• 100 story ideas
  • Checked October 2026

Winter Story Ideas

Press the button for three winter premises, each with what goes wrong and one way it could turn.

Winter Story Ideas

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  1. A crow starts sliding down a snowy roof on a jar lid, and the other crows will not admit they are watching.It looks undignified. Turn: by afternoon there is a line.
  2. A boy is dared to cross the frozen lake at night and meets the one who dared him coming the other way.Neither wanted to. Turn: they walk back round the shore together.
  3. A power cut and a blizzard leave an apartment block dark, and the tenants meet on the stairs for the first time.Each floor has one useful thing. Turn: the stairs become the kitchen.

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All 100 story ideas

Snowed in 20

  • A boy is snowed in on his birthday, and none of his guests can come. The cake is made. Turn: the guests arrive by sled over the garden walls, an hour late.
  • A cat walks out across the crust of a deep snow and will not come back in. The whole house calls from windows. Turn: she is leading them to the neighbor's door.
  • A family is snowed in with a jigsaw puzzle that turns out to have one piece too many. It fits nowhere. Turn: it belongs to the puzzle in the attic that nobody finished.
  • A girl and her dog are the only ones awake when the snow reaches the windowsills. The door will not open. Turn: the dog knows about the coal chute.
  • A girl is snowed in at her grandmother's with no screen and a trunk of letters. She reads them in order. Turn: the last one is addressed to her.
  • A lighthouse keeper is cut off by ice for a month with a relief keeper he cannot stand. There is one chessboard. Turn: they finish the month a game apart and ask for another.
  • A mail carrier takes shelter at the last house on her route and is stuck for a week with its bag of letters. The family has written to no one in years. Turn: she has stamps.
  • A mountain hut built for four shelters nine on the night of a storm. The stove takes one log an hour. Turn: they tell one story a log, and run out of logs first.
  • A mountain lodge is cut off with twelve people to run it and one visitor to run it for. He feels watched. Turn: by Thursday he is helping in the kitchen and losing at checkers.
  • A power cut and a blizzard leave an apartment block dark, and the tenants meet on the stairs for the first time. Each floor has one useful thing. Turn: the stairs become the kitchen.
  • A school bus is stopped by a drift a mile from anywhere, with a driver, nine children and a tuba. Help is two hours off. Turn: the tuba can be heard at the nearest farm.
  • A school is snowed in overnight, and the teachers must put forty children to bed in the gym. Nobody sleeps. Turn: the principal, of all people, knows a ghost story with a kind ending.
  • A shepherd and forty sheep sit out a storm in a hut meant for one shepherd. It is warm, at least. Turn: he counts thirty-nine, and the dog goes out.
  • A snowed-in village takes turns keeping one bread oven hot. One night the fire goes out on somebody's watch. Turn: nobody will say whose, and everybody brings wood.
  • A snowplow driver is the only person moving in a snowed-in town, and people begin handing him errands. He has a route to finish. Turn: the route becomes the errands.
  • A snowstorm closes the pass, and eleven strangers are kept three days at an inn with ten beds. Somebody sleeps in a chair each night. Turn: by the third night they are competing for the chair.
  • A train is stopped by snow between stations, and the dining car has only soup for forty. There are sixty aboard. Turn: a passenger in third class turns out to have a suitcase full of bread.
  • An old couple is snowed in so often that they keep a list of things to argue about. This winter the list runs out. Turn: they start on things they agree about.
  • Three generations are snowed in with one deck of cards and a missing queen. Every game goes wrong. Turn: the youngest draws a new queen, and she becomes the best card.
  • Two neighbors who share a wall and have never spoken are both snowed in, and one runs out of tea. She knocks on the wall. Turn: he knocks back, twice, which they decide means yes.

