100 Story Ideas for Novels and Short Stories (and How to Come Up With Your Own)

A story idea is the raw material that gets a story moving. A good one turns into a “what if?” that immediately puts someone in trouble, and the trouble is where the plot starts.

This guide has 100 story ideas sorted by genre, seven ways to come up with your own when the list runs dry, and five questions for choosing one. After that comes a short template that grows a one-line idea into something you can write a first chapter from, and a simple way to keep the ideas you have in the shower from disappearing.

At a glance

1. An idea is not yet a story. It becomes one when someone wants something and something stands in the way
2. Ideas rarely arrive while you wait. Writing a “what if” line, pairing two unrelated things or starting from a job you know usually shakes one loose
3. Treat any idea from a list as a starting point. Mix two of them, or twist one detail, and it becomes yours
4. Write new ideas down as one line and a date, then look back over them once a week

Idea, premise, theme: what's the difference?

People use these words loosely, but they point at different sizes of thing.

You don't need a theme before you start. Write a few chapters and you'll notice what you keep circling back to. That is usually the theme, and you can name it then.

How to come up with story ideas: seven ways

Each method below comes with a line showing how They Say I'm a Dark Mage, but All I'm Good At Is Digging Dirt, the example story in TypeTak's Web Novel Course, might have started from it.

1. Write one “what if” line

Take an ordinary situation and change one thing. If that change leaves someone in trouble, you have an idea.

• What if a magic academy's judging stone mispronounced “earth magic” as “dark magic”?

2. Pair two things that don't belong together

Pick a genre and something that has no business in it. Keep two columns in a notebook, one for genres and one for jobs or objects, and draw one from each.

• Magic academy + farm work → a commoner boy who knows how to plow, surrounded by noble students

3. Start from a job or a place

Picture an ordinary day in a job or place most readers know little about. The problems only insiders know about make good plot.

• A farm kid who reads soil for a living notices land going bad before anyone else does

4. Flip one trope

Choose a scene readers have seen a hundred times and reverse the outcome.

• The hero hides a secret power and gets found out → the hero hides nothing, and everyone is convinced he does

5. Hide your own feelings behind a character

Take something you've found hard to say and move it to another person in another world. For first-time writers this is the idea that lasts longest.

• A kid who wants to help his family, but whose dream looks small to everyone else

6. Steal one “why?” from the news

Don't copy the facts. Keep only the question that occurred to you while reading, then make up the answer inside your story.

• An article says it takes years to restore contaminated soil → if a spell could do it overnight, why would nobody bother learning it?

7. Start from a single scene or line of dialogue

Sometimes a scene shows up with no before or after. Write it down and work backward by asking why this person is here.

• The exam hall goes silent and someone whispers, “Dark… magic?”

100 story ideas by genre

These are one-liners, so use them as raw material. Combine two or three, or run one through the methods above, and it becomes your idea. The genre sections are the ones readers search for most; short story ideas and fanfic ideas have their own sections at the end.

Horror story ideas (13)

[Horror]
1. A night-shift nurse notices one patient's chart is updated every hour, though the room has been empty for a week
2. A family moves into a house whose previous owners left a list of rules taped inside every cupboard
3. Every photo you take shows one more person standing behind you than the last
4. A town holds a festival every autumn, and nobody under thirty knows what it's for
5. A baby monitor picks up a second child's breathing
6. A hiking trail appears on maps only in years when someone goes missing on it
7. Your new roommate never seems to sleep, eat or leave, and is always cheerful about it
8. A voice assistant starts finishing your sentences before you say them
9. A lighthouse keeper's logbook describes ships that won't be built for forty years
10. Everyone in the support group has survived the same accident, but they all remember it differently
11. A daycare worker realizes the children's drawings are of the same tall man
12. The motel's ice machine hums a lullaby your grandmother used to sing
13. A storm cuts a small island off, and the ferry schedule on the wall starts listing tomorrow's dead

Fantasy and romantasy ideas (13)

[Fantasy / romantasy]
1. The last dragon keeper loses her job when the kingdom's dragons vanish overnight
2. A mapmaker records the land that disappears, one square each night
3. Magic is taxed, and the protagonist is the tax inspector nobody invites to dinner
4. The chosen one pulls the legendary sword from the stone, and only the hilt comes out
5. After the dark lord falls, the hero's party goes to court over their pensions
6. A spirit will only bond with you if you give up your favorite memory
7. A court scribe deliberately writes one wrong letter in every prophecy
8. A commoner hired to tutor a fae prince falls for the bodyguard sworn to kill her
9. Enemies to lovers: two rival healers are bound by a spell that makes each feel the other's wounds
10. A city where people gain power by taking someone's name
11. Only children born outside the city walls can understand monsters
12. An earth mage who can only move soil is mistaken for a dark mage
13. The oldest bridge in the kingdom starts talking, and it has opinions about the king

