“What If?

” Scenarios 
 
1. What if we are all really just a rock floating in space with no purpose? 
2. What if I could choose to be anybody in the world? 
3. What if something about your appearance changed every time you got wet (taking a 
shower, swimming, standing in the rain, etc.)? 
4. What if we actually woke up as a different person each day? 
Tweak to: what if you changed bodies every day? (See: David Levithan’s Every Day). Or 
what if you woke up one day and  
5. What if I had told someone the first time he hurt me? 
6. What if there's no future? So people can really appreciate right NOW? 
Tweak to: What if you lived the same day over and over? So many variations of this. 
Why? How out of the maze?  
7. What if in order to follow your dream you had to let go of all that you knew and walk away 
from all that you love to give yourself the best chance at succeeding? 
8. What if you had to choose between a comfort familiarity or new unknown possibilities? 
9. What if I started anew in a foreign country and left everything I’ve ever known and loved?  
Tweak: Coming of age novel about someone going abroad. Why? What running from? 
To? 
10. What if I settle with a boring life everyone tells me to follow or simply sell everything and 
move away to follow my dream? 
Tweak: What if you start with A and decide to B? You can see the variations of this 
depending on what defines a boring life and what defines a dream​. 
11. Who am I really when no one else is watching? 
Tweak: Does this mean we are being watched? By who? Is this a tech-dystopian a la 
Black Mirror?  
12. What if in order to follow your dream you had to let go of all that you knew and walk away 
from all that you love to give yourself the best chance at succeeding? 
13. What if you could give up now, not a day later, not a hour later, but now. Would you? 
Tweak:  
14. What if we die and that’s all? Am I going to be happy for not doing the things I wanted to 
because I thought I would go to “hell”? 
Tweak: This is a philosophical question we ask ourselves.  
15. What if life is just a illusion, what if we don’t really exist? 
16. What if he doesn't think of me while he drinks his favourite red wine anymore? 
17. What if you could choose between having everything easily or have to work a lot to 
archive your goals and grow from it? 
18. What if my husband and children all died tomorrow?  
Tweak: This could be a serious mediation on life after loss. Or, it could be an anti-hero 
mother who’s unleashed of obligation and becomes an assassin. Or a revenge novel if 
someone killed them.  
19. What if you have to choose between a career or your dream career? 
20. What if the world we live in isn’t the one we think we know? 
Tweak: The basis of so many dystopian novels like The Giver.  
21. What if today is the last day I'm living? 
22. What if you knew how you were going to die?? 
23. What if you knew when you were going to die but you couldn't do anything about it? 
See Denton Little’s Death date. They Both Die At The End. OUr Last Day On Earth. 
24. What if you could recreate yourself. How would you? 
Tweak: A Cinderella story? A crime story? 
25. What if our lives were just lies? 
26. What if time is just an illusion and everything really happens at once? 
27. What if birthmarks are places where and how we died in past lives? 
28. What if we lived more than one life? 
Tweak: A multiverse story. You meet a different you from a different multiverse. Or you 
get swapped. Why? Who do you meet? How do you get back? 
29. What if the life I'm living right now is just a dream? What is my real life like when I actually 
wake up? 
30. What if I choose to save myself? 
Tweak: A redemption story. I’m an addict and I get clean. OR a medical drama. I create 
the cure for my own disease. Or an adventure story: Lost in the woods and I have to save 
myself.  
31. What if everyone was crazy and the crazy people were the ones who were actually sane? 
32. What if I could be there instead of here?What if there is no afterlife and I'll never see her 
again?  
Tweak: A metaphysical ghost story.  
33. What if there's no happy ending but only life?  
34. What if I never find the one or if there isn't the one? 
35. What if you were able to genetically alter your child while they were still in the womb?  
36. What if every child had a safe, loving environment to go home to every night? 
37. What if you could choose who you fall in love with? 
38. What if we could actually turn our "what if's" into reality? 
39. What if these random scenarios that we come up with in our heads are actually 
happening in an alternate universe? 
