Category: Story Ideas

When we started considering Doctor/Patient as a theme for a prompt list, we had concerns: it has so many inherent potential consent issues, perhaps it would be better not to? But we had a few tempting ideas, and decided…why not give it a try? For the most part, we’ve tried to avoid consent issues, but of course some will crop up (especially depending on how a story written for one of these prompts actually goes!) and of course if the potential consent problems give you pause and you still want some prompts on this theme, nearly all of our suggestions can be read as platonic instead of romantic or sexual! So, without further ado…prompts!

1. That awkward moment when Doctor enters the examination room to meet their newest Patient…and it’s the barista they’ve been crushing on for months. (and yes, it’s mutual pining, and no, the barista didn’t realize that Doctor was their favorite customer.)

2. For years, Doctor has been developing feelings for Patient, but there was no appropriate way to express them, so Doctor makes small (and, they know, also inappropriate) notes (or poems, or doodles, or something similarly personal and really not supposed to be there) in Patient’s file. Patient finds out when they move away and have their records transferred…and they need to know more.

3. An urgent message comes through on subspace: the creatures of a distant planet need a Doctor, stat! Doctor’s ship jumps to hyper-speed to get there as fast as possible, and Doctor is set to treat the Patient(s)…only to discover that there is a massive pheromone incompatibility(…or compatibility, depending on one’s attitude and point of view) between the Doctor’s species and the Patient’s. They experience nigh-irresistible attraction, and it’s mutual, and that might be interesting to explore if the situation wasn’t so dire… 

4. Doctor and Patient coincidentally find each other vacationing at the same spot…which turns out to be a favorite among couples. Most of the events there are aimed at couples, and going solo is awkward at best, agonizing at worst. Neither knows anyone else there, and both are lonely, so they decide, maybe just for the week, they’ll play the couple.

5. Doctor sees Patient’s name on their docket for the day, and their first instinct is panic, because they and Patient dated in college (and Doctor is loathe to admit it but they definitely think of Patient as “the one that got away”) but Doctor is determined to be professional. They can handle this! Patient, on the other hand, only finds out that Doctor is their ex when they arrive. Some names are not at all common…and some are really, really common…how was Patient supposed to know?

6. Local snake oil dealer pretends to be Doctor, develops feels for Patient they’re duping, now has a serious problem. What do?!?!

7. The last thing Doctor wants is to treat their friends, and they have strict policy about that – no office privileges for people they know. Unfortunately, that policy is impossible to enforce when Doctor and friend-and-soon-to-be Patient get lost together while on a hike, and Patient falls down a ravine and is injured. Now, Doctor has no choice but to treat them…and that can’t help but expose some awkward truths about one or both of their feelings.

8. “Oh, I don’t date Doctors,” says (maybe, potential, could be) Patient. 

“Why not?” asks Doctor. 

“I mean, what if your specialty is something obscure, and I have a medical emergency, and you’re the only person in the tri-state area who can treat me? How awkward and awful would it be if that happened and we’re a couple? The ethics of it make my head hurt!” 

“…you…you realize I’m a Doctor of Philosophy, right?”

“…oh.”

“Yes. Oh.”

9. A bright light awakens Patient in the middle of the night, and they’re astonished as a person appears in their home…they blink until their eyes accustom to the light, and when they can finally make out who is there, they discover it’s Doctor. “Look, I don’t have time to explain,” Doctor says, crackling like they’re on a bed cell phone connection. “But you have to find a new Doctor. The future of the world depends on it!”

10. After trekking through the forest, surmounting mountains, and slogging through flooded valleys, Patient finally reaches the hut in which the only Doctor in the province arrives. Patient is in desperate need of help, and they’re prepared to beg for it if necessary…what they’re not prepared for is that their soulmark activates the instant they and Doctor lay eyes on each other.

11. There’s something nigglingly familiar about the person Patient is on a date with, but they don’t think much of it. There’s something nigglingly familiar about the person Doctor is on a date with, but they also don’t think much of it. And it’s a good date. So they go on another, and another, and another, and anyway, it’s somehow six months in before either realizes that they’re dating their Doctor/Patient. (“At least I have the excuse that I only ever see you in a lab coat when you’re treating me – what’s your excuse?” “Look, I’m a little face-blind, okay?”)

12. Doctor isn’t actually a Doctor, they just know a little herbalism because they love tea. Unfortunately, no one else in the caravan realizes that – and the tea is very good, and psychosomaticism is a very powerful force. They finally arrive at their destination, where Doctor had hoped to make a fresh start…and they’ve not been there five hours when Doctor is summoned to attend the local Royals. Apparently, the merchants have promised that Doctor can cure one of the Royals – the Patient’s illness – and the consequences for Doctor failing would be dire.

13. Patient has an hour to kill before their appointment with Doctor, so they scroll through their Grindr/Tinder/etc. until they find a promising hook-up…and their hook-up is Doctor, who also had some time to kill.

