100 story starters for every kind of writer

The hardest part of writing a story is often the first sentence. A story starter takes care of that for you: it drops you into a situation that already has a question built in, so all you have to do is answer it. Every starter on this page was written for this site. They are grouped by genre and work for upper elementary students through adults; the funny, animal and fairy tale sections are especially good for younger writers.

How to use these story starters

• Pick one that makes you curious. If you want to know what happens next, your reader will too.
• Copy the starter as your first line, or rewrite it in your own words.
• Before you write more, decide who the main character is and what they want.
• Set a timer for 10 or 15 minutes and keep writing until it rings.
• Change anything you like: names, setting, point of view, even the genre. A starter is a push, not a rule.

Adventure story starters

• The map was drawn on the back of a cereal box, but the X marked a real place: the old water tower at the edge of town.
• When the canoe drifted around the bend, the river split in two, and neither branch was on our map.
• My aunt handed me a backpack, a compass and a bus ticket and said, "You'll know when you get there."
• The ski lift stopped halfway up the mountain, and the snow began to fall harder than I had ever seen it fall.
• We had been hiking for three hours when Ana pointed at the cave and said, "That wasn't there yesterday."
• The hot-air balloon was only supposed to rise to the end of its rope, until the rope came loose.
• Grandpa's old sailboat had one rule painted on the side: Never sail past the lighthouse. Today the wind had other plans.
• The night train stopped in the middle of the desert, and the conductor told everyone to stay in their seats. I didn't.
• On the first day of summer camp, each of us got a sealed envelope and strict orders not to open it until the bell rang at midnight.
• The rope bridge across the canyon had forty-two planks. On the way over, I counted only forty-one.

Mystery story starters

• Every morning for a week, someone left a single sunflower on our porch, and every morning the dog refused to go near it.
• The library book was nine years overdue, and the name on the checkout card was mine.
• When Mr. Patel opened his bakery on Monday, every cake in the window had exactly one bite missing.
• The class hamster was back in its cage, but it was wearing a tiny knitted scarf that nobody had ever seen before.
• The postcard had no stamp and no return address, just four words: "Look under the stairs."
• All the clocks in the museum stopped at 3:17, and the guard swore he heard footsteps in the empty dinosaur hall.
• My new neighbor carried boxes into his house every night, but every morning his windows showed empty rooms.
• The trophy disappeared from the glass case during the school assembly, while four hundred people were watching the stage.
• Someone had already filled in the crossword in our newspaper before it was delivered.
• The key was taped inside the cover of a secondhand book, along with a note that said, "You took long enough."

Fantasy story starters

• On my twelfth birthday, my shadow stood up, stretched and walked out the door without me.
• The dragon at the end of our street wanted only one thing: someone to teach it how to read.
• In our town, the rain falls upward on Tuesdays, and nobody talks about it.
• The old woman at the market sold jars labeled with feelings, and the one marked COURAGE was nearly empty.
• When I pulled a loose thread on Grandma's quilt, the little stitched village on it began to move.
• The wizard's apprentice had one job while the wizard was away: don't feed the plant.
• Every hundred years the river spirit asks one question, and this year it chose me to answer.
• The door at the back of the coat closet had always been painted shut, until the morning it stood wide open.
• I found out I could talk to trees on the day the oak in our yard asked me to move my bike.
• The crown fit perfectly, which was a problem, because I had only stopped at the castle to ask for directions.

Science fiction story starters

• The robot vacuum stopped in the middle of the kitchen and said, very clearly, "We need to talk."
• In the year 2150, I was the last kid on the space station who had never seen real rain.
• The message from deep space arrived on a Tuesday, and it was addressed to my little sister.
• When the whole town lost power, the lights came on in the old observatory that had been locked for fifty years.
• My new phone could predict the future, but only ten seconds of it, which turned out to be exactly enough.
• The colony ship had been traveling for two hundred years, and I was the first person to wake up early.
• Everyone in my class got a robot tutor, but mine kept asking me for help with its homework.
• The scientists said the comet would miss Earth by a wide margin. They did not mention the thing riding on it.
• I pressed the wrong button on the time machine and arrived exactly one day before I left.
• The new girl said she came from Ohio, but she had never seen a dandelion and thought snow was a kind of food.

Funny story starters

• My dog ate my homework, which would have been a fine excuse if I had a dog.
• The substitute teacher was, without any doubt, a goat in a cardigan, and nobody else seemed to notice.
• Grandma took up skateboarding at eighty-one and is now banned from three parks.
• I thought I was signing up for a library card. It turns out I signed up for the town pie-eating contest.
• My little brother announced at dinner that he was now a cat and would only answer to Mr. Whiskers.
• The talent show started in one hour, and my only talent was touching my nose with my tongue.
• Dad decided to fix the washing machine himself, which is why the kitchen is now full of bubbles.
• The class pet escaped on picture day and ended up in every single photo.
• I wished my teacher would forget about the test. I did not expect her to forget everything else too, including how doors work.
• Our family road trip had three rules: no singing, no complaining and no stopping. We broke all three before the first exit.

