# Story Generator: Story Starts by Genre - Feldar > Free story generator: a protagonist with a want and a flaw, setting, inciting incident, three turning points and an ending, by genre and tone. No AI. - URL: https://feldar.com/tools/story-generator - Site: [Home](https://feldar.com/) · [About](https://feldar.com/about) · [Blog](https://feldar.com/blog) · [Careers](https://feldar.com/careers) · [Pricing](https://feldar.com/pricing) · [Download](https://feldar.com/download) · [Changelog](https://feldar.com/changelog) - Machine index: [llms.txt](https://feldar.com/llms.txt) · [full site content](https://feldar.com/llms-full.txt) --- #### What the story generator gives you A premise tells you where a story starts. A story start also tells you where it turns. Each result has nine parts, picked from lists written by hand for each genre and joined in your browser: - Premise. The story in one sentence: when something happens, this person must do this. - Protagonist, want and flaw. A particular person, something they wanted before the story began, and the habit most likely to ruin it. The want gives the reader a reason to follow them; the flaw gives the story something to test. - Setting. A place with pressure already in it: a town about to lose its school, a moon where the company owns the air. - Inciting incident. The event that ends ordinary life and starts the story. - Turning point 1. The character commits. After this there is no simple way back. - Turning point 2. The midpoint. Something learned changes what the story is about. - Turning point 3. The worst moment, when the old way of doing things fails and a choice is forced. - Possible ending. One way the story could close, in the tone you picked: dark, hopeful or wry. Turn it off when you would rather find the ending yourself. The incident, the three turning points and the three endings are written together as one arc, so the midpoint follows from the incident and the ending answers the third turn. Arcs never name a place, a job or a relative the character might not have, so any arc fits any protagonist and setting in its genre. Across the nine genres the parts make more than 600,000 different story starts. This is not an AI story generator. No model writes anything; the page picks and joins sentences a person wrote, in your browser. #### Story generator or plot generator? Both are free and built the same way. They answer different questions. ##### Use the plot generator When you want many premises to choose from. Each is a short paragraph with stakes and an optional twist, quick to scan in sets of eight. [Plot generator](https://feldar.com/tools/plot-generator) ##### Use the story generator When you have a direction and want to see a shape: who the character is, where the story turns three times, and how it might end. Fewer results, more of each. #### Worked example: from a story start to a beat sheet Here is one horror story start exactly as the generator produced it, then the same story laid out on a novel of 80,000 words. Generated story start Premise: When the photographs he takes start showing someone standing behind him, a widowed father with two small children must find out who it is before it is close enough to touch. Want: To sell the house quickly. Flaw: He needs to be the one who is right. Setting: In a lake town where the water never freezes, however cold it gets. Turning points: The figure is a little closer in every photograph, and it has started to look like him. He finds old photographs from the town archive, with the same figure behind other people, all dated the year before they died. The figure is no longer only in the photographs. Possible ending (hopeful): He turns to face it, and it is only the shape of something he has refused to grieve, and it goes. ##### 1. Connect the want, the flaw and the ending The parts arrive separately; your first job is to make them one story. He wants to sell the house quickly, and the ending is about grief he has refused. So the house is where his wife died, and selling it fast is how he avoids grieving. His flaw, needing to be right, is why he will not admit the photographs mean anything until it is almost too late. ##### 2. Give the setting a job A lake that never freezes is a striking image with no purpose yet. Give it one: his wife drowned there in winter, when the ice everyone expected was not there. Now the setting carries the grief, and the town's strangeness is part of the plot rather than decoration. ##### 3. Lay the turns on the length A common rule of thumb in three-act structure puts the first turn about a quarter of the way in, the midpoint at half, and the third turn at three quarters. It is a guide, not a law, but it tells you how much room each part of the story has: BeatAroundIn this story OpeningWords 1 to 8,000He is clearing the house for sale, and argues with the estate agent about everything. The children will not go near the water. Inciting incident8,000Photographs for the listing show a figure behind him at the end of the jetty. Turning point 120,000The figure is closer each time and starting to look like him. He takes the house off the market without telling anyone why. Turning point 240,000The town archive shows the same figure behind people the year before they died. The question changes from who it is to who is next. Turning point 360,000The figure is in the house, standing over the children's beds, and being right about anything no longer helps. Climax and ending72,000 to 80,000He goes out onto the water where his wife drowned, turns to face it, and