The Cursed Coastal Shipwreck
Set your story in a small coastal town, where the main character finds an abandoned shipwreck that locals believe is cursed. As they restore the ship, they also explore tangled relationships and face their fears, discovering their own place in the world by summer’s end.
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 adults well-meaning but wrong.
- Use the way your hero texts to show who they are.
- Write in close first person, as if it's happening right now.
Writing young adult books
Ages 12 to 18: firsts, identity and everything at stake.
Young adult fiction is written for teens, with protagonists usually 14 to 18. Every genre lives here, from fantasy to thrillers to romance. What makes it YA is the voice: immediate, intense and inside a teenager's head.
What readers expect
- A teen protagonist
- An immediate, close voice
- Identity and independence
- Big feelings, taken seriously
A tip before you start
Write from inside a teen's head, not from an adult looking back. That immediacy is what separates YA from an adult book with a young hero.
More Coming-of-Age prompts
- The Attic JournalAfter discovering a mysterious journal in their attic, a teenager uncovers secrets of their town’s past that parallel their own struggles of identity…
- The Freshman Year Challenge ListTell the story of three friends who, on the eve of high school graduation, decide to complete a list of challenges they made in freshman year. Each…
- The Graduation Road TripWrite about a group of friends who embark on a road trip after graduation. Along the way, they encounter challenges that test their friendship and…
- The Scholarship and the SecretWrite a story about a teenager who wins a scholarship to an elite boarding school. They must navigate new social circles, rigorous academic…
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