Inspiring Story Ideas

Press the button for three of 100 heartwarming story ideas, with what gets in the way and a possible turn.

Inspiring Story Ideas

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  1. A man moving out alone on the hottest day finds a line of neighbors he never met carrying his boxes.He is moving away from them. Turn: he unpacks the kettle on the sidewalk first.
  2. A tourist with the wrong map is walked across a whole city by a child who takes payment in stories.The child should be at school. Turn: the last stop is the school, in time for show and tell.
  3. A woman's car fails outside a town where the one mechanic has closed early for his daughter's recital.She has an interview at nine. Turn: he fixes it in his good suit, and she comes to the recital.

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All 100 story ideas

A small kindness 20

  • A baker puts the first loaf of each day on the wall outside and never sees who takes it. One morning the loaf is still there. Turn: she goes looking.
  • A boy leaves his umbrella at the bus stop on purpose every time it rains. He is running out of umbrellas. Turn: one comes back with a note in the handle.
  • A bus driver waits forty seconds every morning for a woman who is always forty seconds late. A new timetable ends the wait. Turn: the whole bus starts arriving forty seconds late.
  • A child at swimming lessons holds the ladder steady for everyone and never gets in. The teacher notices on the last day. Turn: the whole class holds the ladder.
  • A girl gives up her place in the final so that a teammate's father can see his daughter play. The team loses by one. Turn: the father is a scout, and he was watching the bench.
  • A girl keeps the seat beside her at lunch free every day for whoever is new. One week nobody is new. Turn: someone keeps a seat for her.
  • A girl pays the library fine of the stranger whose name is above hers on the list. The stranger is her principal. Turn: the principal begins paying for the next name down.
  • A grocer has rounded every bill down for one old customer for years. The new owner audits the till. Turn: the old customer has been rounding the tip jar up.
  • A lifeguard at an empty winter pool teaches the janitor to swim after hours. The pool is to close. Turn: the janitor's first full length is the last one swum there, and people come.
  • A mail carrier reads the postcards aloud to a woman whose eyes can no longer make them out. Her nephew stops sending them. Turn: the mail carrier starts writing.
  • A man mows his neighbor's lawn each week because he thinks the neighbor is away. The neighbor is not away. Turn: he has been baking for whoever mows the lawn.
  • A mechanic fixes one thing more than he is asked to on every car and never mentions it. A customer notices. Turn: she is an inspector, and she never mentions it either.
  • A night cleaner at a school finishes one child's chalk drawing each evening before she mops. The child thinks the drawing grows by itself. Turn: one evening the child leaves her the chalk.
  • A school cook sets out to learn one dish from every country her pupils' families come from. There are twenty-three. Turn: the families send corrections, and then come to help.
  • A shopkeeper lets a boy read comics in the corner for a year without buying one. The shop is failing. Turn: the boy draws its new sign.
  • A teenager teaches her grandfather to send one message, and he sends it to everyone he knows. It says only good morning. Turn: forty people answer.
  • A train conductor keeps a drawer of forgotten gloves and tries to match them to hands each winter. One red mitten has waited six years. Turn: its owner has kept the other.
  • A waitress keeps the window table for a man who always comes alone and orders for two. The owner wants the table. Turn: one day the second person arrives.
  • A woman knits a hat for every baby born in her town and has lost count. Her hands are slowing. Turn: the first babies are old enough to hold the wool.
  • An old man repaints the faded hopscotch squares outside his window every spring. The street has no children left. Turn: fresh paint brings some.