Spooky story starters (not too scary)

• The jack-o'-lantern on our porch was smiling when we went to bed. In the morning, it was frowning.
• Every night at nine, the piano in the empty music room plays the same three notes.
• The new house came with everything: furniture, dishes and a note on the fridge that said, "Please don't move the blue chair."
• My reflection blinked a second after I did.
• The ghost in our attic was very polite, but it kept rearranging the furniture without asking.
• The scarecrow in Mr. Lund's field faced the road on Friday. On Saturday, it faced our house.
• Halfway through the sleepover, we realized there was one more sleeping bag than there were kids.
• The fog rolled in so thick that when it finally cleared, every house on our street had changed color.
• Nobody had lived in the lighthouse for forty years, so who kept turning on the light?
• The old doll in the antique shop had a price tag that said, "Free. Please take her. Please."

Animal story starters

• The stray cat that followed me home wore a collar with an address on it, and the address was a street that had not existed for a hundred years.
• The raccoons in our neighborhood had organized, and they had a list of demands.
• A goose landed in the middle of the soccer field during the championship game and refused to leave.
• Our class turtle was named Speedy as a joke, until the day he escaped and nobody could catch him.
• I was the only one on the farm who knew the old horse could count.
• The penguin at the zoo kept waddling to the gift shop to stare at the postcards of tropical beaches.
• A crow left a shiny button on my windowsill every morning. Today it left a key.
• The dog at the animal shelter had been waiting for three years, and today he picked me.
• The bees in Grandpa's hives stopped making honey and started making something blue.
• When the traveling petting zoo left town, one small goat stayed behind in our garage, eating the recycling.

Realistic fiction: school, family and friends

• I had practiced my speech a hundred times, but when I stepped up to the microphone, my note cards were blank.
• My best friend moved away in June, and in September a new girl took her seat, her locker and, it seemed, her laugh.
• Mom said we were moving to a farm, and I said I would rather live in a cardboard box. That was before I met the goats.
• The tryout list was posted on the gym door, and I could see from across the hall that my name was not at the top.
• Grandpa said he had one more thing to teach me before summer ended, and it involved a rowboat and a very early alarm.
• The note in my locker said, "Meet me at the bike racks after school," and it was signed with a drawing of a fish.
• I was supposed to watch my little sister for one hour. It took me ten minutes to lose her at the hardware store.
• My parents finally let me get a phone, on one condition: my grandmother would be my first contact.
• The spelling bee came down to me and the kid who had beaten me every year since second grade.
• When the power went out during the storm, my family had to talk to each other for the first time in months.

Historical fiction story starters

• In 1849, my family packed everything we owned into one wagon, and Father said there was room for only one book.
• The year was 1925, and the first radio in our town had just arrived at the general store.
• On the night the telephone line finally reached our farm, the phone rang, and nobody knew how to answer it.
• I was nine when I crossed the ocean to America with a loaf of bread, a cousin's address and my brother's old coat.
• The castle cook gave me one task: carry the soup up two hundred stairs to the great hall without spilling a drop.
• In ancient Egypt, I was the youngest scribe in the city, and this morning I made a mistake on the most important scroll in the kingdom.
• Our one-room schoolhouse had a single stove, and in the winter of 1888 it was my job to keep it lit.
• The circus train rolled into town in 1910, and I had exactly one nickel and one plan.
• In July 1969, our whole street crowded around one small television to watch the Moon landing, and that was when our dog ran off.
• In 1903, the newspaper said two brothers had flown a machine through the air, and Grandfather laughed out loud. I started building wings that night.

Fairy tales and fables with a twist

• The third little pig was tired of building houses, so he hired the wolf as his contractor.
• Goldilocks went back to the bears' house ten years later, this time with a casserole and an apology.
• Cinderella's glass slipper fit three different girls, and the prince had to come up with a better plan.
• The giant at the top of the beanstalk had been waiting years for someone to climb up and help him get down.
• Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother was a retired detective, and she knew right away that something was wrong.
• The frog had been kissed by fourteen princesses, and he was starting to think he liked being a frog.
• Rapunzel cut her hair short and built a staircase instead.
• The witch's gingerbread house failed its safety inspection because of the gumdrop roof.
• Sleeping Beauty woke up after a hundred years and wanted to know what she had missed.
• The tortoise and the hare agreed to a rematch, and this time the hare brought snacks.

How to turn a starter into a story

1. Ask the question the starter raises. Why did the shadow leave? Who left the sunflowers? What does the robot want to talk about?
2. Give your main character a name, a want and one weakness.
3. Decide what stands in the way, and make it get harder as the story goes on.
4. Plan the climax: the moment your character has to act.
5. Write the opening, using the starter as your first line.
6. End with a change, not a dream. Our guide on how to write a short story covers the whole process.

Tips for teachers

• Read three starters aloud and let each student choose one.
• Use a starter as a ten-minute daily warm-up, then let students pick one warm-up a week to develop into a full story.
• Swap halfway: each student writes a beginning, then passes it to a partner who writes the ending.
• Have younger students draw the scene first, then write two or three sentences about it.
• Ask students to write the same starter in two genres, such as mystery and funny, and compare how the tone changes.
• Use the realistic and historical starters for narrative essay practice or to support a history unit.
• Post one starter a day on the board and collect the best opening paragraphs in a class book.

For more ideas, our page of writing prompts has 300 more, sorted by grade band and genre, including journal and opinion prompts. If your students write dialogue, a quick review of quotation marks will save a lot of red ink.