Over 100 Great Short Story Ideas to Get Published in 2023

Last Updated on May 7, 2024 by Nathaniel Tower

Update: We now have over 100 short story ideas on this list. These are all bona fide story prompts that you can turn into full short stories. These are not just writing exercises to get your brain doodling. If you write one of these ideas, you have a very good chance of being published. These are truly unique ideas that you won’t find anywhere else.

If you write one of these stories, I am very confident you will get published this year. Dozens of writers have contacted me about previous story ideas from this list and the success they have achieved.

Be sure to add this page to your favorites because I will be continuously updating it with new ideas for short stories. 

If you’re anything like me, your ideas for short stories are few and far between these days (I’m guessing you’re in a similar boat since you most likely got here by Googling short story ideas or something similar). Well, this post is going to solve all your short story inspiration issues and help you become a better writer.

Skip the intro and go straight to the best short story ideas.

How to come up with good short story ideas

I used to get new short story ideas all the time. I found inspiration for new stories everywhere. On walks, in the shower, at work, in the car, at the grocery store, at a funeral. It didn’t matter where I was. My brain was always looking for the next thing to write about. That’s what writers are supposed to do, right?

I also used to have one or two short stories accepted for publication every single week. Yeah, I was on a roll back then. Now I’m kind of a bum. Not only have I not had anything published in over a year, I also haven’t submitted or even written a new short story in at least as long. On the bright side, my rejection rate is 0% these days!

The best way to come up with short story ideas is to observe the world around you:

• Go for a walk or drive
• Read a book
• Sit in a park and watch people, animals, and the clouds
• Just be observant, but don’t try too hard to think of ideas for short stories.

When you’re trying to think about story ideas, you often come up empty. When you just focus on what’s happening around you, the ideas start to flow. Just make sure you have a pen and paper with you to record those ideas before they vanish.

The creativity of the story is not accidental. In addition to being inspired by the external environment, satisfactory stationery is also very important. Therefore, as a writer, you should have your own unique custom pens and customize them according to your favorite style. In addition to recording creative ideas, it can also be used to sign signatures for readers. It is of great significance!

If you’re struggling to come up with new ideas or write one of these stories, then try these tips to beat writer’s block.

Writing prompts vs. short story ideas

You’re probably wondering to yourself: Is this just another list of writing prompts? 

I’m glad you asked. The answer is a resounding, “No.”

There are hundreds of blog posts and articles out there containing dozens upon dozens of short story writing prompts. That’s all well and good, but there are two problems I typically have with those lists:

• The prompts are often more like writing exercises that get the ink flowing, but they don’t produce real short stories. Things like “tell the story of a scar” or “tell a story about what happens when you come upon a big fortune.” Give me a break.
• The prompts that are worthwhile have typically already been done to death. We’re talking blatant ripoffs of famous published stories or a bunch of tired tropes that no one really wants to read about any more.  Either way, you should avoid these cliches like the plague.

Okay, so now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about some ideas for short stories that haven’t been overdone. Many of these are ideas from my list I’ve either never taken the time to write about or I started and never finished. Others are stories I’d like to see written. In both cases, I think these story ideas are better presented here for the many great writers out there rather than sitting locked away on my personal cloud.

The ultimate list of good short story ideas

I thought about bucketing these ideas together in groups, but I think it’s better for you to experience them as a massive list. That way you won’t skip down to a common theme and overlook the section of stories called “weird ass stories no one should ever write about.” Because those are the story ideas you really don’t want to skip.

There’s something for everyone on here. There are funny story ideas. Serious story ideas. Historical story ideas. Science fiction story ideas. Even short story ideas for high school students. You name it, it’s on here. And these are typically pretty specific ideas, not generic things like “write a short story about time travel.”

