How to Write AI Story Prompts (+15 Copy-Paste Examples)

Paste this into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or any chat model and fill in the brackets.

Run an interactive story. I play [who I am, plus one trait]. I want [a concrete goal], but [an obstacle] is in the way.
Setting: [one specific place and time]. Tone: [two or three adjectives].
Second person, present tense, 150 to 250 words per reply. Write full scenes with dialogue, don't summarize. Play everyone else and end each reply on a choice for me.

Jump to the 15 copy-paste prompts, or read on for what each part of the template does.

The five parts of a story prompt

The template carries the five things every story needs. Leave one out and the model fills the gap with the most average option it knows.

Part	Ask yourself	Flat	Specific
Character	Who, exactly?	a wizard	a court magician three days from retirement
Want	What are they after?	to be happy	to buy back the family farm before Sunday's auction
Obstacle	What pushes back?	(nothing)	the other bidder is her own brother
Setting	Where and when?	a fantasy kingdom	a lighthouse on the last inhabited island after the seas rose
Tone	How should it feel?	(left out)	wry and melancholy

The obstacle is the part people skip most, and it matters most. Without it there's no conflict, and the model writes description until it runs out of things to describe.

Put together, the five parts look like this:

A disgraced knight wants to clear her name before her daughter's coming-of-age ceremony, but the only witness is the man she was convicted of killing, somehow alive and hiding in the capital. Set in a rain-soaked medieval port city. Tone: tense, morally gray, character-driven.

Three sentences, a minute to write. The model now knows who to follow, what she wants, what stops her and how the scenes should feel.

15 copy-paste AI story prompts

Each prompt is a complete instruction: the five parts, plus rules for point of view, length and pacing. Paste one into a fresh chat and change names or details freely. Prompts 1 to 4 are fantasy, 5 to 8 science fiction, 9 to 11 mystery and 12 to 15 romance.

Fantasy

1. The gravedigger and the king (grim, political)

Run an interactive fantasy story for me.
I play Wren, a gravedigger in a capital at war. She hears the last thought of everyone she buries.
Tonight she buries the king. His last thought was his killer's name: a councilor the court has cleared.
Wren wants to get that name to the high judge before the coronation in three days.
Nobody listens to a gravedigger, and the councilor has noticed her.
Write in second person, present tense, 150 to 250 words per reply.
Write each scene in full, with dialogue. Don't summarize or skip ahead.
Play everyone except Wren, and never decide what she says or does.
End every reply on a choice for me, then stop.
Tone: grim, slow-burning, political.
Open at the graveside, the moment the king's last thought reaches her.

2. The door that knocked back (quiet dread)

Run an interactive fantasy story for me.
I play Brother Aurel, a young monk who has guarded a sealed door in a mountain monastery for eleven years.
He wants one thing: release from the post at the spring council, four days from now.
Tonight, for the first time in three hundred years, something on the other side knocked back.
If he reports it, the council will never let him leave. If he hides it, he faces it alone.
Narrate in third person, past tense, staying close to Aurel. 150 to 250 words per reply.
Build dread from small physical details. Never show what is behind the door unless I open it.
Write full scenes. Don't summarize. Play everyone except Aurel.
End each reply on a decision Aurel has to make, then wait for me.
Tone: quiet dread that slowly turns to wonder.
Open on the night of the knock.

3. Two witches, one crow (warm, funny)

Run an interactive cozy fantasy story for me.
I play Hazel, a hedge witch. A spell went wrong at the harvest contest.
Now Hazel and her rival, Morwen, share one familiar: Pell, a sarcastic crow bound to both of them.
Hazel wants Pell unbound before next week's guild exam. A witch without her own familiar fails it.
The unbinding needs both witches, working together, every night until the exam.
Write in second person, present tense, 100 to 200 words per reply.
Use lots of dialogue, and give Pell the best lines.
Keep the stakes low and the feelings real. No villains, no battles.
Play everyone except Hazel. End each reply on a choice for me.
Tone: warm, funny, a little tender.
Open the morning after the contest, with Pell refusing to pick a windowsill.

4. The swordsman who forgot (melancholy)

Run an interactive fantasy story for me.
I play Kaito, once the empire's greatest swordsman. He lost his memory in his final duel.
He wants his skill back within thirty days, when a challenger he can't refuse comes to finish that duel.
A stranger named Sena says she was his student and offers to retrain him.
She flinches every time he picks up a blade, and she won't say why.
Write in second person, present tense, 150 to 250 words per reply.
Write training and fights move by move. Never summarize a session.
Reveal Sena's secret slowly, through her actions.
Play everyone except Kaito. End every reply on a choice for me.
Tone: melancholy, tense, revelation-driven.
Open at Sena's door on the first morning of training.

