Pirate Writing Prompts & Story Ideas (2024)

Looking for some exciting pirate writing prompts and story ideas? You’ve come to the right place! Here is an arr-ay of prompts, story ideas and story starters for middle-schoolers to high school students to NaNoWriMo warriors to any seasoned writers!

Read on for prompts like Blackbeard having Medusa’s snake hair instead of beard, or a group of pirates who can’t seem to get out of a certain lighthouse’s reach!

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The Definition of Pirate
Themes Found in Pirate Stories
Pirate Writing Prompts & Story Ideas
More-Ideas?

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The Definition of Pirate

Piracy is an act of theft or criminal violence committed by ship or boat-borne assailants against another ship or a coastal region, often with the intent of stealing cargo and other valuables. Pirates are those who commit acts of piracy.

Piracy was first attested in the 14th century BC, when the Sea Peoples, a group of ocean pirates, raided ships of the Aegean and Mediterranean civilizations. Narrow passages that funnel commerce into predictable routes, such as the seas of Gibraltar, the Strait of Malacca, Madagascar, the Gulf of Aden, and the English Channel, have historically provided possibilities for pirate assaults.

Themes Found in Pirate Stories

What makes pirate stories so fascinating? The answer lies in the adrenaline-pumping hunt for treasure, power and love, sprinkled throughout with greed, lust, betrayal and intrigue. If you’re anything like me, you can’t get enough of it!

The popular obsession with piracy predates Stevenson’s classic 1883 novel Treasure Island. There’s romanticism in burying loot with a bloody X on a map and forcing foes to walk the plank for shark food. In essence, piratical activity has a timeless quality to it: living a lawless life, stealing from the affluent, and rebelling against authority.

Hollywood has long cashed in on the pirate obsession from Hook to the hit franchise Pirates of the Carribean, and you should, too!

Now, to help get your wheels turning on what kind of pirate story to write, we’ve put together some exhilarating prompts that will have you itching to get started.

Please note that all the genders in this prompts are just placeholders.

Pirate Writing Prompts & Story Ideas

Below are some thrilling pirate story ideas and writing prompts from Blackbeard having Medusa’s snake hair instead of beard, or a group of pirates who can’t seem to get out of a certain lighthouse’s reach!

(Please note that all the genders in this prompts are just placeholders and are not meant to enforce any hurtful stereotypes nor to offend anyone.)

Pirate Prompts: Adventures

1. While dealing with a devastating a storm, a group of surviving pirates must cope with dwindling supplies, each other, and delusion.

2. Eight strangers aboard a cruise ship must battle various weird happenings they slowly uncover that the Captain of the ship is the descendant of a late famous pirate and the eight strangers are somehow connected to the pirate’s death.

3. When his father passes away in suspicious nature, a pirate captain’s bastard son must compete with a line of people who want to succeed his father The only problem? He’s prone to seasickness.

4. When a struggling 18th-century journalist who sneaks aboard a pirate ship to obtain an exclusive story gets found out by the rest of the crews, what will become of his fate?

5. A prince or princess, yearning for adventure, disguises themselves as a pirate and joins a notorious crew. But soon they learn that there’s a reason why their parents, the King and Queen, forbid them to go near the sea…

FROM: Not Your Usual Royalty Story Ideas (2023)

Pirate Prompts: Mystical Creatures

1. When the captainship of a pirate vessel is determined by a cursed pendant passed from one captain to the next, an extraordinary incident occurs, giving a mermaid the command of a vast pirate ship.

2. When a pirate captain kidnaps a physician to treat his injured crews and then he himself suddenly passes away, the physician finds that he’s been entrusted with the captainship of the vessel.

3. Let’s throw some vampires into the equation because, why not? A pirate ship’s crews only come to life during the twilight hours, plundering anything in its way not for the riches and treasure but to feed.

4. What happens when the pirates and the sirens team up to ensnare any ship which dare to cross their paths? And what happens when a band of siren hunters entice the pirates to double cross the sirens?

5. What if Blackbeard has Medusa’s curse, and instead of a beard, he has her snake hair?

Picture Prompts

Here are some picture-based pirate story ideas, because, a picture speaks a thousand words! Below are some image prompts as well as some prompt ideas to accompany each.

(Please click on the image for more information.)

1. When a sea creature has gotten used to the taste of human flesh, it uses Blackbeard’s ghost ship, famous for carrying insurmountable gold, as a bait to lure treasure hunters’ ships within its reach.

2. A terrifying sea creature keeps a solitary pirate crew as a “pet” and goes as far as hunting food and finding him a human friend!

(Please click on the image for more information.)

1. What happens when a group of pirates can’t seem to get out of a certain haunted lighthouse’s reach?

2. A lighthouse which turns everyone who gazes upon its light into a cursed merpeople.

More Ideas?

There have been various reiteration of pirate stories out there, but none of them are written by you YET! Armed with the above pirate story ideas and writing prompts, it’s time to set sail and bring your own swashbuckling adventures to life!

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