The Firm's Environmental Cover-Up
A brilliant law student interns for a prestigious but secretive firm, only to find out they are involved in legally covering up major environmental disasters caused by their clients. Torn between their career prospects and their conscience, the intern battles with exposing the firm and risking their future or becoming part of the cover-up and betraying their own ethical beliefs.
Suggested length: A short story: 1,500 to 5,000 words, or flash fiction under 1,000
Start the clock
Pick a sprint, press start and keep going until it stops. Momentum beats polish on a first draft.
Make it yours
Three ways to take this prompt somewhere nobody else will.
- Make the person helping your hero the one to worry about.
- End a scene on a phone call, a knock or a name.
- Let the reader know something the hero doesn't.
Writing thriller books
Something terrible is coming. Can they stop it in time?
Where a mystery looks back at a crime, a thriller looks forward at a threat. The reader often knows more than the hero, and the tension comes from watching danger close in. Short chapters, high stakes and a ticking clock are the tools of the trade.
What readers expect
- A clear, escalating threat
- A hero under pressure
- Twists and reversals
- Pace: little time to breathe
A tip before you start
Put a clock on it. A deadline the reader can count down turns every scene into a race.
More Legal Thriller prompts
- The Lawyer and the Tech MagnateA rookie lawyer accepts a high-profile case defending a tech magnate accused of a massive privacy breach. However, the deeper she digs, the more she…
- The Last Human Defense LawyerA legal thriller set in a futuristic society where AI serves as the judge and jury, and human lawyers are virtually obsolete. The protagonist, one of…
- The Bankruptcy Paper TrailDuring a high-profile bankruptcy case involving a once-prominent construction company, an intern at a law firm discovers a pattern of transactions…
- Letters Before the VerdictWrite a story about a retired judge who receives threat letters aimed at influencing his final, landmark verdict. As he tries to unravel the source…
Fifteen minutes in? Keep going.
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