Story Ideas for Kids to Write

Kabir's cricket bat starts hitting sixes on its own, but only when he tells the truth.

The first six landed on the headmaster's car, and Kabir hadn't even swung.

Ages 6–11

The school's slowest runner is picked for the relay final, because the rest of the team caught chickenpox.

Meera looked at the empty team bench and swallowed hard.

Ages 6–11

A girl finds old football boots in her grandmother's cupboard, but in them she plays like someone else entirely.

The boots were too big, and they smelled of 1983.

All ages

Two rival captains get locked in the sports shed overnight, and the only way out needs both of them.

The door clicked shut, and Zoya and Rohan stopped arguing at exactly the same moment.

All ages

A swimmer who has never lost a race secretly wants to quit, but her coach is her mum.

Everyone said Anaya was born in water. Nobody asked if she wanted to stay there.

Ages 9–14

A boy gets a message from the future: tomorrow's match will change everything, but it doesn't say how.

The message came from a number with fourteen digits.

Ages 9–14

A street dog follows a girl to school and refuses to leave her classroom.

The dog sat in the front row, as if it had always been there.

Ages 6–11

The monkeys in a boy's colony hold a meeting every night, and they've noticed him watching.

The biggest monkey looked straight at Aarav and raised one eyebrow.

Ages 6–11

A tiger cub goes missing from the forest reserve, and two children find paw prints leading to their school.

The paw prints went past the canteen and stopped at the staff room.

All ages

A girl can talk to birds, but only crows answer, and crows love gossip.

"You won't believe what the postman did," said the crow.

All ages

The river near a village is drying up, and a boy follows it upstream to find out why.

Every morning, the river was one step further away.

Ages 9–14

An old elephant remembers a secret about the town's oldest family.

Elephants never forget. That was the problem.

Ages 9–14

A tiny alien lands in a girl's balcony garden, and it's terrified of her cat.

The spaceship was the size of a teacup, and it had landed in the tulsi pot.

Ages 6–11

A boy's science-project volcano erupts for real, but it erupts jelly.

The volcano rumbled, and the whole class leaned back.

Ages 6–11

The moon goes missing one night, and one girl saw where it went.

At 9:14, the moon slipped behind the water tank and didn't come out.

All ages

Two kids are picked for the first school trip to Mars, and they can't stand each other.

Seven months in a spaceship with Omar. Nia started counting the days before they'd even left.

All ages

A girl invents a machine that lets you hear plants think, and the mango tree has a warning.

The mango tree had been trying to tell them for weeks.

Ages 9–14

A boy picks up a radio signal from a spaceship launched a hundred years ago, and it's asking for directions home.

"Is anyone there?" crackled the radio, in a voice from 1926.

Ages 9–14

Everything a girl draws with her new crayons comes to life, but the yellow crayon is missing.

Anaya drew a cat. The cat drew a breath.

Ages 6–11

A boy's cardboard rocket for the school show starts to hum the night before.

At midnight, the painted windows on Dev's cardboard rocket began to glow.

Ages 6–11

A clay dragon a girl made in art class keeps turning up in different places around school.

The little clay dragon was on the principal's desk. Meera had left it in her bag.

All ages

A boy paints a door on his bedroom wall for fun, and the next morning someone knocks from the other side.

Knock, knock, went the wall.

All ages

A painting in the city museum has a tiny figure that a girl swears wasn't there yesterday.

In the corner of the painting, a small boy was waving. Zoya was sure he hadn't been there on Monday.

Ages 9–14

A girl can fix anything broken with glue and glitter, until someone brings her a broken promise.

The boy at the door was holding nothing at all, and crying.

Ages 9–14

A boy falls into his favourite video game, but he isn't the hero: he's the shopkeeper nobody talks to.

"Welcome, traveller," Dev heard himself say, and he couldn't stop saying it.

Ages 6–11

A game character escapes into the real world and wants to try everything, but he has only three lives.

The first thing Pixel did in the real world was walk into a door.

Ages 6–11

A girl finds a secret level nobody else can see, and it shows places in her own town.

Level 0 looked exactly like the bus stop outside Priya's house.

All ages

A boy's grandfather asks to try his video game, and he's suspiciously good at it.

Nana picked up the controller like he'd held one before.

All ages

The best gamer in school is beaten by a player who knows all her moves, but nobody else is online.

The username was "Me_From_Tomorrow".

Ages 9–14

A boy designs a game you can't win by fighting, only by befriending the monsters, but nobody believes it will work.

"A game without swords?" laughed Arjun's brother. "Nobody will play that."

Ages 9–14

A boy's tabla can make it rain, but only if he plays the beat exactly right.

Kabir played the first beat, and a cloud looked down.

Ages 6–11

A dance competition is won by a dog, and nobody can work out who taught it.

The judges gave the dog a perfect ten.

Ages 6–11

A girl hears a song in her head that nobody has written yet, and the whole street starts humming it.

By lunchtime, even the vegetable seller was humming Tara's song.

All ages

The school band's instruments vanish the day before the concert, and each one leaves a clue.

Where the trumpet should have been, there was a note: "Look higher."

All ages

A boy who can't sing joins the choir to stay near his best friend, then finds out the choir is a team of spies.

"You can't sing," said the choir teacher. "Perfect. You start Monday."

Ages 9–14

A grandmother's old music box plays a tune that opens a locked room in the house.

When the tune ended, something clicked inside the wall.

