5,000 Writing Prompts

by Bryn Donovan

  A woman refuses two marriage proposals from good guys and marries a foreigner who winds up being mean to her. Much later, one of her former suitors takes an interest in her daughter, while the other one tells her he’s still interested in her. (Portrait of a Lady, Henry James.)

  A man falls in love with a woman, but she’s pretty mad at him because she found out he talked another guy into breaking up with her sister. (Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen.)

  A mistreated animal comes into a better situation. (Black Beauty, Anna Sewell.)

  A few visits from ghosts convince a greedy man to be more generous and loving. (A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens.)

  Facing the facts of his mortality, his unpopularity, and his worthless existence, a man makes a drastic change for the better. (Also A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens.)

  A cynical slacker redeems himself by trading places with a great guy who’s been imprisoned and dying in his place. (A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens.)

  A rich man runs over and kills a poor child in the street, but he shows no remorse. Later, he is murdered in his bed. (Also A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens.)

  A woman is caught in a love triangle with her fiancé and her fiancé’s father. (The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky.)

  A man desperately seeks money to pay what he owes to his fiancée so that he can leave her and run off with the woman he really loves. He then finds out that the woman he really loves has taken up with a former boyfriend again. (Also The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky.)

  A person never ages due to a sinister spell. (The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde.)

  A girl follows an animal guide to a strange new world. (Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll.)

  A young man falls in love with the girl next door, but she rejects him because she sees him as a brother. Later, when he’s on vacation, he crosses paths with the girl’s sister, and those two fall in love. (Little Women, Louisa May Alcott.)

  A man forgives his wife and his wife’s lover for having an affair. His wife’s lover is so embarrassed he attempts suicide, but fails. The adulterers then run away together. (Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy.)

  A young woman teaching at a school abroad develops relationships with both the schoolmaster and a rich doctor. (Villette, Charlotte Brontë.)

  A respectable man has a secret and horrible past: he sold his wife and baby daughter. (The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy.)

  A bitter old man gets robbed and becomes the foster father for a little girl. (Silas Marner, George Eliot.)

  A woman marries an old man who has no interest in her, but becomes friends with an interesting guy her own age. When the woman’s elderly husband dies, he leaves a note in his will that she can’t inherit anything if she marries the younger guy she’s friends with. (Middlemarch, George Eliot.)

  A woman only realizes she’s in love with her good friend after another woman falls in love with him. (Emma, Jane Austen.)

  Nobody knows that this beautiful young bride faked her own death, abandoned her child, and assumed a new identity in order to find a wealthy husband. (Lady Audley’s Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon.)

  A boy fakes his own death, runs away from home, and teams up with another runaway for adventure. (Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain.)

  An orphan becomes a criminal’s apprentice. (Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens.)

  A woman gets news that the man she was once in love with has gotten married to his girlfriend. Later, she learns she was mistaken—the man’s girlfriend dumped him to marry his brother instead. (Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen.)

  A young woman is heartbroken when the dashing and charming man she loves ignores her and then breaks up with her. After she recovers from a dangerous illness, she receives attentions from a man who’s loved her all along. (Also Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen.)

  After discovering that his grandmother was a fairy, a young man’s room turns into an enchanted wood in Fairy Land. (Phantastes, a Faerie Romance for Men and Women, by George McDonald.)

  The statue of a woman comes alive. She runs away, and a man searches for her. (Also Phantastes, a Faerie Romance for Men and Women, by George McDonald.)

  A woman is punished and ostracized for adultery while her husband, in disguise, seeks revenge on her lover. (The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne.)

  In a remote location, a scientist creates grotesque human hybrids. (The Island of Dr. Moreau, H.G. Wells.)

  A young man manages to pick fights with three different guys in one afternoon, but they all wind up being friends. (The Three Musketeers, Alexander Dumas.)

  A young man sleeps with a rich woman in exchange for money. In doing so, he learns a secret about her that leads her to try to get him killed. (Also The Three Musketeers, Alexander Dumas.)

  A man makes a large bet with his friends that he can travel around the world in a short frame of time. (Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne.)

  A teacher at a school snaps and beats up an abusive headmaster. (The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Charles Dickens.)

  A man is in love with a woman who’s marrying some rich and selfish old man who’s offered to pay off her father’s debt in return. (Also The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Charles Dickens.)

  A young woman falls in love with her employer only to learn that he’s married to a woman he keeps locked up. (Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë.)

  Aliens attack a country on planet Earth and crush its human army, but then they all die of some alien disease. (The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells.)

  A mischievous boy develops a huge crush on a girl at school, but he keeps messing things up with her. (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain.)

  A boy secretly witnesses a murder and is scared to tell anyone, even when the wrong man is blamed for it. (Also The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain.)

  A relentlessly cheerful man’s good nature is tested when he moves to a dangerous and difficult new place. (Martin Chuzzlewit, Charles Dickens.)

  50 Plots From Classic Cinema

  Most of these are plots or plot points from Hollywood movies of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, though there are a few movies in here from countries other than the United States. Many of these, of course, were novels first, and a few of them were plays before they were movies.

