writing ideas

Writer’s Prompt: He’s Just So Nice—Says the Obituary

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Everyone thinks Brad’s a sweetheart. Too bad his wife’s starting to price out poison detectors.

🕵️ Starting Paragraph:

Samantha had stopped drinking the smoothies. Brad always insisted on making them—said they helped with her “mood swings.” Maybe it was just protein powder. Maybe it was arsenic lite. All she knew was that every time she sipped one, she felt woozy and suspicious… like she was in someone else’s dream. Brad never raised his voice. He brought her roses. He doted on her in front of friends. And yet, something wasn’t right. The way he stood a little too close behind her in the kitchen. The way he stared just a second too long when she took her meds. She told her best friend Lisa. Lisa laughed. “Brad? Kill you? He makes his own sourdough starter!” Samantha smiled back, nodding. And quietly, she started hiding knives under the mattress.

🤔 3 Questions to Dive Deeper:

  1. Can intuition be trusted when it’s the only warning signal you have?
  2. What would it take for a friend to believe the unbelievable?
  3. How do you write tension when nothing technically has happened… yet?

Writer’s Prompt: She Bakes Cookies. She Volunteers. She Might’ve Murdered a Man in 1965.

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What kind of grandmother drops a million-dollar bounty on her own head—and asks a jaded ex-cop to dig up her darkest secret? One who isn’t done rewriting her legacy.

📜 

Opening Paragraph Prompt:


Retired NYPD detective Jack Corrigan wasn’t expecting visitors. He definitely wasn’t expecting a white-gloved woman in orthopedic shoes, a lavender cardigan, and pearls that looked like they remembered Nixon. She placed an envelope on the bar top of O’Reilly’s Pub, ordered chamomile tea like it was whiskey, and said, “Prove I murdered a classmate at Mt. Holyoke in 1965, and a million dollars is yours. But you’ll have to be quick. I don’t plan on dying before the truth gets out.”

🕵️‍♂️ 

3 Deep-Dive Questions:

  1. Why would someone want to be proven guilty of a crime they’ve gotten away with for decades?
  2. What personal demons might the ex-cop be wrestling with—and how could this case force him to face them?
  3. How do buried secrets from a “respectable” past challenge our ideas of innocence, justice, and redemption?

Writer’s Prompt: Move Over, COVID—This Virus Has Bigger Plans (And Two Scientists Who’ve Had Enough Coffee to Stop It)

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When the next virus strain threatens to make COVID-19 look like child’s play, you better hope the fate of humanity isn’t resting on two scientists who haven’t slept in 72 hours… but guess what? It is.

Starting Paragraph

Dr. Elena Ruiz hadn’t showered in three days, and Dr. Mark Chen was on his twelfth espresso—both minor details considering they were humanity’s last hope. A new virus strain—code-named “Medusa”—was spreading faster than bad memes, and with symptoms so brutal that COVID was starting to look like a mild case of the sniffles. With governments too slow, and conspiracy theorists clogging social feeds, it was up to Elena and Mark to decode the virus’s genome before the world hit the point of no return. But hey, no pressure.

Three Questions to Dive Deeper

  1. How would you show the human side of these scientists under extreme stress—beyond just their lab work?
  2. What moral dilemmas might arise when choosing between saving a few or risking everything for the world?
  3. How would you balance scientific accuracy with the need for gripping, fast-paced fiction?

Writer’s Prompt: Dear Dad (Whoever You Are): A Quest for the Father I’ve Never Met (But Might Resemble)

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Imagine discovering that your biological father is a mystery man who donated his DNA in a lab… and now you’re playing genetic detective armed with nothing but a birth certificate and your mother’s vague memory of the clinic’s receptionist. Let the awkward family reunions (or lack thereof) begin.

✍️ Starting Paragraph

Ryan always knew he wasn’t exactly the product of candlelight and Marvin Gaye. His mother, a fiercely independent woman with a penchant for Chardonnay and Jane Austen, had once admitted—after a few too many glasses—that he was conceived in a clinic with sterile walls and even steriler forms to fill out. Now in his thirties, armed with a DNA test kit and a half-baked plan, Ryan wonders if it’s time to stop dodging his reflection in the mirror and finally meet the man who provided half his genetic blueprint.

❓ Three Questions to Dive Deeper

  1. What emotional or moral dilemmas might Ryan face as he searches for someone who never expected (or wanted) to be found?
  2. How could discovering his biological father change Ryan’s sense of identity or his relationships with others?
  3. What unexpected twists—family secrets, ethical questions, or legal obstacles—might complicate Ryan’s journey?

Writing Prompt: Your Main Character Just Found a Severed Ear… Now What?

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Let’s be honest—your fiction’s been a little too chamomile tea and cable-knit sweater lately. It’s time to spice things up. This writing prompt will yank your imagination off the couch, toss it in a trench coat, and hand it a mystery so weird even Columbo would raise an eyebrow.

✍️ Fiction Writing Prompt:

Your protagonist finds a severed ear in an unexpected place: a mailbox, a sock drawer, maybe inside a vegan meatloaf. It’s fresh. It’s real. It’s not theirs (hopefully). What happens next? Who sent it? Is it a threat… or a twisted love note?

Jumpstart Example (First 2–3 Sentences):

Darla had just come back from yoga when she opened the mailbox and saw it: a severed human ear resting on top of her Netflix envelope. “Ugh,” she muttered, “I knew I shouldn’t have skipped corpse disposal class.”

The ear had a small tattoo on the lobe—an infinity sign. Darla didn’t recognize the ear, but she knew exactly who the message was from.

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