.
• This music was composed by a baby and performed by a piano.
• You find a group of people, formerly dogs, playing piano.
• A married couple buy a piano for their anniversary, though neither of them actually know how to play.
• Write a poem titled “At Quite an Accident” to tell the story of a piano that sounds outside of tune but is actually quite quick.
• A concert piano lays abandoned in a public park for five years until one day a homeless man finds it and restores it to glory.
• A young girl dreams of not being able to play the piano.
• Write a story about someone living in a no-piano society.
• Piano parts have been written. But an improvising pianist must improvise the rest. He learns something better.
• Families compete in who has the best imaginary piano rock band.
• A pop star is trying to write a song for the piano but can’t find inspiration.
• A piano is found in an abandoned house in the middle of the woods.
• You enter an antique shop and see a piano that screams.
• Your grandfather remembers playing piano when he was in grade school.
• You’re capable of playing every piece of music ever written on your piano chord by chord.
• What it means to have a piece of sheet music on a piano.
• Children in your area are taught how to play the piano for an hour every day.
• A group of angels come down to earth to judge humanity on the fate of the world.
• Your character is a piano and either you or a guest had used him as a bed, pillow, and blanket.
• A boxer and his coach compose a rhythm for his opponent to follow which results in a temporary victory.
• Parents walk into a music store with their children to buy them a piano, the only one they can afford is broken and the store owners think it is a good opportunity to make a profit and fix it up a little.
• You have a dream where you attend a concert of the piano, and it is described in great detail.
• The chaos from a hurricane put the piano through countless hours of exposure to the elements showing the results to be a rustic organ.
• An old college friend is calling you late at night, because his wife is leaving him and he only wants to talk to you.
• An old woman has a piano but can’t follow sheet music to save her life. She digs up a fountain pen.
• While climbing a mountain hikers come upon an old piano that they play.
• Arrietty is stranded on a piano on the floor of the music room and needs Tiktok’s help to get out.
• The outside of a piano was designed to be very attractive so it wouldn’t look out of place in a grand hall, whatever’s inside is almost ugly.
• A song is written about a piano.
• Write a love story that takes place around a piano.
• A pianist gives her daughter a box of music sheets for her birthday.
• Start that story as the piano is selling in the junkyard.
• Write a song for a piano compilation.
• A pianist is trying to compose the saddest song ever written.
• A man won’t let his daughter play the piano because he says that it’s too hard for women.
• Write a story about the piano being left outside for the night.
• The piece of hair found on the piano causes it to feel guilty about the deed it did when it was an owl.
• Write about a person who teaches music to students and has to deal with obnoxious parents on the phone.
• A piano in an alternate universe doesn’t have keys but people still wish to make music.
• A publisher wants you to write an audio book about pianos.
• Dreaming of childhood, you are a piano.
• Many people learn to play the piano, but few are able to play a fire-breathing version of the song “Flight of the Bumblebee.”
• You enjoy playing the piano so much that you decide to take it on a road trip. Unfortunately your car crashes and now you’re under a pile of rubble…buried alive.
• Write about sobbing at an elegant piano service.
• A piano is given as a wedding gift to a young couple.
• Out of rage from his family, a boy throws his piano out of his house. Years later he finds it. He becomes re-interested in music and the piano.
• Write a story from the perspective of a piano player.
• There are no pianos on Mars.
• A son finds the diary of his mother’s killer hidden inside her old piano.
• The smell of fresh coffee and French pastries fills up the room but you do not understand how or why since you are at a piano museum.
• Write an Oscar speech for the piano.
• Write about a boy who hates piano playing.
• Discovering an old technique released a child prodigy to the world.
• Several years after a cruel incident, a student has finally found the courage to challenge the tormenting bully that broke his life.
• A pianist gave up on his dream and became a financial planner. Write a letter from the piano to the financial planner.
• A young child is given a small piano for Christmas.
• An aspiring pianist is held at gunpoint by the competition in his kids piano recital.
• A pianist is kidnapped. The only way to stay alive is to write a new song daily.
• Two dogs get into an argument after one believes that pianos are meant for chewing.
• What happens when your piano comes to life?
• Cover the piano in an infinite amount of arms and hands and see what song plays.
• This person got a new piano as a present and is trying to figure out how to pack it up.
• Pianos started dropping from the sky and multiplying rapidly.
• Write about a piano in a basement that kills when played.
• Someone from the future falls through a time gap and ends up in a piano factory in today’s time.
• Everyone on earth dies and the only remaining life is a lonely pianist and his piano.
• The piano has always felt emotionless.
• Engineering students enter a contest to construct a piano out of anything they like.
• A mad scientist demands to hear different notes of the piano playing a melody in a specific rhythm.
• The student gets a music scholarship to Juilliard but cannot go because he or she is too shy to play for the judges.
• A piano is found hundreds of years later after being buried by time.
• A pianist specializes in different parts and plays several parts at once.
• A pianist takes a break from playing, but an old woman wants to hear him play.
• A piano plinks its own tune and the neighbors call the police.
• The death of a composer has cut any commissions for his longtime piano player.
• The piano of an autistic child has healing powers.
• A cellist’s top string snaps during practice and a piano tuner approaches her after hearing her cry out in frustration. Both are affected by the situation.
• Write about two pianos drowning in a river.
