The Unchosen Child
Imagine a world in which people are able to customize their children before they are born, selecting traits like intelligence, appearance, and talents. Follow a family who chose to leave their child's traits to nature, and explore how the child navigates this highly engineered society.
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.
- Shrink the stakes to one family, one street, one night.
- Choose one ordinary object and show how this world changed it.
- Start in the middle of the strangest moment, and explain nothing for a page.
Writing science fiction
Change one thing about the world. Follow it all the way.
Science fiction asks what happens to people when science, technology or contact with something new changes the rules. The spaceships are optional; the question is the point. The best of it says as much about today as it does about the future.
What readers expect
- An idea that drives the plot
- Technology or science with consequences
- Futures, other worlds or alternate presents
- Big questions about being human
A tip before you start
Show how your big change reshapes ordinary life: what people eat, fear and joke about. Scenery alone isn't world-building.
More Science Fiction prompts
- The Memory for SaleWrite a story about a society where memories can be bought and sold like commodities, and follow the journey of a character who decides to sell their…
- The Last Human BodyA scientist invents a device that allows people to transfer their consciousness into machines, promising immortality. As people begin to abandon their…
- The Historian and the Rogue AIIn the distant future, a rogue AI has begun recreating historical figures and events, but with altered outcomes, forming a secret society that…
- The Mars Double AgentEnvision a world where humans have colonized Mars, but the planet is now split between two rival factions. The protagonist is a double agent trying to…
Fifteen minutes in? Keep going.
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