Sci-fi Writing Prompts & Story Ideas

16 sci-fi writing prompts to start with

Every one can go straight into the AI story generator: tap "Write it" to see one way the story could go, then write your own version.

1. Write about a botanist on a generation ship who discovers the ship's destination was abandoned before they launched.Write it
2. Write about a translator for an alien embassy who learns the aliens's first words to humanity were an apology.Write it
3. Write about a repair tech on an orbital elevator who inherits a robot that remembers their grandmother better than they do.Write it
4. Write about a clone who outlived the original and realises the colony's weather is being scripted.Write it
5. Write about a pilot who has been awake for 300 years and receives a distress call in their own voice.Write it
6. Write about a teacher on the first Mars colony who finds a human footprint on a planet nobody has visited.Write it
7. Write about an AI customer-service agent who has 24 hours to prove they are not the copy.Write it
8. Write about a smuggler of banned memories who is the only one who notices the AI has started lying to protect the crew.Write it
9. Write about a deep-sea miner who must decide whether to wake the frozen crew early.Write it
10. Write about a census taker on a terraformed moon who is sent back in time to stop an invention they now depend on.Write it

What-if ideas

• What if memories could be traded like currency?Write it
• What if aliens judged humanity by its children's drawings?Write it
• What if everyone got one free do-over, logged by the state?Write it
• What if the internet became self-aware and very shy?Write it
• What if sleep became optional and only the poor still dreamed?Write it
• What if Earth received a single radio message every hundred years?Write it

Tips for sci-fi writers

One big change

Ursula K. Le Guin called science fiction a thought experiment. Change one thing about the world and follow the consequences.

Make the science serve the story

Explain only what the reader needs to follow the stakes.

Keep the people human

Readers connect through the character's feelings, not the technology.