• 120 story ideas
  • Checked October 2026

Historical Fiction Story Ideas

Three invented people beside real events per press, with the place, the years and a thing to look up.

Historical Fiction Story Ideas

All 120
  1. A teenager records songs onto a tape cassette to give to a friend who is moving.After August 1963. Wants: the order of songs right. Look up: Cassette tape.
  2. A sailmaker's daughter sews better than anyone in the loft and signs nothing.A harbor town in the age of sail. Wants: her stitch known. Look up: Sailmaker.
  3. An embroiderer stitching the long cloth that tells of the conquest adds a face she knows.England, the decades after 1066. Wants: her brother remembered. Look up: Bayeux Tapestry.

Next step Deal a medieval plotDraw something from the past

All 120 story ideas

The ancient Mediterranean 20

  • A boy is paid to carry broken jars to the growing heap beside the Tiber. Ancient Rome. Wants: to find one jar whole. Look up: Monte Testaccio.
  • A citizen of Athens hears his neighbor's name whispered before a vote to send one man away for ten years. Ancient Athens. Wants: to keep his neighbor. Look up: Ostracism.
  • A cook sells hot food over a street counter and envies the shop across the road. A Roman town. Wants: her rival's recipe. Look up: Thermopolium.
  • A courier of the imperial post carries a letter he is tempted to read. The Roman Empire. Wants: to be rid of it by nightfall. Look up: Cursus publicus.
  • A dyer's child grows up in a workshop that makes purple from sea snails. The ancient Mediterranean coast. Wants: one purple thread to keep. Look up: Tyrian purple.
  • A family in a crowded Roman apartment block hears that the landlord is raising the rent. Imperial Rome. Wants: to stay in the building. Look up: Insula (building).
  • A farmer's son walks to Athens to see his first comedy at the festival. Athens, after 490 BC. Wants: a place near the front. Look up: Theatre of ancient Greece.
  • A fisherman of Rhodes rows visitors past the statue an earthquake has thrown down. Rhodes, after 226 BC. Wants: the visitors to keep coming. Look up: Colossus of Rhodes.
  • A grain measurer at Rome's port waits for the ships from Egypt, which are late. Imperial Rome. Wants: one more quiet day. Look up: Cura annonae.
  • A junior copyist at the Library of Alexandria is handed a scroll that nobody can read. Alexandria, third century BC. Wants: his name in the catalog. Look up: Library of Alexandria.
  • A lamp boy's family watches the great lighthouse of Alexandria going up, year after year. Alexandria, 280 to 247 BC. Wants: to climb it before it is finished. Look up: Lighthouse of Alexandria.
  • A laundry worker's daughter knows every customer by the stains on their cloth. Pompeii, 1st century AD. Wants: to run the shop. Look up: Fullo.
  • A new watchman of the city goes out on his first night patrol for fires. Ancient Rome. Wants: not to be the one who raises a false alarm. Look up: Vigiles.
  • A potter makes pointed storage jars for a merchant who never pays on time. The ancient Mediterranean. Wants: to be paid before the ship sails. Look up: Amphora.
  • A road builder's daughter lives beside the first stretch of the Appian Way. South of Rome, 312 BC. Wants: to see where the road ends. Look up: Appian Way.
  • A runner's younger brother walks to Olympia to watch the games. Olympia, between 776 BC and AD 393. Wants: to see one race. Look up: Ancient Olympic Games.
  • A sculptor's apprentice works on Rhodes while the giant statue of the sun god is raised. Rhodes, about 280 BC. Wants: to shape one finger. Look up: Colossus of Rhodes.
  • A stoker feeds the furnace that sends hot air under the floors of a great house. A Roman town, after about 80 BC. Wants: to stand on the warm floor once. Look up: Hypocaust.
  • A water carrier works in Rome in the year the first aqueduct reaches the cattle market. Rome, 312 BC. Wants: to keep his trade. Look up: Roman aqueduct.
  • An apprentice helps to build a hand-turned device of gears that shows eclipses to come. The Greek world, 2nd century BC. Wants: to turn it once. Look up: Antikythera mechanism.

