• 100 story ideas
  • Checked October 2026

Witch Story Ideas

Three storybook witches at a press, each with her trouble and a turn to write toward.

Witch Story Ideas

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  1. A witch's doormat changes its greeting for every visitor, and for one caller it says nothing at all.The caller is her sister, after ten years. Turn: the mat is waiting to hear what she says first.
  2. A witch is asked to make it rain for the farmers and stay dry for the wedding on the same Saturday.The fields and the church are one lane apart. Turn: it rains on the lane.
  3. A witch who teaches third grade has a classroom where pencils are never lost and nobody knows why.A substitute takes over for a week. Turn: the children keep the spell going themselves.

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All 100 story ideas

The village witch 20

  • A new doctor sets up across the lane from the village witch. They share a waiting bench. Turn: each starts sending the other the callers they cannot stand.
  • A traveling salesman arrives selling charms that work better than the village witch's own. Her customers drift away. Turn: the charms are hers, bought cheap from her nephew.
  • A village witch can cure hiccups and bad luck, but nobody will sit beside her at the harvest supper. The bench fills from the far end. Turn: the baker's smallest child saves her a seat with a turnip.
  • A village witch charges one secret for each spell and has never told a single one. A stranger offers gold for the lot. Turn: she tells him one, his own, and he leaves by the back road.
  • A village witch is asked to find a lost wedding ring and finds eleven other things first. Each owner would rather it stayed lost. Turn: she returns them all at the wedding breakfast.
  • A village witch is paid in eggs, and this spring not one hen in the valley is laying. Her shelf is bare by May. Turn: she takes payment in news instead, and hears why the hens stopped.
  • A village witch's doorbell rings by itself an hour before anyone in the village is going to need her. Today it rings and no one comes. Turn: the need is hers, and the village has to work out what it is.
  • A village witch's well grants small wishes, and the village has started lining up before dawn. The wishes are getting bigger. Turn: the well goes on strike, and she has to negotiate.
  • A witch agrees to mind the village while everyone else goes to the coast for the day. Geese, bees and the mill stream all bring complaints. Turn: the village comes home to new rules.
  • A witch is asked to make it rain for the farmers and stay dry for the wedding on the same Saturday. The fields and the church are one lane apart. Turn: it rains on the lane.
  • A witch keeps a jar on her shelf for every promise made in the village, and one jar has begun to hum. The promise is thirty years old. Turn: it was hers.
  • A witch who lives at the end of the lane wakes to find the lane has grown a mile longer overnight. Nobody can reach her before dark. Turn: the lane is sulking about something she said.
  • A witch's cottage stands exactly on the line between two villages that both claim her. Each sends a pie on the same day. Turn: she moves her bed a yard east each night until they share.
  • Every child in the village is told the witch eats naughty children, and one of them knocks to check. She is having toast. Turn: the child stays for some, and the rumor needs a new ending.
  • The oldest house in the village is the witch's, and the council wants to put a plaque on it. The plaque needs a date. Turn: the house is older than the village, and so is she.
  • The village has gone to its witch for forty years and has never once asked her name. A census man needs it written down. Turn: she has forgotten it too, and the village votes on one.
  • The village holds a fair, and the witch is asked to judge the pickles, which she has always won. Every jar on the table is a bribe. Turn: she gives the ribbon to the worst one, on purpose.
  • The village witch has foretold a hard winter every year, and this year she says nothing at all. The village stacks wood to the eaves. Turn: she has only lost count of the months.
  • The village witch loses her voice the week every spell on order must be spoken aloud. She writes them on slates. Turn: the miller's boy reads them out, with his own improvements.
  • The village witch retires, and the village learns how much of her magic was simply remembering things. Nobody knows when to plant beans. Turn: she left a notebook, filed under Common Sense.