Ages 9–14

A boy wakes up inside his favourite cartoon, and everything he says comes out as a song.

"Good morning," sang Ishaan, and he clapped a hand over his mouth.

Ages 6–11

The family TV starts showing tomorrow, but only in black and white, and with no sound.

On the screen, Maya's dog was eating Maya's birthday cake. Her birthday was tomorrow.

Ages 6–11

A film crew comes to a small town, and a boy is asked to keep one secret about the star.

"You didn't see me," said the most famous face in India, ducking behind the tea stall.

All ages

The superhero from a boy's favourite show retires and moves in next door, and he's terrible at being normal.

Mr Thunder couldn't work out the gate latch.

All ages

A girl writes the last episode of her favourite show, but her characters disagree with her.

"I would never say that," said Captain Nova, from inside Ruby's notebook.

Ages 9–14

Every episode of a mystery show a boy watches happens in his building the next day.

Episode 4 was called "The Missing Cat on the Seventh Floor". Rohan lived on the seventh floor.

Ages 9–14

A boy builds a robot to tidy his room, and it decides the mess is art.

"Do not touch," said the robot, guarding the pile of socks.

Ages 6–11

A girl's robot dog only obeys commands that rhyme.

"Sit," said Maya. Nothing. "Sit down, Byte, nice and tight," she tried, and it sat.

Ages 6–11

The new smart speaker in the kitchen starts giving very strange advice.

"Do not open the fridge," said the speaker. "Not today."

All ages

A boy writes a tiny program that grants one wish a day, but every wish has a bug.

Dev's first wish worked perfectly. That was the problem.

All ages

A robot built for the science fair asks its maker the one question she can't answer.

The robot blinked twice and asked, "Why did you make me?"

Ages 9–14

The school computer has been quietly changing everyone's marks, upwards.

Everyone in 7B got a hundred in Science. Nobody in 7B had studied.

Ages 9–14

A board game's pieces come alive at night and play their own game on the dining table.

The little red counter tiptoed off the board.

Ages 6–11

A boy finds a treasure map inside a jigsaw, but one piece is missing.

With 999 pieces done, the puzzle showed a map. The last piece was the X.

Ages 6–11

Grandma's chess set is magic: whoever loses has to tell the truth for a whole day.

"Checkmate," said Grandma, and Leo's mouth started telling the truth.

All ages

A girl gets a riddle in the post every Sunday from someone who signs only "Q".

The fourth riddle was different. It had her name in it.

All ages

The escape room at the mall has one room nobody has ever escaped from, and a boy is sure its door is real.

Room 6 had no clock, no clues and no way out. Kabir loved it immediately.

Ages 9–14

The newspaper crossword starts answering a girl's questions.

Seven across: "What your brother is hiding (5 letters)."

Ages 9–14

A grandmother's laddoos make whoever eats one say exactly what they think.

After one bite, Uncle said, "I never liked this sofa."

Ages 6–11

A birthday cake keeps growing, and growing.

By four o'clock, the cake was taller than Maya.

Ages 6–11

Two kids run a pretend restaurant at home, and a mysterious real customer turns up.

The customer wore a hat, sunglasses and a moustache that was clearly drawn on.

All ages

A girl finds her great-grandmother's recipe book, and one recipe is in code.

Every recipe said "a pinch of salt". Except one, which said "a pinch of moon".

All ages

A boy enters a cooking competition to save his family's food stall.

If they lost, the stall would close. If they won, Rohan would have to cook on TV.

Ages 9–14

The school canteen's new cook is suspiciously good, and very secretive about the back room.

Nobody had seen the back room. Nobody had seen the cook blink, either.

Ages 9–14

A boy writes a story about a dragon, and the next morning there's a dragon-sized hole in the garden fence.

"I only wrote it," Arjun told the fence.

Ages 6–11

A girl's notebook starts writing back.

Under her sentence, in someone else's handwriting, it said: "And then what?"

Ages 6–11

The characters from a boy's unfinished stories come to complain that he never gave them endings.

There was a queue of half-finished people outside Leo's bedroom.

All ages

A girl finds a library book with her own name as the author, dated fifty years from now.

"By Priya Nair," said the cover. Priya was eleven.

All ages

A boy's diary from last year has an entry for a day he doesn't remember.

"Today I promised I'd never tell anyone," said the diary, in Rohan's handwriting.

Ages 9–14

A pen that writes only true things is passed around a class, and it changes who people think they are.

Whoever held the pen couldn't write a lie. Sana found that out in Maths.

Ages 9–14

A shy girl draws herself as a manga hero, and the drawing starts doing the brave things she can't.

The drawing winked at Sana from the page.

Ages 6–11

A boy's cat turns out to be a retired guardian spirit, but it has forgotten every power except finding lost socks.

Miso yawned, stretched, and pointed one paw at the sofa.

Ages 6–11

Two best friends swap bodies the day before the big school competition.

Tara woke up, and her hands were Leo's hands.

All ages

A girl inherits her great-grandmother's sword, but it only glows when someone nearby is lying.

The sword glowed the moment Aunty said, "What a lovely surprise."

All ages

A boy joins a secret school for people who can hear objects think, but he can only hear the boring ones.

The stapler was worried about Tuesday.

Ages 9–14

Every night at 3:33 the city freezes and only one girl can still move, but tonight someone else is moving too.

At 3:33 the clock stopped, the dogs stopped, the rain stopped. The footsteps didn't.

Ages 9–14