Okay, enough stalling. Here is the massive list of the best short story ideas you should start writing now (note: genders and identities don’t have to conform to the wording of the prompt):

1. A teacher is universally loved but hates absolutely everything about the students and other teachers. The teacher struggles with this every day and eventually bursts in a comedic but tragic way.
2. After 17 years of unemployment, a man or woman with no skills finally tries to find a job. The individual creates a fake resume making him/her look like a genius with tons of experience. The interview goes well and the main character soon has a job he/she is completely unqualified for. Somehow, it all works out.
3. A man who lives life hoping tragedy will strike him at every possible moment. No matter how much he is enjoying something, he always wants it to turn miserable and for either his loved ones or him to die.
4. A husband falls hopelessly in love with one particular feature of his wife and treats it like royalty while somewhat forsaking her.
5. A pizza delivery boy becomes obsessive after delivering a pepperoni pizza to the girl of his dreams.
6. A renowned baker never washes his/her hands.
7. A man keeps two insignificant secrets from his wife, and when revealed, these secrets tear apart their marriage but not for reasons you would expect.
8. A reformed criminal takes up gardening as a hobby and suddenly turns back to a life of crime using the plants as his alibi and minions.
9. The most mediocre person in the world suddenly finds himself to be the most popular and most beloved person in the world and he can’t figure out why.
10. In a futuristic world, everyone looks exactly the same but no one notices except for one person.
11. A man finds a new girlfriend and proposes to her at his wife’s funeral.
12. A suicidal man hangs onto life because he knows with absolute certainty that the world is ending in two weeks.
13. A wife grows tired of her husband’s disdain for her fear of lizards, so she decides to get revenge on him.
14. A man loses his wedding ring two days after his wife dies, and he is simultaneously relieved that she died before he lost it but also hopelessly depressed and desperate to try to get it back.
15. A crazy man erects a giant swing set in his front yard and everyone in the neighborhood wants to see it destroyed after it starts attracting a seedy crowd.
16. A woman is constantly trapped in whirlpools every time she takes a bath.
17. A woman becomes infuriated at work because everyone is always apologizing about every little thing.
18. A first-person narrator turns 40, but no one remembers his/her birthday even though they’ve always had a huge party in the past.
19. A first-person narrator becomes hated by esteemed magazines all over the world, and every magazine features hateful articles about him/her.
20. A man gets a phone call announcing his wife and daughter are dead, but the person on the phone starts laughing hysterically so the man doesn’t believe it and goes about his day. His callousness leads to him becoming the prime suspect in their murder even though they clearly weren’t murdered. He starts to wonder if the caller is the murderer even though he knows they weren’t murdered.
21. A futuristic tale that’s written by a robot and therefore the perfect piece of writing.
22. A man answers a job ad in the newspaper that promises tons of free money if he just waltzes into a room. He expects it is too good to be true, but it isn’t. Or is it?
23. A woman wakes up one morning in a world with no depth. She is completely flat, as is everything else in her room. However, when she goes outside, the world is three-dimensional everywhere else and she must learn to cope.
24. A colony of ants takes home inside a person’s left nostril.
25. A man with premature ejaculation issues is told he will last longer if he runs long distances. He becomes a world-class marathoner with a secret identity as an infamous porn star. He eventually finds it hard to keep up both acts (pun very much intended).
26. A man is standing on the corner of a busy street with his arm clearly tucked in his shirt pretending he is a disabled homeless veteran. A well-respected passerby becomes enraged and jumps out of his car to attack the man. The attack is documented and the attacker becomes the scourge of the world, with everyone else unable to recognize the homeless man was actually not disabled, not homeless, and not a vet.
27. A prolific writer who has written hundreds of novels one day realizes he’s never written about a writer, so he decides to write about a writer and soon learns that writing about writers is the worst thing in the world, but he becomes obsessed with the pursuit and ruins his entire career. Yes, this story idea requires you to write about a writer who is writing about writers! 
28. A wife sits down her husband and says she wants a baby. He agrees even though he doesn’t want one. At work, he complains about it and his coworker comes up with the brilliant idea of buying a yacht instead, because of course you can’t have a baby if you just bought a yacht you can’t afford. The man agrees even though he hates the water.
29. A man finds a bag of drugs in his teenage daughter’s dresser and decides to teach her a lesson by doing the entire bag of drugs, causing him to OD.
