Plot generator
Story premises built from hand-written parts: a main character who wants something, a complication that gets in the way, what it costs to fail, a setting and a twist. Choose a genre and a tone, and show the logline when you want the one-sentence pitch.
Runs in your browser. No AI, no account, and nothing you save is sent anywhere.
Every part was written by hand for its genre. Keep the part that interests you and change the rest.
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Young adult
In a lake town in the last summer before everyone leaves for college, a sixteen-year-old drummer wants to get her band one real gig. But her best friend vanishes on the night of the party, last seen in her car, and now she must find out what happened before the rumors decide for everyone. If she fails, she is stuck in this town for good.
Twist The friend planned to vanish and left her a message she has not yet understood.
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Fantasy
In a forest where the dead keep their names for a year and a day, a gravedigger who can hear the newly buried wants to get one honest night's sleep. But a creature that should be extinct takes shelter in her home, and now she must keep it hidden from the hunters already looking for it. If she fails, the old oaths that hold the realm together are forgotten.
Twist The creature is not the last of its kind; it is the first of the new ones.
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Mystery
On a small island with one ferry a day, a true-crime podcaster with a shrinking audience wants to land one story big enough to save the show. But a stranger leaves him a fortune on one condition: find out who killed the stranger, and now he must solve a death nobody else believes was murder. If he fails, the one person who has always believed in him stops.
Twist The stranger was not murdered; the will is the stranger's way of making him look at an older crime.
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Horror
In a seaside town out of season, where the one open hotel never seems to have guests, a retired surgeon with a tremor wants to hide the tremor from her family. But the photographs she takes show a figure that comes a little closer each time, and now she must find out what happens when it arrives. If she fails, she turns into the thing she has been running from.
Twist The ghost is as frightened of her as she is of it, and has been trying to move out.
Shortlist
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How the plot generator builds a premise
A premise needs five things to be worth writing: a particular person, something they want, something that gets in the way, a cost if they fail, and a place that puts pressure on all of it. The generator picks one of each from lists written by hand for each genre, then joins them into a short paragraph:
- Setting. A place with a problem already in it: a mountain village that loses its only road every winter, a lunar city about to vote on independence.
- Main character and want. A person defined by a job or a situation, with a want of their own that exists before the story starts.
- Complication. The event that starts the story, and what it forces the character to do next.
- Stakes. What happens if they fail. Sometimes public, often private.
- Twist. Optional. Where a complication has a twist written for it, you get that one, so the reveal follows from the setup.
The parts in each genre are written to fit each other, so a fantasy complication never lands in a Chicago winter and a romance never ends with a body in the freezer. Tone narrows the complications, stakes and twists to the dark, the hopeful or the wry ones. Across the nine genres the parts make more than 120,000 different premises before twists and tone are counted.
This is not an AI story generator. Nothing is written for you on the fly and no model is involved; the page picks and joins sentences a person wrote, in your browser.
How to turn a generated plot into your story
A generated premise is a starting position, not a book. Thousands of people can press the same button; what makes the story yours is everything you decide after that. These are the moves that do the most work.
Keep one part and throw the rest away
Read the premise and notice which part gave you a small jolt. Often it is only one: the gravedigger, the sealed room, the sister who has been winning the same argument since 1987. Keep that part and replace everything else with your own choices. A premise you have rebuilt around one strong part is yours in a way a lucky combination never is.
Tie the complication to the want
The parts arrive independent of each other. Your job is to connect them so the complication hits the character exactly where the want is. If a nurse wants a quiet ward and a stranger hands her a phone, ask why this stranger chose a nurse, and what the call costs her that it would not cost anyone else. When the problem could only happen to this person, the story starts to feel inevitable.
Make the stakes private
Public stakes (a city falls, an election is stolen) give scale. Private stakes give the reader a reason to care in the first chapter. For each public stake, find the private one underneath it: who, specifically, does the character lose if they fail?
Let the character get it wrong first
The premise says what the character must do. Decide what they try first, and why it fails. A detective who suspects the wrong person, a lover who picks the safe choice, a knight who asks the order for help it cannot give: the first wrong attempt is usually your first act.
Treat the twist as a question
A twist only works if the reader could have seen it coming. Before you use one, ask what the reader has to see in the first third of the book for the reveal to feel fair, and plant three of those things. If you cannot find any, the twist belongs to a different story.
Push past the first idea
For each part, write down the first three versions that occur to you, then use the fourth. The first ideas are the ones every reader of the genre has met before. The generator gives you a direction; your fourth idea gives you the book.
Worked example: from a generated plot to a first scene
Here is one fantasy premise exactly as the generator produced it:
Generated premise
In a forest where the dead keep their names for a year and a day, a gravedigger who can hear the newly buried wants to get one honest night's sleep. But a creature that should be extinct takes shelter in her home, and now she must keep it hidden from the hunters already looking for it. If she fails, the old oaths that hold the realm together are forgotten.
Twist: The creature is not the last of its kind; it is the first of the new ones.
1. Keep the part that jolts
The gravedigger who hears the dead, and wants sleep, is the strongest thing here. The forest where the dead keep their names for a year and a day gives her work a deadline. The stakes about the realm's oaths are vague, so they go.
