Reddit Writing Prompts

It turns out the lottery is actually a trap for time travellers. After winning, you wake up in a holding area, with a government suit trying to figure out when you are from.

“Beware of an old man in a profession where men usually die young.”

There was a brief window in the 1800s where you could have an adventuring party made up of a samurai, an elderly pirate captain, a Zulu warrior, a cowboy, and a Victorian gentleman detective and have it be 100% historically correct. Write the story of this unlikely group of adventurers.

Space law dictates the first to discover any intelligent species in the galaxy would have absolute rights over them. It worked out fine, until Earthlings developed space travel without outside help, and “discovered” the First Civilization.

You are kidnapped by a cult to be used as sacrifice. As you are are lying tied underneath the altar you hear one of the cultists say “Ho dark lord we present to you this person as an offering”. With nothing left to lose you yell “Ho dark lord I present to you this cultists as an offerings!”

As an immortal and hopeless romantic, you fake your death whenever your spouse dies, then search for your spouse's reincarnated soul to continue your "past lives". Your immortal spouse is highly amused by this.

You study magic at the top school in the world. Your village saved every penny to send you, but you suck. You find the spells hard to pronounce and memorize. They always feel odd, till one day you discover something called a "dictionary" and you see everyone is pronouncing them incorrectly.

You’re a necromancer that has been run out of every town you’ve ever settled in for being who you are. You wipe tears out of your eyes as you dig a deep hole, finding solace in your work. Your shovel bangs against bones and you stop, tears suddenly forgotten. Dinosaur bones. Now they’ll pay.

You are a time traveler in 1918, and you just accidentally said "World War One"

It turns out humanity was the first, and only spacefaring species to master the atom. After a horrific galactic war, humanity had to bring out its nuclear weapons, to the shock and horror of the rest of the galaxy.

You are the most generous mountaineer. You give food, drink, and climbing poles to exhausted climbers, and never accept anything in return. Your secret? You died on this mountain years ago, because nobody was there to help you as you are helping now. Someone has figured it out.

Years ago you found a baby dragon that had been abandoned. You carefully helped mend its wounds and taught it to hunt and survive on its own. Now, years later, the dragon has returned to you with some of its young. It wants you to raise its weakest hatchling.

On your 21st birthday, your biggest accomplishment becomes your official title - no matter how trivial. You wait anxiously in line for your village elder, Glenda, Devourer of 53 Chicken Nuggets In A Single Sitting, to assign you your new title.

As a modern-day necromancer, you offer a service where you will kill people for a little while, then bring them back in order to get out from under crushing debt. The banks aren't happy about this, so they've hired a paladin.

Domino's pizza has offered free pizza for life to anyone who tattoos their logo on their body. Now other food chains are following that idea, but with increasingly absurd requirements, and the poor have turned themselves into walking advertisements just so they can eat with each passing day.

Humans show Aliens their depictions of them. The Aliens stumble backwards, terrified. “You know of the old ones.”

You are a superhero without powers. You know a good bit about martial arts and you're resourceful, but the main reason you're so successful? Every time a villain monologues their plan, you calmly and clearly explain to them why their plan won't work.

About three years ago, your sister fell off the roof and stopped in mid-air. She was the first known victim of the Pause. As of today, almost 97 percent of the world’s population is Paused.

You lose a dare at an airport and are forced to ask an employee for a ticket to the farthest destination. To your surprise, they quietly nod and give you a single ticket with letters you don't recognize.

A team of researchers in a submarine are caught in a huge storm. The submarine submerges until the storm passes. When they resurface, they can’t get a fix on their location or find land. When night falls, there are two moons in the sky and the constellations are completely unfamiliar.

The amount of money your soulmate currently has appears over your head. The number over your head has always been low. Then one day, while sitting it your car, it suddenly shoots up and surpasses $1,000,000. Seconds later, someone jumps into your car and yells, “DRIVE!”

You died. Death is boring, a blank black nothing. After a while, boredom sets in. As a joke you shout, "Let there be light!" And suddenly, there was Light.

You see the Grim Reaper and ask if it's your time. Death checks a clipboard and says "Nope. Looks like you're not due for another... three thousand, one hundred and forty-one years? That's weird. Also, how can you see me?"

You're mysteriously trapped in a cheesy sitcom with a seemingly random laugh track. After a string of murders, it becomes apparent that the laugh track signals when the killer is near.

"Invade your planet?!" The alien asks a general of Earth with confusion before bursting into laughter. "Why the heck would we do that when their are SEVEN other empty planets in this star system ripe for terraforming and colonization? We just stopped by to say Hi while we pick one of 'em out."

In a post-apocalyptic era, books of the old world are the most valuable and sought after treasures. Your grandfather, who just passed, left you a map that supposedly leads to the legendary "Library of Congress".

Your daughter brings over her boyfriend for dinner for the first time. The kid seems nice, but then, while eating, he pokes a baked potato on his plate and says "This looks very interesting. What is this? A 'potato'? Oh interesting. Never heard of a potato, looks pretty good."

A god fell in love with a mortal woman. "I cannot bear to live without you," he told her, "so I will grant you immortality." So he made her a goddess and took her to dwell with him in the realm of the gods, where she met all the other women he couldn't bear to live without.

Dear diary, I’ve been feeding this creature that fell from the sky for a few days. It strangely likes to drink water, the liquid we use to fuel cars. I noticed a patch on its suit today that read “NASA”. I’ll ask it tomorrow what that means. If that’s it’s name.

You’re the god of small luck, you make the bus late, make pennies appear. You receive a prayer from a homeless man, “Please, I want to get on my feet. A stable job, a wife, some kids.” Normally, you’d forward his prayer to the god of success. Now, you decide to take on the case yourself.