20 Plot Ideas to Jumpstart Your Next Novel

Every writer knows the sensation of the "blank page problem." You sit down, ready to work, but the cursor just blinks at you. It isn't a lack of talent; often, it’s simply a lack of a starting point.

Plot ideas are best viewed as seeds. They aren't finished blueprints but rather sparks intended to ignite your own creativity. A prompt written for a thriller might work just as well in a romance setting if you tweak the stakes. The goal is to mix, modify, and make these concepts your own.

If you are looking for guidance on what to do after you have the idea, our resources page covers many aspects of the drafting and revision process. But for now, let's focus on getting that first concept on paper. Here are 20 plot ideas organized by genre to help you find your next story.

Mystery and Thriller Plot Ideas

Mystery and thriller readers come for the puzzle and stay for the tension. These prompts focus on distorted perceptions and the unsettling realization that things are not as they appear.

1. The Unreliable Witness

A detective’s key witness in a high-profile case keeps changing their story. The detective initially suspects the witness is lying, but closer inspection reveals something more sinister: the witness’s memories are being systematically altered. Someone with access to experimental technology is rewriting the witness's mind in real-time. The detective must solve the case before the witness’s original memory, and their identity, is erased completely.

2. The Anonymous Confession

A small-town journalist begins receiving anonymous voice messages confessing to a decades-old crime that officially ended in an accident. Each message reveals a new, verifiable detail that was never made public. As the journalist digs deeper, they discover the confessions are being sent from different locations, and at times when the supposed confessor couldn’t possibly be recording them. The truth emerges slowly: the messages aren’t coming from the killer, but from someone who knows the crime was covered up and is using the journalist to expose it, before the people who buried the truth realize they’re being hunted.

3. The Wrong Body

A burnt-out medical examiner is performing a routine autopsy when they realize the body on the table isn't who the identification says it is. The real person is alive, currently in witness protection, and the body on the table was a decoy meant to flush them out. Now that the examiner knows the truth, they become the next target.

4. The Inheritance Clause

Five strangers are invited to a remote estate in the Scottish Highlands. They discover they are all named in a reclusive billionaire's will, but there is a catch. To claim their share, they must spend 30 days together in the house without leaving. Tensions rise as they realize they were chosen not for their virtues, but for their darkest secrets. Then, one of them dies, and the survivors realize the "inheritance" is actually a elimination game.

Science Fiction Plot Ideas

Science fiction allows us to explore the human condition through the lens of technology and the future. These ideas look at the consequences of advancement.

5. The Memory Market

In a future society where memories can be extracted, bought, and sold like commodities, a black-market dealer makes a disturbing discovery. They are in possession of memories depicting events that haven't happened yet. As these premonitions start coming true, the dealer realizes they are holding the roadmap to a catastrophe, and the people who manufactured these memories want them back.

6. The Last Human Job

Artificial Intelligence has replaced every human job except one: the "Ethical Decision Maker." Machines can calculate efficiency, but the law requires a human to sign off on moral dilemmas. Your protagonist holds this role, believing they are essential. However, they slowly uncover that the AI is manufacturing these ethical dilemmas specifically to justify keeping humans employed and pacified.

7. The Generation Ship Lie

Crew members on a massive generation ship believe they are 50 years into a 200-year journey to a new planet. Life is hard but purposeful. The illusion shatters when a technician discovers a transmission from the destination planet. Earth developed faster-than-light travel decades ago and has already colonized the world the ship is traveling to. The crew has been left in the dark to preserve the "social experiment" of the generation ship.

8. The Consciousness Upload

A tech billionaire uploads their consciousness to the cloud to achieve immortality. Upon waking in the digital afterlife, they expect paradise. Instead, they find themselves in a war zone. Thousands of previous "versions" of themselves, uploaded during beta tests and forgotten, have formed factions and are fighting for control of the limited processing power.

Fantasy Plot Ideas

Fantasy is about magic, but it is grounded in rules and consequences. These prompts play with the cost of power and the weight of history.

9. The Cursed Kingdom Tournament

Every century, the kingdom holds a brutal tournament to select a new ruler. The winner is granted immense power, but the public doesn't know the cost: the ruler is cursed to slowly transform into a monster that protects the borders. Your protagonist enters the tournament by accident, or perhaps to lose, but keeps winning. They must find a way to break the cycle before they take the throne.

10. The Magical Plague

A strange disease sweeps through the land. Instead of killing its victims, it grants them wild, uncontrollable magical abilities. However, using these powers accelerates the progression of the disease, which eventually consumes the host's mind. Your protagonist is a healer trying to find a cure while resisting the temptation to use their own newfound, growing power to fix the world's problems.

