100 story premises, by genre

Fantasy

1. Rin Keita, glassblower in the crater town of Vess, cannot finish the duke's commission until she names the impurity in the sand, and the quarry is owned by her brother.
2. When the salt wells of Orleigh freeze in midsummer, the well-keeper's daughter hears a choir under the ice and is told to keep the lids shut.
3. Inside the bone-white keep of Halder, a cartographer is hired to draw a room the duke swears has always been there, though no servant will enter it.
4. After the harvest festival in Greenseam, the scarecrow that faces west starts walking home at dusk, and only the blacksmith's boy will follow it.
5. Thornmarket's youngest farrier is asked to shoe a horse whose rider pays in coins minted by a kingdom that drowned two hundred years ago.
6. On the night the aurora hangs low over Kett, a chimney sweep finds a second moon reflected in every puddle except the one outside the palace.
7. Bound by a vow she did not make, a river-pilot on the Isk must deliver a sealed box to a village that the current keeps moving downstream.
8. During the five-day eclipse at Sable Pass, the monastery cook discovers the bread will not rise unless someone tells it a true name.
9. Herding goats above the cloudline, Pell the goatherd finds a door set into the cliff that opens only when he is not looking at it.
10. Two rival cartomancers in the city of Quill share a single deck, and tonight a card has appeared that neither of them painted.

Science fiction

1. Mission botanist Ilya Chen wakes to find the ship's greenhouse has grown a tree whose rings record conversations from the crew mess.
2. Assigned to archive dead satellites, technician Nia Solas finds one still broadcasting a children's lullaby in a language Earth never catalogued.
3. Below the ice of Europa's service trench, welder Brin Calder is ordered to scrap a pump that still holds the outpost's last drinkable reserve, and the work order is unsigned.
4. Colony hydrologist Samira Quell maps a river on Kepler-442b that flows uphill every seventeenth hour, toward a mountain that is not on the survey.
5. Recalled from retirement, deep-space tug captain Oren Vale is hired to tow a derelict that answers his hail with his late wife's voice.
6. Printing spare lungs in the med bay, intern Joss discovers the bioprinter has started adding a second heart no protocol requests.
7. Surveyor Lila Okonkwo plants a flag on a silent asteroid and the flagpole begins to tap back in Morse she almost recognizes.
8. Frozen-sleep technician Marek Voss unseals pod 19 to find the passenger holding the commissary ledger the crew was told had burned, with this month's shortages in the margin.
9. Mining the dark side of a captured comet, crew lead Hana Ito finds a staircase cut into the ice, each step a different human language.
10. Gravity-well clerk Tomas Dyer files a shipping error: a crate of soil from Earth has sprouted a city the size of a thimble, with lights on.

Mystery

1. Parish organist Edie Marlow finds a wedding march copied into next Sunday's booklet for a couple who died in 1961.
2. Night janitor at the county courthouse, Ben Ostrow keeps finding a wet umbrella in courtroom 3, though the building has been locked since six.
3. Coraline Finch, who restores silent-film titles, is sent a reel whose intertitles describe a killing that will happen on her street next Tuesday.
4. Village postmistress Anwen Price starts receiving letters addressed to houses that were demolished when the reservoir was filled.
5. Retired boxing coach Lew Harper is asked to identify a gym bag left at the rec center; inside is a medal from a fight that was cancelled, and a key.
6. Divorce lawyer Priya Shah finds her own signature on a decree dissolving a marriage she does not remember filing, dated last March.
7. Harbor freeze inspector Cal Bennett notices the same red scarf frozen into the river ice three mornings running, always a yard farther out.
8. Substitute math teacher Doran Ives grades a pop quiz and one paper lists every locker combination in the building, including the one the principal keeps sealed.
9. Antique-map dealer Nessa Brant buys a 1912 street plan of her town in which the courthouse annex is unmarked, though the annex holds every land title from the flood year.
10. Window-cleaner Sami Qureshi, twenty floors up, sees the mayor's office across the street emptying its files into a river barge, two days before the audit.

