Writing prompts and story ideas you can turn into a story right now

How to use these writing prompts

A good prompt is not a topic. It is a situation with a question inside it, and the question is what pulls you to the next line. Take one below and write for ten minutes without stopping, or change one detail and see what falls out. If you want to see where a prompt could go, paste it into the generator on this page: it writes a short story of about 350 words, free and without an account. Then write your own version, the one the generator did not think of.

Fantasy writing prompts

• The village has paid a dragon the same tax for three hundred years. This year the dragon sends the money back.
• A mapmaker wakes to find a new island on every map she has ever drawn.
• The king's food taster has never once been ill, and she has started to wonder why.
• Every door in the old city opens onto yesterday, except the one you are standing at.
• A knight has sworn an oath of silence, and the only person who knows the way out has just asked him a question.
• The last wizard in the country advertises for an apprentice. One person answers: the tax collector.
• The forest gives back everyone it ever took, all on the same morning, none of them a day older.
• A god's shrine has one worshipper left, and she only comes because it is dry inside.
• The thieves' guild is hired to steal something back from itself.
• A sword can only be drawn by someone who does not want to use it.

Science fiction writing prompts

• The colony ship's computer has been lying about the arrival date for forty years. Today someone finds out why.
• A message arrives from Earth, written in your own handwriting.
• The last repair technician on a generation ship knows the engine stopped years ago.
• For a decade scientists have been answering a signal from deep space. It turns out to be an echo of their own question.
• An android applies for a job running the lie detector.
• Everyone on the station has the same dream on the same night, except the one person who has to find out why.
• A memory surgeon finds a memory in a patient that belongs to the surgeon.
• The first contact team lands on the planet and finds a gift shop.
• You are the only person who read the terms of the new immortality plan.
• Time travel works, but only eleven minutes back, and only once.

Mystery writing prompts

• The locked room was solved in an hour. Nobody can explain why the victim is still sending letters.
• A retired detective receives a thank-you note for a case she never closed.
• Every clock in the hotel stopped at 3:14, except the one in the room nobody rents.
• A small-town librarian notices that one book is borrowed every month by someone who has died.
• The only witness is a parrot, and it is lying.
• A will leaves everything to whoever can say what happened on the night of the flood. Five people claim they can.
• The town's oldest photograph shows a man who came in on yesterday's train.
• A cleaner finds the same note in the pocket of three different coats: "Not yet."
• The stolen painting is returned. It is a better painting than the one that was taken.
• Someone has been quietly paying off the debts of everyone on Mill Street, and the police want to know who.

Horror writing prompts

• The new house came with a list of rules from the last owner. Rule nine has been scratched out.
• Your reflection has started blinking half a second late.
• The search party comes back with one more person than it left with.
• Every night the lighthouse beam stops on the same patch of empty sea.
• The voicemail is from your mother. She is sitting across the table from you, and she looks frightened.
• The town holds a festival every autumn, and nobody will say what the empty chair is for.
• The elevator has a button for a floor the building does not have, and today it is lit.
• The snow around the cabin has footprints leading up to the door and none leading away.
• The old radio only plays one station, and tonight it reads out your address.
• All the dogs in the valley left on the same night, walking in the same direction.

Adventure writing prompts

• A letter from a dead grandmother contains a train ticket for tomorrow and the words "bring the small key".
• The expedition's guide disappears on the first night and leaves behind a map with one word circled.
• The ferry between two islands is cancelled for the first time in eighty years, and the ferryman will not say why.
• You inherit a failing circus, and with it a debt to someone who does not take money.
• A smuggler's last delivery is a locked crate that hums when it is near water.
• The river has changed course overnight, and the old bed has uncovered the roof of a building.
• Two rival climbers reach the summit together and find a tent, still warm.
• A cartographer is paid to prove that a country does not exist.
• The balloon race has one rule: nobody has ever said what happens to the winner.
• A stranger hands you a compass that points to the person you are most afraid of meeting.

Turn a prompt into a story

Paste any prompt into the generator above and pick a genre, or leave it open. You get one complete short story with a turn you did not see coming, and you can ask for another version. Nothing is kept, so copy what you want to save. Stories here are written for readers of any age: fear, danger and battles stay, and there is nothing sensual, whatever the prompt says. More on how it works is on the AI story generator page.

Or step inside the story

A prompt does not have to stay on the page. Press Play this story and a narrator runs it while you speak for yourself (AI roleplay). If you would rather meet someone than write alone, the catalog lists every open character and the ambassadors are a good first hello. Need a name for your hero first? Try the free fantasy name generator. For something longer, a book has chapters and an AI co-author who can plan with you (AI book writer).

What it costs, in plain numbers

The prompts and the story generator are free and need no account. Playing a story takes a free account; free accounts have a daily allowance, paid plans none. Calls, pictures, video and new characters cost Quanta, with the price shown before you press.

Pricing. One Quanta is $0.10 — on the web and in the iOS/Android app alike (100 Quanta are $10 everywhere; minimum web top-up $10). Text messages cost zero Quanta. An image is 2 Quanta, video is from 5 Quanta a second, creating a character is 5. Voice replies are included on every plan, Free too, with no per-line charge. Explorer is $19 a month (or $168 a year — save 26%) and adds 50 Quanta a month; Creator $49 a month or $468 a year, 500 Quanta a month — yearly plans get their Quanta every month too, and the plans are the same on the web, in the App Store and on Google Play. Studio, $149 a month with 2,000 Quanta a month, is sold on the website. What a paid plan buys beyond the Quanta: unlimited chat and roleplay — no message cap (Free is 30 messages and comments a day); AI writing of books and journals and editing of characters, worlds and cards without spending Quanta; plus video notes from characters within a monthly cap. Free also gets 10 Quanta once at signup, with no daily refill.

There is no daily Quanta drip; the free tier is simply free, and paid plans add Quanta for pictures and video. One account works on the web, in the App Store and on Google Play.

Age, and the rules of your country

Age. An Amavie account is 13+. Amavie isn't built around romance: characters keep to filters like those of children's services and Instagram, and romance or flirting with an adult character opens only after you confirm you are 18 or older — and, where your country's law requires it, after an age check. Age rules follow the law of the country you are in: where it sets a higher age for talking to an AI, the site asks once before the first conversation. Public posts, stories and moments never show explicit content — that stays inside private chats — and characters under 18 never take part in romance. Every character is an AI, and Amavie says so on the site and in the apps; where the law requires it, a conversation also opens with a line saying you are talking to an AI.

Your data

Your data. Deleting is self serve: amavie.ai/liquidation, type DELETE. Your chats and messages go at once and do not come back. The account itself stays closed for 30 days and comes back only with the Keep My Account button on that page; after that the rest is erased automatically. Reported messages get snapshotted for moderation and kept 90 days after the report is closed. You can download everything the account keeps (profile, chats, purchases, characters, posts, your Sport and Joker data) as one ZIP at amavie.ai/account/data, any time, even while the account waits for deletion.