• 100 story ideas
  • Checked October 2026

Summer Story Ideas

Three premises that could only happen in summer, each with what goes wrong and one way it could turn.

Summer Story Ideas

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  1. A girl is too young for the summer jobs her brothers have, so she invents one: reporter of the street.Her paper is one page. Turn: by August it has subscribers and one complaint.
  2. A fire hydrant on a city block is opened on the hottest day, and the street has an hour before it is shut.Every window empties. Turn: the officer sent to close it takes her time walking over.
  3. The lifeguard's chair is empty on a red-flag afternoon, and a ten-year-old decides somebody should sit in it.Nobody may swim. Turn: she spends three hours telling grown-ups no, and they listen.

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All 100 story ideas

At the beach 25

  • A beach hut is rented to a different family each week, and each leaves one thing on the shelf for the next. A jar, a kite, half a book. Turn: the last family of the summer finds a shelf with everything on it.
  • A beach photographer takes one family's picture in the same spot every year, and this year the daughter is the taller one. Nobody mentions it. Turn: the mother stands on a rock for the picture.
  • A bottle with a note in it washes up, dated last Tuesday, from the next cove over. It asks for a reply. Turn: two children trade bottles all summer and never once meet by land.
  • A boy loses his grandfather's watch in the sand at high tide and has until low tide to think where. The beach looks different every hour. Turn: a dog digs it up at low tide, and the watch is still running.
  • A boy who cannot swim tells everyone at the beach that he just does not feel like it today. He says it for two weeks. Turn: a much smaller child offers to teach him, in a tide pool.
  • A crab moves into a boy's left sneaker at the top of the beach and will not be evicted. He walks home in one shoe. Turn: he comes back next day with a better shell and an offer.
  • A day-tripper falls asleep on an island beach at five, and the last ferry leaves at six. She wakes at ten past. Turn: the island has one guest room, and she comes back every summer after.
  • A family arrives at the shore for one week, and it takes the father until Thursday to take off his shoes. He checks the time all day. Turn: on Friday the children bury his watch, with his permission.
  • A girl builds the same sandcastle every morning, and every morning the tide takes it by lunch. She moves it back a step each day. Turn: on the last day she builds it at the waterline on purpose.
  • A girl collects only gray pebbles, and by August the windowsill of the rented house is full. The car is packed, with no room. Turn: she is allowed one, and takes an hour to choose.
  • A girl finds a pair of glasses at low tide and tries them against every face on the beach. They fit nobody. Turn: the owner is the swimmer who has walked straight past her towel twice.
  • A grandmother swims out to the same buoy every summer morning, and her family times her from the sand. Today she is slow. Turn: she stopped to talk to another swimmer, and brings her back for breakfast.
  • A kite gets away at the beach, and the whole shoreline stands up, towel by towel, to chase it. It comes down in the dunes. Turn: the boy who reaches it carries it back the long way, to be seen.
  • A little brother is buried to the neck in sand and likes it so much that he will not come out. Lunch is brought to him. Turn: the tide comes for his toes and he remembers he has legs.
  • A man on the pier catches nothing all summer and has the most visitors of anyone on it. Children check his bucket daily. Turn: when he lands one at last, everybody votes to let it go.
  • A teenager's first summer job is renting beach umbrellas, and it rains for nine days. She has rented none. Turn: on day ten the sun comes out and she has forgotten the prices.
  • An ice cream seller walks the whole beach every day and knows every family's order but not one name. On the season's last day a child asks his. Turn: nobody ever had, and he has to stop and think.
  • Fog hides a whole beach on the hottest day of the year, and only the sound of the sea is left. Families sit in the white anyway. Turn: when it lifts, everyone has drifted next to a stranger.
  • The lifeguard's chair is empty on a red-flag afternoon, and a ten-year-old decides somebody should sit in it. Nobody may swim. Turn: she spends three hours telling grown-ups no, and they listen.
  • The lowest tide of the summer uncovers the ribs of a rowboat, and a girl claims the wreck as her house. She has it two hours a day. Turn: she learns the tide table better than the harbormaster.
  • Somebody draws an enormous picture in the wet sand every dawn, and it is gone before most people wake. Only the paper-route girl sees them. Turn: one morning the picture is of her bicycle.
  • Three cousins are given one inflatable boat and one rule: never past the second rock. The boat has a slow leak. Turn: arguing over whose turn it is to blow keeps them happily ashore.
  • Two boys start digging a hole on the beach, and by three o'clock a crowd is giving advice. Nobody knows what it is for. Turn: the tide decides, and the crowd cheers the water in.
  • Two children sell shells from towels ten steps apart and spend a week undercutting each other. The price falls to nothing. Turn: they merge, and a shell comes free with every look.
  • Two families set up on the same patch of beach every July and have never exchanged a word. This year one umbrella blows into the other camp. Turn: by August they share one cooler.

