Sunday Service Burglaries
In a quiet suburban town, a series of houses have been burglarized, all while the families were attending Sunday service. The local sheriff, who was weeks from retirement, must solve the case quickly but discovers an unexpected link between the burglaries and his own past.
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.
- Limit it to one location and one night.
- Let the most helpful witness be the one with the most to hide.
- Tell it from the point of view of a suspect who is lying about something else.
Writing mystery books
Who did it? You get every clue and a fair shot at the answer.
A mystery opens with a puzzle, usually a death, and closes with the solution. In between, a detective (professional or not) gathers clues and suspects while the reader tries to get there first. A mystery looks backward, at a crime that has already happened.
What readers expect
- A crime or puzzle early on
- Clues, suspects and red herrings
- A detective the reader follows
- A solution that is surprising but fair
A tip before you start
Play fair. Every clue your detective uses should appear on the page first, ideally hidden in plain sight.
More Mystery and Crime prompts
- Puzzles for the Crime ReporterA local journalist, known for their crime column, receives anonymous, cryptic puzzles that seem linked to recent disappearances in the city. Each…
- Notes from the Real KillerA forensic psychologist is called to a high-profile courtroom trial to determine the sanity of a defendant accused of a string of gruesome murders.…
- The Typewriter's Cold CasesAfter purchasing an old typewriter from a garage sale, a crime novelist starts receiving typed notes on their doorstep that describe unsolved cases…
- The Officer's First CaseOn the eve of retiring, a seasoned police officer stumbles upon an old, unsolved file that turns out to be the first ever case they worked on.…
Fifteen minutes in? Keep going.
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