by Bryn Donovan
A woman brags about how many children she has, enraging a god and goddess, who kills them all. (Niobe in The Iliad, Greek mythology.)
The son of a nobleman comes to court disguised as a serving boy who works in the kitchens. Some of the nobles look down on him, including the girl whose sister he soon sets out to rescue. (The Story of Gareth, Arthurian legend.)
A woman loved by both a mortal prince and a handsome god chooses the prince. (Idas and Marpessa, Greek mythology.)
The youngest son of a miller inherits only a cat. However, he’s no ordinary cat, and after demanding a pair of boots, he uses cleverness and trickery to make his new master a prince. (“Puss in Boots,” Italian fairy tale, but many other versions exist.)
The Devil marries two sisters in succession, only to throw them both into hell. The third and youngest sister marries him, rescues her sisters from hell, and helps them all escape—but only after robbing him. (“How the Devil Married Three Sisters,” Italian fairy tale)
A sculptor creates a statue so beautiful, he falls in love with it. Then it comes to life. (Pygmalion and Galatea, Greek mythology.)
A dragon in a local lake keeps eating the village’s cows and the occasional maiden. A man brings the dragon an enormous suet pudding in a cart, which the dragon eats (along with the horse and cart.) Then the dragon starts to feel sick to his stomach. The man pretends to lean in to give the dragon medicine and kills him with an axe to the head. (British folk tale.)
A god brings his baby son to the cave of a centaur and asks him to foster the child. (The story of Asclepius, Greek mythology.)
When a chieftain plays his magical harp, he can make anyone who hears it begin weeping, laughing, or even sleeping, as he chooses. (The Dagda’s Harp, Irish mythology.)
A girl gives a drink of water to an old woman who’s a fairy in disguise. The fairy rewards her with an enchantment: whenever the girl speaks, jewels, gold, or flowers fall from her lips. (“Diamonds and Toads,” French fairy tale.)
A baby girl is born, and her father gives orders to leave her outside to die. She’s raised by a bear and grows up to be a great huntress and a fast runner. (Atalanta, Greek mythology.)
A mouse, a bird, and a sausage (who is sentient) all live together happily for a while, but when they decide to switch who does what household task, it’s a disaster. (“The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage,” German fairy tale.)
A horse-tamer wishes he could ride a giant winged horse. One night, he dreams that a goddess gives him a golden bridle that will allow him to do so. He wakes with the golden bridle in his hand. (Bellerophon and Pegasus, Greek mythology.)
Everything a man touches turns to gold, and it’s awful. (King Midas and His Golden Touch, Greek mythology.)
The Queen of the Fairies dies and the fairies need to elect a new one, but they have trouble deciding between two candidates. They decide whoever does the most amazing feat will win the crown. (“Rosanella,” French fairy tale.)
An individual who is unable to attain something he wants consoles himself with the idea that the thing probably wasn’t any good, anyway. (“The Fox and the Grapes,” Aesop’s fable, ancient Greece.)
A king sends out his barber to find him a wife. The barber only asks that women who would like to be considered should look into his magic mirror, which makes flaws in a person’s character show up like blemishes on his or her face. Strangely enough, almost no women are interested in getting married to the king. (“The Magic Mirror,” Spanish folk tale.)
An evil fairy curses a baby princess so that one day she’ll prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die. To keep the princess safe, another fairy puts the princess into a deep sleep for a hundred years, one that can only be broken by a kiss from a prince. (“Sleeping Beauty,” French fairy tale.)
A fire-breathing demon lulls warriors to sleep, then burns the castle of Tara to the ground…every Samhain, for twenty-three years, until a hero bests him. (The story of Fionn Mac Cumhaill, Irish mythology.)
A goddess employs a big, strong man with a hundred eyes all over his body. A god disguises himself as a shepherd and tells the man such a long, dull story that, one by one, the eyes close, and finally, he dies of sheer boredom. (Hera, Argus, and Hermes, Greek mythology.)
A mermaid sits on a rock every evening and gives medical advice to villagers. One local woman accuses the mermaid of being evil and pushes her seat into the river. The next day, this woman’s baby has died in his cradle, and no one ever sees the mermaid again. (Scottish folk tale.)
A trickster god decides it would be hilarious to shave the head of his brother’s wife while she’s sleeping. When she and her husband are furious, he promises to give her new hair made from pure gold. (Loki, Thor, and Sif, Norse mythology.)
A knight in the habit of inviting rich and poor alike to Christmas feasts and giving all of them generous gifts, eventually runs out of money and lives with his family in poverty. He realizes he’s been forgotten by the king, who doesn’t invite him to court. But on Christmas morning, in the middle of winter, a cherry tree in his garden bears delicious fruit. He takes some of the fruit to the king, who showers riches on him and his family. (Sir Cleges and the Christmas Cherry Tree, Arthurian legend.)
50 Plots From Shakespeare and Other Elizabethan Literature
A man makes a deal with the Devil, trading his soul for twenty-four years of service from a demon. (Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe.)
Two people who are in love and about to wed conspire to get two of their friends, who are always bickering with one another, to marry each other. (Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare.)