Journeys in the cold 20

  • A boy is sent with a message to the next valley on the shortest day of the year. He must be back by dark, and dark is at four. Turn: he sleeps over, and the message was an invitation.
  • A boy on skates follows the frozen river to see where it goes. It goes farther than supper. Turn: he is skated home by a stranger who once did the same.
  • A boy walks his little sister home across town in the first heavy snow, and the streets all look alike. He will not say they are lost. Turn: she has been dropping mittens.
  • A bus driver on the last run before the road closes has one passenger and a long way to go. The passenger has no fare. Turn: he pays in directions, and they are good.
  • A family walks to its winter house over the ice, pulling everything it owns on one sled. The sled is too heavy. Turn: each child chooses one thing to carry, and one thing to leave for spring.
  • A girl carries a lantern through the woods to her grandfather's, and the lantern goes out. It is very dark. Turn: the snow is bright enough, once her eyes forget the flame.
  • A girl skis nine miles to school each day and one morning finds another set of tracks beside her own. They stop where hers stop. Turn: they are yesterday's, and somebody followed them home.
  • A hiker follows the tracks of a single ski and wonders about its owner. They go on for miles. Turn: at the end is a girl on a kick sled, wondering about his two.
  • A mail sled's lead dog retires, and the dog who must replace her has only ever followed. The first run is in a whiteout. Turn: the old dog rides in the sled and says nothing.
  • A piano is moved by sled to the schoolhouse across the valley, with its tuner riding on top. The hill is steeper than it looked. Turn: the piano arrives first, and in tune.
  • A reindeer herder moves her herd south and finds a fence where the old trail ran. The herd will not go round. Turn: the farmer has never seen reindeer and opens the gate to watch.
  • A sleigh horse knows the road so well that it brings the sleeping driver home. This time it stops halfway. Turn: there is a hat in the road, and then its owner.
  • A snowshoe hare's tracks lead a lost hiker in a wide circle. She has crossed her own trail twice. Turn: the third time, she leaves herself a note.
  • A traveling clockmaker walks from farm to farm all winter and is paid in suppers. One farm has no clock and asks him in anyway. Turn: he leaves them one.
  • A truck full of oranges breaks down in a mountain village in January. They will freeze by morning. Turn: every kitchen takes a crate, and the village smells of marmalade till March.
  • A woman drives a snowplow over the mountain every night so that the bread truck can follow. One night the bread truck does not come. Turn: she turns the plow around.
  • A woman walks out to meet the mail plane on the lake ice every Friday. This Friday the plane is late. Turn: she lights the landing fires herself.
  • An icebreaker's cook goes over the side on a rope each morning to collect clean snow for the tea. One morning there are footprints out there. Turn: a fox has been walking beside the ship.
  • Two brothers haul the winter's firewood over a frozen marsh and hear the ice talking. The short way saves a day. Turn: they take the long way and find out who else did.
  • Two children pull a sled of library books to the farms the library van cannot reach. The books are due back. Turn: the farms send back their own.

Animals in winter 20

  • A badger settles in for the winter and finds a rabbit already asleep in his spare room. She talks in her sleep. Turn: her dreams are all of summer, and he starts listening for them.
  • A barn cat takes in a litter of mice on the coldest night of the year, to her own surprise. Morning is awkward. Turn: there is a truce until the thaw.
  • A bear cannot fall asleep for the winter and goes round asking the other animals how they manage. Each has a different trick. Turn: the dormouse is no help at all, and that is what works.
  • A crow starts sliding down a snowy roof on a jar lid, and the other crows will not admit they are watching. It looks undignified. Turn: by afternoon there is a line.
  • A farm dog decides that the snowman is a stranger and guards the yard against it for a week. The family thinks it is funny. Turn: when it melts, the dog is sure he won.
  • A flock of chickadees shares one hollow tree on the coldest night and argues over who gets the middle. Nobody wants the edge. Turn: they take turns, and that is the story.
  • A fox follows a hare's tracks all night and finds the hare has been following hers. They meet at dawn, both worn out. Turn: neither can remember who began it.
  • A hedgehog wakes in January, convinced it is spring. Nothing is as he left it. Turn: a robin walks him home and tucks the leaves back in.
  • A horse left out in a far pasture walks home through a blizzard. The gate is shut. Turn: the dog hears, and the dog can work a latch.
  • A lost lamb is born a month early, in snow. The ewe cannot keep it warm alone. Turn: it spends its first week in a kitchen drawer by the stove.
  • A moose walks into town every evening to lick the salt off the road. Traffic waits. Turn: the town sets its clocks by her.
  • A mouse spends the winter inside a snowed-in beehive, and the bees pretend not to notice. She eats very little. Turn: in spring, she is the one who clears the door.
  • A seal keeps one breathing hole open in the ice all winter and guards it from everyone. A smaller seal surfaces in it. Turn: two can keep a hole open better than one.
  • A squirrel forgets where she buried everything. Winter is long. Turn: the jay who watched her dig remembers, and wants a share.
  • A white hare is still brown when the first snow comes. There is nowhere to hide. Turn: a patch of bare earth under a spruce is exactly her color.
  • A wolf pack's old leader can no longer break trail through deep snow. The pack slows. Turn: the youngest goes in front, and the old one sets the pace from behind.
  • A young deer steps onto a frozen pond for the first time and cannot work out her legs. The herd is on the far side. Turn: an otter shows her that sliding is a choice.
  • An owl who hunts by sound is baffled by the silence after a snowfall. She goes hungry for two nights. Turn: under the snow, the voles are louder than she thought.
  • The last goose of the flock leaves a week late and must find her way south alone. She has only ever followed. Turn: she picks up three more stragglers, and has to lead.
  • Sparrows find a way into the school's attic and spend the winter above the music room. They learn the songs. Turn: in spring the children hear them sung back.