• Write about a cat that steals a
• A space voyage was sabotaged, and the astronauts’ only chance of survival is in a piano rocket to reach Earth.
• A piano player bets on poker that their opponent will recognize a particular song after he plays it.
• Find a painting from around 1900 of a person playing Chopin.
• Write a scene of a group therapy session in which all the patients are made to take turns playing different keys on the piano.
• An exploration through all the sounds of a piano.
• Write a story from the eyes of an out of tune piano.
• Write a story from the perspective of a piano player’s fingers.
• A piano owner is surprised by strange noises coming from inside of his piano.
• An ancient instrument from the southern lands is brought back to Europe, and gives birth to a new way of creating – pushing the limits from just black and white, to full sound.
• Sunday morning, the piano man is at school to teach children how to play the piano.
• A pianist falls in love with an electric piano.
• Write about the composer of the piano.
• One day a tornado comes and turns some piano keys into people.
• A short-story written from the perspective of a piano is awarded an award for the best short story ever.
• Write a song about the piano.
• A piano has over 1000 keys.
• As a joke, a musician decides to sing fake lyrics to one of your songs with the intention of getting you to hear them.
• Write about the silencing of a piano.
• The ghost of the first pianist who ever played your piano appears to you and you can have a conversation with them.
• A musician wants to write a song for the piano.
• A singer starts playing a piano instead of a piano-keyboard after getting into a car accident.
• A certain breed of animals come to you to hear of their sorrows and what they think of the piano.
• A mysterious benefactor claims that you stole works from him.
• Write a dialogue between an owl and a piano.
• A boy teaches his small pet piano to play piano on his dad’s guitar.
• A person doesn’t feel guilty after watching a movie at the piano because it was part of their piano.
• You are a piano.
• A lightning bolt strikes the piano’s tuning fork and everyone hears it with a jolt.
• A grandmother is taking care of her grandchildren but secretly can’t afford gifts. She tells them she can and goes into debt.
• A piano is reincarnated as a human, only to be taken for granted for the second time in its life. They choose to leave again.
• Someone is trying to figure out if they can take the piano with them on the plane.
• Write about taking a lesson and only being able to play one piece afterwards.
• Johnny saves the world by playing his baby grand piano.
• Working on a mausoleum, you discover the unnerving secret of your boss’s grandmother.
• A man makes a discovery in the piano when he sets out to work on it.
• You are sitting at the piano playing. A procession of dead ancestors comes by.
• A piano falls in love with a woman and waits at her house for her.
• A jazz musician on a bus hears a story from a girl living inside him.
• A pizza place is under construction, but every time any part of it is built, the builders can’t find any notes to lay down, and the project stalls. The main character, a teen who played piano years ago, has no idea where the notes are.
• Write about a child that enjoys playing a piano.
• Write a story from the perspective of a violin.
• There once was a scientist who has made plenty of things and is very proud of himself. One day, he designed a piano. At that moment, the piano said to the scientist, “Please, if you ever want someone else to be able to play the piano, let me be just an instrument – do not make me think or do other things.” The scientist was very sad because he wanted to show off how smart he was, but he agreed to the piano’s wishes and respected them forever.
• You go for a walk and find an ancient, broken piano that plays itself.
• Write a murder-mystery that includes references to pianos.
• Write a story about the person who manufactured your piano. What were the circumstances behind them building pianos?
• An aspiring pianist is transported to a world represented through a large piano.
• Write a piano duet of a story where time is accelerating, and two people are working their way to 30 kisses by piano duet.
• Everyone in your town loves to play on your grand piano. Eventually the piano improves every one’s mood and makes them play better. There are the honor children in boarding schools who only play on the piano and then there is you who just plunks away a few tunes.
• Write a series of stories about the broken down piano in your neighborhood and the graffiti that is written all over it.
• Write a scene from the perspective of a piano’s keys.
• An orphan girl dreams of finding her birth parents, who play piano like she does.
• A customer went to play a piano for sale and asked Miss Effie where the keyboard is.
• A man locks his alcoholic wife out of the house on Christmas Eve. When he hears her in the fridge, he starts playing the piano and she brings him another bottle.
• A famous pianist must plan a song for his next piano based off of the requests of an audience of two.
• Write a story from the perspective of a piano that was played by Graham Tolbert.
• A divorced amateur musician tries to change the sound of his piano to please his ex-wife.
• Looking to continue building your outfit?
• Someone buys a piano at an auction to learn to play but ends up the star of a talent search.
• A carpenter finds a rare blue piano in the trash.
• An old piano gets dragged into the future by some scientists looking for other things but one day realizes that it’s in the future.
• Write the instructions on operating a piano.
• Write about falling asleep to a music box playing the Moonlight Sonata in the 1800s.
• A 6-year old girl joins a piano contest but loses the competition.
• A family moves into a new house. There’s a piano playing because there’s no one living in the main house and its player piano.
• A country piano shop is robbed, and the owners get mistaken for a couple.
• Write a story about someone who discovers their ability to become invisible when they sit at a piano.
• The piano keys represent cancer.
• A famous pianist gets involved in a gang war.
• You are lost in the desert and can only drink one thing you may or may not find.
• Write about a one-handed piano player .
• A piano-loving composer sends his love over the words of the piano.
• The piano is the only thing a struggling composer can hear above the noise of the city in the morning.