The apprentice 20

  • A boy who came to mend the witch's roof stays on as her apprentice without either of them saying so. He fixes spells with the wrong tools. Turn: the wrong tools are the magic.
  • A witch takes on an apprentice who is frightened of cats, toads and the dark. That rules out most of the lessons. Turn: she is fearless about the one thing the witch dreads, customers.
  • A witch too proud to take an apprentice hires a housekeeper who keeps tidying the magic away. The cauldron is scrubbed of forty years. Turn: the spells work better clean, and the job changes.
  • A witch's apprentice finds a door in the cottage that her teacher swears is not there. It opens only for her. Turn: behind it is the last apprentice's room, kept ready.
  • A witch's apprentice is sent for seven things from the wood and comes home with six and a lost goat. The seventh was a white hair. Turn: the goat is glad to oblige.
  • A witch's apprentice is sent to market to sell charms and gives every one of them away. She comes home with no money. Turn: by morning the gate is hung with thanks, paid in kind.
  • A witch's apprentice is trusted with the cottage for one night and one rule: do not open the blue jar. The jar begins to knock politely. Turn: it only wants the window open.
  • A witch's apprentice writes home that she is learning great and terrible magic. She has spent a year washing jars. Turn: her mother visits, and the jars turn out to matter.
  • An apprentice copies out her first spell and changes one word because it sounded nicer. The stew now sings. Turn: it sings the truth, and supper guests are due.
  • An apprentice discovers she is better at one small spell than her teacher has ever been. It is the spell for finding lost socks. Turn: the teacher asks for lessons, and is a terrible pupil.
  • An apprentice finds that every spell works better when she hums, and her teacher forbids humming. The spells go flat. Turn: the teacher once hummed too, and stopped for a reason.
  • An apprentice is given her teacher's old hat, which still mutters her teacher's opinions. It disapproves of everything she tries. Turn: she finds what makes it go quiet.
  • An apprentice is set to stir a pot for a year and a day and is not told what is in it. On the last day it is done. Turn: it is soup, and the lesson was the year.
  • An apprentice learns that her teacher's famous spell book is mostly recipes and the rest is blank. She was promised its secrets. Turn: the blank pages are hers, and the first is due tonight.
  • An apprentice signs up by mail for lessons in witchcraft, and they arrive by owl, by bat and by one confused pigeon. Lesson three is missing. Turn: the pigeon has been doing the homework.
  • An apprentice turns her teacher into a teapot by accident, an hour before an important visitor arrives. The visitor wants tea. Turn: the teapot has plenty to say about how it is poured.
  • An apprentice who cannot get one spell right is told to teach it to somebody younger. Her pupil is the blacksmith's son, aged six. Turn: explaining it shows her the mistake.
  • The apprentice's first flying lesson ends in the top of the tallest tree in the parish. The broom goes home without her. Turn: she gets down by magic she did not know she had.
  • On her last day, an apprentice must cast one spell her teacher has never seen. Everything she knows came from her teacher. Turn: she casts one she learned from a mistake.
  • Two apprentices are told only one of them can stay, and each secretly helps the other pass. Both tests go suspiciously well. Turn: the witch wanted to see exactly that.

The modern witch 20

  • A modern witch keeps her spell book on a phone, and the phone updates itself overnight. Every spell is now sorted by popularity. Turn: the least used one is at the bottom for a reason.
  • A modern witch runs a plant shop where nothing ever dies, and an inspector wants to know why. He brings a fern on its last frond as a test. Turn: he keeps coming back with sicker ones.
  • A modern witch sells weather by the hour to a city that wants sun for its lunch break. Bookings clash. Turn: a child books one hour of snow in July, and the whole city stops to look.
  • A modern witch tells her new friends the truth on the first night, and they laugh for a week. She stops correcting them. Turn: the elevator sticks, and she has to choose in front of everyone.
  • A modern witch tries to hold a full-moon gathering in a city where the moon is behind a billboard. The billboard is lit all night. Turn: they use its light, and the ad has changed by morning.
  • A modern witch works in an office and has never once been late, lost a file or waited for an elevator. A new colleague starts keeping notes. Turn: the colleague is one too, and worse at hiding it.
  • A modern witch's broom is in for repair, so she takes the subway to the midnight meeting. The train stops between stations. Turn: half the carriage is going to the same meeting.
  • A modern witch's familiar is a rescue cat who came with opinions about its last owner's spells. It corrects her pronunciation. Turn: she writes to the last owner, who is glad to hear.
  • A teenage witch has to finish a spell and a science project by Friday, and both need the same kitchen. The model volcano erupts on its own. Turn: she writes up the spell as her method.
  • A witch in a small apartment has to hide a cauldron from a landlord who inspects every month. It has been a laundry basket, a planter and a stool. Turn: he asks to borrow it, by name.
  • A witch knits socks for sale, and word spreads that nobody wearing them has ever missed a train. Orders arrive by the thousand. Turn: she can knit only as fast as she can, and says so.
  • A witch moves to the city and finds that none of her spells work without a view of the horizon. Her window faces a brick wall. Turn: the roof has a view, a water tank and three other witches.
  • A witch on the ninth floor grows a moon garden on a balcony the size of a doormat. The neighbors below complain of glowing drips. Turn: their window box flowers in January.
  • A witch who drives a night bus knows which passengers need to miss their stop. Tonight a man is desperate to get off on time. Turn: she lets him, and follows on foot.
  • A witch who repairs bicycles puts a little luck in every tire, and one customer keeps coming back. He never has a puncture. Turn: he has guessed, and he wants to learn, not buy.
  • A witch who teaches third grade has a classroom where pencils are never lost and nobody knows why. A substitute takes over for a week. Turn: the children keep the spell going themselves.
  • A witch who works nights at a bakery kneads one small charm into every loaf. The morning line doubles. Turn: one customer returns a loaf because its charm was meant for someone else.
  • A witch with a day job at the library shelves a book that was never in the catalog. It keeps returning to her desk. Turn: the last borrower's card has her grandmother's name on it.
  • A witch's grandmother sends her spells by mail, handwritten, and the mail is now sorted by machine. The sorting machine has started granting wishes. Turn: the postal workers would like it to go on.
  • Two witches share an apartment and one refrigerator, and their potions keep getting eaten. A roommate who is not a witch has started to float. Turn: they have to tell him, and he takes it well.

