If you want to start to write horror stories, you might be on the hunt for some horror writing prompts to get your brain to come up with ideas.
The prompts below will be divided by type of creature, but feel free to read through all of them to get a variety of ideas for possible stories.
There might even be ways for you to combine different ideas all into one book or use it as inspiration for taking a whole fresh approach.
Bookmark this article for the future when you need more ideas for your next book. With that all in mind, let’s dive into some prompts.
Horror Writing Prompts
Horror Writing Prompts
Scroll through some of the prompts below to get an idea of what you could write a story about or see if there are some you want to save for future book ideas.
They will be organized by type of creature so you can find ones that work for the type of books you want to write.
11 Vampire Book Prompts
1. A vampire decides that their own kind needs to be stopped, so vampires become vampire hunters.
2. Humans have so many pollutants in the world that their blood is now too toxic for vampires to drink.
3. A vampire discovers they are allergic only to a particular blood type.
4. Vampires live under the sea in order to avoid the sun, but the deep sea creatures do not like their presence.
5. Every time a vampire drinks someone’s blood, it also gives them that person’s memories.
6. Write a story about vampires who are living through the end of the world (since they can live forever).
7. Vampires figure out how to communicate with the dead.
8. Vampires create a medicine that lets them only live 200 years instead of forever. How would they deal with it and who would take it?
9. Humans are starting to bite vampires back.
10. Vampires have taken over the world, but now how do they deal with each other and what types of systems do they set up within the planet. Do they end up following similar rules to humans or create all new ones since they live forever?
11. Some vampires can drink blood and tell humans when they are sick, but what happens when they only want sick blood?
Ghost Story Book Prompts
12. Multiple generations of ghosts live in a house because one murderer keeps killing his victims in the same house. How can they come together to stop him?
13. A college dorm is haunted by a terrifying ghost. How did it get there and what does it want?
14. A ghost is being haunted by other ghosts and preventing them from being able to cross over into the afterlife.
15. A ghost is terrorizing hikers in the woods who pass by their campgrounds.
16. Someone is selling antiques online but the buyers do not know that each item comes with a ghost.
17. A man is being visited by the ghost of his wife, but she is alive and sleeping next to him (or, at least he thinks that is her).
18. A haunted AirBnB attracts ghost enthusiasts, at least until a tragedy happens.
19. Family members argue over whether there is a ghost in the house and whether it is peaceful or there to terrorize.
8 Zombie Book Prompts
20. During the zombie apocalypse, your characters need to go to a nearby town to find some supplies. However, they do not know what is ahead.
21. Your characters are visiting a theme park when the zombie apocalypse breaks out.
22. The president of a country is bit by a zombie and is trying to conceal it from the people around them.
23. People from the city need to escape and go into open, abandoned areas, but what if they brought one with with them?
24. A single parent realizes that they have a bite and need to quickly figure out what their kids are going to do without them.
25. A scientist accidentally creates a zombie while trying to find a cure for a disease.
26. The zombie outbreak starts but it does not present in humans the way we always thought it did.
27. There is a crew assigned to cleaning up all of the zombie bodies left all over a city, but what happens when not all of them are actually dead?
13 Mermaid And Other Water Creatures Book Prompts
28. Most of us imagine mermaids as peaceful, helpful creatures in the ocean, but imagine if they were terrifying creatures who hunted humans when they got into water.
29. Something is deep under the water and has been using the trash humans pile into the ocean to create weapons.
30. What if orcas and great white sharks are not the predators we think they are and in fact protecting humans from something much worse?
31. A mass extinction happens across the oceans, but what caused it?
32. All of the water across the world becomes toxic, but no one knows it until 30 days after being in the water.
33. Mermaids find a way to live outside of the water, and they are not friendly.
34. Mermaids start to take down all the boats in the ocean.
35. People start disappearing when they sit on the beach and soon people figure out something is under the sand.
36. A morse code is coming out from the ocean, deep in a part where people have never gone.
37. A yacht with some of the world’s richest people are taken over, but not by pirates.
38. Cute little pet goldfish evolve and change into horror creatures.
39. Sharks can smell blood from a long distance away, but now all ocean creatures can.
40. A paddleboarding day trip takes a nightmarish turn.
15 Werewolf, Bigfoot And Other Woodland Creatures Book Prompts
41. What if bigfoot had the same intelligence as humans and could track them in the same way that we do to animals.
42. Werewolves have a whole city that can only be seen by humans on a full moon.
43. Countries use werewolves to take over new land that they want, but not without consequences for their actions.
44. A sound is coming from deep in the woods, calling to your characters, but it is a sound no one has ever heard before.
45. People try to capture bigfoot, but end up capturing something much scarier.
46. A camping trip turns dark and grizzly.
47. A couple with a relationship on the rocks wants to get away in the woods to reconnect, at least, until darker things appear.
48. Teenagers who should be in school take a day hike and run into something terrifying.
49. Someone thinks a woman is trapped deep in a cave, but it’s not a human.
50. Forest fires bring something terrifying out of the woods.
51. Everything in the forest is now out to hunt humans.
52. Survivors are trapped in a cabin and can’t find a way out.
53. A school trip of teenagers who came up to the mountains to stargaze turns dark.
54. A husband cannot get the cops to believe him that something came out of the woods to take his wife.
55. Visiting a firewatch tower seems like a great trip, until…
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