• Your mother died under mysterious circumstances. For revenge, you used the piano as a weapon at the scene of the crime.
• Write about the weather while you listen to the piano.
• Ghosts can play the piano, because learning how to play gives your ghost fingers.
• The instrumentals from the old soundtracks of a movie play when one enters a toy store.
• Ghost key stumps reader during a piano recital.
• Write about a road trip where somebody brings a piano.
• A dog hears howling that sounds like a piano in the distance. It leads him to discover a forest that he could not see before.
• You are a piano teacher. Write an account of a particularly awful student.
• A piano disappears. Someone seeks the location of the piano.
• Write a story about mankind after discovering how to inhabit a piano.
• A person dies but is saved because there is a piano there that still has a few keys left that they can play their favorite song on.
• A piano and a performer are notorious for their fights. It’s in the tabloids.
• A pianist is back home after her tour and a neighbor claims that he can hear the piano from his house.
• A disgruntled umbrella repairman makes grand pianos in a small shed behind his home. He must deal with a pretentious son who is also interested in music.
• In the future, everyone is legally obligated to carry a piano around for when someone desperately needs to write a song.
• A ghost’s touch turns everything he touches into a piano.
• The left hand of a pianist is broken. He can only play with his right.
• An unusual key makes a tiny noise that really doesn’t fit the song but he uses it anyways.
• A boy’s apartment gets turned upside down and all of his old memories end up in these boxes that look exactly like a grand piano. He tries to piece back all of his memories using the boxes.
• I composed my entire Sonic album while waiting for the piano tuner to finish.
• Write about a human being turned into a piano.
• Very softly, like the act of opening a baby’s eyes for the first time, her father touched the keys of the piano, which began to glow softly.
• You learn to play the piano.
• Write about that first piano lesson.
• A giant used piano is found in a junkyard.
• My deep love for someone is not related to me by family ties, nor geography, but through the piano.
• The writer hears a woman crying in his house.
• The sound of an old piano awakens your neighbor.
• Write a story about an average day in a piano museum.
• A player piano is recording its own performance as a musician is distracting it.
• The piano is an embodiment of butts.
• A spaceship from another planet crashed into a piano and began to play. Then it fell in love with the only girl left aboard the spaceship.
• What’s your favourite piece of music that’s featured on the piano?
• Do you still have any creative writing prompts from this list or come up with your own writing prompt? We’d love to read your comments below.
• A musical prodigy becomes rich and famous and buys a special piano he has been dreaming about.
• Pianos are put in an aquarium in a nightclub.
• A troubled woman who lost her job discovers that playing the piano calms her down.
• Were you a lazy or dedicated pianist as a child?
• Write about a character who’s soul can only be seen as a black dot on a piano.
• A pianist who is neither good nor appreciates music is hosting a dinner party.
• There is a piano at a beach in your town. It has been there for a hundred years, since the day that civilization was destroyed and all the humans perished. The piano… PLAYS ON ITS OWN. Delete the word ‘plays’. Now replace the word with ‘keeps on playing’. You’ve just written your own horror story.
• A man gets stuck inside a piano.
• A group of three young orphans sell their piano to fund a basketball team.
• An unlucky woman can’t get a marriage proposal from her suitor because he constantly says she should play the piano.
• A young fledgling pianist teaches an old man the fundamentals of playing the piano, but he soon learns the man isn’t so simple.
• Write about pianos playing, or the sounds that they make.
• Due to a mistake at the Air Force One factory, George W. Bush plays the piano like crazy.
• A man finally restored his antique piano only to see that someone had cut out a piece in the middle of the piano.
• Write a story where your main character buys a piano and they constantly break it through clumsy accidents caused by the piano’s presence.
• An unidentified piano is abandoned in a forest.
• You see a mangled piano playable, without the strings, at a flea market for five dollars. Write a story about purchasing this piano and fixing it up.
• Your piano teacher is a vigilante at night-time.
• Write a letter to your future self explaining how to play the piano.
• An old piano at the corner of a bar was involved in a rape.
• Write a story from the perspective of a piano in the Spanish inquisition.
• A young, prodigal piano player takes her first steps into the spotlight and discovers the glory that predicted her success.
• It feels as if a piano has followed you home.
• Write a story about the last person left who played piano as a living. He/she lives far from any other people so he/she becomes lonely and strange.
• Another musician composes a song for the piano but struggles with certain notes.
• A piano somehow finds its way into a bohemian coffee shop.
• Your hands can always remember where to go when playing the same piano.
• A ghost is the only one who plays an old piano.
• Try playing the piano, but get bored halfway through and wonder what you should do.
• Write a thing you’ve always dreamed of doing with a piano.
• Write a story about a musician whose piano is sick.
• A talented young student is transferring to your haunted school and practicing her violin but the piano has been on the third floor of the stairless building for fifty years.
• Write a description of the inside of a piano.
• During your summer vacation on a cruise, you play piano on a piano stage for a crowd in the afternoon each day.
• Forget the words to a song and make up something that could go with the tune of the keyboard.
• Satan’s monstrous hands hold the strings.
• The disappearance of Mary Turner.
• The life of a despondent piano.
• A piano must choose between its parent and its friend.
• If a ghost could play any object, it would be the piano.
• An author witnesses a murder and alerts the police but is ignored and when someone starts playing Dizzy Fingers they realize why.
