The Rare Gene
In a dystopian society, every citizen's role is determined by their DNA. Your main character, who was always told they had the DNA of a low-level technician, accidentally discovers they possess the rarest gene, capable of unpredictable powers. What happens next?
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.
- 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.
- Make the magic or technology cost your hero something they can't get back.
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 DetectiveWrite a story set in a future where memories can be bought and sold. Your protagonist is a memory detective who must recover a stolen, highly…
- The Ecosystem Beneath EarthIn a world recovering from a near-catastrophic environmental disaster, an environmental scientist discovers a hidden ecosystem beneath the Earth's…
- Alone Near the Black HoleYour character wakes up on a space station alone, with no memory of how they got there. The station is drifting towards a black hole. Through clues…
- The Martian Peace TalksHumans have started terraforming Mars, but an ancient, dormant Martian technology awakens, recognizing the terraformers as threats. A historian…
Fifteen minutes in? Keep going.
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