Medieval Europe 20

  • A charcoal burner's child spends the season in the woods beside the smoking pile. Medieval Europe. Wants: one day at the fair. Look up: Charcoal burner.
  • A cloth merchant's daughter goes to her first great fair in Champagne. Northeastern France, 12th or 13th century. Wants: to strike one bargain alone. Look up: Champagne fairs.
  • A copyist in a monastery writing room finds a mistake in the book he is copying from. Medieval Europe. Wants: to mend it unnoticed. Look up: Scriptorium.
  • A falconer's apprentice loses his lord's bird on its first flight. Medieval Europe. Wants: it back on the glove by dusk. Look up: Falconry.
  • A farmer who owes a tenth of his harvest has had a bad year. Northern Europe in the Middle Ages. Wants: to keep enough seed. Look up: Tithe barns in Europe.
  • A journeyman is paid for the first time as a qualified worker of his craft. A guild town in the Middle Ages. Wants: his old master's approval. Look up: Journeyman.
  • A keeper minds the cathedral's new iron clock, which has no dial. Salisbury, about 1386. Wants: the town to trust it over the sun. Look up: Salisbury Cathedral clock.
  • A mapmaker's helper inks the edge of the largest map of the world he has ever seen. England, about 1300. Wants: his own village on it. Look up: Hereford Mappa Mundi.
  • A miller's boy has to turn the whole windmill on its post to face the wind. England, from the 12th century. Wants: to sleep through one windy night. Look up: Post mill.
  • A minstrel who juggles better than he sings looks for a hall to winter in. Medieval Europe. Wants: a place by the fire until spring. Look up: Minstrel.
  • A painter of beasts has never seen a lion and has to paint one. Europe in the Middle Ages. Wants: to meet someone who has. Look up: Bestiary.
  • A parchment maker's daughter prepares skins for books she cannot read. Medieval Europe. Wants: to learn her letters. Look up: Parchment.
  • A sailor's daughter keeps her father's accounts in a port of the Hanseatic League. Northern Germany, 13th to 15th century. Wants: one voyage on the cog. Look up: Hanseatic League.
  • A stonecutter's son carves a face where nobody will ever see it, high on a new cathedral. Chartres, 1194 to 1220. Wants: his mark on one stone. Look up: Chartres Cathedral.
  • A student arrives at one of Europe's first universities with a letter and no money. Italy, 11th to 15th century. Wants: somewhere to sleep. Look up: Medieval university.
  • A swineherd drives the village pigs into the forest to feed on fallen acorns. Medieval Europe. Wants: to find the one that strays. Look up: Pannage.
  • A village is told to farm its land in three fields, leaving one empty each year, and one old farmer will not. Europe, 9th to 11th century. Wants: his strips left alone. Look up: Three-field system.
  • A villager watches the king's men arrive to write down what everyone holds. England, 1085 to 1086. Wants: one ox left off the list. Look up: Domesday Book.
  • A woman who composes songs in Old Occitan hears them sung under a man's name. Occitania, 1100 to 1350. Wants: to perform one herself. Look up: Troubadour.
  • An embroiderer stitching the long cloth that tells of the conquest adds a face she knows. England, the decades after 1066. Wants: her brother remembered. Look up: Bayeux Tapestry.

