The Bookshop's Hidden Clues
Envision a scenario in which a teen gets a part-time job at an old, seemingly quaint bookstore, only to discover that certain books contain secret messages and clues about a forgotten local mystery involving the founding families of the town.
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 your hero make a big mistake for a reason the reader understands.
- End with a choice only this hero would make.
- Make the adults well-meaning but wrong.
Writing young adult books
Ages 12 to 18: firsts, identity and everything at stake.
Young adult fiction is written for teens, with protagonists usually 14 to 18. Every genre lives here, from fantasy to thrillers to romance. What makes it YA is the voice: immediate, intense and inside a teenager's head.
What readers expect
- A teen protagonist
- An immediate, close voice
- Identity and independence
- Big feelings, taken seriously
A tip before you start
Write from inside a teen's head, not from an adult looking back. That immediacy is what separates YA from an adult book with a young hero.
More YA Mystery and Thriller prompts
- The Town Mystery Was a LieEvery year on the anniversary of an unsolved town mystery, the local teens gather to recount the tale and explore the supposedly haunted site related…
- The Haunted Lighthouse PodcastA group of friends start a podcast to explore and solve local mysteries. Their latest topic? The decades-old unsolved case of the haunted lighthouse.…
- The Founder’s Missing WatchIn a small lakeside town, during the annual summer festival, a legendary old watch said to belong to the town's founder goes missing. The protagonist…
- Sabotage Before the Science FairThe night before a regional science fair, the groundbreaking project of a brilliant teen inventor is mysteriously sabotaged. Teaming up with a rival…
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