Romance story ideas (13)

[Romance]
1. Fake dating: she needs a date for her sister's wedding, and the only option is the contractor renovating her kitchen
2. Second chance: ten years after a broken engagement, they're hired to plan the same wedding
3. Grumpy and sunshine: a night-shift baker and a morning-shift barista share one tiny shop
4. Enemies to lovers: two neighbors who've fought over a shared fence for years get stuck in the same elevator
5. Forced proximity: two strangers book the same cabin for a week by mistake, and the road is snowed in
6. Friends to lovers: best friends make a pact to marry at thirty-five if they're still single, and the birthday is next month
7. A matchmaker who can't find a match for herself
8. An editor and the author who has never once hit a deadline
9. He keeps lending her his umbrella on the morning bus without ever saying a word
10. A divorcing couple has to live together for one more month to sell the house
11. Her blind date turns out to be her new boss
12. They only ever meet at the dog park, and neither knows the other's name
13. The fake relationship has an end date, and on that day one of them has to tell the truth

Mystery and thriller ideas (12)

[Mystery / thriller / cozy]
1. A secondhand book contains a note with your name and today's date
2. The only police officer on a small island goes on vacation, and that is the week of the murder
3. An estate cleaner finds a diary in a dead man's house, and it was written by someone still alive
4. One person in a reunion group chat never reads any message, then replies to an old one
5. A building manager finds three minutes missing from the security footage
6. Someone on the wedding guest list died two years ago
7. You wake up with no memory, and everyone says you did it
8. Cozy mystery: the owner of a knitting shop solves crimes by noticing who suddenly changed yarn
9. A claims investigator gets suspicious because the accident scene is too clean
10. A bed-and-breakfast guest book has the same sentence written on the same date every year
11. The package on your doorstep lists you as the sender
12. A true-crime podcaster realizes the listener feeding her tips knows things only the killer could

Sci-fi story ideas (12)

[Sci-fi]
1. In a market where memories are bought and sold, one man only collects the cheapest ones
2. The last hairdresser on a Mars colony ship
3. An AI assistant notices the breakup before its owner does
4. A teenager transfers to a city where a day lasts thirty hours
5. You wake from cryosleep and find your job in a museum
6. A repair technician fixes machines that record and play back dreams
7. A clone attends the funeral of the person it was copied from
8. A salesman for a company that sells weather
9. The first day time travel is legal, seen through a border control officer
10. A retired chef teaches a robot to cook
11. Everyone can see how many years they have left on their wrist, except you
12. A deep-space crew receives a distress call in their own voices

Dystopian story ideas (10)

[Dystopian]
1. Citizens are assigned a lifetime word limit, and a teenager has fifty words left
2. Sleep is rationed by social score, and the protagonist sells their hours to a stranger
3. A city has outlawed handwriting, and a calligrapher teaches in secret
4. Every child takes an exam at twelve that decides which floor of the tower they'll live on
5. A government app rates your honesty in real time, and it just gave your mother zero
6. In a flooded world, the last dry hill is run as a members-only club
7. Memories of the old world are illegal, and a librarian hides books inside bread
8. Weather is private property, and rain costs extra
9. A border guard is ordered to stop the one person who taught her to read
10. Everyone wears the same face, and someone starts painting faces on walls

LitRPG and progression ideas (9)

[LitRPG / progression]
1. The system gives everyone a class, and yours is “Spectator”
2. A dungeon core's only goal is to keep adventurers from getting hurt
3. A maxed-out player is reset to level one, but keeps the walkthrough notes
4. The quest giver NPC realizes he's in a game and starts lying about rewards
5. A town baker gets a skill tree, and every branch is about bread
6. A healer with no attack skills must solo a dungeon to get home
7. Every time you level up, you forget someone you love
8. A dungeon appears in a suburban cul-de-sac, and the homeowners' association wants it gone
9. The tutorial never ends

Short story ideas (10)

Short stories work best when the idea is small enough to resolve in one scene or one evening. These ten fit that size.

[Short stories]
1. A neighborhood bathhouse's last month before closing
2. A daughter tells her father she won't take over his dry cleaner's
3. A rural bus driver and the old woman she drives every day, who never says where she's going
4. Divorced parents meet again to plan their daughter's wedding
5. A librarian tracks down the person who borrowed one book forty years ago
6. A brother and sister clearing out the family home find their father's notebook
7. A retired teacher takes a part-time job at a former student's shop
8. A deli owner knows what's happening in a regular's life from how their order changes
9. A late-night photo studio waits for its last customer
10. A family argument that resurfaces every Thanksgiving, told from the dog's point of view

Fanfic ideas (8)

Fanfic ideas are usually patterns rather than plots: you take characters you already love and drop them into a new situation. These work with almost any fandom. How to start a fic, from tags to AUs, is in How to Write Fanfiction.

