Finish-the-Story Writing Prompts (Story Openings + Cliffhangers to Continue)

Continue this scene: "The footsteps had been getting closer for ten minutes. I had counted each one, seventy-three. They stopped just outside the door. I held my breath. Whatever was on the other side was waiting too."

Continue this scene: "I had been searching the desk for an hour. I had given up. I was about to leave when I saw it, a photograph face-down on the floor, half under the rug. I picked it up. I turned it over."

Continue this scene: "She had been reading the diary for two hours. Most of it was ordinary: school, weather, complaints about her sister. Then, on the last page, she read the last line. She put the diary down. She would not be sleeping tonight."

Continue this scene: "The door had been open when I got home. I always lock it. Always. I stood in the hallway. I called out. No one answered. I checked every room. They were empty. But something was missing, something specific. And I knew exactly what."

Continue this scene: "My phone rang at 4:47pm on a Tuesday. The caller ID showed my own number. I let it ring four times. I picked up. 'Hello?' I said. The voice on the other end was mine. 'Don't go to the meeting tomorrow,' it said. Then it hung up."

Continue this opening: "It was a perfectly ordinary Tuesday. I made my coffee. I checked my email. I started the news. And then the news anchor said my name."

Continue this opening: "I loved my job. I loved my coworkers. The pay was fine. I genuinely looked forward to Mondays. Then one Tuesday in March, my company's biggest client emailed me directly. 'I need to meet you,' the email said. 'Tonight. Alone.'"

Continue this opening: "I'd been driving for six hours. I knew the road well, I'd driven it dozens of times. I knew the exits, the gas stations, the small towns I passed through. So I should have noticed sooner. I had passed the same exit three times."

Continue this opening: "The email came at 11:23pm. The subject line was just a date, March 14, 2017. I hadn't thought about that date in years. I opened the email. The body was empty. The only attachment was a single photograph."

Continue this opening: "Everyone said the house was just a house. The realtor said it. The neighbors said it. My family said it. After we moved in, I started saying it too. Until last Wednesday."

Continue this opening: "She was running through the rain in heels. Her dress was soaked. She was crying, not sobbing, just steady tears that mixed with the rain. She didn't look back. Whatever she was running from, she didn't want to see it again."

Continue this opening: "He held the match for a long moment, watching the small flame. The papers in front of him were three years of work. The papers were also evidence. He thought about what he'd already lost. He thought about what he could still keep."

Continue this opening: "They met at the train station the way they had every Saturday for fifteen years. He bought the coffee. She bought the newspapers. They walked to the same bench. They had never said anything important to each other. Today, they would."

Continue this opening: "She picked up the phone to call her mother. She had picked it up at least twenty times in the past month. Every time, she put it down. This time, she dialed."

Continue this opening: "The old man walked to the edge of the cliff. He had walked here every morning for forty years. He had never gone past the edge. Today, he had a small canvas bag in his hand. He was about to do something he had thought about for forty years."

Continue this opening: "The basement light turned on by itself at 2am. I know it did, because I was standing at the top of the stairs when it happened. I hadn't been down there in a week. And I live alone."

Continue this opening: "There were thirteen of us on the camping trip. We counted twice before bed to be sure. In the morning, there were fourteen sleeping bags. Every one of them was full."

Continue this opening: "The text arrived at 11:58pm from a number I did not recognize. It said, 'Get out of the house.' I laughed and locked my phone. Ten seconds later it buzzed again. 'They are already inside.'"

Continue this opening: "When we bought the house, every mirror was covered with a bedsheet. The previous owner left a note taped to the fridge. It said only one thing: 'Leave them covered.' On our first night, my daughter pulled one down."

Continue this opening: "The dinner party had six names on the guest list. Five people arrived. By the time dessert was served, one of the five was dead, and the sixth guest had never shown up. Or so we thought."

Continue this opening: "The room looked untouched. Nothing was missing, nothing was broken. But Inspector Reyes noticed one thing the others had walked past: the clock on the mantel was eleven minutes fast. She smiled. That was the whole case."

Continue this opening: "By Friday, every single person in the village of Ashford had an alibi for the night of the robbery. All two hundred of them. Which meant one of them was lying, and I had until Sunday to find out who."

Continue this opening: "The reading of the will took four minutes. My grandfather left his house, his money, and his business to a woman none of us had ever met. Her name was Clara. The only clue was an address, written on the back of an old photograph."

Continue this opening: "The signal came from a colony ship we would not launch for another four hundred years. It used our own transmission code. It was addressed to me, by name. And it contained a single instruction: do not board the ship."

Continue this opening: "The dragon did not breathe fire. It did not move at all. It simply lowered its enormous head until one golden eye was level with mine, and it asked me a question no human had ever been asked. I had until sunrise to answer."

Continue this opening: "I woke up in my own bed, in my own body, with a full set of memories that were not mine. I remembered a war I had never fought. I remembered a wife I had never married. And I remembered, very clearly, how I had died."

Continue this opening: "The old map had one road my village did not have, leading to one door in the mountain that no one had ever seen. My grandmother swore the map was worthless. On my sixteenth birthday, I packed a bag and went to find the door."

Continue this opening: "It started on a Tuesday. I came home from school and found my dog, Biscuit, sitting at my laptop. He had typed one word: 'Snacks.' By Friday, he had opened his own email account and ordered forty pizzas."

Continue this opening: "Our substitute teacher had green ears, six fingers on each hand, and a name we could not pronounce. Nobody else seemed to notice. When she asked us to 'take out your tentacles for the quiz,' I raised my hand and said, 'We do not have tentacles, Miss.'"

Continue this opening: "I woke up on Monday morning eight inches shorter, wearing a unicorn onesie, and staring at my own annoyed face across the breakfast table. I had swapped bodies with my seven-year-old sister. And I had a math test in two hours."

Continue this opening: "The new vending machine in the school hallway did not sell chips or soda. Every button was a wish. 'Fly to school.' 'Never do homework again.' 'Talk to animals.' I had exactly one coin, and everyone was watching to see what I would pick."