30. Alternate to #29: A man finds a bag of drugs in his teenage daughter’s dresser and decides to teach her a lesson by doing the drugs in front of her and her friends and acting super cool. All her friends think he is really cool, but the daughter hates him and promises never to do drugs again. But her dad becomes a drug addict.
31. A man marries a woman who never ages. They met when they were both eleven. When he turns twenty-five, he proposes to her and they get married even though she is still eleven in appearance. Everyone hates him because they think he is a pedophile, so they do terrible things to him.
32. A variation of #9: In a futuristic world, everyone realizes they all look exactly the same, but for some reason men and women are still drawn to specific partners and find them more attractive than the others.
33. A school named John Wilkes Booth High School has a renowned reputation because of incredible test scores and other achievements. Unfortunately, one day a newspaper links a terrorist attack to one of the students. The school thinks about changing its name to get rid of the attention but instead sets up a scholarship fund.
34. The narrator is positive his/her next door neighbor is a complete creep. The narrator struggles constantly with whether or not to turn the neighbor in even though there is no evidence. The narrator spends day and night trying to uncover the neighbor’s dark secrets.
35. A failed actor with a very small package decides to try out to be a porn star to get a big break.
36. A man’s life is derailed when he learns his wife is expecting and she begins to hate him for spending so much time working on his 3-D graphic novel.
37. A beautiful woman waiting for the bus becomes the obsession of the bus driver because he thinks she is too beautiful to wait for a bus.
38. A boring man that no one could possibly want to kill begins receiving death threats, causing him to wonder why anyone would possibly want to kill him.
39. A man finds himself in a strip club in the middle of nowhere and quickly realizes that everyone else in the strip club is exactly like him and none of them are even remotely interested in watching the strippers. In fact, he soon realizes that there are no strippers at all.
40. A friend shows up with a new invention that looks like nothing more than a stainless steel colander with a twenty-foot USB cable attached. Soon it is revealed that this device is a revolutionary mind-control device that will allow the narrator to gain control of anyone.
41. A man comes home to find his wife is gone. In her place is a squirrel who is much better at cooking, cleaning, and many other things than his wife was. He decides not to look for his wife and just live with the squirrel instead. Then his wife comes home several months later to find him co-habitating with a squirrel (in a non-sexual way), and she is furious that he didn’t look for her.
42. A blogger who hates football decides to analyze a football game on her blog. The blog post is brilliant and forces her into a life of watching football even though she hates every minute of it. Her commentary completely changes the game of football, but she constantly feels empty.
43. A man named Fabius Chute has his life changed by giving a beggar a quarter.
44. A man becomes so enraged by one of those stick-figure family decals on the back of a minivan that he goes around terrorizing everyone who has one on their vehicle.
45. After getting a divorce, a fantasy football champion must find a new league because he can’t be in a league hosted by his ex-brother-in-law. He finds an ad on Craigslist for a fantasy league that promises to be different. It is the Fantasy Murder League, and it requires players to murder people.
46. A man shows up five minutes late to his own murder. The murderers are upset that he’s late. He’s not even sure why he showed up at all.
47. A brother and sister accidentally kill a dog one summer. When they tell their dad, he tells them to let the dead bury the dead. So they toss the dog in the cemetery and it gets buried. Curious, they start killing other things to see if the dead continue burying them. Everything they kill gets buried. Meanwhile, signs begin appearing about missing animals, and the neighborhood is in panic mode.
48. A normal, average person dies, and over 40 people write very different obituaries about the person’s life. Some of them are hateful, some of them are loving, and the collection as a whole is a shocking look at how we will all be remembered by the different people we have touched.
49. A former well-respected scientist who has become the scourge of the scientific community figures out how to use Earth as a deadly weapon, but he doesn’t share his research with anyone.
50. A woman is convinced her goldfish has sleep apnea. She takes the goldfish to the doctor. The doctor falls in love with the fish and the woman falls in love with the doctor.
51. A woman wants to kill her husband even though she adores him in every way. She can’t figure out why she wants to kill him, but it’s all she can think about.
52. A man dies while trimming his fingernails.
53. A man meets the devil at a Dodgers game. The devil is not a Dodgers fan but never misses a game. He wears an Orioles hat and calls them the Pigeons. In fact, the devil calls everything by a different name.
54. A crazed man becomes convinced that the world needs an assassination in order to bring everyone together. He tries to hire someone to do it, but he soon realizes no one will do it for any price. So he debates whether or not he should do it even though he doesn’t want to assassinate anyone.