Thriller

1. Diplomatic courier Yasmin Adel is given a briefcase that is lighter than it was at the last checkpoint, though the seals are intact.
2. Ski-resort avalanche tech Rowan Blake finds the mountain's warning sirens have been rewired to stay silent above one particular chalet.
3. Freelance translator Kim Park is hired to sit in a van and render a live conversation; both speakers are using her dead brother's nickname.
4. Overnight vet at the city zoo, Lien Nguyen finds every camera in the big-cat house pointed at her apartment window across the river.
5. Subpoena server Miles Grant is paid triple to deliver papers to a penthouse; the name on the door is his, and the lights are on.
6. Crop-duster pilot Evie Santos is told to spray a field that does not exist on any map, then to forget the coordinates she just flew.
7. City-hall stenographer Paul Okada notices last week's transcript now includes a vote he watched fail, and his own objection is gone.
8. Deep-sea cable tech Inara Cole is sent to repair a line that is humming a phone number; when she calls it, her mother answers from a house sold years ago.
9. Witness-protection driver Hank Loomis is given a new route at the last minute, through a town that was erased from his own childhood map.
10. Forensic accountant Mei Lin traces a stolen payroll to a shell company that lists her clinic's landlord as treasurer, and the rent was paid in cash the same week.

Romance

1. Competitive ice-carver Juniper Flagg is paired with the ex who ruined her last festival, and they have one block of ice and four days.
2. Small-press binder Owen Hale is hired by a poet who will only meet him at dawn in the bindery, and she never lets him see the last signature.
3. Migrant orchard-pruner Luz Medina shares a ladder for one season with a man who knows her hometown's harvest songs, though he says he has never been there.
4. Rival storm-chasers Tess and Arun are forced to share the last working radar truck in Oklahoma, and the supercell will not let them split up.
5. Funeral pianist Celeste Ward is booked for two services in one afternoon; the second widower is the man who left her a green metronome and no note, twelve years ago.
6. Night-shift florist Ivo Perrin is hired to dress a storefront for a wedding, and the other florist on the job is the person he almost married, working off the same unpaid invoice.
7. Restoring a seaside carousel, mechanic Amira Said finds a brass horse engraved with a proposal dated the day she swore she would never come back.
8. Culinary-school sauciers Nico and Wren are assigned one stove for the final exam, and the recipe they drew requires four hands and an apology.
9. Pen-pal archivist Talia Moss is hired to return undelivered wartime letters, and the donor who pays her salary asks her to lose the one addressed to his wife.
10. Dockside chess hustler Rafael Quinn loses on purpose to a woman who always plays the same doomed opening, then asks him to teach her how to lose differently.

Horror

1. Pediatric dentist Orla Venn locks up and finds every extracted tooth back in its tray, warm, and the parent who paid in cash is waiting in the lot with no child.
2. Campground host Ellis Rourke restocks the firewood shed and counts thirteen hatchets where there were twelve, each handle carved with a guest's site number.
3. Subtitler for a dead language, Kira Solene watches her own living room appear in the footage, three seconds ahead of real time.
4. Village bell-ringer Filip Draz finds the rope wet with seawater every dawn, though the church is forty miles inland and the tide tables are on his desk.
5. Taxidermist's apprentice Odile finds the fox she mounted yesterday has changed its pose overnight, now facing the door she locks at closing.
6. Sleep-study nurse Pavel Rusk records a patient who sits up on the hour to name the combination of the clinic's drug cabinet, then asks who else has been selling the leftovers.
7. Harvest-moon corn maze designer Jude cuts a new path and walks it at dusk; the walls close behind him into a route he did not draw.
8. Antique-mirror restorer Veda Hof is hired to restore a funeral parlor's glass, and each morning a new crack runs toward the drawer where the unpaid bills are kept.
9. Church-basement quilt-keeper Pia Broel finds this week's quilt already finished with a living neighbor's measurements, and the circle's treasurer has been collecting funeral dues from a family that is still paying rent.
10. Motel night clerk Deon Harris checks in a guest whose ID photo is Deon's face at sixteen, and the guest asks for the room Deon always refuses to clean.

Historical fiction

1. 1919 telephone operator Cora Lind hears a crossed line from a trench that the armistice said had gone quiet four months earlier.
2. Napoleonic army surgeon Etienne Morel is ordered to save a horse before the general, and the horse is carrying a letter that would end the campaign.
3. Ming-dynasty kiln inspector Wei Shan finds a bowl that has already been signed by a potter who will not be born until the next emperor.
4. Dust Bowl photographer Ada Mertz is hired to document a farm that the county says was abandoned in 1931, and the well is still drawing cold water.
5. Tudor court embroiderer Bess Holloway is told to unpick a rose from a duke's sleeve; under it is a name the king had ordered forgotten.
6. Reconstruction-era bridge builder Elijah Crow is told the county will only pay if the span opens before harvest, and the timber lot is already deeded to the mill that employs his brother.
7. Silk Road caravan cook Saffron Devi is asked to season a stew for a guest who never eats, and the spice she is given does not exist on any stall.
8. 1944 factory-floor timekeeper Maude Trigg notices three workers clocking out who were buried last winter, always at the same minute.
9. Viking-age shipwright Sigrid Tane is ordered to build a hull from a tree that still stands, and the king wants it launched before the tree is cut.
10. Gold-rush assay clerk Homer Gage weighs a nugget that is lighter in the morning and heavier at dusk, always by the same three grains.