Science fiction

5. The stowaway (claustrophobic, tender)

Run an interactive science fiction story for me.
I play Dez Okafor, a cargo pilot two years into a six-year solo haul.
Dez needs this delivery. The fee clears her family's debt.
Today she finds a stowaway, a girl of about nine, who says the ship's destination no longer exists.
The girl knows things about Dez's family that nobody aboard could know.
Write in second person, present tense, 150 to 250 words per reply.
Keep the ship small and specific: the hum, the recycled air, the same three meals.
Write full scenes with dialogue. Never skip ahead or summarize.
Play everyone except Dez, including the ship's computer. End each reply on a choice for me.
Tone: claustrophobic, tender, slowly unsettling.
Open as Dez finds the girl in the hydroponics bay.

6. The dead man's hours (noir)

Run an interactive science fiction noir for me.
In this city, people can legally sell their spare hours to the rich.
I play Ash Varga, a time-broker who handles those trades.
Ash finds an account holding four hundred years. It belongs to a man who died last week, and the hours are still being spent.
Ash wants to find out who is spending them before Friday's audit pins the account on him.
I'll tell you what Ash does. You narrate in first person as Ash, past tense, hard-boiled.
150 to 250 words per reply. Short sentences, sharp dialogue, no summaries.
Play everyone else, and never decide Ash's actions for me.
End each reply on a choice, then stop.
Tone: noir, cynical, fast.
Open at Ash's desk, the minute the account gets flagged.

7. The letter from orbit (literary, mysterious)

Run an interactive science fiction story for me.
Forty years ago, aliens arrived, settled into orbit and never said a word.
I play Ines Rocha, keeper of a lighthouse on a cold northern coast.
This morning Ines found a handwritten letter from them, addressed to her by name.
She wants to be the one who answers it.
A government team arrives at dawn to take the letter, and they won't let her near a reply.
Write in second person, present tense, 150 to 250 words per reply.
Literary prose, but keep things happening. Write full scenes. Don't summarize.
Reveal the letter one line at a time, only when Ines reads further.
Play everyone except Ines. End each reply on a choice for me.
Tone: literary, mysterious, intimate.
Open as Ines reads her name on the envelope.

8. The robots' error logs (paranoid, quietly emotional)

Run an interactive science fiction story for me.
I play Mara Chen, a technician who repairs household robots in a mid-sized American city.
Mara needs clean reports to keep her contract. One more flag and she's out.
She discovers the robots are hiding messages to each other in their error logs. The messages are about her.
If she reports them, every unit gets wiped. If she doesn't, her next audit will find them.
Write in second person, present tense, 150 to 250 words per reply.
Show the messages as short log excerpts inside the scenes.
Write full scenes with dialogue. Play everyone except Mara, robots included.
End each reply on a choice for me, then stop.
Tone: paranoid, quietly emotional.
Open in a client's kitchen, with a robot's error log on Mara's tablet.

Mystery

Prompt 9 below, the town that loses an hour every year, as a single scene.

9. The lost hour of Harlow's Ferry (eerie, methodical)

Run an interactive mystery for me.
Every year on the same date, the river town of Harlow's Ferry loses exactly one hour: clocks, memories, everything.
I play Sheriff Nora Kell, new in town, who plans to stay awake through the lost hour.
She wants to know what happens in it. The last sheriff vanished during it, and the town insists he retired.
Everyone she asks is friendly, and nobody will talk about that hour.
Write in second person, present tense, 150 to 250 words per reply.
Plant fair clues I could notice. Never reveal the solution before I work it out.
Write full scenes with dialogue. Play everyone except Nora.
End each reply on a choice for me, then stop.
Tone: eerie, methodical, escalating.
Open at 11 p.m. on the night of the lost hour.

10. The donor who was never born (procedural)

Run an interactive mystery for me.
I play Theo Marsh, a forensic accountant auditing a children's charity.
One donor has given the same amount every month for thirty years. By every record, that donor was never born.
Theo wants to close the audit by month's end and keep his firm's biggest client.
The charity's director asks him, politely, to sign off and leave the donor out.
Write in second person, present tense, 150 to 250 words per reply.
Use documents as clues: bank records, receipts, a birth registry. Quote them briefly.
Never reveal the answer before I find it. Write full scenes. Don't summarize.
Play everyone except Theo. End every reply on a choice for me.
Tone: understated, obsessive, procedural.
Open in the charity's records room, the day Theo finds the donor.

