50 Fantasy Romance Writing Prompts to Start Your Next Book

Stuck on what to write next? A good prompt is not a plot… it is a spark with built-in tension. These 50 fantasy romance prompts are organized by trope so you can pick by what you are craving. Take one, change a detail, make it yours. The only rule: start writing before you talk yourself out of it.

Enemies to lovers

• The assassin sent to kill the queen is hired, the same week, as her personal bodyguard.
• Two rival mages are forced to share the last room… and the last spellbook… at the academy.
• She burns down his manor in the first chapter. He rebuilds it room by room, waiting for her to come back and explain why.
• He is the general who conquered her kingdom. She is the translator he cannot rule without.
• They have been writing anonymous hate letters to each other for a year. Tonight they meet in person, and neither knows.
• The heir she is sworn to depose keeps saving her life, which is extremely inconvenient.
• A truce requires their marriage. The truce does not require them to be civil about it.
• She is the only healer left, and her worst enemy is bleeding out on her table.

Fae and the courts

• A fae noble steals a human’s name as a joke and discovers it has tied their fates together.
• A mortal healer crosses into the Otherworld to save her sister and is offered a bargain by a king who has not felt anything in centuries.
• Every full moon the fae prince forgets her completely. Every full moon she has to make him fall again.
• She trades a year of her life for a single favor. The fae who grants it starts counting the days too.
• He is the changeling left in a human cradle, and the court has finally come to collect him… and the woman who raised him.
• A girl who can lie to the fae (which should be impossible) is brought before the throne to explain how.
• The Faerie Queen only ever takes mortal lovers. This year she takes the one person who came to kill her.
• He guards the door between worlds. She is the first traveler in a hundred years he does not want to let leave.

Forbidden and forced proximity

• Snowed into a shrine for three days with the enemy soldier she was supposed to interrogate.
• He is her dead husband’s brother, and the only one who believes she did not do it.
• A priestess sworn to celibacy is assigned to escort the one man who makes her question the vow.
• Two spies on opposite sides realize they have been falling for each other’s cover identities.
• The bodyguard and the heir. One bed. A very long winter.
• She is promised to his brother. He is the one teaching her the language of the court.
• They are the only two survivors of the expedition, and rescue is six weeks of walking away.
• A vow of silence is the only thing keeping a war from starting. They are also clearly in love.

Fated and soulbound

• Their souls are bonded, which would be romantic if they had not spent ten years trying to kill each other first.
• She can feel everything her bondmate feels. He is very good at hiding pain. She is learning to read the silence.
• The prophecy says they save the world together. It does not mention that they have to like it.
• Every life they are reborn, they find each other, and every life one of them dies first. This life she means to break it.
• He hears her thoughts the moment they touch. She has spent her whole life making sure no one could.
• A dragon and its rider share one heartbeat. Hers just started beating for someone else.
• The bond mark appears on her skin the day she meets the man she has been ordered to execute.
• They were promised to each other as children by a magic neither remembers agreeing to.

Dark and morally grey

• He is the monster the village warns children about. She is the only one who knocks on his door.
• The villain everyone fears has one weakness, and it just walked into his throne room asking for a job.
• She made a deal with something ancient to save her city. It comes to collect, and it is not what she expected.
• He was framed for a massacre. She is the investigator who finally believes him, which puts a target on her back.
• The cursed prince can only be touched by someone who does not fear death. She has nothing left to lose.
• A necromancer and the knight sent to burn her at the stake strike a very practical bargain.
• He keeps a list of everyone who wronged her. She did not ask him to. She is not sure she wants him to stop.
• The kingdom calls him a tyrant. She has read his private letters. The truth is worse, and softer.

Slow burn and second chance

• They were each other’s first love. Now she is the witch his kingdom hired to break a curse he cast to forget her.
• A letter arrives twenty years late. The man who wrote it is standing on her doorstep.
• Childhood best friends, separated by a war, reunited on opposite ends of a negotiation table.
• He taught her everything she knows about swordfighting. She is about to use it to leave him.
• The lighthouse keeper and the selkie who washes up every winter, a little less of a stranger each time.
• They almost kissed once, years ago. Neither has forgotten. Both pretend they have.
• She returns to the cursed town she swore she would never see again, and he is still there, still waiting.
• He proposed. She said not yet. Ten years later, not yet finally runs out.

Found one that grabbed you? Do not outline it to death… write the first chapter while the spark is hot. If you want a framework so chapter one practically writes itself, that is exactly what I teach.

Watch: tropes are load-bearing walls