Trying again 20

  • A band plays its first concert to three people, one of whom is asleep. The second concert is booked. Turn: the sleeper comes back, awake, with friends.
  • A boy learns to ride a bicycle at fifteen, in a parking lot, at night. His little brother finds out. Turn: the brother holds the saddle and does not laugh.
  • A boy with a stammer signs up for the debate team. The first round is on Thursday. Turn: his pauses turn out to be where the room leans in.
  • A chef goes back to the cooking school that threw him out, and enrolls in the beginners' class. The teacher is the same. Turn: she hands him the onions without a word.
  • A farmer replants the same hillside after the third washout. The neighbors have sold up. Turn: this time she plants willow, and the hill holds.
  • A girl builds a kite that will not fly, eleven times. The festival is on Sunday. Turn: the twelfth is the first she does not copy from the book.
  • A girl has asked to join the game at recess every day for a year. Today they are one short. Turn: she says no, and brings her own ball tomorrow.
  • A girl tries out for the school play every year and is always cast as a tree. This year the play has no trees. Turn: she writes one in, with lines, and the teacher keeps it.
  • A gymnast returns after a fall, and the beam looks narrower than it used to. Trials are in a month. Turn: her coach chalks a line on the floor and starts there.
  • A man of fifty goes back to finish high school, in his daughter's class. She pretends not to know him. Turn: he asks her for help with one problem, in front of everyone.
  • A novelist opens her fiftieth rejection at the mailbox, in front of the mail carrier. He has delivered all fifty. Turn: he asks whether he may read the book.
  • A potter throws a hundred bowls to get one right and breaks ninety-nine. The hundredth cracks in the kiln. Turn: a customer asks for the cracked one.
  • A runner who has never finished enters the same marathon for the fifteenth year. The course closes at five. Turn: the marshals stay until six.
  • A swimmer who came last in every race for a season asks to try the longest distance. The coach has no one else. Turn: last place is where she learned to pace.
  • A translator is let go over one mistake and starts again by labeling her own kitchen in a new language. Her savings will last the winter. Turn: the mistake she made becomes her specialty.
  • A violin maker's first forty instruments all sound like doors. The forty-first is promised to a student. Turn: the student likes doors.
  • A woman fails her driving test for the ninth time, and the examiner books the tenth himself. She has stopped believing. Turn: he failed nine times too.
  • A woman of seventy freezes at the second bar of her first piano exam, for the third spring running. The examiner waits. Turn: she asks to begin with the tune she plays for the cat.
  • An inventor's flying machine lands in the same pond every summer, to the town's delight. This year the town has stopped coming. Turn: one child is there, with a towel and a suggestion.
  • An old sailor fails the new written test for a small-boat license. He has sailed for fifty years. Turn: he takes it again beside a girl of twelve, who lends him a pencil.

An unlikely friend 20

  • A beekeeper and the farmer whose spray drifted onto her hives are snowed into the same barn. They have not spoken since June. Turn: by morning they have drawn a hedge on a feed sack.
  • A boy and the school's strictest teacher are the only two people who bring chess sets to lunch. Neither will ask. Turn: a pawn rolls under the wrong table.
  • A champion sprinter and the slowest boy in school are made lab partners. He is quick at the one thing she is not. Turn: she starts timing his equations.
  • A crow brings a girl one bright thing each day in exchange for crusts. One day it brings a ring that somebody is missing. Turn: returning it makes a third friend.
  • A girl and the old man who owns the junkyard build a telescope out of what is lying around. Her parents think she is at the library. Turn: he asks them to come and look through it.
  • A girl who dislikes dogs is paired with a dog who dislikes children in a school reading program. They ignore each other for a month. Turn: the dog falls asleep at chapter four.
  • A grandmother joins her grandson's online game by accident and is very good at it. His friends want her on the team. Turn: he must decide whether to say who she is.
  • A lighthouse keeper and a ship's radio operator have talked every night for six years and never met. The ship is being retired. Turn: its last voyage passes the light in daylight.
  • A long-distance trucker and a toll booth clerk exchange one sentence a week for ten years. The booth is being automated. Turn: the last sentence is an address.
  • A new boy who speaks no English and a girl who speaks to nobody are seated together. The teacher expects silence. Turn: they invent a third language out of drawings.
  • A night security guard and the pigeon that lives in the atrium keep each other company. The building is to be sealed for winter. Turn: the guard leaves one window on the latch.
  • A piano tuner and the builder working next door discover that they hum the same tune. Neither knows its name. Turn: finding it takes them to three towns.
  • A retired judge and a boy with a skateboard share a park bench every day at four. The boy stops coming. Turn: the judge borrows a skateboard and goes to ask.
  • A ship's cook and a stowaway cat pretend not to see each other for a whole voyage. Port inspection is tomorrow. Turn: the captain has been feeding it too.
  • A substitute teacher and the class that has driven off six others find they dislike the same textbook. The term has ten weeks left. Turn: they write a better one.
  • A woman who lives alone and the boy who delivers her paper argue about the crossword through the mail slot. He goes away to college. Turn: the crossword comes by post with one clue left blank.
  • An old woman and the fox that raids her trash cans come to an arrangement. The council sends a trapper. Turn: she tells him she has no fox, only a guest.
  • An opera singer and a subway busker trade one sung line each morning as she passes. Her season ends. Turn: on the last day she stops and sings the whole aria.
  • Two commuters who have nodded on the same platform for years are stuck on a stopped train. One has a flask of tea and one has cake. Turn: they miss their stop on purpose.
  • Two rival ice cream sellers are parked on the same beach on the coldest day of summer. No customers come. Turn: they trade flavors and stay till dark.

