Fantasy Writing Prompts
Good fantasy prompts don't hand you a world — they hand you a problem the world has to answer. Each of these starts with a crack in reality and a person standing on it. Steal one, twist it, and start chapter one today.
- 01
Every citizen receives one spell at birth, chosen by lottery. Yours has been declared illegal — retroactively, as of this morning.
- 02
The dragon your village sacrifices to hasn't eaten anyone in two hundred years. You're this year's offering, and you find out why.
- 03
Magic is dying, and the last enchanted objects are kept in a museum. You're the night guard, and tonight one of them spoke your name.
- 04
A cartographer discovers that maps don't describe the kingdom — they decide it. Her next commission: erase a city that voted wrong.
- 05
Your sword is haunted by its previous owner, who insists she died undefeated. She has opinions about your technique.
- 06
The royal food taster develops an immunity to every poison — and discovers the king has been poisoning the kingdom's water for years.
- 07
A witch's familiar outlives her and inherits the debt she owed to the forest. The forest has begun collecting.
- 08
In your city, rain falls upward once a year, carrying away everything not tied down. This year you didn't tie down your grief.
- 09
The chosen one died at age six. The prophecy, unbothered, simply moved to the next name on the list: yours, the chosen one's tutor.
- 10
Every lie you tell becomes true for exactly one hour. You've been very careful for thirty years. Today your daughter is dying.
- 11
The kingdom's last unicorn walks into a pawn shop and asks the owner to hide it. Hunters arrive twenty minutes later.
- 12
A bridge appears overnight connecting your village to an island that has never existed on any map. Toll: one memory per crossing.