Frozen lakes and long nights 20

  • A boy counts the stars from the middle of the frozen lake, where there are no trees to hide them. He loses count at each shooting star. Turn: he starts counting those.
  • A boy is dared to cross the frozen lake at night and meets the one who dared him coming the other way. Neither wanted to. Turn: they walk back round the shore together.
  • A boy skating alone at dusk hears someone else's blades and never sees them. The marks on the ice are real. Turn: they are a girl's from the far shore, who thought the same of him.
  • A fisherman's hut slides away across the lake ice in a gale, with his supper inside. He runs after it. Turn: it stops beside a rival's hut, and supper is for two.
  • A girl cuts ice blocks from the lake with her father, and one block has a pocket watch frozen in it. It stopped at four. Turn: the initials are her grandmother's.
  • A girl keeps a candle in the window through the long nights for a brother due home on the last boat. The harbor has frozen. Turn: he walks in over the ice, following the candle.
  • A girl learning to skate backward cannot see where she is going, which is the point. She keeps looking. Turn: her grandfather skates behind her and tells her what is there.
  • A lake freezes so clear that a boy can see last summer's lost oar on the bottom. It was his fault. Turn: in spring he knows exactly where to dive.
  • A night watchman on the frozen harbor counts the lights of the ice-bound ships. Tonight there is one more. Turn: it is a lantern, walking.
  • A town clears a skating oval on the lake each year, and each year the same man lays out the lamps. This year he cannot. Turn: the lamps are out by dusk, wrongly, and beautifully.
  • A village holds its winter market on the lake ice, and one stall is always empty. It is kept for someone. Turn: this year, a lamp is lit in it.
  • A whole village skates to a neighbor's house across the lake, and nobody is asked to bring anything. Everyone does. Turn: there are nine pots of the same soup.
  • An ice fisher has caught nothing in a week and keeps coming back to the same hole. His neighbors pity him. Turn: he is not there for the fish.
  • An ice road opens across the lake, and the first truck over it each year carries the school piano tuner. The ice is a week late. Turn: the school sings flat, and proudly, until he comes.
  • An old woman knows every sound the lake ice makes and what each one means. No one writes it down. Turn: a girl with a notebook moves in next door.
  • The longest night of the year falls on a town whose lamps have run short of oil. There is light for half the houses. Turn: everybody spends the night in half the houses.
  • The northern lights come so low over the lake that the children try to skate under them. They are called in for bed. Turn: the grown-ups go out instead.
  • On the longest night, a town tells one story that must last until dawn. Each household adds a part. Turn: the youngest is given the ending and saves it for next year.
  • Two sisters hang a lantern from a pole in the ice so that their father can find the fishing hut. The wind takes it. Turn: they sing instead, in turns, until he answers.
  • Two villages on opposite shores meet only when the lake freezes, for one fair in the middle. This year the ice comes late and thin. Turn: they hold the fair in boats, bow to bow.