grieves at last. ##### 4. Make the first scene Start where the want is strongest. Goal: he must get the house photographed before the agent's deadline. Conflict: his daughter refuses to be in any of the pictures and will not say why. Turn: on the agent's screen, in the last photograph, someone is standing behind him on the jetty. From here each turning point becomes a chapter to plan scene by scene. The guide to [outlining a novel](https://feldar.com/guides/how-to-outline-a-novel) walks through that step, and the [character generator](https://feldar.com/tools/character-generator) can fill in the people around him: the agent, the archivist, the neighbor who remembers his wife. #### What each genre's arcs turn on Each genre has its own settings, protagonists and five arcs. The flaws are shared, because people are flawed the same way on every shelf. ##### Literary Family, work and the body. The turns are discoveries about people the character thought they knew, and the endings are about what they can live with. ##### Fantasy Bargains, keys, doors and eggs that should not exist. The midpoint usually reveals that the magic has a price someone else has been paying. ##### Science fiction Copies, signals, sealed rooms and systems that run daily life. The second turn changes who the character is, not only what they know. ##### Mystery A death, a theft or a letter, and a closed circle of people. The third turn puts the investigator under suspicion; plan the true sequence of events before you write. ##### Thriller An ordinary person pulled into someone else's plan, with a clock. Keep the deadline concrete and let every turn narrow the choices. ##### Romance Two people forced together by work, family or a house. The obstacle comes from who they are; the third turn is the moment one of them lets the other go. ##### Horror Doors, voices, photographs and towns with old habits. The fear lands hardest when the character has a reason to stay; the want gives you one. ##### Historical Parcels, ledgers, fevers and households with two masters. Real periods and ordinary trades; research the year so the turns fit what people could do. ##### Young adult Friends, schools, families rearranged and the price of belonging. Keep the stakes the size they feel at sixteen. #### Questions writers ask about story generators Is this an AI story generator? No. Every protagonist, setting, flaw, incident, turning point and ending 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. Can I use a generated story 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](https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf)). Other people can press the same button, so treat a story start as raw material and make it particular. What does the tone setting change? It picks which of the arc's three endings you see: dark, hopeful or wry. Everything before the ending stays the same, which is a useful way to see how one story can close three ways. With Any tone, the kicker above each story names the tone it got. How do I get the same stories again, or share them? Press Copy a link to these stories. The link holds the genre, tone and a seed, so anyone who opens it sees the same stories in the same order. Star a story to keep it in your shortlist in this browser, and use Copy all to take the shortlist with you. Why does every story come with a flaw? Because the turning points need something to test. A character who wants to be right, or cannot ask for help, will make the wrong choice at the third turn for a reason the reader understands. Change the flaw first if a story does not feel like yours. Does it work for short stories? Yes. Keep the protagonist, the flaw and the incident, use only the third turning point, and end there. A short story usually has room for one turn; a novel needs all three and more between them. Can I write the story in Feldar? Yes. Paste the story start into a new project, then plan each turning point as a page with an outline of scenes. You write the scenes yourself, or press Draft Page for a first pass that you then rewrite. Scenes CHAPTER 1 - 1 Photographs for the listing The agent's deadline, and a daughter who will not be in any picture. - 2 The end of the jetty On the screen, someone is standing behind him in the last shot. - 3 Water that never freezes He tells the agent it is a trick of the light, and believes it. Draft Page #### Turn the three turns into chapters When a story start 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](https://feldar.com/features/canvas), and read how the [Outline and Draft Page](https://feldar.com/features/scenes) work. The writing stays yours. [See how Feldar works](https://feldar.com/novel-writing-software) #### Keep reading [Free tool Plot generator Story premises by genre and tone, with loglines and twists.](https://feldar.com/tools/plot-generator) [Free tool Character generator A cast around your protagonist: want, fear, secret, contradiction and voice.](https://feldar.com/tools/character-generator) [Free tool Character counter Fit a blurb or a pitch to the limit, counted the way each platform counts.](https://feldar.com/tools/character-counter) [Guide How to outline a novel Turn a story start into chapters and scenes, with a worked example.](https://feldar.com/guides/how-to-outline-a-novel) [Free tool Book title generator Working titles by genre and pattern, checked against famous books.](https://feldar.com/tools/book-title-generator) [Feature Scenes to chapters Plan each page as a list of scenes in Feldar, then write it.](https://feldar.com/features/scenes)