The Haunted Apartment Lease
In your story, every city block has its own guardian spirit, and residents must negotiate with them for everything from parking spaces to noise complaints. Your protagonist, a skeptical real estate agent who never believed in such tales, starts seeing the spirits after unwittingly signing a lease on a haunted apartment.
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.
- Tell it from the point of view of someone who thinks this world is perfectly normal.
- Shrink the stakes to one family, one street, one night.
- Choose one ordinary object and show how this world changed it.
Writing fantasy books
Magic is real, and it costs something.
Fantasy builds a world where the impossible works: dragons, spells, gods who answer back. It might be a whole invented continent or one enchanted door in an ordinary house. Either way, readers come for the wonder and stay for the people paying the price for it.
What readers expect
- Magic or the supernatural, with limits
- A world that feels lived in
- Quests, wars or a power worth fighting over
- Myths and history under the surface
A tip before you start
Give magic a cost. Readers believe in a power when they can see what it takes from the person using it.
More Urban Fantasy prompts
- The Wish Rune on the WallIn a world where magical graffiti appears overnight, with symbols that can alter the fabric of reality, your protagonist, a novice street artist…
- The Time-Traveling SubwayTell a story about a subway system that doesn’t just transport people geographically but temporally as well. One day, an operator realizes the trains…
- The Cats Beneath the LibraryCats in the neighborhood have always been peculiar, but recently they've begun to display openly magical abilities. A local librarian discovers that…
- The Last Bus to ElsewhereEvery city bus is a portal to another dimension, but only the bus drivers know the secret routes. When a regular commuter accidentally stays aboard…
Fifteen minutes in? Keep going.
Chapterly gives a draft somewhere to grow: chapters, daily word goals, and readers when you're ready.
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