The coven 20

  • A coven agrees to do one good deed for the town without the town finding out. Thirteen witches have thirteen ideas of good. Turn: the town is baffled, and slightly better off.
  • A coven chooses its meeting night by the moon, and one member has bought a calendar that disagrees. Six turn up on Tuesday and seven on Wednesday. Turn: both nights work, which upsets everything.
  • A coven has kept one secret for two hundred years, and its oldest member has just forgotten what it was. Nobody else was ever told. Turn: they decide to keep it anyway.
  • A coven has met on the same hill for three hundred years, and this year there is a wind farm on it. The turbines hum off key. Turn: the witches tune them, and the hill sings.
  • A coven keeps one book, and each witch is allowed to add one page in her lifetime. The newest is asked what hers will be. Turn: she asks to read the others first, and nobody ever has.
  • A coven of twelve needs a thirteenth, and the only applicant is a man who thought it was a book club. He has brought the book. Turn: they read it, and the meetings improve.
  • A coven takes in a witch whose magic only works when she is alone. Every joint spell fails with her in the circle. Turn: they give her the job that has to be done alone.
  • A coven that has always flown to its meetings must go on foot the year the brooms are being re-bristled. It is eleven miles. Turn: they finally meet the country they have been flying over.
  • A coven writes to its sister coven across the sea once a year, by bottle. This year a reply comes back the same week. Turn: the sister coven has moved to the next village.
  • A coven's circle is always one short because the thirteenth witch is always late. They start without her and nothing works. Turn: she is late because she does all the preparing.
  • A coven's leader steps down and names as her successor the witch who argues with her most. The coven is appalled, and so is the successor. Turn: arguing was the job all along.
  • A coven's meeting is interrupted by a lost hiker who sits down and asks what is for dinner. No spell works with a stranger in the ring. Turn: he is fed, walked to the road and remembers only the stew.
  • A coven's shared cauldron can be stirred only when all thirteen agree, and they have not agreed since spring. The brew is going cold. Turn: they agree at last on supper, and that counts.
  • The coven's familiars hold their own meeting while the witches hold theirs. They vote on bedtime, fish and the dog next door. Turn: the witches find the minutes.
  • The coven's yearly feast is a potluck, and thirteen witches bring thirteen identical pies. Each one read the same omen. Turn: the omen meant the pie, and somebody had better cut it.
  • Every witch in a coven has a specialty, and the new one's is undoing. Her spells unpick everyone else's by accident. Turn: the coven has one very old knot it needs untied.
  • One witch in a coven keeps casting everyone else's spells a moment before they do. She says she cannot help it. Turn: she hears them a moment early, and that has uses.
  • Three sisters make up the smallest coven in the county, and the middle one wants to join a bigger one. The big coven has rules and a waiting list. Turn: it sends her home with a message for her sisters.
  • Two covens book the same clearing for the same night. Neither will move. Turn: the combined spell is stronger, and nobody will admit it.
  • The youngest witch in the coven is asked to take the minutes and writes down what everyone actually said. The minutes are read aloud next month. Turn: it is the most honest meeting in a century.

