If you’re into writing sci-fi but you want to branch out, give cyberpunk a try!
Cyberpunk stories usually center around themes like cybernetic body enhancement, artificial intelligence, capitalism, and class wars.
Below, you’ll find a list of writing prompts that you can use to help spark some creativity if you’re in a bit of a writing rut, or just as some inspiration for your next story.
Using This Guide
You can use these prompts just as they’re written, or change them up to match your writing style. The addition of neon colors, cool cars, and characters with multiple piercings is totally optional.
The Prompts
- You are smuggling a weapon across faction lines, but the guards don’t realize that you are the weapon.
- Write a cyberpunk story based on the novel The Lord of the Flies.
- An army of AI doesn’t need to be hacked to attack their masters. They only needed a little convincing.
- Write a story from the point of view of an AI that doesn’t realize they’re not human.
- Turn your favorite children’s story into a cyberpunk story.
- Write a cyberpunk story featuring a blind main character.
- Write a story that takes place in space.
- Someone has hacked your contact lenses, and you can suddenly see the time and date that someone will die just by looking at them.
- Writers no longer have to sit down and write—they can simply plug in and automatically transmit their latest writing onto their devices to be uploaded.
- Write a story from the point of view of a cyborg.
- You turn down a dark alley, but the shadowed figure is still following you. It’s time to lose him.
- In an effort to feel human for the first time in your life, you start the painful body modification process of replacing your cybernetic parts with real human parts.
- You’ve always been weary of the cyborgs who have all but replaced emergency workers. But when one saves you from a fiery crash, your opinion changes.
- Build a cyberpunk world around cacti that are the only source of water.
- You’re a cybernetically enhanced bounty hunter, created to capture every bounty, no matter how sneaky they are. But your current assignment has eluded you for weeks.
- Music has evolved in the past 200 years. Your music implant knows precisely what you want to listen to, but recently, it’s been giving you random selections. You’re starting to notice an eerie trend.
- Rewrite your favorite musical’s plot as a cyberpunk story.
- You wake up on an operating table. When you go to touch your throbbing head, instead of a hand, you see a robotic arm.
- The AI that you designed to save Earth from its impending deterioration is acting strangely lately…
- The robot nanny who raised you informs you that you were grown in a lab in an artificial womb, and your parents aren’t who you think they are.
- Write a cyberpunk story based on your favorite non-cyberpunk video game.
- Write a cyberpunk heist story.
- “She’s gone. But she left this behind…”
- In a world full of technology and AI, your father refuses to use any tool that has a mind of its own.
- Rewrite your favorite horror movie’s plot as a cyberpunk story.
- Write a noir mystery set in 2250.
- Robots have replaced nearly all human employment. What do humans do with their time, and how do they earn a living?
- You run one of the last flower shops in the state, and the sudden decrease in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere threatens both your life and your livelihood.
- Rewrite the plot of your favorite western as a cyberpunk story.
- Build a cyberpunk world around a cafe with a reclusive cyborg owner.
- Write a short cyberpunk comedy.
- Use examples from your real life to write a cyberpunk story.
- Rewrite your favorite book’s plot as a cyberpunk story.
- Write a time traveling cyberpunk story.
- Rewrite your favorite superhero movie’s plot as a cyberpunk story.
Looking for more writing resources?
Our site is home to an abundance of writing prompts and story ideas to keep your creative drive in check and inspire you to keep writing.
You’ll want to check out our sci-fi prompts, or if dystopian writing is more your thing, we’ve got you covered too.
If you’re looking for something specific, let us know. We’d love to hear your ideas.