• Telephone repairman working on the line out of “Desperate Housewives’ ‘finds a baby grand piano in the alley.
• The song the character is writing will play a role in the resolution or ending of the story.
• A pianist is given an opportunity to still remain a star in Japan after the war by using propaganda music. Though he is hesitant, he soon changes his perspective on it.
• An old house has a piano in an unknown location.
• You’re in a death metal/sludge band and disgruntled over the increasing popularity of pop music. After discarding some of your best written music and before smashing your keyboard you see a piano in the corner of the room and decide to sit down to write a song for it.
• Write about your life as the piano in an orchestra.
• Write a short story about a tall man who’s married to a little girl, and she’s cheating on him with her big counterpart. A different tall man is narrating the story and hints at ways in which the husband is going to get revenge, such as buying his wife a grand piano when she’s old enough to play it.
• Write a poem about seeing a piano for the first time.
• Write a letter to an old friend telling them about an incident involving a piano.
• The first time you hear your own heartbeat, it sounds like that of a piano being played.
• Your piano teacher is arrested for murder.
• A soul has traveled to a magical land where pianos work in pairs alongside people they’re compatible with.
• A piano rolls out of someone’s burning house.
• Write a love letter to the first person you have ever been in love with, using the words of a piano.
• The writer strikes a key on the piano and dreams of what they want the key to mean.
• A basketball coach is also a piano teacher.
• It’s Christmas and a local concert comes to town for the first time in many years.
• The universe is ending. You have two minutes left. You have time to write one piece of music. How do you end the universe?
• You tell a story from the perspective of a piano.
• There’s a big piano in your house and everyone is too afraid to step on it.
• A confused spirit finds a piano and can’t understand its purpose.
• The piano player always thinks the singer is doing a terrible job.
• This is a personal ritual a lover plays on a piano before asking their lover on a date.
• A piano dies and goes to heaven.
• Write a story about a pianist.
• Write a conversation between an amateur pianist and a professional pianist.
• A magic teapot runs away with a musical note and becomes part of a piano.
• An actress falls in love with her pianist boyfriend, until a new girl charms him away.
• Before he died, your grandfather recorded a song on the computer and your camera. Tune that song and make it into a piano track.
• There is a piano on Everest. Write a text message in emoji form to a friend about that piano.
• You never knew you had a Muse until your piano is broken
• You are playing the piano in a band.
• Paint was found on the piano that reveals a section of music that may be a treasure map.
• The setting of a futuristic world is invaded by intelligent pianos called PianoCorp.
• Instead of practicing the piano, a girl decides to ‘write as she plays’. This frees her thoughts and she begins to write wonderful stories.
• A man was walking down the street one day, minding his own business, when he stumbled upon a small piano in the middle of the road. He picks it up and suddenly inspiration hits him. He sits down, and in two hours writes the piece of music that would eventually win him the Pulitzer Prize.
• Your piano is a portal to another world in which you are the personification of either a sunrise or sunset.
• The world’s oldest piano is sent to be destroyed by a bomb in a distant country.
• It’s all downhill from here.
• The main character believes a piano holds great value, but another character doesn’t. When the piano receives a scratch, he starts to believe the opposite.
• You were abandoned when you were a child but a group of pianos found you.
• The first song you composed after learning to play piano is stuck in your head all day.
• The student of a famous composer is to write a solo for piano.
• A magician enthralls everyone with his piano players.
• One night, a performance-shy girl finds she can run on the piano and enter a world.
• Write about a girl who tries to convince her parents that she needs a piano, and they won’t buy her one.
• A pianist is trying to rescue a toddler who is trapped in his house on fire.
• Describe your own piano in words. Tell its history and who made it.
• She sees the piano which stuns her after long moments of silence.
• The auditorium of a theater collapses while an orchestra is playing, and the only way for a pianist to survive is to play the piano off into the sky, like a plane.
• A phantom of a famous composer becomes real and starts writing great works from inside a piano.
• Two pianos live together and go over their days. One has an obsession with broccoli.
• Someone is writing a book about ghosts coming out of pianos, but is having trouble finding any eyewitnesses.
• Write a story showing how different and unreliable the internet is.
• Someone breaks into the piano store, buys a piano and tries to escape through the window.
• The door was shut tight but the tune from the piano went through the cracks and got musically stuck in my head.
• The name of a river flows on the surface of the words.
• The Wachowskis’ trilogy 4D is based on a man in his late twenties falling for a piano.
• An appliance repairman is the manager for a band.
• A piano is distracted by a piano falling out a window that is too high up for it to fall on any humans.
• A precocious child decides to learn how to play the piano.
• The least favourite piano is surprisingly the best soloist.
• A professional pianist refuses to play the piano, and when the audience finds out why, chaos occurs.
• An angel is the only one who can hear the piano. Write a brief story about that angel.
• An enemy attacks you by playing your piano. You have to win the battle by playing it better than your enemy.
• Write from the perspective of a piano struggling with domestic violence.
• A damsel escapes down a river in a piano.
• The people of the non-musical planets need to learn how to learn the basics of music, being introduced to the piano. The only problem is, the technology of their planet is not as advanced as Earth’s, and the people within the futuristic planet don’t know what a piano even is.
• Write about an antique piano.
• Try “The Whisper Song” by William König.  Tell a short story inspired by the music or piano itself.