The thaw 20

  • A boy finds last autumn's kite in a snowbank as it shrinks. The frame is whole. Turn: the first wind of spring is tomorrow.
  • A ferry makes its first crossing of the year with one passenger who has waited since the freeze. He has a parcel. Turn: it is a winter's worth of letters, to be handed over at once.
  • A girl has waited all winter to plant one bulb, and the ground is still iron. She tries every day. Turn: the day the spade goes in, something is already coming up.
  • A girl who learned to ski this winter watches the snow go from the hill, a stripe a day. She skis the last stripe. Turn: it ends in the first flowers, and she lies down in them.
  • A lost glove appears in the melting snow, and then its owner's whole winter, object by object. A girl collects them. Turn: she returns each with the date it was lost.
  • A sled dog team is turned out to grass for the summer, and the lead dog will not stop working. He herds the chickens. Turn: he is given the children's wagon.
  • A snowman is the last on the street to melt, and a boy tries to save him in the freezer. There is only room for the head. Turn: next winter's snowman gets last winter's head.
  • A town guesses each year at the day the river ice will go out and chalks the guesses on the feed store wall. No one has ever been right. Turn: this year a child is, and gets to name the day.
  • A village that has been cut off since November hears the first cart on the road. Everyone guesses what it carries. Turn: it carries a person, with news.
  • A woman takes down the storm windows and finds a message a child wrote in the dust behind one last fall. It says see you in spring. Turn: the child was her, and she had forgotten.
  • An ice fisher's hut goes through the last of the ice with his lucky chair in it. He will not buy another. Turn: in June it washes up at his own dock.
  • The first bare patch of earth in the yard is exactly the size of a sleeping dog. The dog has been keeping it secret. Turn: the cat is found in it by noon.
  • The first crack runs across the lake ice in the night, and the whole town hears it. A fishing hut is still out there. Turn: its owner had moved it at dusk, on a feeling.
  • The icicles on the schoolhouse begin to drip, and the children time them. The longest is expected to fall during arithmetic. Turn: the teacher takes the class outside to watch.
  • Meltwater floods the low road, and the school bus becomes a rowboat for a week. Somebody has to row. Turn: the smallest children turn out to be the best at it.
  • The pond thaws from the edges, and a toy boat frozen in since the first frost sets out again. It was a race, months ago. Turn: its owner is there to see it win.
  • The river ice breaks up early and takes the footbridge with it. Two halves of a village cannot reach each other. Turn: they string a rope and send the mail in a bucket.
  • Snow slides off the barn roof in one piece and uncovers the weathervane that vanished in December. It points the wrong way. Turn: it is pointing at where it has been.
  • The snow that buried the garden gate melts to show that it was open all along. Something has been using it. Turn: the tracks are small and many, and go both ways.
  • Two neighbors who shared one path through the snow all winter each go back to their own gate. It is lonelier. Turn: they keep the path, and plant along it.

How it works

These winter story ideas are 100 premises of one sentence each: people snowed in, journeys in the cold, animals in winter, frozen lakes and long nights, and the thaw. Under each is what goes wrong and a possible turn.

Read the full guide

Snow story ideas start by closing a door

Snow keeps people where they are. The Snowed in group puts eleven strangers in an inn with ten beds and nine children on a stopped bus with a tuba. Decide what the characters cannot leave, and what they have too little of.

Five parts of the season

A list under the button holds five groups: Snowed in, Journeys in the cold, Animals in winter, Frozen lakes and long nights, and The thaw. Choose one, and every press deals from it. The thaw is for endings: the things the snow gives back.

  • Count something scarce in every scene: logs, beds, hours of light.
  • Use the cold on all five senses, then stop. One squeak of snow underfoot is enough.

Questions and answers

What can I write about in a winter story?

Something the season forces. On this list a family is snowed in with a jigsaw puzzle that has one piece too many, and a mail sled gets a new lead dog who has only ever followed.

Are these Christmas stories?

No. No holiday is the subject of a premise. The stories are about snow, ice, the dark and the thaw, so they work in any week of the winter.

Is any of it frightening?

Not much. There are whiteouts, thin ice and long nights, and nobody is lost to the cold. A boy dared to cross the frozen lake at night meets the one who dared him coming the other way.

Which ideas have animals in them?

The 20 in the group Animals in winter, such as a bear who cannot fall asleep and a crow sliding down a snowy roof on a jar lid. They are story animals: nothing about them was checked as fact.

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