A stranger helps 20

  • A boy drops his bus fare down a drain, and the stranger behind him pays without a word. He looks for her for a year. Turn: he finds her one coin short of a fare.
  • A boy lost at a fair is kept busy at the ring toss stall until his family can be found. He is good at it. Turn: his family finds him handing out prizes.
  • A boy who cannot afford the science fair fee finds it paid in the name of last year's winner. Last year's winner is his rival. Turn: the rival wants someone worth beating.
  • A cyclist with a flat tire is passed a repair kit over a garden fence by a hand with no face. He never sees who it was. Turn: he rides that road again with a present for the fence.
  • A father alone with a crying baby on a night bus hears a lullaby start up from the back seat. It is not in his language. Turn: half the bus knows the chorus.
  • A girl locked out in the rain is let into the corner shop to wait and is put to work pricing cans. Her mother is late. Turn: she is offered Saturdays.
  • A girl stranded at an airport overnight is taught a card game by a cleaner on her break. The flight is canceled again. Turn: the game has a rule for exactly this.
  • A girl's kite catches in a stranger's tree, and the stranger is afraid of ladders. The girl is not. Turn: from the top she can see why he never looks up.
  • A lost hiker follows a line of small cairns that someone has been building for years. The cairns stop at a river. Turn: on the far bank, the builder is at work.
  • A man moving out alone on the hottest day finds a line of neighbors he never met carrying his boxes. He is moving away from them. Turn: he unpacks the kettle on the sidewalk first.
  • A runner takes a wrong turn in a city race, and a taxi driver paces her back to the course. He keeps the meter off. Turn: he is at the finish with her time written on his hand.
  • A sailor adrift is answered on the radio by a girl in her bedroom with a secondhand set. Her signal is weak and her bedtime is nine. Turn: her mother lets her stay up and holds the aerial.
  • A snowplow driver follows one set of footprints off his route and finds a car in a ditch. His round is not done. Turn: the town's roads are late, and nobody complains.
  • A stranger at a flea market recognizes a family photograph on a stall and buys it to send home. There is no address on the back. Turn: there is a school crest on a blazer.
  • A stranger on a train solves the last clue of a crossword that a man has carried in his wallet for ten years. He and his brother began it before they fell out. Turn: she tells him to call with the answer.
  • A tourist with the wrong map is walked across a whole city by a child who takes payment in stories. The child should be at school. Turn: the last stop is the school, in time for show and tell.
  • A violinist's bow breaks an hour before her audition, and a street musician offers his. It is held together with tape. Turn: she plays better on it, and has to give it back.
  • A woman finds her lost wallet on her doorstep with everything in it and one thing added. The thing is a library card in her name. Turn: she goes to see who signed it.
  • A woman's car fails outside a town where the one mechanic has closed early for his daughter's recital. She has an interview at nine. Turn: he fixes it in his good suit, and she comes to the recital.
  • An old man who cannot work the new ticket machine is rescued each day by whoever is behind him. He begins to learn their names. Turn: the day he masters it, he pretends he has not.