Familiars, brooms and cauldrons 20

  • A bat who is afraid of the dark becomes familiar to a witch who works days. Neither tells the coven. Turn: the daytime spell they invent is one nobody else can do.
  • A broom and a mop in the same cupboard both believe they are the witch's favorite. Only one of them flies. Turn: the mop is the one she talks to.
  • A broom maker binds a single strand of her own hair into each broom, and one broom keeps coming home. It has left four owners. Turn: she stops selling it and learns to fly.
  • A broom that has swept the same cottage for a century is asked, for the first time, to fly. It does not know how. Turn: it sweeps the sky instead, and the clouds part.
  • A cauldron cracks the night before the biggest brew of the year. The tinker can patch it by noon or mend it properly by Friday. Turn: the patch changes the brew for the better.
  • A cauldron has been in one family for nine generations and has started adding its own ingredients. Everything now tastes faintly of mint. Turn: mint is what every recipe was missing.
  • A crow who works as a familiar is offered better pay by the witch next door. The pay is buttons. Turn: the crow asks its own witch to match it, and she counts her buttons.
  • A familiar who has outlived three witches is given to a fourth who has never cast a spell. The cat knows every word. Turn: it has to teach without being able to speak.
  • A familiar's contract runs for seven years, and tonight a witch's owl may choose to leave. She pretends not to mind. Turn: the owl stays, with one new condition.
  • A spell book in a witch's kitchen has started hiding the page she needs. It opens only at cake recipes. Turn: she bakes the cake, and the problem is settled over a slice.
  • A toad applies to be a witch's familiar and is told the position requires a cat. It sits on the step for a month. Turn: the cat resigns in its favor.
  • A witch inherits her aunt's familiar, a goose, along with a note that says only: do what she tells you. The goose has firm views. Turn: every one of them is right.
  • A witch's black cat goes missing and three different black cats come home. Each knows where the cream is kept. Turn: all three are hers, from different years.
  • A witch's cat can talk, but only on the one night of the year the witch is always away. This year she stays home with a cold. Turn: the cat has been saving up a great deal.
  • A witch's doormat changes its greeting for every visitor, and for one caller it says nothing at all. The caller is her sister, after ten years. Turn: the mat is waiting to hear what she says first.
  • A witch's familiar is a goldfish, and it is tired of being left out of the flying. A bowl does not balance on a broom. Turn: the goldfish turns out to be the navigator.
  • A witch's familiar is a snail, and every spell she casts arrives a week late. Customers have learned to order early. Turn: one spell had to be slow, and it is the one that matters.
  • A witch's hat has been handed down so many times that it has learned to cast a little on its own. It finishes her sentences. Turn: it finishes one she would not have dared to.
  • A witch's kitchen spoon stirs by itself and has begun stirring things that are not in the pot. The clock, the curtains and the cat all go clockwise. Turn: it is trying to stir her out of the house.
  • A witch's mirror tells the truth, and the hallway mirror has begun to disagree with it. One says rain, one says sun. Turn: they are looking out of different windows.

How it works

These witch story ideas are 100 one-sentence premises about the village witch, her apprentice, the modern witch with a day job, the coven and the familiars. Under each is the trouble and a possible turn.

Read the full guide

Modern witch story ideas

The group The modern witch puts magic where it has to hide: a night bus, a ninth-floor balcony, a library desk, a third-grade classroom. The trouble is small and present-day, such as a landlord who inspects every month or a phone that sorts the spell book by popularity.

Witches of the village, the cottage and the coven

The other four groups are The village witch, The apprentice, The coven, and Familiars, brooms and cauldrons. The village witch is paid in eggs and secrets; the coven agrees on nothing but supper.

  • Decide what the magic costs before you write. Here it is paid in eggs, in secrets, or in arriving a week late.
  • Give the familiar the opinion the witch will not say aloud.

Questions and answers

What are some ideas for short stories about witches?

Pick one witch and one small problem. On this list a village witch loses her voice the week every spell must be spoken aloud, and an apprentice turns her teacher into a teapot an hour before a visitor arrives. Each fits a few pages.

What is a good story idea about a witch in the present day?

Set her magic against something ordinary. A witch moves to the city and finds that her spells need a view of the horizon, and her only window faces a brick wall. The roof has a view, a water tank and three other witches.

Are these witch stories scary?

No. They are friendly-spooky at most: cauldrons, covens, black cats and brooms, with trouble that ends in a turn. No premise curses anyone, and nobody is harmed.

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