Writing prompts · Fanfiction

Fanfiction Writing Prompts

A strong fanfiction premise uses what readers already care about, then changes one pressure point. Choose the canon fact, relationship, or decision you want to examine more closely.

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How to shape a strong fanfiction premise

Name the promise and name the variable

Write down the canon promise you are keeping and the one variable you are changing. Readers will follow a bold divergence when the characters still feel emotionally recognisable, and lose interest when everything moves at once.

Write toward the gap canon left

The most reliable fanfiction premises live in the spaces the source skipped: the missing conversation, the time jump, the reaction nobody was on-page for. Those gaps come with built-in reader appetite because the audience already wanted them filled.

Keep characterisation load-bearing in an AU

An alternate universe works when the personalities survive the transplant. Change the setting, the stakes, and the century if you like, but keep each character's core defence mechanism intact — that is what readers came to recognise.

Decide how much canon knowledge you are assuming

Establish early whether a reader needs the source to follow you. Both choices are fine; the failure is being inconsistent, so that the fic explains one relationship in detail and assumes another the reader has never heard of.

40 original fanfiction prompts

Use one as written, combine two, or take only the pressure point that catches your attention.

1
Write the missing conversation two rivals had after the victory, when neither could admit the fight was the only thing connecting them.
2
Change one minor canon decision so the original antagonist must become the protagonist's reluctant protector.
3
A character receives letters from the version of themself who made the opposite choice at the story's turning point.
4
Put two characters who never met in canon in charge of protecting the same secret for completely different reasons.
5
Write the week after the ending, from the point of view of the character canon stopped following.
6
The mentor survives. Write the story of a protagonist who never had to become self-sufficient, and the resentment nobody expected.
7
Take the canon confession scene and set it two years too late, when both people have built lives around not having said it.
8
Write the funeral canon skipped, attended by everyone who has a reason to lie in their eulogy.
9
A minor character who appears in three canon scenes turns out to have been present at every major event, off-page. Write their account.
10
Recast the story so the sacrifice at the climax is refused. Follow what the refusal costs the people it was meant to save.
11
Two characters are stuck doing something profoundly boring together — a stakeout, a queue, an inventory — and this is where the relationship actually turns.
12
Write the villain's version of the inciting incident, in which they are being reasonable and the protagonist is the interruption.
13
The protagonist wakes up in the timeline where they succeeded early, and has to decide whether to say anything.
14
Set the canon cast in an ordinary workplace. Keep every power dynamic identical and remove every supernatural element.
15
Write the conversation between two characters who are canonically friendly and privately cannot stand each other.
16
A character who died in canon lives, and everyone's grief has already done its work. Write the return.
17
Give the found family a genuine, unresolvable disagreement about something that is not the plot.
18
Write the scene where a character realises the group has been protecting them, and how insulting that is.
19
The prophecy applied to someone else. Write the person who spent their whole life preparing for a role that was never theirs.
20
Two rivals are forced to write each other's official commendation, honestly, for the record.
21
Write the story from the perspective of the institution — the school, the ship, the agency — that has watched several protagonists come through.
22
A canon couple is together and it is not working, for ordinary reasons, and neither of them is at fault.
23
Swap which of two characters got the powers. Keep both personalities exactly as canon wrote them.
24
Write the missing year: what the character was doing during the time skip, in a way that makes their return make more sense.
25
The antagonist's plan succeeds completely on page one. Write the aftermath from inside the new order.
26
A character has to explain their found family to their birth family, over a single dinner.
27
Write the scene where the mentor realises the protagonist has surpassed them, and does not handle it well.
28
Set two characters on opposite sides of a strike, a vote, or a lawsuit, where both positions are defensible.
29
The soulmate mechanism exists and is wrong about them. Write two people deciding to ignore it, or failing to.
30
Write the letter one character drafts eleven times and never sends, including the drafts.
31
A character returns to the place the story started, alone, years later, and finds it has been renovated.
32
Two characters who were never allowed to grieve properly are stuck house-sitting together.
33
Write the version where the misunderstanding at the centre of the plot is cleared up immediately, and the story that has to happen instead.
34
The chosen one delegates. Write the person who accepts.
35
A character discovers their own fan following in-universe, and how the story is being told about them.
36
Write the argument the fandom has been having, as a conversation between the two characters it is about.
37
Give a canonically unflappable character a small, humiliating, entirely non-dramatic problem and make it the whole story.
38
The war ends. Write the demobilisation: who gets a pension, who gets a statue, and who gets neither.
39
Two characters trade one memory each. Write what each of them does with the other's.
40
Write the story canon would never publish: the ordinary Tuesday, six months after everything, where nothing is at stake and everything has changed.

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Frequently asked questions

What makes a good fanfiction prompt?

A good fanfiction prompt identifies a specific pressure point in the source — a decision, a gap, a relationship canon underused — and changes or examines exactly one thing about it. Prompts that work in any fandom are usually about a dynamic rather than a plot.

How do I keep characters in character while changing the story?

Work from motivation rather than behaviour. A character transplanted into a coffee shop should not do what they did in canon, but they should want what they wanted in canon and defend themselves the same way. Readers forgive an unfamiliar situation and notice an unfamiliar reaction instantly.

What is canon divergence and how far can I take it?

Canon divergence changes one decision or event and follows the consequences, as opposed to an alternate universe that changes the setting wholesale. There is no upper limit, but the further you diverge, the more work the characterisation has to do to keep the reader oriented.

Can I use these fanfiction prompts for works I post publicly?

Yes — the prompts themselves are free to use, change, combine, or ignore, with no credit required. What you can do with the underlying source material is a separate question governed by the rights holder's policy and your local law, so check the fandom's own norms before posting or monetising.

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