Whether you have a passion for making stories or if you’re just taking a creative writing class next semester, it can be challenging to come up with original ideas. All that time dedicated to drawing up a good plot, character development, strong diction, and about a thousand other factors can seem too much to manage and weave into a strong piece of prose, so we took the liberty of helping you get your feet off the ground. Hopefully at least one of these challenging fifteen story ideas will inspire you to go forth into the world and write!
1. Write a short, fictional autobiography about a man who serves as the president’s personal chef. Do not use the words “I,” “you,” or “president.”
2. Write a story about the first manned mission to Mars from the perspective of a high school janitor who is about to pass a kidney stone.
3. Write a one page story with a title that reads “How I Accidentally doomed humanity, Heroically Survived the Apocalypse, and Discovered the Meaning of life.”
4. Write about a man with a hook for a hand, and tell the heartwarming story of how he became a baseball all-star.
5. Write a passionate love letter from the perspective of an overly-descriptive poet. Do not use any adjectives.
6. Write a story that ends with the sentence, “And after years of searching high and low through the Earth’s great jungles and majestic mountains, I finally found my shoes.”
7. Write a story about an paleontologist who finds a 10,000 year old computer buried in the Sahara Desert.
8. Write a children’s book about the dangers of tax evasion.
9. Write a fairy tale where the protagonist has the power to turn shoes into TV dinners, and explain how this ability has allowed him to save the damsel in distress.
10. Write a resume and cover letter from the perspective of a peanut farmer applying for a job at NASA.
11. Write a pastoral poem about Pittsburgh.
12. Write the world’s most interesting emergency exit directions.
13. Write a one paragraph story about zebras in Zimbabwe. Do not use the letter “Z.”
14. Write a haiku using an 8-syllable word.
15. Write a detailed instruction manual on opening a can of diet soda.