The age of sail 20

  • A cabin boy on his first voyage cannot tell one officer from another. A merchant ship to the East Indies, 17th to 19th century. Wants: to be trusted. Look up: East Indiaman.
  • A carver is finishing a ship's figurehead whose face the owner dislikes. A shipyard, 16th century or later. Wants: to keep the face. Look up: Figurehead (object).
  • A clockmaker's apprentice carries a new sea clock aboard for its trial. Britain, after 1714. Wants: it to keep time in a gale. Look up: Longitude rewards.
  • A cook brings a cat aboard against the captain's orders. A trading ship. Wants: the cat to earn its place before it is found. Look up: Ship's cat.
  • A cooper makes the water casks for the ship his son has signed onto. A port in the age of sail. Wants: every cask tight. Look up: Cooper (profession).
  • A crew far from any port hauls its ship over on a beach to scrape the hull. A distant shore in the age of sail. Wants: to float her on the next tide. Look up: Careening.
  • A dock worker nails copper plates to a hull and is sure it is a waste of copper. Britain, 18th century. Wants: to be proved right. Look up: Copper sheathing.
  • A girl in Manila watches for the ship that comes from Mexico once or twice a year. Manila, 1565 to 1815. Wants: a letter from her father. Look up: Manila galleon.
  • A harbor pilot's son knows the sandbars better than the charts do. A river mouth in the age of sail. Wants: to bring one ship in himself. Look up: Maritime pilot.
  • A laborer helps to build a lighthouse on rocks that the sea covers. Off Cornwall, before 1699. Wants: one dry night. Look up: Eddystone Lighthouse.
  • A mate counts the knots that run out on a line to tell how fast the ship is going. A sailing ship. Wants: a number the captain will believe. Look up: Chip log.
  • A navigator's apprentice learns to measure the sun's height with a new instrument. At sea, after 1731. Wants: to fix the ship's place first. Look up: Sextant.
  • A passenger is held at a quarantine station within sight of the town she sailed to reach. A port in the age of sail. Wants: to send one message ashore. Look up: Lazaretto.
  • A rope maker's child walks the length of the ropewalk all day long. Britain, in the days of sailing ships. Wants: to see one rope go to sea. Look up: Ropewalk.
  • A sailmaker's daughter sews better than anyone in the loft and signs nothing. A harbor town in the age of sail. Wants: her stitch known. Look up: Sailmaker.
  • A sailor who cannot sing is told to lead the work song at the ropes. A merchant ship, mid-19th century. Wants: the crew to pull in time. Look up: Sea shanty.
  • A ship's boy has the job of ringing the hours on the ship's bell. A sailing ship. Wants: not to fall asleep on watch. Look up: Ship's bell.
  • An apprentice shipwright works in a Dutch yard where a windmill drives the saws. The Netherlands, first half of the 17th century. Wants: the sawyers' respect. Look up: Shipbuilding.
  • The youngest hand on a tea clipper sails in the race home from China. China to London, 1866. Wants: to be first to sight the dock. Look up: Great Tea Race of 1866.
  • The youngest sailor on a mail packet guards a bag of letters across the Atlantic. The Atlantic, 18th century. Wants: to deliver one letter by hand. Look up: Packet boat.

Victorian Britain 20

  • A boy of nine has never been to school in the year a law sets out schooling for every child. England, 1870. Wants: to read a shop sign. Look up: Elementary Education Act 1870.
  • A boy races a horse on a bicycle with one huge front wheel. Britain, 1870s or 1880s. Wants: to stay on to the finish. Look up: Penny-farthing.
  • A cab driver is lost in a thick yellow fog with a fare who is in a hurry. London, in the years of coal smoke. Wants: one landmark he knows. Look up: Pea soup fog.
  • A child who searches the river mud for things to sell finds something worth more than coal. London, 19th century. Wants: a fair price. Look up: Mudlark.
  • A country girl saves for a year to see the Great Exhibition. London, 1 May to 15 October 1851. Wants: one whole day there. Look up: Great Exhibition.
  • A crossing sweeper keeps one street corner and will not give it up. A British city, 19th century. Wants: the corner by the bank. Look up: Crossing sweeper.
  • A fried fish seller sees a shop open across the road that sells fish with chips. England, 1860s. Wants: her customers to stay. Look up: Fish and chips.
  • A gardener's boy sails with a sealed glass case of living plants. At sea, 19th century. Wants: every plant alive on arrival. Look up: Wardian case.
  • A girl minds the wooden changing carts that are rolled into the sea at a resort. A British beach, 19th century. Wants: to swim herself. Look up: Bathing machine.
  • A glazier's boy helps to put up a palace of iron and glass in Hyde Park. London, before May 1851. Wants: to be inside on opening day. Look up: The Crystal Palace.
  • A lamplighter's daughter walks his round with him in the week gas lamps reach her street. A British town, after 1807. Wants: to light one lamp. Look up: Lamplighter.
  • A maid is sent up a cliff to find a rare fern for her mistress's collection. Britain in the reign of Victoria. Wants: to get down again. Look up: Pteridomania.
  • A photographer's assistant has to keep a child still for one of the first kinds of photograph. Britain, 1839 to the 1850s. Wants: one picture with no blur. Look up: Daguerreotype.
  • A post office clerk sells the first stamps that send a letter any distance for a penny. Britain, May 1840. Wants: to write to his mother. Look up: Penny Black.
  • A postman watches the first pillar box go up on his round. St Helier, Jersey, November 1852. Wants: to know if it will cost him his job. Look up: Pillar box.
  • A shopkeeper's street is dug up for the first underground railway. London, before January 1863. Wants: her customers back. Look up: Metropolitan Railway.
  • A station master is told to set his clock by the railway's time and not by the town's. England, after November 1840. Wants: his own noon. Look up: Railway time.
  • A teacher at a free school for the poorest children has forty pupils and six slates. London, 1844 to 1881. Wants: boots for one boy. Look up: Ragged school.
  • A telegraph clerk reads a message that was meant for someone else. After 1837. Wants: to decide whether to speak. Look up: Electrical telegraph.
  • A woman paid to wake the mill workers oversleeps. A British mill town, before alarm clocks were cheap. Wants: nobody to lose a day's pay. Look up: Knocker-up.

