How it works
Each of these 100 space opera writing prompts sets two powers after one prize: a throne, a ship, a star, a world that was on nobody's chart. The line under it names the prize and gives a turn.
Read the full guide
A space opera plot generator in four parts
Empires and thrones is court intrigue: an empress steps down, and her two capitals each crown an heir. Crews and ships puts a handful of people on one hull between two navies. A war across systems keeps to the shape of the war and leaves out the shooting. A lost world found begins with a discovery that two powers reach on the same day.
Start from what both sides want
A space opera runs on a prize that cannot be split: one seal, one gate, one garden world. Write each power's best reason for deserving it, then hand the story to someone small who stands between them, such as a courier, a cook or a harbor master.
- Make travel slow somewhere. A declaration of war that takes nine years to arrive is a plot by itself.
- Let both powers be right about the prize. The reader should be unsure whom to back until the turn.
Questions and answers
What is a space opera?
Science fiction on the grand scale: adventure among the stars, where ships cross between them faster than light and the background is usually empires, alien peoples and wars in space. The opera is not music: it is the opera of soap opera, meaning melodrama.
Do the prompts borrow from any series?
No. No ship, empire, planet or character of a published book, film, show or game is named or retold. The hive of a billion minds, the duchess with the toll gate and the freighter's six-legged cat belong to this list.
How do I turn one prompt into a whole plot?
Take the turn as the end of act one, not the end of the story. If the derelict's computer files a claim of its own or the lost colony sends an auditor, ask what each power does the morning after it finds out.