2. Connect the want and the complication
Why would a woman who wants sleep take in a hunted creature? Because when it is near, the dead go quiet. For the first time in years she sleeps through the night. Hiding the creature stops being a chore and becomes the thing she wants most, which is a far better engine for a story.
3. Make the stakes private
The hunters pay well, and her younger brother is one of them. If she fails, he finds out what she has been hiding and has to choose between her and the bounty that would feed his family.
4. Test the twist
If the creature is the first of a new kind, the reader needs early signs: the newest graves are quieter than the old ones, and the creature eats only at the edge of fresh burials. Both can be planted in the first chapters without giving anything away.
Rewritten premise
Wenna digs graves in a forest where the dead keep their names, and their voices, for a year and a day. She has not slept properly in eleven years. When a creature the hunters swore was extinct crawls into her woodshed, the voices stop. Keeping it means lying to the whole village and to her brother, who hunts for the bounty on its head.
First scene
Goal: Wenna must bury a drowned girl before dawn, while the girl is still telling her how she died. Conflict: the creature is under the cart, the voice goes silent halfway through a sentence, and Wenna does not know why. Turn: her brother walks up the path with two other hunters and asks whether she has seen tracks.
From there the next scenes almost write their own outline: the first night of sleep, the lie to her brother, the morning the drowned girl's mother comes to ask what her daughter said. For names, try the Celtic-inspired style in the character name generator; for the shape of each scene, see the guide to outlining a novel scene by scene.
Premise, logline and synopsis
Writers use all three words, often loosely. They do different jobs, and the generator gives you the first two.
| Form | Length | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Premise | A short paragraph | Sets out who, what they want, what goes wrong and what is at stake. A note to yourself before you plan. |
| Logline | One sentence | The story as a pitch: when something happens, someone must do something, or a cost follows. Used in query letters and when someone asks what you are writing. |
| Synopsis | One to two pages | The whole plot, ending included, in order. Agents ask for it; it is also a useful test of whether the middle of the book holds together. |
A good logline names the inciting event, a specific character and the cost of failure in under 40 words. Turn on Show the logline to see each premise in that form, then cut it until every word does work.
What each genre's plots are built around
Each genre has its own settings, characters, complications, stakes and twists. Here is what they lean on, and what to add when you make one your own.
Literary
Family, work, grief and late chances. The stakes are private and the twists are about what people have been telling themselves. Add a specific year and a specific room.
Fantasy
Bargains, bindings, failing orders and gods who stop answering. Decide what magic costs before chapter one; the generator's twists often depend on it.
Science fiction
Contracts, copies, closed habitats and first contact. Pick the one technology that changes daily life and follow it into kitchens and bedrooms, not only control rooms.
Mystery
A closed community, a death or a theft, and an amateur with a reason to care. Write the true sequence of events first, then decide what the detective sees.
Thriller
Ordinary people with one useful skill, a clock and a powerful opponent. Keep the deadline concrete: a date, a train, a vote.
Romance
Two people forced together by work, family or an arrangement. The obstacle should come from who they are, not only from circumstance. The love interest is left open for you to define.
Horror
Homes, families and places that should be safe. The fear lands harder when the character has a reason to stay; find it.
Historical
Real periods, ordinary trades and the pressure of rank, faith and money. Research the year before the plot, because the period decides what your character can do about it.
Young adult
Teenagers at the edge of leaving: family, friendship, reputation and first chances. Keep the adults real and the stakes the size they feel at sixteen.
Questions writers ask about plot generators
Can I use a generated plot in a book I publish?
Yes. You do not need permission or credit. In the United States copyright does not protect ideas, plots or concepts, only the words you write to express them (US Copyright Office, Circular 33). Other people can press the same button, so treat a premise as raw material and make it particular.
Is this an AI story generator?
No. Every setting, character, complication, stake and twist was written by a person, and the page only chooses and joins them. It runs in your browser, makes no network requests while you generate, and does not need an account.
What does the tone setting change?
It limits the complications, stakes and twists to the ones marked dark, hopeful or wry, plus the ones that suit any tone. Settings and characters stay the same. A wry horror premise is still horror, just with a dry edge.
How do I get the same plots again, or share them?
Press Copy a link to these plots. The link holds the genre, tone and a seed, so anyone who opens it sees the same premises in the same order. Star a plot to keep it in your shortlist in this browser.
Does it work for short stories?
Yes. For a short story, keep the character and the complication, drop the twist, and end at the moment the character makes the choice the premise sets up. Most of these premises are novel sized; a short story usually needs only one turn.
What makes a plot idea good enough to write?
You can answer three questions about it: what the character does first, what goes wrong because of it, and what they have to give up at the end. If a premise makes you want to answer those, it is worth an outline. If it does not, generate again.
Take the premise into your outline
When a premise is ready to become a book, Feldar keeps the plan beside the pages. Each page has an Outline: write the next story beats in a few lines and Generate scenes suggests scene titles and descriptions that you edit, reorder or delete. Put the characters and places on the Canvas, and read how the Outline and Draft Page work. The writing stays yours.
See how Feldar works