• You are playing the piano slowly. This inspires a dancer to create a dance, and another artist to find inspiration.
• There’s a man who has invented a piano that can also sing opera.
• The piano suddenly loses its wisdom and does not know how to play anymore.
• Write a scene where several people would rather play an instrument than be the person who tells a joke to break the tension.
• A life insurance agent is trying to convince a client not to buy the piano as part of their investment portfolio.
• The pianist that you see everyday in the coffee shop walks up to you and says that you got lucky by seating near him today. What do you say?
• The piano in your room sits on a stack of old books waiting to fall onto the floor.
• There are some markings on the inside of the piano.
• In your dream last night, you were on a game show that involved the piano.
• You discover a piano in a lonely one horse saloon town.
• Metaphors about pianos in daily life.
• The day the piano dies suddenly
• The pet rabbit of a troubled middle schooler is found dead on top of the piano.
• A child experiences the power of music for the first time through a piano.
• You’re caught somewhere where you have to play the piano to distract the others from the fact that you’re a Native American.
• You find an old piano in your garage.
• When you die you get a second chance to hear the piano you learned to play during life.
• An artist falls in love with a piano. Now she must decide if her feelings for the piano are more than just a strange obsession.
• A pianist hates a police officer so much, he decides to summon demons at the station.
• A piano comes alive and writes tunes.
• Music with nothing but a piano added.
• A pianist’s son wishes that she would quit music for good.
• The knowledge of using a piano is running amok, wildly infected within the earth.
• The piano is being used as the jurors’ table when a trial judge is late to court.
• The sea is in love with the piano’s ivory keys.
• A pianist can feel the heartbeat of any bystander who sits at her piano.
• The conversations between a piano and a baby that lives in a music store.
• Someone has started playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata at a local bar.
• A man in medieval times discovers that other people also have their own pianos that are controlled by magic.
• Someone gives you a piano to work on. The piano has a bizarre defect.
• A man brings home a piano and the family doesn’t approve so he plays it in his room till it falls apart.
• You finally get to play a piano after moving halfway across the country and follow the sound of the music.
• An immigrant accepts any job to make money to buy a piano.
• The ghosts gather around the piano.
• Generally, the musician or singer has their hands on the piano in the studio.
• A piano coach was hired to help a young performer, but they begin to form feelings for one another.
• A man falls in love with the piano whom he befriends..
• You have to solve a maze in which piano keys are the corridors.
• You hate piano recitals.
• Create a secret society centered around your piano.
• The ghost of your favorite composer is being sad because you don’t listen to his piano concertos.
• A composer’s piano gets smashed by drunk and mad spouses during an argument.
• For every key on a piano, there’s a human somewhere with a song inspired by that piano key. Imagine who these people are and their unique histories.
• Write a love song to an instrument that you play.
• Stories about a shopping trip for a piano.
• A man is practicing the piano when he hears a knock at the door. His new neighbor asks if he can join in.
• Someone has unintentionally killed a member of the circus with their piano.
• A piano is abandoned.
• A piano is loved in a crime scene.
• The notes leaving a piano tell a story to a pianist who can’t read.
• A typographer is hired by a piano to demand that a prison stop making duplicate keys.
• An old piano is found in the Elderly Care Home where your best friend lives which you played together when they were younger.
• There was another, hidden piano in the storage of a piano museum.
• The piano used to belong to a beloved rockstar until a few recent burglaries.
• Someone made complaints of piano noise to a residence that has a piano in it.
• Write a love story from the perspective of starting to learn to play the piano.
• There is a piano that teleports anyone that touches it to another universe.
• A piano is playing itself and has gained a following.
• Write about the difficulty of playing piano for a long period of time.
• The only instrument missing from every symphony is the piano.
• Someone was allowed to spend five minutes in an apartment where a piano was the only thing.
• Pianos appeal to people more when they know the composer.
• Phractured as a pianich!
• Dilworth Piano Company is opening a store to showcase their new design for an instrument counter.
• What name do you give to a battle between pianos?
• An eccentric piano tuner lives in an old piano.
• The moon harbors a tune that comes out of 8 pianos regularly featured on the beach.
• A young boy dreams of becoming a piano player, but secretly likes writing books.
• A pianist has a fear of being noticed by non-pianists.
• A pianist is really upset because they’re going to get rather simple accompaniments for the song they wrote.
• The piano cannot bear the sound of a single cheery note.
• A teacher is making a lesson for her students to practice on the piano but is forced to be quiet because the students in the school room next door are talking too loud at the same time as them and their teacher.
• A group of people live on the moon.
• Piano rolls pinned to the keyboard are like handwriting, and can be deciphered to create a new song.
• At a party, strange things follow a group of people to a piano they eventually use.
• A band helps a blind boy fall in love with the piano.
• Write an essay about what the piano means to you.
• In Germany, you can learn about history by playing the piano.
• The ghost of the composer refuses to leave the piano unless it is played a certain way.
• You come out of the closet to your parents, but then they break out a piano and start playing music you can’t stand.
• A child hates piano but goes on to prove their teacher wrong.
• Write a short story about why somebody hates the piano.
• Write a letter to a friend about your feelings after getting a new piano.
• Write a song/poem no longer than 4 stanzas about a piano.