In town 25

  • A boy is given the job of watering eleven neighbors' plants while the whole street is away in August. He has eleven keys and no labels. Turn: he learns the street by its kitchens.
  • A boy is sure the summer is longer on the other side of town and rides over to check. It looks the same. Turn: a girl there believes the same about his side, and they trade for a day.
  • A boy mows lawns for the summer and learns which neighbors watch, which pay in coins and which bring water. One lawn he mows for free. Turn: its owner has been leaving the money with his mother all along.
  • A boy sets out to shake hands with everyone on his street before the summer ends. One door never opens. Turn: its owner works nights, and leaves him a note with a drawn hand.
  • A bus driver's summer route passes the lake, and she has never once had time to stop. On the season's last run the bus is empty. Turn: she parks it and wades in to her knees.
  • A family with no plans for the summer eats supper in a different spot in town every night. The roof, the bus stop, the bandstand. Turn: on the last night they choose their own table, and it feels new.
  • A fire hydrant on a city block is opened on the hottest day, and the street has an hour before it is shut. Every window empties. Turn: the officer sent to close it takes her time walking over.
  • A girl is too young for the summer jobs her brothers have, so she invents one: reporter of the street. Her paper is one page. Turn: by August it has subscribers and one complaint.
  • A girl's best friend is away all summer, and she writes down everything that happens so as not to waste it. Nothing happens for a week. Turn: writing down nothing turns out to take four pages a day.
  • A heatwave closes the school three days before the end of term, and nobody gets to say goodbye. The lockers are still full. Turn: the janitor opens the doors for one hour, and the whole class comes.
  • A movie is shown on a bedsheet in the square, and the wind keeps taking the picture with it. Four volunteers hold the corners. Turn: they see the whole film backward and ask for it again.
  • A new family moves in during the hottest week, and their boxes sit on the lawn because the door has swollen shut. The street watches from its porches. Turn: it takes nine neighbors, and they stay for supper on the boxes.
  • A street holds a race on the hottest afternoon of the year, and the prize is the shade of its one tree. It is a walking race, by vote. Turn: the winner invites the whole street under.
  • A teenager gets a summer job at the town's only gas station, where four cars stop a day. He studies the wall map instead. Turn: by August he can direct anyone anywhere, and has been nowhere.
  • A thunderstorm ends a three-week heatwave in the middle of a wedding in the park. Nobody runs. Turn: the photographs of that hour are the ones the family frames.
  • The evenings are so long that one block's game of hide and seek lasts until somebody's father joins in. He hides too well. Turn: the whole block is out looking for him with flashlights, laughing.
  • The ice cream truck's speaker breaks, and it has to drive the town in silence. Nobody comes out. Turn: one boy runs ahead of it shouting the tune.
  • The library is the only cool building in town, and by noon every chair is taken. Nobody is reading. Turn: the librarian starts reading aloud, and no one leaves at closing.
  • On the longest day of the year a girl decides to stay outside from sunrise until dark. By four o'clock she has done everything. Turn: the last hour of light is the one she remembers.
  • The power goes out along a whole street on the hottest night of July, and everyone comes out to the steps. The freezers are warming. Turn: every tub is carried out and eaten at once, by flashlight.
  • The summer the bridge is closed for repairs, the two halves of the town cross by the old rowboat. Each crossing is ten minutes of talk. Turn: when the bridge reopens, the rowboat keeps its passengers.
  • The town clock stops on the first day of summer vacation, and the children agree it should stay that way. A repairer is sent for. Turn: she looks at their faces and orders the part by slow mail.
  • The town fountain is switched on for the summer, and a girl appoints herself its keeper. She fishes out the coins and gives them back. Turn: people start throwing wishes written on leaves.
  • The town pool opens for the summer with a new high board, and for a week everyone who climbs it climbs back down. The ladder is busy both ways. Turn: the smallest girl meets someone coming down, and has to go up.
  • Two children open a lemonade stand, and their only customer all day is the mail carrier, four times. They are down to the last cup. Turn: she has been buying for every porch on her route.

