The Mansion Mirrors
Write a story where a family inherits an old mansion, only to discover every mirror in the house shows their reflection with someone else standing beside them—a figure that starts appearing beyond the reflection.
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.
- Start somewhere safe and ordinary, like a kitchen or a school run.
- Let one rule of the house or town be broken, and show why it existed.
- End before the danger is over.
Writing horror books
Something is wrong here, and it's getting closer.
Horror is defined by the feeling it creates: dread, then fear, then the urge to keep reading anyway. The threat might be a ghost, a creature or the person in the next room. Underneath, the best horror is about something real: grief, guilt, the things we can't control.
What readers expect
- Dread that builds
- A threat that can't be reasoned with
- Characters out of their depth
- An ending that doesn't let you off easy
A tip before you start
What you don't show is scarier than what you do. Let the reader's imagination fill in the dark.
More Horror prompts
- The Reflection's WarningImagine a world where reflections have an agenda of their own. One morning, a character notices their reflection attempting communication, leading to…
- The Mirror at the Estate SaleAfter purchasing an old, ornate mirror from an estate sale, a couple notices that their reflections begin to display actions and emotions that they…
- Voices in the Old ForestA group of friends goes on a hiking trip in a remote forest where no human has stepped for decades. As night falls, they realize that something in the…
- The Book That Makes Things RealAfter inheriting a strange old book from a relative, a college student realizes that every time they read a passage aloud, bizarre occurrences…
Fifteen minutes in? Keep going.
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