• Unable to break the habits from his parents, astronaut Alex Jones visits Jupiter.
• A pianist practices diligently in order to try and earn her father’s praise.
• A ghost haunts a piano meant for a wealthy family but when they lose their fortune the piano is sold to a smaller home owned by two sisters. The sisters do not know the piano is haunted and name it Rosa after their grandmother.
• A simple sheet becomes a complicated story when the notes cease to make sense.
• What happens when new pianos are built, but people can’t see, feel or hear them? How can their creator stop his piano and the ones just like it from making music on their own?
• A giant piano has run over a town.
• The object that is stealing notes from pianos is identified
• The trees started growing piano keys on their branches.
• You need to figure out how the piano got into your basement.
• You can no longer find your way home, and all you have to guide you is old sheet music that you wrote.
• A young child has always wanted a piano but musical instruments are a luxury.
• Your apartment building is set on fire. You ask most people to escape via the fire escape, but the piano seems to warn you about holding any ill will to the one who is responsible for your piano getting burned.
• Write a short story about a concert pianist and his piano.
• A rich man wants a piano but has little knowledge about instruments and sees the instrument merely as a status symbol.
• A photographer wants to capture the pianos of the world.
• Write a story from the perspective of a piano that is mourning the death of a loved one.
• Mother plays piano for their son every night to put him to sleep.
• A ghost haunting a piano is calling for someone to come along and play it.
• There once was a computer so advanced and intelligent that it could be taught music on the piano.
• You are competing to become the greatest pianist in the world but you can’t play piano very well.
• Write the lyrics to a song about a piano that lost its voice.
• Write from the perspective of two different pianos when a terrorist attacks at the Grand Theater.
• Write a dubstep song about the piano.
• Your high school is implementing a random drug-and-alcohol testing policy. The policy will fail due to practical issues and the involvement of students and faculty in a conspiracy to create a false test for drugs and alcohol.
• Write about a child who steals their family’s piano and then tries to breed pianos for profit.
• The key of E minor is a sacred key that has a curse put on it. If you play the key, the piano will begin to play on its own and kill you if you don’t finish playing it before the end of the day.
• A piano is found in the desert embedded in cement.
• Write about a girl who rebels from societal norms, refuses to wear modest clothing and eventually marries and moves to America.
• Someone discovers a piano floating in the ocean with a letter inside the case.
• An aspiring pianist performs at his first piano recital after losing his love in a brutal accident.
• Write a memory story about a piano that has sentimental value.
• Write about how you told someone about their mistakes on the piano.
• A love story told through music, a deceased love lives on through a person’s organs decorated with their favorite covers.
• A pianist becomes the Halloween decorations of a gothic-themed home.
• A piano lies dying in a junkyard.
• A love story between a pianist and the piano.
• A piano that never made a sound.
• Find a tune in a piano that isn’t in any musical scale.
• You are an instrument inside a concert hall.
• Write a letter to your piano.
• Write about a person who finds the electronic soundtrack of a video game incredibly emotional.
• Write a poem about a piano going through the night to an ocean to ultimately feel free.
• Write a story about a famous pianist.
• A group of pianos become sentient after going through the black hole of Calcutta.
• The story of a man who falls madly in love. However, he doesn’t know if she’s interested in the piano or somebody else.
• A pianist drags a piano to the edge of a steep cliff to play his final performance.
• Piano rolls can be eaten and also used for dance steps.
• An aspiring pianist is admitted to a piano conservatory, but drama and love interests soon gets in the way of her practice.
• He goes to the hospital and plays things for his ailing mother, but to his dismay, that doesn’t change how she is feeling.
• Write about a ghost piano that only you can hear in your house.
• An aspiring teenager is trying to buy a piano.
• Why does a piano need a pianist?
• Build fireworks from stolen pianos.
• A spinning bicycle tire is powering a small piano.
• Children are at the piano recital and they are scared of the new piano teacher.
• Write a 140-character short story on twitter derived from the piano prompts above.
• Write “piano tuning”, “piano melody”, or any similar phrase as a short story with a beginning, middle and end.
• A piano is forced to perform at an animal talent show. As the crowd gets louder, the instrument must find a way to stay in tune.
• A collector comes across a mysterious piano and decides to hear how it sounds.
• Write a story in which the first word of every other sentence is, “The piano…”
• Piano music playing in the distance turns out to be coming from your cat.
• Write from the perspective of a piano.
• Write a story about Guy Fawkes having a relationship with a pianist.
• Halfway through writing the second book of a series, the author realizes that the storyline has been changed for his main character’s uncle, who really loved playing the piano.
• A boy finds music notes, secrets, and strange clues written in a dusty old piano.
• Your last piano note is stuck.
• A bully hides in the piano.
• You lost something and got your daughter’s piano teacher to help you find it.
• What would you create if you found a piano in the woods?
• Write a 100-word essay from the perspective of a piano.
• Before Orpheus played his lyre, people had only heard stories. After Orpheus played his lyre, people had only seen the stories in their head. Before and after the piano was invented, people have heard vague stories. Acts of war, heartbreak, and love that fade quickly.
• A girl who never tried playing the piano because she thought that it was too hard became an amazing player after playing the beautiful piano for the first time.
• Write about a world where the keys on the piano always say the actual note played.
• When a professional pianist visits a retirement home, he begins writing a song for them.
