The Afterlife Lost and Found
In a bustling modern city, a peculiar store sells items people have left behind in the afterlife, but all items come with hidden effects. When a young man unknowingly buys his deceased mother’s diary, strange occurrences lead him to unravel secrets that could alter the living world and the spectral plane.
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.
- 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.
- Write it as a document from the world: a letter, a field report, a warning sign.
Writing paranormal fiction
Vampires, ghosts and witches, just around the corner.
Paranormal fiction drops supernatural beings into the real, modern world. Unlike horror, the creatures aren't always the threat: they're often the heroes or the love interests. It overlaps heavily with romance and urban fantasy.
What readers expect
- Supernatural beings in our world
- A hidden society with its own rules
- Romance, danger or both
- Secrets ordinary people can't know
A tip before you start
Decide the rules early. Can your vampires cross running water? Readers will hold you to it.
More Supernatural and Paranormal prompts
- Ghost Ships at Full MoonWrite a story about a small coastal town where every full moon, the spirits of sailors lost at sea appear as ghostly ships on the horizon. The town's…
- The Attic MirrorYou move into an old Victorian house and find a mysterious mirror in the attic that doesn’t reflect reality, but rather the last 24 hours of whoever…
- The Ancestral LibraryImagine a library that only appears to a person once in their lifetime. In this library, each book contains the untold secrets of one’s ancestors and…
- The Folklore FogDevelop a story about a mystical fog that rolls into a coastal town, bringing with it figures from folklore and legend. The townspeople must navigate…
Fifteen minutes in? Keep going.
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