Free screenwriting tool
Story Starters: 216 Opening Lines by Genre
A story starter is an opening line that drops you into a situation already in motion, so you can keep writing instead of staring at a blank page. This generator holds 216 original starters in nine genres: screenplay openings with a scene heading and first action line, and prose first sentences.
Written and reviewed by ScriptLix Editorial
Starter of the day
216 starters match
My mother ran the only boarding house between Abilene and Santa Fe, and in fifteen years she never once asked a guest where he had come from or what he had done there.
- ScreenplayThriller
INT. LAUNDROMAT - NIGHT
ROSA DELGADO (30s) folds a stranger's forgotten shirts while she waits. A bloodstained passport slides out of a pocket. The photo inside is hers, but the name is not.
- ScreenplayThriller
EXT. DESERT HIGHWAY REST STOP - DAWN
TRUCKER WALT BRODY (50s) returns from the restroom to find his rig idling with the trailer doors wide open. The cargo he signed for is gone. Something else is in its place, breathing.
- ScreenplayThriller
INT. EMBASSY VISA OFFICE - DAY
Clerk AMIRA HASSAN (20s) stamps applications on autopilot until one file contains a handwritten note in her late father's script: Do not approve this man. He is standing at her window.
- ScreenplayThriller
INT. SUBWAY CAR - NIGHT
The train stalls in a tunnel. Every phone in the car chimes at once. TEODOR (40s), a tired accountant, reads the message aloud: One of you has until the next station.
- ScreenplayThriller
EXT. CONTAINER PORT - DUSK
Customs inspector GRACE OKAFOR (30s) cracks the seal on a shipping container listed as empty. Inside: a furnished office, a lit desk lamp, and a laptop open to her own personnel file.
- ScreenplayThriller
INT. HOSPITAL PHARMACY - NIGHT
Night pharmacist DEV MALHOTRA (30s) counts morphine vials twice. Three are missing. The security monitor behind him shows himself, an hour ago, taking them.
- ScreenplayThriller
INT. SKI LODGE KITCHEN - NIGHT
Snow buries the windows. Line cook JUNO PARK (20s) finds the walk-in freezer locked from the inside, and someone inside it is knocking politely, in rhythm, like a code.
- ScreenplayThriller
EXT. VINEYARD - DAY
Harvest workers scatter as a drone drops a sealed tube between the vines. MARGUERITE (60s), the owner, opens it and goes pale. It contains her grandson's school ID and a GPS coordinate.
- ScreenplayThriller
INT. COURTROOM STENOGRAPHER BOOTH - DAY
Stenographer LUCILLE BANKS (50s) types testimony word for word. Her machine prints a line the witness never spoke: She knows. Lucille looks up. The defendant is smiling at her.
- ScreenplayThriller
INT. AIRPORT LOST AND FOUND - DAWN
Attendant OMAR FEZZI (40s) catalogues an unclaimed suitcase. It is packed with his own clothes, folded the way his wife folds them, and his wife died in March.
- ScreenplayThriller
EXT. FISHING TRAWLER - NIGHT
Deckhand SIOBHAN REILLY (20s) hauls the net aboard. Tangled among the cod is a waterproof bag holding a satellite phone, still ringing, with her name on the screen.
- ScreenplayThriller
INT. PARKING GARAGE ELEVATOR - DAY
Accountant BENJAMIN CHO (30s) rides down alone. The elevator stops between floors. A voice through the emergency speaker says, calmly, that it would like to discuss his audit.
- ProseThriller
The ransom note asked for exactly the amount my brother had stolen from our mother, down to the cent, which meant whoever wrote it knew more about our family than I did.
- ProseThriller
On the fourth day of the blackout, the only working radio in Valparaiso began reading out the names of people who had not yet gone missing.
- ProseThriller
I was hired to follow a woman for a week, and on the second day she turned around in the fish market, walked straight up to me, and asked if I was ready.
- ProseThriller
The safe deposit box held nothing but a child's drawing of my house, dated eleven years before I bought it.
- ProseThriller
Every interpreter at the summit was told to translate the speech exactly, so I did, and that is why three governments now want me dead.
- ProseThriller
My husband had been sleeping beside me for nine years when the police called to say his body had been found in a quarry in 2014.
- ProseThriller
The boy at the ferry terminal handed me an envelope, said my name correctly in a language I have never spoken, and ran.
- ProseThriller
In the training video for new bank tellers, there is a robbery scene, and the robber is wearing the jacket I lost last winter.
- ProseThriller
Nobody at the lighthouse keepers' reunion would say why Arno never came back from the 1987 relief shift, but all of them had brought him a gift.
- ProseThriller
The text said Don't turn around, which would have been easier if I had not been standing in a room made entirely of glass.
- ProseThriller
We were four strangers who had each received a key to the same storage unit in Tulsa, and only one of us was pretending to be surprised.
- ProseThriller
The jury had been sequestered for six days when Juror Nine started passing me notes in the hotel breakfast line, and every note was a correct prediction.
Got a first line and need a story behind it? Roll a premise with the plot generator, then read how to start a screenplay for what the rest of page one should do.
How to use it
- 1
Pick screenplay openings, prose first lines or both, and a genre if you have one.
- 2
Press New story starter until one makes you ask what happens next.
- 3
Copy it into your draft and write the next line before you can talk yourself out of it.
- 4
Keep going for ten minutes, then cut or rewrite the starter so the story is fully yours.
What a good opening line does
| Quality | What it looks like | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| Specific | A named place, a precise object, an odd detail | Specific images feel true and stick |
| In motion | Something is already happening or wrong | The reader joins mid action |
| A question | A gap the reader needs filled | Curiosity pulls them to the next line |
| A voice | Tone you can hear: dry, warm, menacing | Genre and attitude arrive at once |
What makes a good story starter?
A good starter raises a question without answering it. “The baby monitor picked up a second voice” works because the reader has to know whose. Specific details do more than adjectives: a laundromat at 2am, a passport with the wrong name, a key that lands in hot oil.
The best story starters also imply a character. Someone is doing something, wanting something or noticing something, and that gives you a person to follow into the next sentence.
How is a screenplay opening different from a prose first line?
A screenplay opening is a scene heading plus action: only what a camera can see and a microphone can hear, in the present tense. A prose first sentence can go inside a character’s head, play with time and lean on the narrator’s voice. The generator gives you both, so you can write in whichever form you are working in.
How do teachers use story sentence starters?
As warm ups and timed exercises: everyone gets the same first line, writes for ten minutes, then compares where each story went. Filter by genre to match a unit, use the starter of the day as a daily routine, or share a single starter by link so the whole class sees the same one.
Can I use these story starters in my own work?
Yes. Every starter was written for this page and is free to use. Treat it as scaffolding: once your story finds its feet, rewrite the opening so it fits what the story became.
What should come after the first line?
Raise the stakes or deepen the question, quickly. In a script the rest of page one should show who the hero is and hint at what is wrong. In prose the next paragraph often grounds the reader in place and voice before the first turn.
Questions writers ask
What is a story starter?
An opening line or situation you use to begin writing, so you skip the blank page and start in the middle of something.
How many story starters are there?
216 originals across nine genres, half screenplay openings and half prose first sentences.
Is the story starter generator free?
Yes. No signup, no limits. Every starter can be copied or shared by link.
Does the starter of the day change?
Yes. A new starter is picked every day, the same one for everyone who visits that day.
Are these story starters good for kids?
Some are, but they are written for adult and teen writers, and the horror and crime starters can be dark. Preview them before using them with younger students.