55. A boy finds out his mom is the lead singer of an emo band. All the kids at school listen to the band. He tries to keep the secret from them, but they all find out and begin to either torment him about it or be extra nice so they can meet his mom.
56. Tree limbs start growing out of a man’s armpits. Every day, a new tree limb. The doctors can’t figure it out. Eventually, the tree limbs become fully functioning arms. No one thinks of him any differently, but he hates having so many arms. It’s really hard to buy shirts.
57. A story called “Butt Babies.” I’m too embarrassed to tell you what this one was originally going to be about, so you decide what it is. I guarantee it’s not whatever you come up with, and I’m totally fine with that.
58. A woman loses a finger and is worried her husband won’t love her anymore. He still does. Then she loses a hand. He still loves her, but she thinks he treats her differently. Then she loses an arm. He still loves her, but she doesn’t believe it. Things keep progressing like this.
59. A man’s first day of prison is his cellmate’s last day. The two fall in love almost immediately and the one who is about to be paroled commits another crime so he can go back to prison.
60. A kid swallows a dandelion and soon has millions of dandelions growing out of her stomach and mouth. Every time she laughs, the room fills with dandelions. (This story needs to be titled “She Walks with Dandelions in Her Belly”)
61. A man constantly kills frogs because his wife is afraid of them. One day, he is arrested for killing so many frogs.
62. A never-ending bottle of cologne causes marital strife because the wife is convinced the man never uses it (she bought it as a gift), but he uses it every day. He begins applying so much that he smells terrible, but she still thinks he isn’t using it. He starts pouring it out in front of her and they watch it refill together, but she still doesn’t believe he is using it.
63. A grown man learns he is allergic to his mother, so he stops talking to her.
64. A runner is on the verge of completing the greatest athletic feat in the history of the world when he decides to stop mid-stride and walk away from the track forever. The crowd boos and hates him for his failure.
65. A wife trips going up the stairs one day only to discover one of the steps is missing. The husband is incredulous. This story can go in one of two directions: either he becomes obsessed with fixing it, replacing the missing step every day only to have it go missing again, or he is the one who removed the step and he gradually removes more and more stairs (his motivation is unknown at this point, but that’s for the writer or possibly even the reader to decide).
66. A robot runs for president and wins the election by being more human than all the other candidates.
67. A parent (or both parents) loves their kids but often wonders if life would be better without them.
68. While flying a kite, a small child is picked up by the wind and carried to another world where he/she becomes the supreme leader and never misses his/her parents. Meanwhile, the parents spend every moment of every day searching for the lost child.
69. A woman goes to a zoo and decides to become one of the animals (you choose the animal). She changes her entire life and begins living in the animal habitat. Eventually, the zoo visitors can’t tell if she’s a person or just another one of the animals. The zookeepers can’t either.
70. A man who loves TV has watched literally every show ever made and can’t tolerate watching reruns. He builds a complex program that starts creating new TV shows for him. After his invention is discovered, people want to buy it from him for billions of dollars. He refuses all offers because he just wants to watch TV.
71. A global pandemic forces everyone into quarantine. Once the quarantine is lifted, a couple decide that quarantine-life is much better, so they devote their lives to extending the quarantine for everyone.
72. After being held up at gunpoint at a hardware store, a cashier decides to become a vigilante. He wears his hardware store apron everywhere he goes because he thinks it gives him superpowers. One day, he gets shot while wearing the apron and it doesn’t even hurt him.
73. A woman sees a fox in her backyard one morning. When she tells her family, neighbors, and friends, no one believes her. She becomes obsessed with the fox and does everything she can to get it to come back, but it never seems to return.
74. A man who goes back to church after a long absence only to find out that everything is very different and driven by technology. He is very upset to learn that this particular church charges for WiFi usage. The WiFi password is J3sus!sC00!. Everyone in the church spends the entire service clicking away on their phones or laptops instead of paying attention.
75. A man meets his true love at a wake. Spoiler alert – his true love is the corpse. He finds a way to take her home, bring her back to life, and marry her.
76. A married couple that has been together for over 40 years gets into their very first fight. The fight is about something very minor, and neither of them can even articulate what the fight is about, but it completely ruins their marriage and their lives.
77. A woman decides to eat some clay and chia seeds to see if she can grow a chia pet inside her stomach. For some reason, it really turns her husband on.