A prince returns home to mourn his father’s death and finds his mother already re-married to his uncle. A ghost reveals to the prince that his uncle murdered his father, and the prince ponders revenge. (Hamlet, Shakespeare.)
After conquering France, an English king courts the daughter of a French king, who has reservations about marrying an enemy. (Henry V, a historical play, Shakespeare.)
A young woman goes through a portal at the North Pole, finds herself in an alternate universe and becomes the empress of a kingdom filled with talking animals. (The Blazing World, Margaret Cavendish.)
An army commander returns home from war in triumph, but then quarrels with other leaders and gets banished. (Coriolanus, Shakespeare.)
A nobleman forces another man at gunpoint to pray to Satan. Then he shoots him dead, sending him to Hell. (The Unfortunate Traveler, Thomas Nashe.)
When the king becomes gravely ill, a woman comes to court with a prescription developed by her late father, a doctor. The king recovers, and as a reward, he tells the young woman she can marry any of the single men at court she chooses. She picks the guy she’s had a crush on for years, and because he’s not happy about it, he goes off to war. (All’s Well That Ends Well, Shakespeare.)
A duke usurps his older brother’s throne and banishes his niece to the wilderness. The niece disguises herself as a boy for the new adventure, and the duke’s own daughter goes with her. (As You Like It, Shakespeare.)
A widowed duchess proposes to her steward and marries him—in secret, because her brothers didn’t want her to marry again. (The Duchess of Malfi, a historical play by John Webster.)
A man is in love with the duke’s daughter, and she returns his feelings, even though she’s engaged to someone else. The man asks his friend to help him and the woman he loves elope. Unfortunately, this friend becomes attracted to the woman himself and betrays the whole plan to the duke, who locks up his daughter in jail. (The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare.)
A woman leaves home in search of a man who was exiled but still holds her affections. She gets captured by a band of outlaws—but it’s okay, because the man she loves has been elected their leader. (Also The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare.)
A man and a woman are i
n love. Another man’s also in love with this woman, and he’s no longer interested in the woman he used to date. (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare.)
The King and the Queen of the Fairies are arguing because the King wants to adopt the half-mortal boy the Queen took under her wing, and she doesn’t want to give him up. (Also A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare.)
Someone slips a woman a love potion, and she falls in love with the wrong person—and a really inappropriate one. (Also A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare.)
A generous man with a spending problem realizes he’s in debt and asks his friends to loan him money. None of them do. He invites them all to dinner, serves only warm water, and berates them for being bad friends. (Timon of Athens, Shakespeare.)
A neighboring enemy has beaten one of the king’s armies and taken its commander prisoner. Meanwhile, the king’s son spends all his time drinking and carousing with lowlifes. (King Henry IV, Shakespeare.)
A man who wants to marry a noblewoman disguises himself as a slave, starts a slave revolt, and then protects her from the violence he incited in order to get her to love him. (The Bondman, Philip Massinger.)
A shipwrecked merchant lands on enemy shores and is arrested immediately because everyone there hates his country. (The Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare.)
A man shows up for another man’s knighthood ceremony. Then he goes on adventures, pursued by the angry man whose knighthood he “stole.” (Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes, attributed to various authors.)
A man intends to get revenge on another man, but he changes his mind after learning the guy is the brother of the woman he loves. (Also Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes.)
A rich lord and his friends play a trick on a drunken man: they put him in the lord’s grand bedroom, and when the man wakes up, they claim he’s a nobleman and he’s been insane for the past fifteen years. (The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare.)
A down-on-his-luck knight sets out to woo two married women and get their money. The women discover the scheme and set out to make a fool of him. (The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare.)
Although the duke has no idea, two of his new servants are actually the brother and the boyfriend of a woman he murdered, and they’re plotting to kill him in revenge. (The White Devil, a historical play, John Webster.)
Inspired by a prophecy of witches, a woman urges her husband, a war captain, to murder the king so he can take the throne. (Macbeth, Shakespeare.)
A Huguenot king marries the sister of a Catholic king. A duke schemes to take the throne. He murders the new queen and incites Catholics across Paris to kill Huguenots. (The Massacre of Paris, a historical play by Christopher Marlowe.)
The goddess Venus arranges for her son to fall in love with the Queen of Carthage. When he leaves her, feeling he has a destiny to fulfill in Italy, she burns herself to death on a funeral pyre. Her former suitor and her sister, upset by this, kill themselves as well. (Dido, Queen of Carthage, a play by Christopher Marlowe based on Virgil’s The Aeneid.)
A grieving general asks his servant to kill him. The servant doesn’t want to obey him or refuse an order, so he kills himself by falling on his sword. (Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare.)
A married man lives with his girlfriend in a foreign country, but when his wife dies, he goes home and agrees to marry the emperor’s sister. (Also Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare.)
A man gets passed over for a promotion. Seeking revenge, he convinces his boss that his boss’s wife is having an affair with the guy who got the promotion. (Othello, Shakespeare.)