The 1920s and 1930s 20

  • A boy sits on top of a flagpole to set a record. The mid to late 1920s. Wants: his name in the paper. Look up: Pole sitting.
  • A brother and sister enter a dance contest that is won by whoever stays on their feet longest. The 1930s. Wants: the prize money. Look up: Dance marathon.
  • A cameraman's assistant films the news that is shown in cinemas. The 1920s or 1930s. Wants: one shot of his own kept in. Look up: Newsreel.
  • A cook at a soup kitchen recognizes a face in the line. A city in the years 1929 to 1939. Wants: to spare the man's pride. Look up: Great Depression.
  • A family drives west from Chicago on a new highway with everything it owns. United States, after 1926. Wants: to reach the end of the road. Look up: U.S. Route 66.
  • A family listens to the radio together for the first time. United States, early 1920s. Wants: to hear a voice from another city. Look up: Golden Age of Radio.
  • A farm boy pays a stunt pilot for his first ride in an airplane. United States, 1920s. Wants: to see his own roof from above. Look up: Barnstorming.
  • A farm family watches the sky in the year the dust storms come. The American prairies, 1930s. Wants: to stay on the land. Look up: Dust Bowl.
  • A farm wife shares one telephone line with her neighbors and has one secret. The countryside in the years of shared lines. Wants: a call nobody overhears. Look up: Party line (telephony).
  • A farm wife waits for the day the electric line reaches her house. Rural United States, after 1936. Wants: one lamp with a switch. Look up: Rural Electrification Act.
  • A girl makes the sound effects for a radio play and is never named on air. The 1920s to the 1950s. Wants: her name read out once. Look up: Radio drama.
  • A librarian carries books on horseback to mountain cabins. The Appalachian Mountains, 1935 to 1943. Wants: one reader to ask for more. Look up: Pack Horse Library Project.
  • A man marches from his town to London with about two hundred others and a petition. England, October 1936. Wants: boots that last. Look up: Jarrow March.
  • A man out of work is hired to build a road for a government works program. United States, 1935 to 1943. Wants: to be kept on. Look up: Works Progress Administration.
  • A painter works high on the new bridge across the Golden Gate. San Francisco, before May 1937. Wants: to walk across on opening day. Look up: Golden Gate Bridge.
  • A steward serves on a passenger airship crossing the Atlantic. Germany to Brazil, 1932 to 1937. Wants: to stand at the window once. Look up: LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin.
  • A switchboard operator knows every voice in town. A small town in the early days of the telephone. Wants: to forget one call. Look up: Switchboard operator.
  • A trumpet player's little brother carries the case to the dance hall every night. United States, 1920 to the early 1930s. Wants: to be let in. Look up: Jazz Age.
  • A young man of eighteen with no work signs up for a government work camp. United States, 1933 to 1942. Wants: to send word home. Look up: Civilian Conservation Corps.
  • An usher works at a movie palace in the year the pictures start to talk. United States, 1927. Wants: to hear the first one through. Look up: Sound film.