14. After a miraculous, innovative bit of medical magic, Doctor and Patient are invited to attend a high-profile conference at a fancy hotel. Unfortunately, the hotel’s receptionist staff misunderstood when the conference organizers indicated that Doctor and Patient are traveling together…so only book them one room, with one king bed. And by the time Doctor and Patient arrive, all the other rooms are booked by others attending the conference, so they’re stuck.

15. Patient is a Patient…but Patient is also a Doctor. In fact, they are Doctor’s Doctor. No, it wasn’t on purpose, and each time they see each other in a Patient/Doctor capacity (with either in either role!) they squabble and argue about how best to treat X, Y, and Z, and concede anything they get wrong begrudgingly, and praise the other for being right even more begrudgingly, and each swears – to each other, to their friends, to the nurses, to the schedulers and office staff, to other random Patients in the waiting room – that they’re definitely going to find a different Doctor before their next appointment. But neither ever does. And neither is brave enough to ask why not.

We hope you enjoy these prompts!

Now go forth, and write a thing!

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As we recruit authors for our first anthology, we thought it would be fun to do some prompts related to our modern-with-magic slice-of-life theme. With that in mind, we put together a prompt list about contemporary settings full of magic…but with all the weirdness of life in the suburbs (primarily US suburbs…). Enjoy, and if you write a story inspired by one of these, we’d love to see it!

1. An EMT is secretly a necromancer. Everyone around them thinks they’re just really, really good at their job. No one finds out the truth until the EMT is in an accident, slips into a coma…and all their reanimated people collapse. Grief and hijinks and confusion ensue.
2. Little shop of magical delights: To the untrained eye, this shop looks like a splendid candy wonderland. Only the initiated know of the other aisle, the one filled with mandrake infused liquorice, fairy dust sticks with real fairy dust and hard candy made with love, elderberries, and orichalcum.
3. A technomancer creates an app that fuses magic with technology – it detects magical emergencies so that response teams can rush there, but sometimes it’s idea of what counts as an emergency is just a smidge skewed.
4. In the basement of a dingy little used bookshop is the entrance to the underground inverted tower of the deity of lost words, who is looking for someone who can handle computers and the internet because they really need a better archiving system than an endless downwards spiraling tower built from letters and books.
5. The van Humberts – who everyone knows are vampires – are in a constant feud with their next door neighbors the Johnsons – who everyone knows are werewolves. After all, vampires and werewolves never get along. Except actually the van Humberts and the Johnsons get along great, they just like to mess with people (don’t you dare call it “trolling,” trolls have made their position on the use of that term very clear!) and if they can cause problems for their most close-minded neighbors while they’re at it, so much the better.
6. The last thing that the volunteer knight task force expects is for their suburb to be attacked by a dragon. Usually only cities have to deal with problems like that! Yet there’s the dragon, and they’re going to have to do something about it…well, that sounds terrifying…
7. Suburban gardeners engage in a game of stunning front lawn one-ups-manship which escalates to creating a brand new micro-climate when all their rose bushes are still in full bloom in January. The homeowners association thinks this must be against the rules but can’t exactly figure out how.
8. Sure, back in the day, people made deals with warlocks for many unseemly reasons, but not anymore…these days, all the upper middle class McMansion owners secretly consult the warlock in the tower in the swamp no one can afford to drain, offering him money and rare potion ingredients and whatever else he requests so that he’ll help their teens get a leg-up on college admissions.
9. Increasingly strict licensing requirements need to be implemented because people, intentionally or inadvertently, keep selling dangerous enchanted items during their yard sales.
10. Someone is building a strip mall. No one is sure who is building it. No one is sure where it’s being built. The community is split as everyone complains “not in my backyard!” Every time someone sees construction taking place, the strip mall-to-be is in a different location, but with the same amount of progress as it had when it was last sighted. One desperate person just wants to find the marketing office so that they can find out what rents will be.
11. When the elderly Mr. Smith passes away, his house goes from looking spic and span, his car brand new, his belongings all the finest, to being a ruin, and that’s when the neighborhood learns that Mr. Smith was never “keeping up with the Jones’,” he was just an illusionist.
12. The local homeowner’s association meets their match in the eccentric owner of that crooked little hut on the corner. They can’t get past his garden to deliver the scathing letters reminding him to trim his lawn. One swears the sunflowers shot seeds at her. Another gets lost in between the two (2) hedges. A third is cowering in her basement ever since she met the garden gnomes.
13. There’s always that one kid in band who is the distant descendant of a bard, and so it’s depressingly common for school holiday performance to require the intervention of an emergency response team to pull the audience out of the stupor the performer’s music has induced in them…
14. While everyone agrees that community diversity is critical, and they’re certainly trying to bring in a wider range of types of people, no one anticipated how many problems would be caused when people from multiple faiths and traditions start doing magic in the same suburb. Teens from different families, and different magical paths, get together to go on a quest to solve the magical messes that result.
15. Tensions run high after the community’s independence day celebration. No one considered that fireworks plus tons of backyard barbecue plus a full moon could unleash that much chaos among the local werewolf community.