• How does a green sound?
• A pianist loses his hands, but doesn’t mind so much because he can play whatever he wants from memory.
• The piano is being renovated so it can be used again for concerts.
• Write from the perspective of a piano.
• You’re a piano in an orphanage. Write a story from the perspective of a piano in an orphanage.
• Strange noises emanate from the next door neighbor’s house when the lights are off.
• Piano notes are falling from the sky during a dreary day in a small town.
• Someone is having a crisis. Connect that to a piano.
• A galactic observatory picks up a song on its radio and is trying to determine its origin.
• A lonesome piano is thrown out from a building onto a busy street which causes it to multiply.
• A cat sits at the end of a piano keyboard until he knocks all the keys down.
• Write about why you enjoy playing the piano.
• Write a story about three keys on a piano.
• The piano got a flat tire and can’t sound those smugly sustained minor sevenths anymore.
• Write about a traveling musician or their instrument.
• You’ve been moved into a mansion. The only thing weird about it is that it has a new, old piano in it that nobody recognizes.
• A synthesizer is jealous of the piano’s popularity and tries to take over the world.
• A piano is jealous of guitars.
• Woman was so addicted to sugar that she started to play the piano instead of eating it
• Two of the same piano live in two different time periods.
• A patient is writing lines for his wife on the piano with a quill, but she comes in and startles him.
• The story is a woman who fell in love with a man working at a piano.
• Somebody named a street after their piano.
• A musician builds a smaller piano that can fit in their pocket.
• An obituary for a piano.
• The keys of a piano turn children into adults at night.
• You were reincarnated as a skilled and famous pianist.
• Look at the piano as a jewel in a museum.
• Write about a ghost that hits the piano keys in the middle of the night.
• Give the advice for struggling pianists out there.
• Write a story about a rundown piano.
• Somebody is trying to learn piano, but struggles with figuring out one of the keys.
• Write from the perspective of an owner who leaves the piano to his granddaughter in his will but wanted something to be sealed inside it.
• Piano players are in high school. One of the members has to leave for their family from their home country. That person is having a hard time saying their goodbyes to their loved ones.
• A child plays the piano at his parent’s wedding.
• Explain why you love the piano.
• When you hear the piano you can recall everything.
• The other animals in the zoo begin to resent the elephant with her piano.
• Write from the perspective of a piano in the 1800’s.
• A musician is anxious about competition on the piano.
• Write a story about the piano as if you were not even aware of the sounds that it makes.
• A musician moves into a haunted house and tries a variety of rituals to try and contact the ghosts of the house, and finally he notices strange doings on top of the piano.
• When you try to buy a piano, you travel to Tibet to find only one, but before you travel back…
• A piano is invented that can express human emotions.
• Write a story about what it takes for a piano to make its own music.
• A lonely man thinks of painting his room black and putting a piano in it.
• When your hands play the piano and your heart wishes it wasn’t in the room.
• You notice a piano on the side of the road and take it home for your children to learn how to play.
• A man finds out his girlfriend has been cheating on him with her piano teacher.
• The music that comes from a lonely piano is the soundtrack of the city.
• Find a random object and from that object write a short story describing an event that happened to you earlier in the week.
• Write a tale where the writer reveals something about her childhood every time she plays a different key on the piano.
• An ex-teacher of the artist comes back to reclaim his beloved piano but can’t stand hearing the constant humming of the piano each night.
• You were on the longest piano in the world. Fortunately, it was so long, it had a city.
• An English professor always hated the tree he grew up around because it always shuttered whenever someone played the piano nearby.
• A bureaucrat at the DMV has to decide whether your piano is an instrument or not and therefore requires you to get a license for it.
• Ghosts of dead pianists haunt a library and play between the shelves.
• What does the girlfriend of the person who rescued the piano think about their relationship?
• Claimed pianos are being vandalized.
• There’s a piano wedding cake.
• It’s dusk and you find yourself on the piano keys of a church organ. Everything around you blends into reds and blues as you commute between each black key. What happened in the days leading up to the present. Where are you going? What is making the organ stop working right?
• Your parents rented a piano from a pawn shop as a birthday gift.
• A group of children discovered the secrets behind a certain melody.
• If you sat on a piano, what note would it be?
• Your piano teacher is trying to make you practice and you’d much rather download music onto your iPod.
• An antique piano has found a way to keep from being sold and put in storage.
• Someone breaks into your house and plays the piano.
• A teenager breaks into the music section of a library and starts playing random notes. One key sticks. A string snaps. The sound adds something creepy to the room.
• The small keys of a piano are only good for wizards.
• A child is afraid of the poltergeists that’s contained within a piano.
• Write a letter to the piano that was part of your life before the piano was thrown away.
• A pianist enters a bizarre contest where he must improvise on a train journey to the city and it becomes his form of meditation.
• A man walking and playing the piano. Talking about his thoughts and his feelings while he plays. He felt connected with this isn’t only an instrument.
• The theme of the pianos in a coliseum was inspired from the underground rock band, The Flying Pianos.
• A refugee has only a piano for comfort.
• A grown man who played piano as a child has recently come back into your life. He says he wants to show you something.
• The universe is a set of notes that only the piano can play and evil is an empty key phrase that only the piano cares about.
• Write about a pianist who has to perform using a broken keyboard.
• A woman mourns the loss of her piano that was killed in a fire.
