Give it an idea in a sentence, and Hemmingway writes a complete short story in under 1,000 words. Complete is the point. You get a beginning, a turn and an ending in one go, not an opening chapter that stops when it gets interesting.
Your idea and your ending are fixed. The small things a story needs, a line of dialogue, the weather, a page number, it fills in itself. Anything you care about, put in the fields. No idea yet? The story idea generator gives you one to bring back here.
The story generator starts from a character, what they want and what goes wrong. Use that one when you have a person in mind, and this one when you have an idea and a word limit.
What fits in under 1,000 words
- One character, one problem, one change. There is no room for a subplot or a second point of view.
- Start late. Open at the moment things go wrong, or just before. Backstory gets a sentence, not a paragraph.
- Know the ending first. Tell it what is different at the end, and every paragraph can lean that way.
- Stop early. End on the image or the action, and leave out the paragraph that says what it meant.
How long should it be
There is no fixed rule. As a guide:
| Length | What fits |
|---|---|
| About 100 words | One moment and a turn |
| 300 to 500 words | One scene, start to finish |
| 700 to 1,000 words | Two or three short scenes and a full arc |
An example
Asked for a quiet, first-person story of about 700 words in which a widower finds his late wife's handwriting in the margins of a library book, and by the end starts writing in the margins himself, an opening along these lines is what to expect:
The book was three weeks overdue before I opened it.
Page forty, in pencil, in the margin: "No. She would never say this."
I knew the handwriting before I knew I was reading.
From there it runs to the length you gave and finishes with him picking up the pencil. If the middle drags or the ending comes too fast, say so in the chat.
Common questions
Is the short story generator free?
Yes. Hemmingway has a free trial with no card needed, and this tool opens it with your answers filled in. You sign up once, and the story is written in the chat.
Can it write a longer story or a novel?
Not well. Hemmingway is better at short writing than at novels. For a book, read how to write a book with AI first.
Can I hand it in for school or enter it in a competition?
Not as your own work, if you are meant to write it yourself. It is more useful as a model: see how an arc fits into 500 words, then write yours. The guide on how to write a short story goes through the steps by hand.
Will it sound like AI?
It is built not to. Hemmingway-1, the model behind it, came first on sounding like a person in our own blind test, Human-Likeness. Fiction still needs your eye, so cut any sentence that explains a feeling the scene has already shown.