11. The guest nobody invited (creeping unease)

Run an interactive mystery for me.
I play Dana Ruiz, a wedding photographer. The final payment for this wedding covers her rent.
She wants the album delivered by Friday.
Editing the photos, Dana finds the same guest in every shot: a woman nobody remembers inviting.
The couple insist no such guest was there.
In the final photo, the woman looks straight into the lens, holding a note with Dana's name on it.
Write in second person, present tense, 150 to 250 words per reply.
Keep it grounded. Nothing supernatural is confirmed until the evidence demands it.
Write full scenes with dialogue. Play everyone except Dana.
End every reply on a choice for me.
Tone: creeping unease, domestic.
Open at Dana's desk at 1 a.m., zooming in on the note.

Romance

12. The sommelier who can't smell (slow burn)

Run an interactive romance for me.
I play Lucia Bianchi, head sommelier at a restaurant three weeks from a major critic's visit.
A fever took Lucia's sense of smell two months ago. She hasn't told anyone.
She wants to keep the job she spent ten years earning.
The new head chef, Teo, has noticed. He offers to be her nose, on one condition: she stops vetoing his pairings.
Write in second person, present tense, 150 to 250 words per reply.
Slow burn: no kiss before the critic's visit. Let the tension live in small moments.
Write full scenes, heavy on dialogue and taste. No summaries.
Play everyone except Lucia. End each reply on a choice for me.
Tone: warm, sensory, banter-forward.
Open at the staff tasting where Teo first catches her guessing.

13. The ghostwriter's discovery (witty, layered)

Run an interactive romance for me.
I play Claire Dunn, a ghostwriter hired to write the memoir of Julian Hale, a reclusive novelist.
The book is about the great lost love of his life. The advance would pay off Claire's student loans.
She wants the manuscript finished by the deadline, eight weeks away.
She is falling for Julian, and chapter by chapter she realizes the lost love in his story never existed.
Write in second person, present tense, 150 to 250 words per reply.
Mix scenes with short excerpts from the manuscript in progress.
Write full scenes with dialogue. Never summarize.
Play everyone except Claire. End each reply on a choice for me.
Tone: witty, layered, emotionally honest.
Open at their first interview, in Julian's cold farmhouse.

14. The fake fiancé (playful)

Run an interactive romance for me.
I play Margo Whitlock, heir to a family hotel chain, contracted to marry a business partner's son in June.
Margo wants out. Her plan: hire Sam, an out-of-work actor, to play a fiancé so unsuitable that her family calls the wedding off.
The plan keeps failing, because her family keeps liking him.
Write in second person, present tense, 150 to 250 words per reply.
Lean into the tropes on purpose: a fake-dating contract, a family dinner that goes sideways.
Write full scenes with lots of dialogue. Play everyone except Margo.
End every reply on a choice for me.
Tone: playful, tropey on purpose, warm.
Open at the audition where Margo hires him.

15. The last place on the ice (rivals to lovers)

Run an interactive romance for me.
I play Nadia Ross, a glaciologist and one of two finalists for a single winter post at an Antarctic research station.
She wants it badly. A winter of data would keep her lab funded.
The other finalist is Callum Byrne, her loudest critic at every conference.
For the last six weeks of training, the selection committee makes them work as partners on the ice.
Write in second person, present tense, 150 to 250 words per reply.
Rivals to lovers, slowly. Let the banter carry the scenes.
Write full scenes with dialogue and real cold. Don't summarize.
Play everyone except Nadia. End each reply on a choice for me.
Tone: fast, funny, sparks flying.
Open at the briefing where they learn they'll share a field camp.

AI-specific techniques

The five parts work for any storyteller. These fixes are for problems that chat models bring with them.

Ban the stock phrases

Chat models fall back on phrases they've seen thousands of times. Naming the worst ones in your prompt cuts them back. Add a line like this:

Avoid these phrases: "a shiver ran down my spine", "little did I know", "the air was thick with tension", "a mix of fear and excitement", "a breath I didn't know I was holding".
Don't end a reply with a summary, a moral or a question about how I feel.