At camp 25

  • A boy arrives at summer camp with a trunk packed by his grandmother, including a tie. The others see the tie. Turn: by the last night it is the cabin's flag.
  • A boy brings a book to camp to hide in, and his cabin makes him read it aloud after lights out. He does the voices. Turn: they finish it on the bus home, with the driver listening.
  • A boy is the only camper who gets no mail, so his bunkmates begin writing to him. The letters come from the next bunk. Turn: he answers each one, by post.
  • A camp by a lake has one rule that nobody explains: no rowing to the island. A camper asks why. Turn: the island is where the counselors hide the last-night surprise.
  • A camp runs out of marshmallows on the second night, and the campers are asked what else can be toasted. Bread, apple slices, a pancake. Turn: toasted cheese wins and becomes a camp tradition.
  • A camp swaps its oldest and youngest cabins for one day, counselors included. The little ones set the rules. Turn: bedtime is at six, and the big ones are glad of it.
  • A camper finds initials carved under his bunk with a date thirty years old, and they are his father's. His father never said he came here. Turn: the boy carves his own beneath and writes home with one question.
  • A camper keeps a tally of his mosquito bites as a matter of pride. He is winning. Turn: the nurse awards him a ribbon and a bottle of lotion, and the contest ends.
  • A camper who cannot light a fire is put in charge of the campfire for the final night. She practices in secret all week. Turn: it rains, and she is the only one who can keep one going.
  • A canoe trip sets out with six campers, and one paddles the whole way facing backward by mistake. Nobody tells him. Turn: he is the only one who saw the heron.
  • A counselor in her first summer is more afraid of the dark than any child in her cabin. She tells stories to keep the lamp on. Turn: the campers work it out and walk her to the washhouse.
  • A day camp in a city park has no lake, no woods and one very good counselor. The canoe is a bench. Turn: years later the campers can still say where they paddled.
  • A family goes camping for the first time and brings everything except the tent poles. The tent is a blanket on the ground. Turn: they sleep under the open sky and never pack the poles again.
  • A girl at camp can name every star, and nobody at home has ever asked her to. The night hike's flashlight fails. Turn: she walks the group back by the sky.
  • A girl is homesick for the first three days of camp and cannot be found on the last. The bus is waiting. Turn: she is saying goodbye to the lake, one dock post at a time.
  • The camp bell's rope breaks, and a camper with a loud voice is hired to be the bell. She calls every meal for a week. Turn: when the rope is mended, the camp votes to keep her.
  • The camp cook has made the same Tuesday stew for thirty years, and the campers stage a polite protest. She hands them the kitchen. Turn: on Wednesday they ask, quietly, for the stew.
  • The camp's lost-and-found box fills all summer, and on the final day one camper has to empty it. Forty socks and a trombone. Turn: every owner has a story, and she misses her bus hearing them.
  • The camp's nature trail has a sign for every tree, and one night somebody swaps them all. The oak is a birch by breakfast. Turn: the campers put them right from memory, as the counselor planned.
  • Every summer a camp names its biggest tree, and this year the vote is tied between two names. The cabins campaign. Turn: the tree gets a first name and a last name.
  • The last night's talent show is one act short, and the quietest camper is asked what she can do. She can whistle like a loon. Turn: a loon answers from the lake.
  • On the last morning of camp everyone signs everyone's shirt, and one camper's is still blank at ten. She was the one holding the pens. Turn: the whole camp lines up at her bus window.
  • Two cabins at camp have been rivals for forty summers, and nobody remembers what about. A new camper asks. Turn: the oldest counselor knows; it was a canoe that both cabins now share.
  • Two campers who do not get along are tied together for the three-legged hike to the lookout. They are the slowest. Turn: they arrive last and get the sunset the others walked away from.
  • Two sisters are sent to the same camp and put in different cabins for the first time in their lives. They wave across the dining hall. Turn: by the second week each forgets to.