  Some of these are fairly specific, and most or all of them are not in the public domain. You can take inspiration from the stories, but you won’t want to follow them too closely.

  A man is wrongfully arrested for the kidnapping of a child and he almost gets killed by an angry mob. He fakes his death and frames the mob for the murder. (Fury.)

  The young wife of an old pastor falls in love with his son from his first marriage. (Day of Wrath.)

  A man pushes his wife into a singing career even though she’s not that talented, leading to her public humiliation. (Citizen Kane.)

  One man struggles to keep another one, who lacks good judgment and is unintentionally destructive, out of trouble. (Of Mice and Men.)

  An aging movie star who wants to make a comeback hires a struggling screenwriter to doctor the script she wrote to hopefully star in herself. He moves in to her mansion, but is taken aback when he realizes she’s fallen in love with him. (Sunset Boulevard.)

  A woman unexpectedly inherits an estate from a man who dabbled in the supernatural. Before long, the dead man’s animated corpse makes an appearance at the house. (The Ghoul.)

  The chauffeur’s daughter is in love with the younger son of the family her father works for. The older son fears the growing attraction between the two will end the younger son’s engagement—and spoil a lucrative business deal in the process. The older son makes romantic advances toward the chauffeur’s daughter, only to fall in love with her himself. (Sabrina.)

  A beautiful c
ircus acrobat agrees to marry one of the performers in the side show because she’s after his inheritance. (Freaks.)

  A man is arrested for armed robberies he didn’t commit. As his lawyer tries to prove his innocence, the stress is devastating to his family. (The Wrong Man.)

  A pickpocket accidentally steals sensitive government information. (Pickup on South Street.)

  A scientist trying to secure funding for his museum gets tangled up with an eccentric heiress and a spotted leopard. (Bringing Up Baby.)

  A father and his young son search for a stolen item and the person who stole it. (The Bicycle Thief.)

  A socialite marries a wealthy rancher after a whirlwind romance. After she moves to the ranch, she’s appalled at the way the workers are treated. (Giant.)

  The hunt for a serial killer who preys on children disrupts the operations of a city’s crime lords, who pitch in to find the killer. (M.)

  An expatriate painter, a singer, and a concert pianist all try to make it in Paris. The painter falls in love with the singer’s girlfriend. (An American in Paris.)

  A rich woman seems to take an interest in the work of a struggling artist and invites him to a dinner party. He is the only guest at the “party,” and he suspects she’s more interested in paying him to be her boyfriend than in his artwork. (Also An American In Paris.)

  After shots are fired in a theater, a woman talks a man into taking her back to his apartment. She tells him that she’s a spy who has vital information, and that assassins are tracking her down. Later that night, she bursts into his room, dying of a stab wound. She’s clutching a map. (The 39 Steps.)

  A retired couple travels to a big city to visit their grown children, who are too busy to spend much time with them. (Tokyo Story.)

  After a treacherous prince usurps the throne, a nobleman loyal to the rightful king goes into hiding in the wilderness. Others join him, and they wage guerilla warfare against the pretender. (The Adventures of Robin Hood.)

  A motorcycle club comes to a small town for a race and wreaks havoc on the community, but the police chief’s daughter strikes up a romance with the gang leader. (The Wild One.)

  A cruel principal runs a boarding school in Paris. The man’s wife, who owns the school, and his mistress—a teacher—conspire to murder him. After they do it, his body goes missing. (Les Diaboliques.)

  A rogue and the self-centered daughter of a slave owner strike up a fraught romance. (Gone With the Wind.)

  Two brothers—one conservative and proper, the other a womanizer—enlist as pilots during World War I. When the conservative brother’s girlfriend hits on the other brother, he gives in, and then regrets it. (Hell’s Angels.)

  Two brothers are taken prisoner during wartime and given the choice of sharing information or getting executed. One brother is ready to talk. The other brother kills him before he can do it, and is then executed. (Also Hell’s Angels.)

  A reporter who lost his more prestigious jobs in big cities due to bad behavior is writing for an insignificant newspaper. When a man gets trapped in a cave, he tries to prolong the rescue so that he can get more attention as a journalist. (Ace in the Hole.)

  A man abandons his fiancée for an alcoholic, down-on-her-luck actress…who hides the fact that she’s married. (Dangerous.)

  A self-appointed, woman-hating travelling preacher, arrested for stealing a car, meets a bank robber in jail. The bank robber won’t tell him where he hid the money he stole, and is executed for murder. When the preacher gets out of prison, he courts and marries the bank robber’s widow and attempts to learn where the money’s hidden. (Night of the Hunter.)

  A man dates a woman who’s only after his money. His daughter hates her so much she attacks the woman and disfigures her. In retaliation, the father has her boyfriend killed. (The Furies.)

  The spoiled daughter of a slave owner, engaged to a wealthy banker, shocks him and society by showing up to a ball in a red dress instead of the traditional white dress. He breaks up with her. (Jezebel.)