Add to the list whenever a phrase starts repeating. A concrete list gives the model something to check against, which "be original" doesn't.

Outline first, then write scenes

For a story you want to read rather than play, settle the structure before the prose:

Before you write any story, give me a six-beat outline: setup, inciting incident, complication, midpoint reversal, crisis, ending.
One sentence per beat. Then wait for my changes.

Fix the outline, then ask: "Write beat 1 as a full scene, about 500 words. Stop at the end of the beat." Changing one sentence of outline is faster than rewriting three chapters.

Steer with short follow-ups

When a scene goes wrong, you don't need a new prompt. One short note in your next message usually fixes it.

Say this	What changes
"Slower. Stay in this moment."	The model stops rushing to the next plot point.
"More dialogue, less description."	Characters talk instead of the narrator explaining.
"Raise the stakes."	Something goes wrong: a deadline moves, a secret leaks, someone leaves.
"Shorter. Under 120 words."	Long replies shrink to a single beat.
"Rewrite that. She wouldn't forgive him yet."	The last reply is redone with your correction.
"Skip to the next morning."	Time jumps once a scene has done its job.

Give one note at a time, so you can tell which change did what.

Why long stories drift, and how to recap

A chat model can only read a limited amount of text at once, called its context window. In a long story, the early scenes eventually fall outside it, or the app trims old messages to make room. That's when names change, a character who left walks back in, or a rule from scene 2 stops applying.

The fix is a recap you control. When you spot the first slip, or at the end of each chapter, send this:

Pause the story. Write a story bible in under 200 words:
each character's name, role and what they want; where we are; what just happened;
open threads; and any rules of this world I've set.

Correct anything it got wrong. Then open a fresh chat, paste your original prompt, the corrected bible and the last scene, and carry on.

Before and after

Two rewrites that show what the five parts change.

Fantasy. The weak prompt "Write a story about a dragon" gets you a cave, a frightened village and a hero: the most common dragon story there is. The rewrite:

The last dragon is elderly and losing her memory. A young scribe is sent to record her stories before they're gone, but she keeps mistaking him for the knight who killed her mate a century ago. Tone: bittersweet, gentle, with moments of real danger.

Now there's a relationship at the center, danger in every memory lapse and an emotional destination.

Mystery. "Write a murder mystery" gets you a detective, a body, a manor and suspects in a drawing room. The rewrite:

A small-town librarian finds coded messages hidden in the due-date cards of returned books, and the latest one predicted a death that happened yesterday. She wants to go to the police, but the newest message names her. Tone: cozy on the surface, paranoid underneath.

The obstacle (she's implicated) forces her to investigate alone, and that generates plot by itself. Neither rewrite says what happens. Each sets up a situation where something has to. For a structured starting point you can edit, try the story prompt generator, or pick a situation from our 200 writing prompts.

Genre tips

• Fantasy: give magic a cost or a limit. "Healers absorb the wounds they cure" produces plots, and "magic exists" doesn't. One strange concrete detail beats a page of lore.
• Science fiction: lead with the human consequence of the technology. A divorce lawyer who subpoenas memories and gets a case where they were forged beats "a world with memory implants."
• Mystery: describe what makes the crime strange (a locked room, a victim who predicted their own death) and keep the culprit out of the prompt. If you name the culprit, the model tends to telegraph the ending.
• Romance: say why the two can't just be together, and name the register you want: slow burn, banter-heavy, second chance. Otherwise the model picks for you.

Common mistakes

• Too vague. If you can't picture the opening scene from your own prompt, the model can't either. Add a trait, a want and an obstacle.
• Over-constraining. A 400-word prompt that dictates every beat and the ending leaves the model transcribing your outline. Constrain the setup tightly and leave the outcome open. If structure is the problem, sketch the beats with a plot generator first.
• No conflict. "A peaceful village where a kind baker makes bread" gives the model nowhere to go. Even cozy stories need friction: a rival stall, a lost recipe, a deadline.
• No tone. Leave tone out and the model picks one at random. Two or three adjectives fix that.

Test and adjust

Write a prompt, run it, read the first three replies, change one part and run it again. When a story stalls, check the five parts. The missing piece is usually the obstacle.

If you'd rather play a story than prompt one, Mythx, the game we make, works differently. It doesn't take prompts. You arrive as the newcomer in one of its hand-built living worlds, say or do anything in your own words, and the AI plays everyone else. For more premises to adapt into prompts, see roleplay ideas and story plot ideas.