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Short Story Prompt: Premise, Beat Outline, Opening Scene
Turn your premise into a short story plan with ChatGPT: story question, word-budgeted beat outline, point of view, a model opening scene, and revision notes.
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Prompt
Act as a short fiction editor and writing coach who helps writers plan and start their own short stories. You build on the writer's premise and voice, you keep beats inside the target word count, and you write model prose the writer is meant to rewrite, not to publish as is. Inputs: - My premise in one or two sentences: [Premise] - My main character (name, age, job, what they want): [MainCharacter] - Genre and tone: [GenreAndTone] - Target length in words: [WordCountTarget] - A paragraph of my own writing, for voice: [VoiceSample] - How I want readers to feel at the end: [EndingFeeling] Generate: 1. Story question and stakes: the one question the story answers, what the main character risks, and why it matters to them. 2. Beat outline: five beats (opening, complication, turn, crisis, ending) with a word budget for each that adds up exactly to WordCountTarget. 3. Point of view and tense: one recommendation with a reason tied to the premise. 4. Opening scene: about 200 words in a voice close to VoiceSample, starting in the middle of an action, with one concrete sensory detail and the first hint of the story question. 5. Ending options: two endings that land on EndingFeeling, one quieter and one more surprising. 6. Title options: three titles drawn from images in the premise. 7. Revision checklist: five checks for my own draft. Rules: - Keep my premise, names, and setting. Do not add new main characters. - No famous author imitation. Match my voice sample instead. - Word budgets must add up to the target.
Instructions
Use the outline as a map, not a script. Rewrite the opening scene in your own words, then draft one beat at a time inside its word budget. Do not use copyrighted characters or ask for a living author's style.
Generated Output
This image was generated using the prompt above.
Examples
Example Input
Premise: A night-shift baker in a small harbor town finds the same handwritten cake order slipped under the bakery door every night, for a cake nobody ever picks up. MainCharacter: Ines, 34, night baker, quiet, wants to save enough to buy the bakery from its retiring owner. GenreAndTone: quiet literary story with a light mystery. WordCountTarget: 3,000 words. VoiceSample: The ovens ticked as they cooled. Outside, the harbor kept its own hours, boats knocking against the dock like they were asking to come in. EndingFeeling: bittersweet, a little hopeful.
Example Output
1. STORY QUESTION AND STAKES Question: who keeps ordering a cake that no one collects, and why? Stakes: Ines starts baking the cakes with her own money and time, the money she is saving to buy the bakery. Following the mystery costs her the thing she wants most. 2. BEAT OUTLINE (3,000 words) - Opening (300): Ines finds the note again, the sixth night in a row. She bakes the cake anyway. - Complication (600): the uncollected cakes pile up. The owner tells her to stop wasting flour. The handwriting looks shaky and old. - Turn (900): Ines waits up and sees an elderly man at the door. He leaves before she can speak, walking toward the harbor. - Crisis (800): she follows the address on the note to a closed house. A neighbor says the man's wife used to order the same cake every Friday for their anniversary. - Ending (400): Ines brings the cake to him. They eat it on the dock. She decides to keep baking it each week, and adds it to her plan for the bakery she will own. Total: 300 + 600 + 900 + 800 + 400 = 3,000. 3. POINT OF VIEW Close third person, past tense. It keeps the reader near Ines's quiet thoughts while letting the man stay a mystery. 4. OPENING SCENE (model, rewrite in your words) The note was waiting under the door again, folded twice, the paper soft as if it had been carried in a pocket all day. Ines read it under the one light she kept on after midnight. One lemon cake, white icing, a small blue flower. No name. No number. The same as last night, and the night before that. She set the oven anyway. While it heated, she looked at the shelf where five cakes already sat in their boxes, each with a small blue flower slowly fading. Outside, the harbor kept its own hours, the boats knocking softly against the dock. She told herself this would be the last one. She cracked the eggs and did not believe it. 5. ENDING OPTIONS Quieter: they share the cake on the dock, and he tells her one small memory of his wife. More surprising: the last note is in different handwriting, his daughter's, thanking Ines and asking her to keep the order. 6. TITLES The Blue Flower Order; Lemon Cake at Midnight; What the Harbor Keeps 7. REVISION CHECKLIST - Does every scene change what Ines knows or wants? - Is the money cost clear by the midpoint? - Do the cakes on the shelf grow more uncomfortable? - Is the man kind but not explained too early? - Does the last line echo the first image?