The Face in Her Nightmares
A young forensic artist who helps reconstruct faces from unidentified remains starts to have nightmares about one of her creations. The more she tries to understand her vision, the more she finds herself wrapped in a case of a serial killer who had never been caught, and whose new interest appears to be her.
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.
- Let one rule of the house or town be broken, and show why it existed.
- End before the danger is over.
- Tell it as a story someone is begging the reader to believe.
Writing horror books
Something is wrong here, and it's getting closer.
Horror is defined by the feeling it creates: dread, then fear, then the urge to keep reading anyway. The threat might be a ghost, a creature or the person in the next room. Underneath, the best horror is about something real: grief, guilt, the things we can't control.
What readers expect
- Dread that builds
- A threat that can't be reasoned with
- Characters out of their depth
- An ending that doesn't let you off easy
A tip before you start
What you don't show is scarier than what you do. Let the reader's imagination fill in the dark.
More Horror prompts
- The Town Behind Locked DoorsWrite a story about a small town where every full moon, the residents lock themselves inside. An outsider, stranded and unaware, experiences the…
- The Book of MadnessIn an ancient library, a librarian discovers a forbidden book that is said to be written in the language of madness. Curiosity leads them to read it…
- The Talisman That SpeaksDescribe the chilling occurrences when an amateur archaeologist unearths an ancient talisman that whispers secrets about the past, and summoning…
- The Mansion MirrorsWrite a story where a family inherits an old mansion, only to discover every mirror in the house shows their reflection with someone else standing…
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