Literary Fiction Writing Prompts

A woman finds out her husband has been paying rent on an empty apartment across town for six years.

Two brothers who haven't spoken in eleven years are both at their mother's funeral. The reception is in two hours.

A man keeps running into the same woman at his therapist's office. They have the appointment right before and right after his. They've started getting coffee.

A man gets the job offer he's wanted for a decade, two weeks after his mother is diagnosed with dementia. She lives alone four hours away and every time he visits she asks when he's going to do something real with his life.

A woman starts attending her ex-husband's church after the divorce. She was the one who wanted to leave. She likes the church.

A retired pianist who stopped playing when his wife died can hear his upstairs neighbor practicing badly every night. He keeps going up to complain and somehow staying.

A man learns his late wife had a best friend he never knew about. The friend shows up at the memorial and knows things about his wife that he doesn't.

A woman said yes when her daughter asked to read her old journals. Now she's lying awake remembering what's in volume three.

A man who moved in with his girlfriend three months ago notices she talks to her ex on the phone every morning. She says they're just friends. He believes her.

A woman agrees to let her teenage daughter read her college application essay from twenty years ago. The essay is about wanting to be nothing like her own mother.

A woman runs into her college roommate at a grocery store. They were inseparable for four years. Neither can remember why they stopped talking.

A father drives his daughter to college and realizes somewhere around hour three that he has nothing to say to her that isn't advice.

A woman who has been sober for fifteen years finds an unopened bottle of wine in the back of her late mother's pantry. It's the vintage from the year she quit.

A retired surgeon volunteers at a free clinic and discovers he's slower than he used to be.

A man caring for his elderly father finds a shoebox of letters written to a woman who isn't his mother. The letters are dated the year he was born.

A couple adopts a dog together the same week they start talking about separating.

A couple in their sixties decides to sleep in separate bedrooms. They tell each other it's about the snoring.

A man attends the funeral of someone he bullied in high school. No one at the funeral knows who he is.

A woman's adult son has started calling every Sunday. He never used to call. She wants to ask why but doesn't want him to stop.

A family gathers for Thanksgiving and no one mentions that the youngest son brought a different girlfriend than last year. Including the youngest son.