Voice Journal (Participation/assessment Due Weds.)
Write the page of your story where we meet the character.
I need to know
- Name of the character
- The central conflict of the story.
Short Story Prompts
If you want to write a short story and are having trouble coming up with ideas, why not try some of these short story prompts?
Science Fiction Short Story Prompts
- The Internet suddenly shuts down, and no one knows why or how to get it back running again.
- A struggling writer in the modern-day world gets an unexpected visit from her great-great-great-grandmother, who was a well-known author in the 1800s.
- A modern-day city kid with no concept of saving money time travels to the Great Depression era.
- All the chicken in the world suddenly disappears—what happens to all the fast food?
- A scientist discovers a way to make food capsules: just add water and it comes out as a full serving.
- An alien ship releases a deadly virus on the earth, and scientists work around the clock to find a cure before the aliens invade the planet.
- Five families volunteer to start a colony on the Moon.
- A web-conferencing company finds a way to incorporate holograms into video calls.
- The water supply of an entire community suddenly spews out soda.
- A fiction writer writes a story every night, but every morning the manuscript disappears and the characters show up in town.
Comedy Short Story Prompts
- A group of friends steal a neighbor’s watermelon and find ways to frame other people.
- A family has all these ideals about taking in foster children, but when they come, everything flies out the window (sounds like “Instant Family”).
- A homeschooling mom of five ends up homeschooling five more kids when a neighbor gets in an accident and needs to stay in the hospital.
- A pastor suddenly loses his church building to a legal battle, and has to think up creative ways for his congregation to meet.
- An elderly couple spends all their money on lottery tickets, and their three grown children can’t agree what to do with them.
- Three friends ride their bikes cross-country and meet strange characters along the way.
- An introvert who runs an online business is forced to meet people when one of his books goes viral.
- All the toilet paper factories are sabotaged by a mysterious fiend; how will the world cope?
- Two elderly brothers, one blind and the other deaf, are trying to make their way home in time for a Thanksgiving family reunion.
- An ice cream company explores new flavors and gets a surprising level of reactions on social media.
- One Page, double-spaced or single-spaced.
- A paragraph describing the character as if your readers meet them in your novel for the first time; Descriptions; Background.
- The character speaks (voice journal) for the rest of the page. It could be about anything. They could be giving an introductory speech or arguing with someone. Be creative.