1945 to 1990 20

  • A boy builds a radio to hear the beep of the first satellite. October 1957. Wants: to pick up the signal before it stops. Look up: Sputnik 1.
  • A child is given one of the first computers made for the home and has to work out what it is for. After 1977. Wants: to make it do one thing. Look up: Home computer.
  • A child is taken to a great national fair held to cheer the country after the war. United Kingdom, summer 1951. Wants: to see everything. Look up: Festival of Britain.
  • A child is the first on her street to use the new striped road crossing. Slough, England, 1951. Wants: the cars really to stop. Look up: Zebra crossing.
  • A delivery driver watches the price of fuel climb through the winter of an oil embargo. October 1973 to March 1974. Wants: to keep his route. Look up: 1973 oil crisis.
  • A driver takes the family car onto the country's first motorway on the day it opens. Lancashire, England, 5 December 1958. Wants: to go a little faster. Look up: Preston Bypass.
  • A factory worker is told that the plant may use electricity on only three days a week. United Kingdom, January to March 1974. Wants: a full week's pay. Look up: Three-Day Week.
  • A family crowds around a neighbor's television to watch people land on the Moon. July 1969. Wants: a place where the youngest can see. Look up: Apollo 11.
  • A family dials a long-distance number with no operator for the first time. North America, from 1951. Wants: Grandma to answer. Look up: North American Numbering Plan.
  • A family sits in the dark on the day the lights go out for millions. The northeastern United States and Ontario, 9 November 1965. Wants: news. Look up: Northeast blackout of 1965.
  • A girl is sent to the shop with the family's ration book. Britain, just after the Second World War. Wants: not to lose it. Look up: Rationing in the United Kingdom.
  • A girl saves for a radio small enough to carry in her pocket. The 1960s. Wants: to listen where nobody can hear her. Look up: Transistor radio.
  • A girl walks through the open wall with her grandmother, who has not crossed in years. Berlin, 9 November 1989. Wants: to find one street. Look up: Fall of the Berlin Wall.
  • A kid with a pocket of coins spends every Saturday at the video arcade. The late 1970s to 1983. Wants: his initials at the top of one list. Look up: Golden age of arcade video games.
  • A mail sorter has to learn the new five-digit codes. United States, July 1963. Wants: to stay the fastest sorter in the room. Look up: ZIP Code.
  • A shop girl faces her first customers on the day the money changes. United Kingdom, 15 February 1971. Wants: to give the right change. Look up: Decimal Day.
  • A teenager records songs onto a tape cassette to give to a friend who is moving. After August 1963. Wants: the order of songs right. Look up: Cassette tape.
  • A viewer waits up for television pictures sent across the ocean by satellite. July 1962. Wants: to see a face from the other side. Look up: Telstar.
  • A young man from Jamaica steps off a ship at Tilbury with one suitcase. Near London, June 1948. Wants: work and a room. Look up: HMT Empire Windrush.
  • An operator connects one of the first calls on a telephone cable under the Atlantic. Scotland to Newfoundland, September 1956. Wants: to listen for a second. Look up: TAT-1.

How it works

These historical fiction story ideas are 120 premises, each an invented person at the edge of a real event, trade or place. The line underneath gives the place and years, what the person wants and one thing to look up.

Read the full guide

Six periods

A list under the button holds The ancient Mediterranean, Medieval Europe, The age of sail, Victorian Britain, The 1920s and 1930s, and 1945 to 1990. Choose one to stay in it. Every person is made up: no real person is a character, and no battle is the subject.

Victorian era story ideas and the look-up line

The Victorian group runs from the first penny stamp in 1840 to the craze for ferns. Each line ends with Look up and the name of an encyclopedia article. Read it before you write: the premise gives one checked date, and the story needs what people ate, wore and feared.

  • Give your invented person a job. Work decides how much of the event they see.
  • Check one more source than this list did. An article's opening is a start, not the research.

Questions and answers

How do I start a historical fiction story?

With one person who wants something on a day that history remembers for another reason. A lamplighter's daughter wants to light one lamp in the week gas reaches her street. Each premise here is built that way, with the place and years attached.

Are these historical fiction writing prompts about real people?

No. Every character is invented. The events, trades and places are real, and each was checked against the opening of the encyclopedia article named in its line. No real person appears as a character, and no real crime is retold.

Which periods can I choose?

Six: the ancient Mediterranean, medieval Europe, the age of sail, Victorian Britain, the 1920s and 1930s, and 1945 to 1990. For more of the Middle Ages, the medieval story ideas page deals a plot from rows.

Are there stories about wars?

Not as the subject. No battle or weapon leads a premise. A few stand at the edge of a war, such as a girl sent to the shop with the family's ration book just after the Second World War.

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