Create a structured story outline. This includes a protagonist, a setting, a conflict, a complication, and even a twist. You can lock in any of the story elements and have the rest of the story regenerated to create even more unique combinations.
Free tools for storytellers
Every story consists of five components: a protagonist, a setting, a conflict, a complication and a twist. The tool randomly selects one component for each of these categories and then uses a set narrative template to form a complete story.
Select a Genre. This limits the tool to pulling components that are generally consistent to the chosen genre. This means that choosing 'Fantasy' would result in the tool choosing mythic settings and magical protagonists whereas choosing 'Thriller' would result in it choosing tense conflicts and moral complications for the story. The option 'All genres' mixes all of the above together, which can result in some of the most surprising plots.
If you love a certain protagonist, but find their corresponding setting is not perfect, you can lock the former and re-generate the story for a different setting. Remember that only unlocked components are re-generated when you press Generate again. You can lock any component, including all of them at once (to 'freeze' a story), or none of them to re-generate the whole thing.
Click ♡ Save to add a plot to your session's saved plots (displayed below the generator). Click Copy plot to copy the generated plot, plus the 5 components that were used to create it, to your clipboard. You can then paste them into your notes, a story outline, or even the current draft of your story.
Written prompts rather than generated stories? Head over to the Writing Prompt Generator to explore 300+ unique prompts to get you started on your writing.
A plot generator is a tool that creates structured story blueprints. These story blueprints consist of 5 parts: the main character (protagonist), a setting, a problem (conflict), a complicating factor, and an optional twist. It's more than a simple writing prompt, as it creates a full narrative skeleton which you can then develop into a short story, novel or even a screenplay.
Locking a story component makes it fixed for subsequent story generations. When generating a new story, locked components are copied to the new story while the unlocked components can be randomly changed. The user can thus change one or more components to generate new stories with similar ideas.
Yes. For example, a writing prompt might read: "For centuries those woods have whispered scary stories to every child who ventured too far from home." A plot generator would create a complete story structure, with many interconnected parts forming a coherent paragraph, like a fuller blueprint rather than just an open-ended spark.
Yes. You can choose from a variety of genres such as Fantasy, Sci-fi, Mystery, Romance, Thriller, Literary, and Comedy to get a story idea with a specific set of characters, setting, and conflict. If you select "All genres," then you can get any mix of components from all genres.
Looking for an open-ended spark instead? Try the Writing Prompt Generator for 300+ original prompts.