78. A husband learns after over a decade that his wife doesn’t like him and only married him because she was pregnant. She miscarried before the husband even learned of the pregnancy. The husband becomes horribly depressed that his entire life is based on a lie, but then he does everything he can to win her back.
79. An advertising agency replaces all of its employees with robots and uses that as its unique value proposition. The agency grows to be the largest company in the world, and the robots always execute on every project flawlessly until they get a project they can’t handle and everything comes crumbling down.
80. A writer writers about a writer who writes about a writer who writes about a writer who writers about a writer ad nauseam in one of the most intolerable stories every written. And it becomes a bestseller that everyone loves except other writers!
81. A family of grass decides it wants to move so it uproots itself and moves into a neighborhood where it forces people out of their homes and then tears down all the homes to expand its own living space (a special thanks to my 8-year-old daughter for this one).
82. Tired of their kids “knowing everything about parenting,” a couple decides to let their kids (both under 10) be the parents for a month. The kids aren’t just making the decisions. They are paying the bills, doing the home maintenance, driving the cars, running the errands, etc. Lots of hilarity ensues!
83. After getting fired from his job, a man vows revenge on his previous employer. Things go very wrong for all parties involved.
84. A writer makes a long list of short story ideas but never actually writes anything.
85. A father and mother have been saving all of their children’s teeth for years. One day, the father decides it’s disgusting and throws them in the toilet. During the night, the toilet turns into a monster with very large teeth. The father must battle the toilet monster before anyone else notices. Note – this isn’t just a crazy fantasy story. It’s also a story about coming to terms with the fact that your children are growing up and you have to let them go. (Second note – I have written this entire story but haven’t gotten around to editing it into a place I’m happy with – I’ll happily share my drafts with you if you want to co-write it!)
86. A recent widower forgets to organize a birthday party for his only child. His kid’s teacher offers to help, and the dad misinterprets this as her having feelings for him. Lots of awkwardness occurs as they plan their way to a pretty amazing party.
87.  A wife kills her husband while she’s sleeping and doesn’t recall doing it. She’s convinced she is innocent even though the evidence is clear.
88.  A man’s kids think he’s the greatest at everything until one day they suddenly learn he isn’t and it delivers a crushing blow to everyone.
89.  The main character learns that death is a government conspiracy. No one ever dies. They are just stolen away by the government.
90.  A man spends months and months fighting to get a life insurance policy. When the document is finally delivered to him, he puts off signing in by one day and ends up dying before he gets the chance.
91.  A child gets a new smart speaker for her birthday and unknowingly programs it to take over the house, the neighborhood, and eventually the world.
92.  A man secretly invests his family’s entire life savings in cryptocurrency. The investments prove very fruitful, but he is afraid to tell anyone about it because they all think crypto is lunacy and he doesn’t want them to stop trusting him.
93.  A little girl becomes obsessed with a pair of swans swimming in the lake by her house. She visits them every day and (either figuratively or in her imagination) starts to feed them and dress them up and become their friend. Then they fly off in the winter and the girl is devastated and can’t find any purpose. Do they return or not? You decide as the writer!
94. A very successful man volunteers to coach his daughter’s soccer team, and it is the most difficult thing he’s ever done.
95. A robin keeps coming back to build its nest on a deck no matter how many times the homeowners chase it away and destroy its progress.
96. A magic hat gives anyone who wears it a full head of hair, but as soon as they take the hat off, the hair goes away. This is a fun story idea with a lot of potential for humor and deep philosophical rantings.
97.  Someone who has been planning to go to a big event, such as a concert by their favorite band, for a very long time ends up missing the event because of a very minor incident they obsess over (example – their tire pressure is a little low)
98.  An employee at an office gets fired but keeps going back to the office because everyone else is working remotely and he keeps doing his job even though he doesn’t get paid. He does amazing work and keeps getting recognized with awards, but they don’t want to hire him back.
99. A group of girls running a lemonade stand accidentally causes a fatal accident that haunts them for years.
100.  A home purchase goes terribly wrong when the owners find out that a family of some type of animal (you decide as the writer) is living in the attic and acting exactly like a human family – even to the point where they are paying part of the mortgage.
101.  Two words: flying firepits. Surely you can do something with this topic.
102.  More short story ideas to come soon!

