The Widow's Cold Case
On the eve of retiring from a fruitful but morally ambiguous career, a private investigator is handed a cold case by a distraught widow who believes the death of her husband was no accident. Roaming through the darker undercurrents of the city, the investigator must confront his own past decisions and ethics to uncover the truth.
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 person helping your hero the one to worry about.
- End a scene on a phone call, a knock or a name.
- Let the reader know something the hero doesn't.
Writing thriller books
Something terrible is coming. Can they stop it in time?
Where a mystery looks back at a crime, a thriller looks forward at a threat. The reader often knows more than the hero, and the tension comes from watching danger close in. Short chapters, high stakes and a ticking clock are the tools of the trade.
What readers expect
- A clear, escalating threat
- A hero under pressure
- Twists and reversals
- Pace: little time to breathe
A tip before you start
Put a clock on it. A deadline the reader can count down turns every scene into a race.
More Crime Thriller prompts
- Pieces of an Unsolved CaseWrite a story where a retired detective is forced to return to work after someone mails him pieces of a cold case he never solved, including notes…
- The Pre-Crime AlgorithmDescribe a world where crime can be predicted through a sophisticated AI system, and the protagonist is an officer in this pre-crime unit. However…
- The Basement Beneath the Antique StoreWrite a plot that follows two siblings who inherit an antique store from their estranged uncle only to discover a hidden basement filled with stolen…
- The Forensic Expert's BetrayalDevelop a story about an esteemed forensic expert who starts tampering with evidence in high-profile cases. A young, ethical prosecutor discovers this…
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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