40. What if you're not good enough? 
Tweak: What if you live your life thinking too much about others and not loving yourself? 
41. What if we all loved a life without fear?  
42. What if I could live forever? 
43. What if I choose to explain my career goals to my boss instead stay for recognition? 
44. What if I had chosen a different shirt this morning? 
45. What if you were able to go back to a crossroad in your life and choose an alternate path? 
Tweak: Sliding doors story. You wear the white shirt and someone spills coffee on it and 
you have to go home and change and get electrocuted by a manhole cover. You wear a 
brown shirt and someone spills coffee on it and and it doesn’t show so you go to work. 
 You wear a red shirt and on the bus someone else is wearing a red shirt and you strike 
up a conversation and this is the love of your life. 
46. What if I could be a great writer? 
What if indeed? 
47. What if the only way to save the world is to not save yourself? 
Tweak: Martyr story. A bazillion of them. You want to crash the space ship into the death 
star?  
48. What if I had given that last hug? 
49. What if we could rewrite our lives and relive them? 
50. What if one small decision really did change the course of your entire life? 
51. What if I were diagnosed with a disease the could change everything? 
52. What if you could live forever while everyone else can’t? 
53. What if you woke up and forgot who you were? 
54. What if we could communicate with animals? 
See: The Knife Of Never Letting Go. See: Dr. Doolittle.  
55. What if I really am just overthinking? 
56. What if phobias were based on something that killed us in a past life? 
57. What if every disability and sickness was actually something too great for the human mind 
to understand?  
58. What if cancer wasn’t a disease, but a source of power we just don’t know how to control? 
Tweak: What if people considered flawed or sick have super powers? 
59. What if you realized "after" may be too late to fulfill what you want to do? 
60. What if I wasn't capable of falling in love?  
Tweak: The premise of 78 percent of all love stories. 
61. What if the animals take control of the world and the humans are the pets? 
62. What if at the end of your life, you see the version of yourself you could have been? 
Tweak; Interesting take on the life flashing before your eyes. It’s a saga only the kicker is 
that you’re not seeing the actual life but the might’ve been. Woven in with the reasons 
why it’s not.  
63. What if you had the power to save three lives in exchange for years off of your own life? 
64. What if i could read people's minds? 
65. What if you had to choose to save yourself or someone you love? 
66. What if you had to choose between love and freedom? 
Tweak: What kind of love? What kind of freedom? This could be a contemporary take on 
marriage (not freedom) or a tragic love story about someone living in confinement, or 
government control, given a choice to leave, but having to leave love behind? 
67. What if no matter what decade, era, time period, country, continent, space, and time my 
husband and I would still find each other and fall in love? 
Time-traveling love story. Who does not love those? You take the specifics of your love 
for your husband and make it sing. 
68. What if the hope I am holding onto is nothing but a mirage?  
69. What If the climb just gets steeper from here, will I give up on my dreams in such case?  
70. What if I never truly find myself, will I be able to love myself then? 
71. What if I did not hold back in speaking what was on my mind?  
Tweak: What if suddenly you couldn’t tell lies anymore? How would that change life? 
72. What if I was brave enough to speak for myself? 
73. What if there is nothing wrong with you? 
74. What if you had to choose between the love of your life and your best friend? 
75. What if we could count all the stars in the night sky? 
76. What if I was 5 minutes earlier?  
77. What if nobody told her? 
78. What if I never get to read all the books on my shelves? 
Tell me about it! 
79. What if people can foretell the future? 
80. What if this world is just simulation and we’re all just NPCs waiting for our code to run out 
of things for us to do? 
Tweak: Popular theme. The Matrix, etc. Simulation theory.  
81. What if I could project my mind out of my body? 
82. What if feelings and emotions were sold like things? 
83. What if you started a new life in a foreign country and left everyone you ever knew and 
loved?