By the way, I have some good starts on some of these stories. In some cases, I’m talking about 3-10 pages of decent writing. If you want to take a look, just let me know. I’m happy to share all my notes.

If nothing on this list strikes your fancy, then you might not be a real writer. Just kidding, of course! But if that’s the case, you should try this short story prompt generator tool.

What you should do with these short story ideas

The first thing you should do here is pick three or four short stories you want to write immediately. Yes, I am an advocate for having many short stories going at the same time. I typically have a dozen or so in-progress stories at any given time. At least I used to, back when I was writing short stories all the time.

If you aren’t quite sure how to write a short story, try reading this post. That will get you started. After you’re done writing and revising your stories until they are perfect, I want you to submit them for publication. After all, good ideas deserve to be published.

So here’s the deal: now that I’ve given you all these free story ideas, you need to promise me something. If you write and publish any of these stories, please share them with me so I can feel good about sharing them instead of writing them myself. More importantly, I want to sing your praises. I promise I’ll share them and promote them.

I’ll also update this post with links to your stories and let people know which ones have been taken so we don’t all end up writing the same stories.

Short story ideas for high school writers

I taught high school English for almost a decade, including several creative writing courses. One of the biggest things I learned during my time as a Creative Writing teacher is that high school students really struggle to come up with ideas for strong short stories.

While some of the story ideas above might not seem appropriate for high school students, most of them will help high school writers get something down on paper that will help them in their journey as a writer.

If you have any additional ideas for short story prompts for high schoolers, please share them in the comments. You can also reach out to me directly and I can share some of the short story topics I had my students write.

More short story ideas

If you don’t see anything on the list above that appeals to you, then you might not be a real writer. Kidding, of course. We probably just have different tastes. Even so, I challenge you to take one of these ideas and turn it into a short story. I promise you’ll have fun writing it!

If you really don’t find inspiration in these ideas, here’s some shit to write about.

And here’s some more stuff to write about.

Sometimes I think I’m better at coming up with short story ideas than I am at actually writing them.