A king’s friend prepares to depart after a long visit. The king tries to persuade him to stay longer. The king’s pregnant wife succeeds in talking their guest into this, and then the king becomes obsessed with the idea that maybe his wife and his friend are secretly in love. (A Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare.)
When the plague strikes London, a rich man retreats to his country estate—only to learn his butler has been using the place for illicit purposes. (The Alchemist, Ben Johnson.)
A shepherd and bandit woos the daughter of a king and helps lead the king’s soldiers to war. After the king is killed in battle, he takes the throne himself. (Tamburlaine the Great, Christopher Marlowe.)
A young man refuses to fight a challenger because he’s in love with the challenger’s cousin. The young man’s best friend can’t stand this, and starts dueling the challenger himself. When the young man tries to intervene, grabbing his best friend to stop the fight, it gives the challenger an opening and he stabs the best friend to death. (Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare.)
An emperor’s wife asks him to stay home from the Senate because she dreamed of something terrible happening to him. He ignores her and goes anyway, and his friends come up and stab him to death. (Julius Caesar, Shakespeare.)
A man gives a public eulogy that leads people to riot. (Also Julius Caesar, Shakespeare.)
A prince is taken captive during a war, and two commanders bicker over who actually kidnapped him. (The Spanish Tragedy, Thomas Kyd.)
An explorer flies to the moon in a spaceship carried by a flock of geese and meets the people who live there. (The Man in the Moone, Francis Godwin.)
A witch traps a sprite in a tree trunk. A scholar of magic frees him, demanding his loyalty and service in return. (The Tempest, Shakespeare.)
A girl grows up on an island with her father, a duke turned scholar and magician. When a ship wrecks on the island, she sees one of the stranded passengers—the first man besides her father she’s ever seen in her life. The two fall in love. (Also The Tempest, Shakespeare.)
A guy makes a bet with a newly married man that he can seduce the man’s bride, and then makes the husband believe he was successful. (Cymbeline, Shakespeare.)
When a king dies, a man he’d exiled returns to court. The new king likes him a lot and gives him all kinds of gifts and privileges. No one else at court likes this. (Edward II, a historical play by Christopher Marlowe.)
A woman is about to take her vows as a nun when she hears her brother’s been sentenced to death. She hurries to beg the man in charge for mercy, and he finds her very attractive. (Measure for Measure, Shakespeare.)
A man abandons his bride-to-be after her dowry gets lost at sea. (Also Measure for Measure, Shakespeare.)
Two rich old men want their children to marry. Each knows his own child is a fool; neither knows that the other young person is also a fool. (Mother Bombie, by John Lyly.)
A prince complains to his best friend that he can’t go to battle because he’s pining over a woman. The best friend complains that he’s been trying to get these two together, and his efforts are never appreciated. (Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare.)
A duchess summons a demon and gets arrested for it, humiliating her husband. (Henry VI Part II, a historical play, Shakespeare.)
A young woman newly married to the king and the popular wife of a duke vie for power at court. (Also Henry VI Part II, a historical play, Shakespeare.)
After conquering a city, a general falls in love with one of the captives and frees her. He hires a man to paint her portrait, but the artist falls in love with her as well and prolongs the project in order to spend more time with her. (Campaspe, a historical play by John Lyly.)
The daughter of a jailor falls in love with a prisoner and helps him escape. (The Two Noble Kinsmen, maybe by Shakespeare and John Fletcher.)
50 Plot Prompts from Regency and Victorian Novels
I’ve taken liberties with some of these plots in order to make them easier to use as prompts. In some cases, they’re the bare bones of the plot, and in many cases, they are only a part of the novel. You can transform these elements by setting them in a different country and/or putting them in a present-day, fantasy, or futuristic context.
A man who was framed for a crime he didn’t commit escapes
prison, makes a fortune in another country, and returns in disguise to get vengeance on his enemies. (The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexander Dumas.)
An orphan boy falls in love with his foster sister. As an adult, he’s still obsessed with her even though she’s married to somebody else. (Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë.)
Members of a club decide to each travel to a different place and then report what they learn back to the group. (The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens.)
A rich man proposes to a young employee of his only to learn that she’s already secretly married to his son. (Vanity Fair, William Thackeray.)
A man searching for a sea monster meets a guy with a fantastic submarine and they explore the ocean depths together. (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne.)
A guy falls in love with a woman who spurns him. Later, he gets a job and then realizes she owns the business. (Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy.)
In the future, humankind has evolved into two separate species. (The Time Machine, H.G. Wells.)
A woman who’s new in town believes the owner of a local business is unfair to his employees, but later she falls in love with him. (North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell.)
A young woman steals money from her father in order to leave the country and elope with her boyfriend against her father’s wishes, but then her fiancé gambles the money away. (The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope.)
A man is found dead in a room with a word written in blood on the wall, but there are no wounds on the corpse. (A Study in Scarlet, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.)
A man believes a woman he loves is having an affair, but she’s actually meeting with her brother. (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Brontë.)
A man arranges for the abduction of his recently orphaned teenage nephew because the kid is the rightful heir to a family estate. (Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson.)
A poor child falls asleep and becomes a magical creature. (The Water Babies, Charles Kingsley.)
