The Art Thief's Clues
Write a story from the perspective of a detective who has been called to solve a high-profile art heist in a bustling metropolis. As they follow the trail of the elusive art thief, they start receiving cryptic clues that somehow relate back to their own hidden 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.
- Make the detective wrong at the midpoint, for a good reason.
- End with the solution in a single line of dialogue.
- Plant the key clue in the first scene, in plain sight.
Writing crime fiction
Not who did it, but why, and whether they'll get away with it.
Crime fiction covers any story built around a crime, and it's often told from the criminal's side. Where a mystery is a puzzle, crime fiction is about people: the pressures that lead to the crime, and what it costs everyone involved.
What readers expect
- A crime at the heart of the story
- Moral gray areas
- Criminals as real people
- Tension over who gets caught
A tip before you start
Give your criminal a reason the reader understands, even one they'd never act on themselves.
More Crime Fiction prompts
- The History HackersA cyber-crime specialist receives an unusual case where thieves are using obscure historical facts to hack into government databases. As the…
- The Cleaner and the CrimeYour protagonist is a crime scene cleaner who discovers evidence that the police missed at a murder site. Choosing to investigate on their own, they…
- The Crime Novel Comes TrueA crime novelist witnesses a crime that eerily mirrors a scene from one of their unpublished manuscripts. Using their deep understanding of crime…
- Pieces of a Coastal CrimeWrite a story set in a small coastal town where everyone harbors secrets. A local journalist starts receiving pieces of a shredded photograph that…
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