Science Fiction Writing Prompts

Imagine you are peacefully drifting between the stars. Write a poem about this experience.

Create a Sci-Fi narrative where two teenagers from feuding families fall in love.

How will you write this Shakespearean trope into a Sci-Fi world? What kind of place do these people live in to have families at war?

Your protagonist has noticed strange symbols tattooed on their friend's skin that seem to move and change...

Compose a story using whatever comes to mind when you see this image.

Create a narrative set in a city with advanced technology but ancient cultural traditions that are strongly upheld.

An alien and a human discuss the concept of love.

Think about what love might mean to another species, and how they would discuss it or think about it differently from humans.

Write a story written in a world covered by darkness, where light is a rare resource.

A spaceship docks silently at an abandoned intergalactic outpost.

Focus on creating tension from the very start of the story. You do not have to resolve the plot.

Don’t wake in the world where the trees all died...

Write the blurb of a book that has been written in another dimension.

Would the normal features of a blurb still apply in this dimension, or do time and space affect the style of stories in this universe?

Write a short dystopian story about a world trying to be perfect, but one person hasn’t been brainwashed like the rest.

Portray a futuristic cityscape without referring to technology.

What other elements can make something seem futuristic?

Write a story inspired by the first thing you think of when you look at this image.

Describe an alien species which has inhabited earth.

As well as describing their physical appearance, try to find interesting and unusual aspects of this species that you could include. Perhaps their movement, their language, their living habits; anything that can be described in high detail.

You’re walking down the sidewalk when you notice everyone around you has a collection of zippers holding their skin together...