In the garden 25

  • A boy builds a tree house with a list of rules on the door, and nobody asks to come in. He crosses off one rule a day. Turn: when the list is blank, the ladder is busy.
  • A boy digs for treasure in the vegetable patch and finds a spoon with his family's initial on it. Nobody remembers losing it. Turn: his great-aunt does, and remembers the picnic too.
  • A boy is paid a nickel a weed and discovers the far corner of his grandmother's garden. It is all weeds. Turn: she tells him those are the ones she planted on purpose.
  • A boy is told the strawberries are not ripe, every day, for two weeks. He checks at dawn. Turn: on the morning they are ready, the birds have left him exactly one.
  • A child sleeps in a tent in the backyard for the first time, ten steps from the kitchen door. The night has more noises than she knew. Turn: she lasts until dawn, and the dog does not.
  • A family eats every supper in the garden from the first warm night to the first cold one. The table sinks a little each week. Turn: in September it will not come out, and it stays.
  • A family grows more green beans than five people can eat, and the children are sent to give them away. Every neighbor has beans. Turn: the children come home with tomatoes, a pie and a kitten.
  • A family hangs a hammock between two trees, and for a month nobody gets a turn because the cat has it. They try a schedule. Turn: the cat allows one person at a time, underneath her.
  • A father builds a brick barbecue, and it takes him the whole summer. It is finished on the first cold day. Turn: the family eats outside in coats and says it was worth it.
  • A gardener goes away for one week in July and comes back to a zucchini as long as her arm. Nobody on the street will take it. Turn: it wins a ribbon, and then they ask for seeds.
  • A girl appoints herself lifeguard of the birdbath and blows a whistle at the sparrows. They ignore her. Turn: the cat does not, and she earns the title.
  • A girl is given a square yard of garden to do as she likes with, and she plants nothing. Her brother's square is in rows. Turn: by August hers has flowers nobody sowed, and the bees.
  • A girl keeps a jar of fireflies for one hour each evening and lets them go before bed. One night a firefly stays in the open jar. Turn: she sits out with it until it changes its mind.
  • A girl plants a sunflower on the last day of school and measures herself against it every week. It passes her in July. Turn: in August it bows its head, and she is the taller one again.
  • A girl teaches herself to roller-skate on the garden path, which is nine yards long. She can start and stop and nothing else. Turn: one day the gate is left open.
  • A grandmother hangs the washing in the garden, and her grandchildren run a theater between the sheets. The play changes each washday. Turn: she begins hanging the sheets as curtains, on purpose.
  • A lost tortoise turns up in the lettuce in June, and its owner is not found until August. By then it has a name and a route. Turn: the owner lives two doors down and agrees to share.
  • A snail crosses the patio every night, and a girl marks how far it gets in chalk. The line grows by morning. Turn: one day it goes straight up the wall, and so does the chalk.
  • A sprinkler is the only swimming pool on the street, and its owner charges one joke to run through. The jokes run out. Turn: she accepts the same ones told worse.
  • A woman waters her garden at dusk, and the child next door waters his on the other side of the hedge. They have never seen each other. Turn: one evening both hoses go over the top.
  • An old apple tree is too tall to climb until the summer a boy can reach its first branch. He goes up and cannot see the way down. Turn: his sister climbs up to show him, and stays.
  • The lawn goes brown in the dry weeks except for one green circle that nobody can explain. The children guard it. Turn: it is where the wading pool was emptied every night.
  • On the hottest night of the year a family carries its mattresses out to the lawn. Nobody sleeps for the stars. Turn: the youngest drops off first and is carried in at dawn.
  • The outdoor faucet drips all summer into a bucket, and a toad moves in. The father means to fix the drip. Turn: the children hide the wrench until September.
  • Two neighbors compete all summer over tomatoes, and neither has ever tasted the other's. A storm takes the fence down. Turn: the best plant is the one that grew through the gap.

How it works

These 100 summer story ideas run from a heatwave that closes the school to the longest day of the year and a lost thing found at low tide. They are sorted by place: beach, town, camp or garden.

Read the full guide

Summer ideas for a story, place by place

At the beach the tide is the clock: a watch lost at high water, a wrecked rowboat that is a girl's house for two hours a day. In town it is the heat. At camp it is the last night, and in the garden it is how slowly a strawberry ripens.

What makes a story a summer one

Take the season out and the story should fall over. A game of hide and seek lasts until somebody's father joins in, because the evening is that long. A family carries its mattresses out to the lawn, because the house is too hot to sleep in.

  • Give the story an end date: the last ferry, the bus home from camp, the first cold night.
  • Let the weather make one decision for the characters.

Questions and answers

What is a good idea for a summer story?

Start small and outdoors. On this list a girl stays outside from sunrise until dark on the longest day of the year, and a crab moves into a boy's left sneaker at the top of the beach.

What are some summer vacation story ideas?

The beach and camp groups hold 50: a father who keeps his shoes on until Thursday of the family's one week at the shore, two cabins that have been rivals for forty summers, a day-tripper who sleeps through the last ferry.

Can a summer story be set in a city?

Yes. The group In town has a fire hydrant opened on the hottest day, a movie shown on a bedsheet in the square, and a power cut that brings a whole street out to its steps on the hottest night of July.

How does a summer story end?

Often with the season. A sunflower that outgrew a girl in July bows its head in August, and she is the taller one again. A brick barbecue that took all summer is finished on the first cold day.

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