Literary fiction

1. Midlist translator of sea journals, Gareth Olm, is asked to cut a chapter that names the pier his publisher's family still owns, or lose the reprint.
2. Community-college registrar Helen Orth is asked to expunge a student who has no file, only a locker that smells of rain and unopened mail.
3. Second-chair violinist in a regional orchestra, Amir Haddad, keeps a broken string from the night his father left; tonight it is the only one that will tune.
4. Suburban pool-cleaner Drew Halberg finds a wedding ring at the drain of a house in foreclosure, and the note in the filter asks him not to tell the bank which room it came from.
5. Grant writer for a shuttered observatory, Naomi Frell is paid to keep applying, and this year's proposal is answered by a telescope that should be dead.
6. Estranged twins meet at their mother's storage unit and find it empty except for a cassette labeled with the date they stopped speaking.
7. City arborist Theo Lang is told to cut a healthy oak because it leans toward a house; the homeowners have already packed, and they will not say why.
8. Proofreader of last-edition encyclopedias, Sera Dalby finds her childhood street missing from the atlas, replaced by a blank the printer says was always there.
9. Night miller at the last working mill on the Wye, Ed Cane bags flour that weighs more when it is destined for the house on the hill.
10. Retired bus driver Nora Keel keeps dreaming the old route, and one morning a child is waiting at a shelter the city removed in 1998.

Comedy

1. Municipal statue-washer Kenji Ono is given a memo to clean a hero on a horse that the town voted to remove, and the horse looks offended.
2. Amateur weather-app reviewer Patrice Bell gives five stars to a forecast that then comes true only on her street, including the bit about the goats.
3. Substitute santa at the mall, Craig Broom, is handed a list of names that includes the mall manager's secret second job and the elf's real age.
4. Competitive pancake-flipper Marla Dean is disqualified for using a pan that laughs when it is heated, and the judges want it for themselves.
5. Town slogan consultant Hugh Renn is hired to replace a motto nobody can remember, then discovers the old one is painted inside every mailbox.
6. Inflatable-castle inspector Dina Cho cites a birthday rental for unapproved weather inside, and the children refuse to come out until she signs the form.
7. Failed magician Len Hart is served a notice that his rabbit has opened a checking account, and the landlord wants last month's rent from the rabbit.
8. Wedding-toast ghostwriter Kavya Nair is booked by both halves of a couple who each think the other cannot write, and they have opposite endings in mind.
9. Parking-meter attendant Sol Rye writes a citation for a horse, then spends the afternoon explaining municipal code to a mounted officer who is not on any roster.
10. Community-theater fight choreographer Bo Ramirez is asked to stage a slap that the lead will not rehearse, because in the script it already happened last night.

Adventure

1. Glacier-rescue guide Anouk Berg is hired to retrieve a camera from a crevasse; the last photo is of her team, taken from inside the ice.
2. River-map smuggler Cass Elwood is paid to carry a chart that shows a waterfall where the dam has stood for sixty years, and the dam begins to hum.
3. Cave-diving instructor Rio Paget finds a dry chamber with a picnic laid for four, and three of the names are her students from the morning class.
4. Desert-mail rider Willa Skye is given one extra letter with no address, only a claim number for a well whose water rights the county just sold to a cattle company.
5. Volcano-edge coffee grower Mateo Yanez is told his slope will be evacuated at dawn; overnight the beans ripen two months early and smell like rain.
6. Icebreaker navigator Freya Nils is ordered to cut a path to a research hut that the satellite shows as open water, and the hut is calling her radio.
7. Canopy-walk builder in Borneo, Jomo Sen, finds the newest platform already tagged for demolition by the timber concession that funds his permit, two weeks before the school groups arrive.
8. High-altitude archaeologist Nadia Breck opens a cairn and finds a stolen survey stake from the mine that is paying her permit, still tagged with last season's claim number.
9. Tidal-pool naturalist Bram Letterman wades out at the lowest tide in a decade and finds a door in the rock with his grandmother's doorbell.
10. Saddle-maker in a canyon town, Tansy Calhoun, is asked to fit a horse that arrives without a rider, wearing a bridle stamped with the brand the bank just repossessed from her uncle.

Turn a premise into a plan

Paste a premise into WriteForYou and choose from 1 to 12 chapters. You review the world, the cast and a chapter outline before chapter 1 is written.