Bad ideas for short stories

Not every short story idea is a good one. A good idea can make for a bad story, just like a mediocre idea can become a really good story. Rarely is a bad story idea going to become a great story, but it’s not impossible depending on the skills of the writer. Although there’s nothing that’s completely off limits, here are some bad short story ideas you should probably avoid (mostly because they are just so overdone):

• A short story about a writer in a bar
• A story about a person who is wrongly accused/convicted of a crime
• A story where the main character has to decide whether or not to get an abortion
• A short story where the whole thing is a dream
• A story about a forbidden love affair

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write any of these stories, but you need to be aware that they’ve been done so frequently that it’s going to be that much harder to get them published.

How to recognize a good idea for a short story

It can be hard to determine whether or not a short story idea is a good one. Generally speaking, a good idea can make for a bad story if executed poorly, but rarely will a bad story idea become a great short story. Therefore, it’s important to start with a good idea!

Here are some signs that a story idea is a good one:

• It doesn’t feel like something you’ve read before (or at least not read a dozen times). Good short story ideas are typically new and different.
• It makes you excited to write. When you look at the idea, you want to drop everything you’re doing and start writing.
• You wish you had come up with the idea yourself. If any of the ideas from the list above make you think to yourself, “Dammit, I wish I had thought of that,” then it’s definitely the right story for you to write.
• You want to keep the idea a secret until you’re finished. If the story idea sounds so good that you’re afraid other will want to write it, then you probably have something made of gold!
• It’s not too hard to write. A good story idea will almost write itself. A bad story idea will leave you stuck at the keyboard in front of a blank screen.

What to do after you turn a story idea into a real short story

Once you’ve taken one of these short story ideas and turned it into a full short story, here are the next steps:

• Revise your short story until you’re happy with it
• Get your story published
• Promote your story

In order to get your short story published, you’ll need to find the right publication to send your work. Below are some resources for finding the best publications and submitting your work:

• Where to submit short stories
• 6 important things to consider before submitting your work
• How to sell your short stories
• How to submit your writing

Once you’ve received your acceptance, then it’s time to celebrate! You’ve successfully turned a short story idea into a great story. Now it’s time to come back to this post and pick another short story idea to start writing.

Which short story idea on this list is your favorite? Which will you write about first? Tell us in the comments, and don’t forget to share this post on all your favorite channels. 

 

Short Story Ideas FAQ

How do you come up with short story ideas?

The best way to come up with short story ideas is to observe what's happening around you. Think of ways to take everyday situations and make them interesting. A short story idea can strike at any time. Don't wait for the ideas to come to you. Rather than sitting in front of a computer or trying to force yourself to come up with ideas, go for a walk, go out with friends, go to a park and sit on a bench, etc. Watch what's happening and jot down any ideas that come to you.

How do you take a short story idea and turn it into a short story?

An idea by itself is not a short story. You need to develop your idea with characters, setting, and plot. The best way to do this is by brainstorming and outlining. Once you have a rough concept for your idea, begin writing.

What if I don't have any ideas for short stories?

If you can't think of any ideas on your own, there's nothing wrong with searching for inspiration on the internet. There are thousands of short story ideas and writing prompts available for free. Pick the ones that seem interesting and start writing them.

What are some good short story ideas?

Good short story ideas can come from a wide variety of places. The best short story ideas are based on real-life situations and are things that haven't been overwritten. Don't try to write about things you've seen done countless times before. There is no set list of good short story ideas. The best ideas come from the world around you.

How do you start a story idea?

Once you have a story idea, you can start a few different ways. One way is to create an outline and plan out as much of the story as possible. The other way is to just start writing. How you start depends entirely on your particular writing style. Do what feels comfortable for you.

What if my short story idea isn't very good?

A bad short story idea rarely becomes a good story. Don't force yourself to write about a bad idea. If you don't like the idea, then set it aside and try something else. On the other hand, a great story idea doesn't guarantee a great story. You still have to write it!