• A piano is written into the story as early as the first line and throughout it.
• A dying woman records a piano performance as a final gift for her unborn child.
• The keys of a piano started but it plays out of tune, it sounds horrible but the musicians must play the piano or else they die utterly.
• A monster only attacks pianos.
• Someone is interested in buying your piano but you’re not sure if it’s the right choice to sell it.
• The inside of a piano has a surgery chamber.
• You’ve just been reincarnated as a grand piano.
• A city is built around one very old, large, and crowded piano.
• Write a broken love story as a broken piano.
• A former pianist struggles to find his love for the instrument and becomes the owner of a pawn shop.
• See how many ways you can think of to “crash” at a piano.
• An aspiring pianist is left with just a piece of the piano.
• Write a marriage proposal for someone that loves the piano.
• A couple falls in love while making out on a piano that was undergoing restoration.
• Someone writes a love letter they intend for their object of affection and discard it. A pianist finds it then tries to contact the owner.
• The piano in your old basement is the only one to survive when your house is blown up. It’s playing gets you into heaven.
• The protagonist is stuck inside of their piano during a break-in.
• The man who played piano in a café fell in love with the waitress but lost his piano in a fire. Now, he wants his piano back.
• It’s been years since you’ve last played the piano.
• A writer is sitting on his truck and playing the guitar when someone throws a piano out of a tenth-story window.
• Your piano movers break your piano by accident.
• Write a story about a piano that fell in love with a choir.
• A man refuses to talk once he starts playing the piano, brilliant piano music does not describe the sounds you hear.
• You’re unexpectedly stuck playing piano in traffic during rush hour.
• A human is cursed to share their life with a piano.
• A professor finds out that his estranged son who plays the piano is dying from cancer and plans a road trip back home to reconnect with him.
• A piano builder crosses over into the afterlife.
• You are invited to a piano that no longer works because someone built a house on top of it.
• A composer is told to write a symphony titled “Nocturne”. His unrequited love for his pupil makes this a daunting task.
• A journalist wins a writing award and goes on the radio to talk about her success on the program that talks about piano songs.
• Write a screenplay for a romcom featuring two twin pianos who are separated at birth and have lifelong affairs with two players.
• A vicious lion broke into the zoo and the animals are having a meeting to decide what to do about it. One vote doesn’t matter. The lion is about to tear up the elephant’s trunk. You’d know this if you read it on instagram. Suddenly, a puppy makes puppy sounds. When his owner isn’t looking, the puppy wishes it was as big as the cat so it could make its own decisions and not rely on the owner. Instantly the puppy transforms into a cat. The lion is attacking the cat. The cat thinks it will try to communicate with the lion like it would with a tiny kitten. But it doesn’t work. The cat says, “NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!”, NO, NO! The lion is fighting it but the cat is too heavy. The lion rips it’s britches, a loud mew escapes from beneath. The lion screams
• You are given a name depending on what you play.
• A carpenter thinks a piano is a table and replaces the legs leaving it unable to play until someone discovers the mistake and when it’s discovered too late whether or not it’s built right becomes the catalyst for a definition of real piano.
• Musician uses piano to trace the physical changes to herself over her lifetime.
• An out of shape vampire plays the piano to stay in shape.
• The piano chooses to play only music that brings people of different personalities together.
• A musician is trying to write a song for the piano but becomes completely lost when someone asks him to play something from one of his favorite bands.
• The following is a list of topics about writing about piano.
• Somebody breaks into your house and plays the piano. Write from the burglar’s perspective.
• A young child discovers piano.
• Write a poem about either the playing of or the changing of a piano.
• A method for playing the piano becomes so popular with everyone that teachers have to stop using it.
• Write the story of a lost piano.
• Inspired by the feeling of the piano made of ivory.
• a story in which a piano isn’t instantly destroyed upon introduction.
• Choose a particular sound effect from a movie, and write a story about a character hearing the same effect on their piano.
• An elaborate piano is found in an attic that plays itself.
• A piano is caught following a young boy around the wilderness.
• The piano that you’re playing becomes sentient and asks you to stop.
• A man discovers a piano that can allow anyone to play a piano perfectly.
• The piano came to life and cursed the day death came to the church and murdered everyone inside.
• Write a small story with a scene where someone falls in love with someone only to find out they are a piano teacher.
• He sells his piano to make extra money.
• Young pianists are sent to a world of pianos as an alternate realm.
• Write a letter to a pianist from a fan.
• Write piano notes that describe a time in your life.
• You meet a solitary pianist near a battlefield.
• Write a story about a haunted and depressing restaurant, whose owner will chain himself in his office every once in a while. He will then “play” the piano to keep the horrors from coming in.
• A double-decker bus crashes into a building and everyone on it dies, except for a person at a piano, which landed on top of him. He is stuck there for over 12 hours with the last thing he wants to do being play the piano the song he is plunking at the time. The song is actually pretty good.
• Write a scene about someone in love with a piano.
• Your companion dies and your piano is the last thing left of them, splattered with their blood.
• A mad scientist uses your old piano to conduct an experiment, but something goes horribly wrong.
• Write a story about a ghost piano…or vice versa.
• A robotic female creams herself over the piano in a bar.
• An awkward guy asks out the piano player in his orchestra, but their first date doesn’t go very well.

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