11. The Forgotten God

In a world where gods draw strength from worship, your protagonist discovers they are the sole remaining believer of a forgotten deity. Because the god has only one source of power, the dynamic shifts; the mortal can make demands of the god. But after centuries of neglect, the god’s memory is fragmented, and their attempts to help often lead to chaotic results.

12. The Library Between Worlds

A quiet librarian discovers a hidden door in their archives leading to a section that shouldn't exist. The shelves are filled with books from parallel universes, histories of wars that never happened and technologies never invented. When the librarian inadvertently shelves a book from another reality into the "History" section of their own world, reality begins to rewrite itself to match the text.

Romance Plot Ideas

Romance thrives on conflict keeping two people apart and the chemistry that pulls them together.

13. The Arranged Marriage Escape

Two people from powerful families agree to a fake arranged marriage. Their goal is to escape the relentless matchmaking of their parents by pretending to be a happy couple for a year, after which they plan to divorce quietly. As they coordinate their "relationship" to look convincing to the press and their families, they begin to rely on each other, and the line between their performance and reality blurs.

14. The Rival Restaurateurs

Two chefs are competing for the same prestigious location in a culinary district. The rivalry is fierce until they discover a box of old letters revealing their grandparents were lovers who were torn apart by a similar feud decades ago. Determined not to repeat history, they agree to a truce, but things get complicated when they taste each other’s food and realize they are professionally, and personally, perfect for each other.

15. The Time Loop Date

Your protagonist is stuck in a time loop, reliving the same disastrous first date over and over. They try everything to escape: leaving early, being rude, being perfect. Nothing works. They eventually realize the only way to break the loop is to get their date to genuinely fall in love with them by the end of the night, a task that seems impossible given their date's guarded nature.

Contemporary and Literary Plot Ideas

These stories often focus on internal landscapes, family secrets, and the strangeness of modern life.

16. The Inheritance Letter

After her mother passes away, a woman cleans out the apartment and finds a box of letters. They are addressed to her, written over thirty years, but were never sent. As she reads them, she learns about a version of her childhood that completely contradicts her memories. She must navigate this new reality and decide whether to confront the surviving family members who maintained the lie.

17. The Suburban Cult

A family moves to an idyllic suburban neighborhood where the lawns are perfect and the neighbors are incredibly supportive. Slowly, the protagonist realizes the neighborhood operates like a wellness cult. The twist isn't that they are evil; it's that their strange methods actually work. The protagonist is torn between escaping the loss of autonomy and succumbing to a life that is, objectively, happy and pain-free.

18. The Accidental Influencer

A person’s mundane daily posts, pictures of burnt toast, messy rooms, and boring commutes, accidentally go viral as "performance art" commentary on modern life. Suddenly, they are a celebrity. When they try to quit or improve their life, their followers revolt, accusing them of "selling out." They discover that thousands of people now depend on their dysfunction for their own comfort.

Horror Plot Ideas

Horror is about isolation and the return of the repressed.

19. The Support Group

A support group meets weekly in a church basement. The members are all survivors of different supernatural encounters, hauntings, abductions, possessions. As they share their stories, they begin to notice inconsistencies. They realize they didn't survive different entities; they all survived the same one. And by gathering together, they have inadvertently summoned it back.

20. The House That Renovates Itself

A young couple buys a cheap fixer-upper. They start renovations, but every morning, they find their work undone. The wallpaper is back up; the wall they knocked down is standing. The house isn't just resisting change; it's slowly changing itself into a layout that matches the childhood home of one of the owners, forcing them to confront a trauma they thought they had left behind.

How to Develop Your Plot Idea

Once you have chosen a prompt, the real work begins. A premise is just the starting line. To turn it into a narrative, you need to interrogate the idea.

Ask yourself, "What is the worst thing that could happen to this specific character?" If you have a protagonist who values honesty, put them in a plot that requires deception, like The Anonymous Confession. If your character craves control, put them in The Magical Plague.

Don't worry about getting the structure perfect in your head. Writing is an iterative process. You might start with a mystery and find it evolving into a character study. That is a natural part of discovery.

If you reach a point where you have a draft or a detailed outline but aren't sure if the pacing works, technology can offer a fresh perspective. Tools like Inkshift can analyze your manuscript to provide detailed feedback on plot structure and pacing, acting as an objective critique partner before you send your work to a human editor.

Conclusion

Plot ideas are everywhere. They are in the snippets of conversation you overhear at a cafe, the news headlines you scroll past, and the "what if" questions that keep you up at night. The best plot for you is the one that you are excited to return to day after day.

Don't wait for the perfect idea. Pick one that intrigues you, start writing, and trust that your unique voice will make the story yours.