fiction writing

Writer’s Prompt: Flash Fiction Mystery: A Classic Noir Detective Story Prompt

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“When a lethal femme fatale drops a stack of hundred-dollar bills and a mysterious photo on his desk, down-on-his-luck PI Wyatt Johnson realizes his darkest past secret is waiting for him at Pier 4.”

The Proposal

Wyatt Johnson loosened his tie, put his shoes up on his desk, tilted his chair back, and pulled his fedora down over his eyes. He was beat, bored, and ready to ditch the dumb idea of being a PI. It all changed when Amber Tones waltzed in and brushed his shoes off his desk. She tossed an envelope filled with C-notes on his desk as casual as you’d toss away an apple core.

Wyatt moved his fedora back on his head and said, “Who’s the loser you want me to teach a lesson to?”

Amber didn’t blink. Her crimson lips curved into a razor-thin smile as she leaned across the scarred mahogany. “No lesson, Mr. Johnson. I need a shadow removed.”

She slid a black-and-white photograph over the cash. Wyatt squinted at the grain. It was a man standing under a streetlight, collar popped, face obscured by shadow—except for a distinctive, jagged scar cutting through his left eyebrow.

“He’s been following me for three days,” Amber said, her voice dropping to a gravelly whisper. “He knows where I sleep. He knows what I did in Boston.”

Wyatt’s eyes flicked from the cash to the photo, then back to Amber. Boston. That was the city he’d run from two years ago after a job went sideways. He subtly shifted his weight, feeling the cold steel of the revolver strapped beneath his armpit.

“Tonight, 11 PM. Pier 4,” Amber instructed, placing a heavy iron key beside the envelope. “He’ll be waiting in the abandoned warehouse. You make him vanish, and there’s double this waiting for you.”

She turned and floated out the door, leaving behind a scent of lavender and ozone. Wyatt stared at the scar in the photograph. His pulse thrummed in his ears. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a matching photograph—one he’d carried for years.

Over to You!

What secret ties Wyatt to the target, and what will he discover when he steps into the warehouse at Pier 4? Write the next chapte

Writer’s Prompt: Echoes from the Pond: A Brother’s Secret, Buried in the Mud

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He came to fish for peace—but what he reeled in was a nightmare buried for decades.

Starting Paragraph:

The pond hadn’t changed much—still murky, still quiet, still cradled in the gnarled arms of old cypress trees. Retired detective Frank Mallory cast his line into the water, hoping to catch something that might silence the noise in his head. This pond had once been a playground, a sanctuary—until the day his younger brother, Timmy, disappeared. Frank was twelve. Timmy was ten. One moment they were laughing, the next, Timmy was gone—vanished without a trace. No one ever found him.

Frank wandered the bank now, decades later, nostalgia colliding with sorrow. A misstep took him through a brittle patch of underbrush—and that’s when he saw it. A curved bit of white jutting from the ground. Then another. And another. Skeletal remains—small, fragile bones, too small to belong to a grown man.

His hands trembled.

Could this be Timmy? Had the truth been here all along, quietly rotting beneath the soil and memory?

3 Reflection Questions:

  1. How does guilt shape the detective’s view of the past—and the present discovery?
  2. What emotional and ethical dilemmas arise when a long-buried mystery resurfaces?
  3. How might the truth challenge everything the detective thought he knew about that day?

Writer’s Prompt: Coffee, Corpses, and Complicated Feelings: Another Day at the Precinct

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They solve murders before breakfast, argue about who stole the last donut, and keep falling for the wrong people—sometimes each other. Welcome to the city’s most dysfunctional, oddly lovable detective unit.

📝 Starting Paragraph (Writing Prompt):

Welcome to the 13th Precinct—a slightly shabbier cousin to McBain’s 87th. The squad includes a hard-nosed lieutenant who writes poetry in secret, a forensic expert with four ex-wives and an alpaca farm, and two junior detectives who keep solving homicides while trying (and failing) not to fall for each other. Their latest case involves a local politician, a bakery explosion, and a trail of clues that somehow all point to a missing cat named Pistachio. The crime is messy, but the real drama? That’s brewing behind the badge.

❓ Three Reader Questions:

  1. What secrets are your detectives keeping from each other—and themselves?
  2. How does working in close proximity with life-and-death stakes affect their personal relationships?
  3. Can justice be served when love keeps getting in the way?

Writing Prompt: Your Mission: Write a Spy Thriller That Won’t Put the CIA to Sleep

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Tired of reading thrillers where the only thing undercover is the writer’s talent? Let’s fix that. Here’s a prompt that’ll ignite your creative fuse faster than a bugged briefcase in Berlin.

Writing Prompt:

A CIA operative posing as an American embassy janitor in Prague intercepts a late-night encrypted message—one that wasn’t meant for the agency, but for them. It’s signed by a codename they haven’t heard since the Berlin Wall fell… their mother’s. And suddenly, sweeping the marble floor isn’t the only thing they’re cleaning up.

3 Questions to Dive Deeper:

  1. What is the operative’s personal connection to the mission—and how does it blur the line between duty and loyalty?
  2. What was buried in their past (or in someone else’s) that’s now being unearthed, and who stands to gain—or die—from its exposure?
  3. What happens when the agency realizes the operative knows more than they should… and trust becomes the real weapon?

✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Dicken’s Opening Paragraph to A Tale of Two Cities

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Opening Paragraph from Dicken’s, A Tale of Two Cities

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

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✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Graham Greene’s Opening Paragraph in “Brighton’s Rock”

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Opening Paragraph from Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock

Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him. With his inky fingers and his bitten nails, his manner cynical and nervous, anybody could tell he didn’t belong – belong to the early summer sun, the cool Whitsun wind off the sea, the holiday crowd. They came in by train from Victoria every five minutes, rocked down Queen’s Road standing on the tops of the little local trams, stepped off in bewildered multitudes into fresh and glittering air: the new silver paint sparkled on the piers, the cream houses ran away into the west like a pale Victorian water-colour; a race in miniature motors, a band playing, flower gardens in bloom below the front, an aeroplane advertising something for the health in pale vanishing clouds across the sky.

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✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ The Best Part of Writing

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“That is the best part of writing: finding the hidden treasures, giving sparkle to worn out events, invigorating the tired soul with imagination, creating some kind of truth with many lies.”

~ Isabel Allende

✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ What Writers Influence Your Style?

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“As for the writers who have influenced me they are many. Hemingway, Chandler, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, William Goldman, Flannery O’Conner, Carson McCullers, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and so many others. As a kid Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Robert E. Howard.”

~ Joe R. Lansdale

💡 Something to Think About

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As a kid, I never realized we were poor. I grew up in a 4 room cold water flat. At times, I thought the train was coming through the bedroom. My parents never complained. We ate simple. Today, I see these items on Italian bistro menus and laugh at the price. My parents made sure my brother and I didn’t hang out with the wrong crowd (the consequences would have been devastating to us). We picked blueberries in the swamps, grew tomatoes and onions in a garden, and picked button mushrooms in the fall. My parents made a bigger difference for me than any teacher (and I had some good ones). Parenting is a most important role.

🖋 Writers’ Wisdom ~ What’s the Secret to Good Writing?

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“Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.”

~ Matthew Arnold

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