Fantasy writing requires a deep level of imagination, detail, and creativity. Anything’s possible, because you’re creating your own world with its native laws, characters, and settings.
But despite having the freedom of a blank slate, it’s often hard to start the story itself, because a blank slate also means an infinite number of possible directions your story can go.
That’s a lot of pressure and confusion, especially when you’re trying to write a fresh and innovative story.
Fantasy Writing Prompts
If you’re a fantasy writer who’s currently in a writing slump, check out this list of fantasy writing prompts. Find one that interests you and see if it’s the start to curing your creative blocks.
Character Prompts
1. You are a Keeper, someone who has vowed to preserve magical knowledge that’s beneficial to mankind. You come across the journal of your era’s most monstrous villain. In it is a ritual that can help humanity, but the methods used are questionable.
2. You work as a private investigator in a city populated by a mix of humans, dwarves, elves, and orcs. The city guard calls you in to investigate a case involving a body that is definitely not from any of the aforementioned races.
3. You are at a party when your drunk best friend pulls you somewhere private. “I’m a mage,” she slurs while tracing glowing runes in the air.
4. A fierce war breaks out between two neighboring kingdoms. You work as a messenger, delivering love letters between a prince and princess separated by the war.
5. An orphanage caters to all sorts of races. Parents looking to adopt usually look for kids of the same race. You, a troll, are currently being adopted by a dwarven couple.
6. On your way home, you knock over an anthill. The next day you receive a letter summoning you to court for “wanton destruction of Faerie property.”
7. A character is born deaf and mute. Since childhood, the only way she can communicate is through writing and sign language. On her 18th birthday, she discovers she has the ability to speak with animals.
8. Somehow, you remember your ancestor’s lives through genetic memory. You didn’t expect one of them to not be human, though.
Setting Prompts
9. In a world where emotions are currency, happiness is in short supply. The rich hoard it, while the destitute resort to stealing it from one another.
10. A kingdom known for its magic finally opens its borders after centuries of isolation. You are part of the very first group of outsiders to set foot inside.
11. A friend invites you to visit her home during summer break. You accept. What you didn’t expect is that she’s from Atlantis.
12. A family moves into an old country house. They discover that each room belongs to a different time… with its own inhabitants.
13. A woman is swallowed by a whale. When she opens her eyes, she discovers an entire civilization living within the whale’s stomach.
14. Experienced cavers begin mapping out an unexplored cave system. After hours of squeezing through rocks, they emerge at a mountaintop overlooking a world that’s definitely not theirs.
15. The mine has been abandoned for centuries. But every now and then, light flickers from the entrance and you hear the murmur of voices within.
16. You go deep diving somewhere in the Pacific and you come across a village of merpeople. They don’t want you to go back to the surface.
Item Prompts
17. On her deathbed, your spinster aunt directs you to a locked box. In it is a glass slipper. She beckons you closer and whispers, “Don’t believe the stories. He never found me.”
18. A magician succeeds in brewing a potion of luck. While the potion does make him incredibly lucky, it also comes with an unexpected side effect.
19. You purchase a camera capable of capturing the memories of a place. You use it on historically significant locations and are surprised with what it captures.
20. You find an interesting novel in the library but find the last pages blank. The librarian tells you the author never finished it so you decide on writing your own ending. Suddenly, a character from the book jumps out, warning you not to end the story.
21. “You can hear the ocean if you hold the shell to your ear,” your mother tells you at the beach. You do as she says and hear much, much more.
22. A dragon has amassed a legendary treasure trove from its years of hoarding. Everyone wants it. Write from the dragon’s perspective as it continuously repels marauders.
23. While excavating some ruins, you come across a rusted but still intact sword. A spirit appears, asking you to bring it to its rightful owner.
24. Supercomputers have advanced to the point that they can decode the missing parts of any old knowledge. Somewhere in the world, an artificial intelligence starts learning magic.
Event Prompts
25. Every decade, magicians from the entire continent come together for a tournament. The prizes are prestige, rare magical ingredients and tools, and even their own powers.
26. A magical plague is affecting the populace. Anyone inflicted turns into an empty shell, mindless and docile. The cause is unknown, the cure nonexistent.
27. It’s Christmas! You wake up to the sounds of something moving in the living room. Thinking it’s Santa, you race down the stairs. Santa is there—but he’s not exactly how the media portrayed him.
28. Today’s wedding is full of tension. One family hates magic, the other embraces it. Can the married couple-to-be keep things calm enough to make it through the ceremony?
29. Night comes and you sleep, intending to wake up the next morning. But when you do wake up, the sky is still dark, and the night goes on and on and on.
30. Magic suddenly disappears, rendering everything reliant on it useless. Write about the aftermath.
31. A portal opens up in all major cities of the world. Every creature from folk tales, legends, and fairy tales comes pouring in. The fantastical is finally coming home to Earth.
32. You are chosen as this year’s harvest queen. Unfortunately, that means being thrown into a volcano as a sacrifice to your village’s patron goddess.
Get Inspired to Write
All writers, no matter the genre or medium, fall victim to writer’s block. There are days you can’t seem to latch onto an idea and translate it into words. Or any work you write down is uncreative and unsatisfying.
To counteract this insidious assassin, a lot of writers go for writing exercises, one of the most popular of these being writing prompts. They’re fun and easy ways to restart your writing streak. Think of them as idea seeds that slowly grow as you get into the rhythm of writing again.
Take them in whatever direction you want to go. It doesn’t even matter if you write poorly. Like every story, you always start rough and then polish them to perfection. The stories you create might not even be only one-off projects. Sometimes you’ll like a prompt so much that it’ll become your next major work.
Did you find this post useful? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Cole is a blog writer and aspiring novelist. He has a degree in Communications and is an advocate of media and information literacy and responsible media practices. Aside from his interest in technology, crafts, and food, he’s also your typical science fiction and fantasy junkie, spending most of his free time reading through an ever-growing to-be-read list. It’s either that or procrastinating over actually writing his book. Wish him luck!