Home, found or mended 20

  • A boy and his new stepfather are left to assemble a bunk bed with one bolt missing. The instructions are in the wrong language. Turn: the bolt has been in the boy's pocket since noon.
  • A caretaker opens a closed school one evening a week so that its old pupils can sit at their desks. The building is sold. Turn: the buyer was a pupil.
  • A choir with nowhere to rehearse is offered a barn, three cows included. The cows have opinions on the high notes. Turn: the concert is held in the barn, by request.
  • A daughter comes home from college to find her room turned into her mother's studio. She sleeps among the canvases. Turn: one of them is her room, as it was.
  • A family new to the country plants seeds from home in a window box, and one comes up that nobody can name. The neighbors gather to guess. Turn: an old woman two doors down knows the smell.
  • A family whose roof blew off in a storm sleeps for a month in the school gym and votes on new paint. Nobody agrees. Turn: each room gets its own color, and the house is known for it.
  • A father and son who cannot talk about anything restore a wrecked car in silence for a year. It is finished. Turn: one of them has to say where to drive it.
  • A girl sent to stay with an aunt she has never met finds her own drawings on the aunt's refrigerator. They were sent every birthday. Turn: the aunt has replies she never mailed.
  • A girl who has changed schools six times is asked to draw her home and draws a suitcase. The class laughs. Turn: the teacher asks what is inside, and she takes an hour to answer.
  • A grandfather and granddaughter repair a clock that has been stopped since the day he left home. It needs one part nobody makes. Turn: she carves it from his old ruler.
  • A grandmother's quilt is divided among three cousins, and no piece is big enough to be warm. Each keeps hers for years. Turn: one winter they sew it back together.
  • A lighthouse family moves ashore and cannot sleep without the lamp passing the window. Nobody admits it. Turn: the father rigs a bicycle lamp on a string.
  • A man living in his van parks outside a house with a room to let and a roof that needs fixing. Neither he nor the owner can pay the other. Turn: they do not need to.
  • A stray dog picks a house, sits on its step and waits for the family to notice they have a dog. The family dislikes change. Turn: the youngest names it before anyone can vote.
  • A town rebuilds its burned-down bakery in a weekend, from memory, and puts the door on the wrong side. The baker says nothing. Turn: the wrong side catches the morning sun.
  • A woman finds her childhood house for sale and asks only to stand in the kitchen. The owner makes tea. Turn: he asks her what the marks on the door frame mean.
  • A woman returns to her village to sell the family house and finds the garden kept. No one will say by whom. Turn: every neighbor has a key.
  • An old sailor builds a house shaped like a hull, and the town tells him it will not stand. The first gale comes. Turn: the town shelters in it.
  • The oldest tree in a village comes down in a storm, and each household is given a plank. What to make of it? Turn: the planks become one long table in the road.
  • Two brothers who have not spoken in a decade are left in joint charge of one small boat. It takes two to sail. Turn: the first word either of them says is duck.

How it works

These inspiring story ideas are 100 one-sentence premises about ordinary people: a small kindness, a second try, an unlikely friend, a stranger who helps, a home found or mended. Under each is the obstacle and a possible turn.

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Happy story ideas still need a problem

Every premise here has something in the way: a new timetable, a play with no trees, a booth about to be automated. The note names it before it gives the turn. Keep the obstacle real and the ending will not feel cheap.

Five groups to choose from

A list under the button holds the groups: A small kindness, Trying again, An unlikely friend, A stranger helps, and Home, found or mended. Choose one, and every press deals from it. The whole list is written out under the tool.

  • Start small. A bus that waits forty seconds is easier to believe than a rescue.
  • Let the person who was helped do the helping in the last scene.

Questions and answers

What makes inspirational story ideas work?

On this list, a small act with a cost. A bus driver waits forty seconds every morning for a woman who is always forty seconds late, and then a new timetable ends the wait. The cost is what makes the kindness count.

Are these true stories?

No. Every premise was made up for this page. None is a news report or a retelling of a real event, and no real person or place is named.

What are some feel good story ideas?

Try the group A small kindness. Its obstacles are mild ones: an owner who wants a table back, a morning when the loaf is still on the wall, a week when nobody is new.

Can a sad story be inspiring?

On this page the sadness sits in the set-up and the note turns away from it. A girl asked to draw her home draws a suitcase, the class laughs, and then the teacher asks what is inside.

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