[Fanfic]
1. Coffee shop AU: the two characters who fought the most are barista and regular
2. Missing scene: what happened in the hours between two canon chapters
3. Fix-it: the death that hurt the most never happens, and everything after it changes
4. Role swap: the hero and the villain wake up in each other's position
5. Five times they almost said it, and one time they did
6. Canon divergence: one character makes the other choice at the story's turning point
7. Modern AU: the cast are flatmates who share one bathroom
8. Epilogue: ten years after the finale, the group meets again

Five questions for choosing a story idea

When three or four ideas start pulling at you, use these questions to pick one. The idea with the most yeses usually lasts.

1. Do you want to keep writing it? An idea you're curious about outlasts one you think other people will like.
2. Does someone want something? A situation without a character who wants something doesn't move.
3. Does something stand in their way? A person, a rule, time running out, the character themselves.
4. Can you see one scene from the first chapter? If you can see the first scene, you can start.
5. Can you say it in one sentence? Try explaining it to a friend in one sentence. If it takes five, the idea isn't settled yet.

Template: from idea to story

A one-line idea isn't a story yet. Fill in these boxes and it grows into something you can write a first chapter from. Copy the box into a notes app or document.

[Idea in one line]

[Protagonist]
Who they are:
Where they stand now:

[What they want]
What they want at the start:

[What stands in the way]
Who or what:
Why it won't simply step aside:

[First event]
What breaks the protagonist's routine:
The scene that ends chapter one:

[Roughly where it ends]
Do they get what they wanted, fail, or get something else?

Here is the template filled in for They Say I'm a Dark Mage, but All I'm Good At Is Digging Dirt.

• Idea in one line: an earth mage who can only move soil is mistaken for a dark mage
• Protagonist: Clay Rowen, a commoner boy from a farming village, looked down on for having little mana
• What he wants: to earn a certificate, get a steady job and support his family
• What stands in the way: a judging stone with a slurred voice and the prejudice of noble students. The bigger the misunderstanding grows, the harder it gets to graduate quietly
• First event: at the entrance exam for Belkadia Royal Academy of Magic, the judging stone announces Clay's element and the hall goes silent. Chapter one ends with someone whispering, “Dark… magic?”
• Roughly where it ends: instead of the ordinary job he wanted, he gets the first post teaching earth magic (example)

Once the boxes are full, the next step is the overall shape from start to finish. Kishotenketsu shows one way to split a long web serial into story, arc and chapter, and Part 2: Board of the course lays out the example story's whole plot on one screen.

Keep an idea notebook

Ideas show up on the bus and in the shower far more often than at the desk, and the ones you don't write down rarely come back. A paper notebook and a phone note both work; what matters is having a fixed way to write them.

• One line and a date. If you try to write a paragraph, you'll put it off. Add one word about what triggered it (something you saw or overheard) and it'll be easier to recall later.
• Look back once a week. Mark the ones you're still curious about. An idea marked two weeks in a row is ready for the template above.
• Don't delete the ones you dropped. A weak idea often comes back to life when it meets another one. They're raw material for method 2.
• Keep scenes and lines of dialogue separate. A scene like the one in method 7 may end up in a story you're already writing, so give it its own page.

Where to test an idea

You don't have to finish a novel to find out whether an idea works. Posting a first chapter or a short piece shows you quickly whether readers want more.

• Royal Road for fantasy, LitRPG and progression serials
• Wattpad for romance, romantasy, horror and teen fiction
• AO3 for fanfic
• r/WritingPrompts on Reddit for trying out a premise as a short response

Common mistakes

Collecting ideas and never writing. The more ideas pile up, the harder it gets to choose. Pick one with the five questions, write a first chapter, and only then go back to the others.

Treating the idea as the story. “A market where memories are sold” is a backdrop. It becomes a story once you know who in that market wants what, and what stops them.

Hunting for an idea no one has ever had. Almost nothing is completely new. Two writers can start from the same idea and end up with different stories, because the person who wants something and the thing in the way are different.

Growing a story idea in TypeTak

TypeTak is an AI writing editor where you write alongside an agent. It's for taking the one line you picked from a list like this and growing it into a story you can write a first chapter from.

• A protagonist and a world come out of one line. Talk a line through with the agent, like “an earth mage mistaken for a dark mage,” and the protagonist's goal, what stands in the way and the rules of the world get decided one by one.
• What you decide stays organized. The characters, places and rules you settle on are sorted into your World by character and place, so weeks later you can open it and see exactly where you left off.
• The next idea doesn't get lost. When another idea hits mid-chapter, jot it in a Memo and get straight back to the scene.

To watch a one-line idea become a full world from the start, see Part 1: Ideation of the course.

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