There are many genres a story can fall under. One of the most common is contemporary fiction. A contemporary story happens in present-day, under usually realistic circumstances.
However, there are subcategories of contemporary. For example, a contemporary fantasy could be a story set in present-day, and things are pretty realistic, BUT maybe ghosts are real.
Contemporary is one of my favorite genres to write, but writing is hard! Sometimes you need a little push to get started. Here are some prompts to nudge you into momentum.
You might try a writing sprint, where you set a timer and must keep writing for the duration of that time span. Don’t judge any of it until the time is up!
Here are 53 of contemporary writing prompts, broken into categories:
- General Contemporary
- Contemporary Fantasy/SciFi
- Contemporary Romance
- Contemporary Horror/Mystery
Even though this list is categorized, feel free to use the prompts for different genres! Using one from the romance list and writing it as horror will give you a wildly different result, so if you really like one of the prompts, try to write a few different stories with it!
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200+ Fiction Writing Prompts In the Most Profitable Genres
Come up with your NEXT great book idea with over 200 unique writing prompts spanning 8 different genres. Use for a story, scene, character inspo, and more!
General Contemporary Writing Prompts
- A character has lied their entire life. One lie finally catches up to them.
- A group of private school girls are bored and antsy–so they start a fight club.
- A character tries and fails to parallel park, while a stranger watches.
- A character is playing Cat’s Cradle with a rosary.
- A single elderly man has ceramic forest creatures, frilly pink towels, and lacey pillows all around his house because he could never bring himself to redecorate after his wife passed away.
- A character comes home, annoyed and exhausted after a long day. They go to hang their keys on the hook, and the hook falls off the wall. The character look at the hook for a moment before tossing the keys onto the floor next to it and walking away.
- An old man smokes cigarettes until they burn the tips of his blackened fingers.
- A foster child commits crimes to help her new family while they try to teach her not to do that.
- A group of friends play a prank on their long-time bully, but it goes wrong and ends in tragedy.
- A girl grows up in a cult. She escapes and survives in the forest until someone finds her, and she is adopted. She learns to adapt to mainstream culture.
- A character obsessed with serial killers tries to recreate one of their murders but is really bad at it.
- A landscaper finds something alarming buried in a new client’s yard.
- A character is tripping on drugs at a carnival. They walk into one of the craft tents and are enthralled with the wind chimes hanging from the ceiling.
- A character traps a vermin under a cup and leaves it there because they’re afraid of it. They feel bad and start feeding it, still too scared to get rid of it. The vermin becomes a kind of pet.
- A group of friends play truth-or-dare. Why is one of them lying?
Contemporary Fantasy/SciFi Writing Prompts
- An immortal being is trapped in one town with advanced degrees from online studying.
- Someone undergoes an operation that replaces part of their brain–they have memories of the previous person’s life and decide to accomplish something the brain donor had set out to do.
- A student’s science experiment piques the interest of a secret agency.
- Strange happenings in a ski lodge prompt a new employee to investigate.
- A spelunker explores a new cave and finds a strange creature.
- A girl wakes up with no memory of the night before, but she feels…off…and she has a bite mark on her arm.
- A character feeds birds in their backyard as a way to destress. Until one of the birds starts talking, and the situation becomes significantly more stressful.
- A boy buys a book from a used book store, but when he brings it home, he realizes it’s not a normal book.
- A girl is sorting through her dead grandmother’s attic before an estate sale, and she finds an old photo album with confusing implications.
- A character moves into a new house and hears a voice coming from a heating vent. The character establishes a rapport with the voice, even though they have no idea what it is.
- A character thinks they’ve having deja vu, until they eventually start guessing what will happen next with growing accuracy.
- An eccentric man has been digging a hole in his backyard for years–a constant pile of dirt for sale at the end of his driveway. When he disappears, a real estate agent arrives to evaluate the house for sale. When she looks into the hole, she discovers a staircase that leads into an underground world.
- Experiments have escaped from a research facility, and a massive search effort disrupts everyone’s daily lives. A character makes a new friend, and they deal with this new world together. Something about the friend is…strange.
- A character has hyper-realistic dreams about a fantasy place. The line between it and reality starts to blur–maybe being awake is the dream.
Contemporary Romance Writing Prompts
- A character has a crush on their coworker and goes to extreme lengths to get their attention.
- A character and their significant other are invited to their boss’ house for dinner. The significant other accidentally knocks over an urn of ashes when the boss is out of the room.
- A character is driving when they see their crush is driving the car in front of them. They rear-end them to have an excuse to interact.
- A soft-palmed office worker inherits their dead grandparent’s country property. They quit their job, move to a tiny town, and learn to work a farm.
- A character hates their extended family but feels pressured to attend the week-long family reunion. They hit it off with their cousin’s girlfriend, realizing they have feelings for her a few days in. Good news is, she’s being paid to fake-date their cousin!
- A seasonal lodge employee gets in a verbal dispute with someone in town during her day off. Back at work, she realizes it was one of the lodge’s wealthiest patrons. The patron sets out to make her miserable, while the patron’s son has a crush her.
- A woman thinks she has a stalker. The stalker eventually speaks to her and says they were lovers in a past life.
- A character discovers her cat has another owner. They fight over ownership of the cat, but realize…maybe it brought them together on purpose. (Probably not. It’s a cat. But let’s let them pretend.)
- A character receives a box of letters as inheritance from an estranged family member. They research the contents and follow the letters through places their relative had lived, meeting new friends along the way.
Contemporary Horror/Mystery Writing Prompts
- A movie theater worker finds a dusty back room with old reels of film. They watch one and immediately regret it.
- A fake psychic gets so into her con that she convinces herself and goes insane, thinking the spirits are angry with her for pretending…or is she right?
- Nighttime fog, illuminated by an orange street lamp, drops low around a swing hanging from an oak tree. The swing creaks in the wind.
- A character walks their dog on a stormy night. A shed in someone’s backyard is lit, quiet radio chatter coming from inside.
- A character enters their kitchen and sees something on the floor. They stoop closer and find a tiny white worm wiggling into the floorboards.
- An intern for a fashion designer discovers a secret code in a piece of clothing.
- A character is in the wedding party for a destination wedding–they arrive early to help with arrangements to find that one of the soon-to-bes has gone missing.
- Rain pelts on a flat bayou. The sun is shining through the storm, and a white crane flies parallel against the water.
- A character takes a new job as a tutor of a rich only-child in a huge, ancient mansion. The parents are aloof and estranged. Something is going on.
- A character is walking on the beach and finds an exotic snake that is obviously someone’s pet. They take it home and make a found pet ad. When they find the owner, they wish they hadn’t.
- A character visits their aging parent. Something is different about them…
- A group of gameshow contestants are stranded to survive two weeks on an island. By day two, someone has been murdered. The remaining contestants are alone with their cameras and a killer.
- An adopted child learns that he has twelve other siblings. He leaves on a quest to find them all.
- A character visits their father’s grave and finds a disturbing message written on his tombstone.
- A girl moves to New Orleans and receives a strange invitation.
I hope you enjoyed those and get a ton of new stories out of them!
If you want prompts for younger writers, we’ve got you covered!
And here’s a list of even more writing prompts.
Save This Resource NOW for Quick Reference Later…
200+ Fiction Writing Prompts In the Most Profitable Genres
Come up with your NEXT great book idea with over 200 unique writing prompts spanning 8 different genres. Use for a story, scene, character inspo, and more!