A Lady at Versailles
Imagine you are a lady-in-waiting in the court of King Louis XVI during the French Revolution. Narrate the events leading up to the fall of the monarchy through the eyes of someone who is torn between her devotion to the queen and the revolutionary ideas that resonate with her personal struggles.
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 dialogue sound of its time without becoming hard to read.
- Tell it from someone the history books ignored.
- Write it as a letter that took weeks to arrive.
Writing historical fiction
Step into another time and feel what it was like.
Historical fiction is set in the past, usually at least 50 years before it was written. Real events and people often appear, but the story belongs to its characters. Readers come for the immersion: the smells, the rules, the dangers of a world that's gone.
What readers expect
- A vivid, well-researched setting
- Real events as backdrop or engine
- Characters shaped by their era
- Details that feel lived, not looked up
A tip before you start
Research deeply, show lightly. One telling detail in a scene beats a paragraph of facts.
More 18th Century Historical Fiction prompts
- Letters Across the SeaImagine the lives of two siblings separated during the slave trade. One is taken to a sugar plantation in the West Indies, and the other ends up as a…
- The Village's Hidden DiscoveryIn a small European village in the 1750s, a young apprentice discovers an ancient manuscript that suggests the village was once the site of a…
- The Servant's Royal CorrespondenceSet in the ornate court of Louis XVI, your story revolves around a young servant girl who secretly learns to read and write. When she uncovers…
- The Printer's Secret DocumentIn colonial America, just before the start of the Revolutionary War, your main character is a young printer's apprentice who stumbles upon a secret…
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