  Someone who routinely spies on his neighbors witnesses a murder while looking in a neighbor’s window. (Rear Window.)

  Two prisoners of war dig an escape tunnel, but just before it’s completed, they are transferred to a more impenetrable fortress. They manage to escape. (La Grande Illusion.)

  A rich woman tries to get a fellow traveller to prove her theory that two perfect strangers can commit murder and get away with it. (Strangers on a Train.)

  A priest is assigned to a new parish where everyone is critical of him and gives him a hard time. One person even spreads lies about him, saying his cruel words helped lead to her mother’s death. (Diary of a Country Priest.)

  A new town marshal, disregarding the objections of his new bride and the concerns of the townspeople, faces a gang of killers alone. (High Noon.)

  Men are pressed into naval service on a ship commanded by a ruthless tyrant of a captain. The ship’s lieutenant finally approves of a mutiny. (Mutiny on the Bounty.)

  A man with a violent past tries to start a new peaceful life as a hired hand on a homestead. He winds up fighting the ranchers who are harassing the settlers. (Shane.)

  A failed British writer turned drifter shows up at a diner in Arizona. The diner owner’s daughter shows him her paintings and confides that she dreams of moving to France. When the people at the diner get taken hostage by robbers, the writer changes his life insurance policy to make the young woman the recipient and asks a robber to shoot him. (The Petrified Forest.)

  An alien lands his spacecraft in Washington, DC. A frightened soldier shoots and wounds him, destroying the gift the alien was bringing to the president: a device that would’ve allowed him to study life on other planets. (The Day the Earth Stood Still.)

  A girl finds herself in an alternate universe. Her arrival killed a witch, and the witch’s sister pursues her. (The Wizard of Oz.)

  An American couple vacationing in a foreign country witness a murder in a marketplace. The dying man tells them of an assassination plot that must be foiled. Then their young son is kidnapped, and they get a message that he won’t be harmed as long as they don’t tell authorities about the plot. (The Man Who Knew Too Much.)

  A botanist in Tibet is bitten by a werewolf. Luckily, the botanist has obtained a temporary cure for werewolf symptoms: the juice of the rare mariphasa plant he collected there. (Werewolf of London.)

  An aging professor is forced to retire due to ill health. He comes to grips with his unpopularity as a teacher and his failures as a husband. (The Browning Version.)

  An idealistic young man is appointed to fill a senator seat after a senator’s death. An older senator, well-respected but secretly corrupt, mentors him. (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.)

  A sheriff arrests the brother of a criminal, who threatens to break him out of jail. The sheriff gets his alcoholic deputy, a disabled man, and a young gunfighter to stand with him against the criminal and his gang. (Rio Bravo.)

  A depressed man has the opportunity to see what the world would’ve been like if he had never been born. (It’s a Wonderful Life.)

  A woman returns to her hometown after the death of her lover, a married politician. She marries a fisherman but soon starts an affair with her husband’s friend. (Clash by Night.)

  A retired American boxer moves to Ireland to reclaim his family’s farm. He falls in love with a local woman, but her brother refuses to consent to the wedding or let her have her dowry. She wants her American beau to confront her brother, but he never wants to fight again. (The Quiet Man.)

  An army deserter and a teenaged girl who’s run away from home meet up in a port city, spend time together, and deal with her creepy godfather and a gangster who’s after her ex-boyfriend. (Port of Shadows.)

  A rich Jewish prince is betrayed by his friend and sold into Roman slavery. After he saves a Roman co
mmander’s life, the Roman frees him and adopts him as a son. (Ben-Hur.)

  A nightclub owner protects his ex-girlfriend, who he still loves, and her husband from their enemies. (Casablanca.)

  CHARACTER PROMPTS

  The most foolproof way for writers to win the loyalty of readers is to create characters they fall in love with. When characters feel like real, interesting people, readers will follow them just about anywhere to find out what they do next. Readers will even overlook weaknesses in plotting or writing if the characters have them hooked. In a series, characters become old friends.

  Even for authors, part of the joy of writing is creating characters…and getting to know them better and better. The prompts in this section are designed to help you do both of those things.

  37 Prompts Based on Personality Typing

  Some people love classification systems for personalities, such as astrological signs, the enneagram, and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Whether or not you believe personality typing systems have any truth to them, they’re useful for fiction, revealing patterns in personality that have resonated with many.

  Don’t get mad at me if a prompt for your zodiac sign or personality type doesn’t accurately describe you. It’s all just for fictional inspiration, anyway. Write about one of these characters, and see who you come up with!

  Aries: independent, arrogant, and full of energy. May have a short attention span.

  Taurus: a self-indulgent person who indulges his or her favorite people as well.

  Gemini: entertaining, but shallow, and probably hiding something.

  Cancer: caring, emotional, and moody.

  Leo: vain, but a lot of fun, with a strong sense of honor.

  Virgo: intelligent, analytical, and critical.

  Libra: concerned with fairness, and a bit naïve.

  Scorpio: smoldering with passion and suspicious of almost everyone.

  Sagittarius: a cocky adventurer.