70 Fairytale Giant Writing Prompts: Ancient Beings, Hidden Kingdoms & Impossible Bargains
Giants have been stomping through fairytales, myths and folklore for centuries. Sometimes they are terrifying monsters waiting at the top of a beanstalk; sometimes they are ancient guardians, lonely outsiders or strange remnants of a world that existed before humans. From the infamous giant of Jack and the Beanstalk and the child-eating giants of Jack the Giant Killer to the enormous inhabitants of Brobdingnag in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and the gentler giants of modern children’s literature, these larger-than-life characters can be far more varied than the traditional monster lurking in a castle. If you are building your own magical world, explore the Fairytales & Folklore Hub for even more inspiration for kingdoms, characters, creatures and enchanted places.
The best giant stories often play with scale, power and perspective. A giant might tower over an entire village but be terrified of something humans consider insignificant; a seemingly ordinary mountain might wake after a thousand years; or a young giant might discover that the tiny people she has been warned about all her life are not quite the villains she expected. Giants can guard castles in the clouds, wander forgotten valleys, serve ancient kings, demand impossible tributes or become unlikely companions to human heroes. For more unexpected starting points, the Fairytale Story Sparks are designed to help you discover characters, conflicts and strange little ideas that can grow into complete stories.
Below, you’ll find 70 Fairytale Giant Writing Prompts divided into seven sections, with plot ideas, story titles, opening lines, closing lines, character concepts, settings and visual prompts to help you approach giants from completely different directions. Use them to plan a traditional fairytale, twist familiar folklore into something darker, build a whimsical children’s story or create an entirely new world where giants have their own kingdoms, customs and secrets. And if one enormous creature sends your imagination in an entirely different direction, you can find hundreds more prompts, generators and story-building resources inside the Creative Writing Archive.
1. Plot Prompts
Giants can be villains, protectors, forgotten rulers, lonely outsiders or creatures caught between the human world and something much older. Use these plot prompts to build complete fairytales around mysterious bargains, ancient conflicts, hidden kingdoms and giants who may not be quite what they first appear.
For generations, a village has been built across what everyone believes is a strangely shaped mountain. When earthquakes begin shaking the houses each night, a young shepherd discovers that the mountain is actually a sleeping giant—and something beneath the earth is beginning to wake him.
Every midsummer, a giant descends from the mountains and demands one precious object from the royal family. This year, the newly crowned queen refuses to pay. What does the giant truly want, and what happened the last time a monarch broke the bargain?
A young girl gathering herbs is accidentally scooped up with a handful of flowers and carried miles away in a giant’s pocket. When she finally escapes, she discovers that the giant has taken her somewhere humans have been forbidden to enter for centuries.
The king offers a fortune to whoever kills the final giant in the kingdom. A young hunter accepts the challenge, only to discover that the giant is guarding something the royal family desperately wants to remain hidden.
A princess born to human parents begins growing at an impossible rate. By her eighteenth birthday, she towers above the palace walls. When the king orders his daughter hidden from the neighbouring kingdoms, she discovers an ancient story suggesting she may not be his child at all.
Spring refuses to arrive because a lonely giant has trapped winter inside his mountain palace. A miller’s daughter is sent to retrieve it, but discovers the giant has a heartbreaking reason for refusing to let the season end.
A boy climbs an enormous tree during a storm and discovers a ruined giant kingdom above the clouds. The giants vanished long ago, yet enormous fires have recently begun burning in the abandoned palace windows.
To end a war between humans and giants, a princess is promised in marriage to the giant king’s eldest son. When she reaches his distant kingdom, she discovers her intended husband has disappeared—and both sides accuse the other of murdering him.
A stone giant has stood motionless at the entrance to a valley for hundreds of years. When a child places a flower in its enormous hand, the giant opens its eyes and asks a single question: “Where is my king?”
A cruel giant cannot be killed because his heart is hidden somewhere beyond his body. A thief is sent to find it, but when she finally does, she discovers that destroying the heart would also destroy the enchanted valley the giant protects.
2. Title Prompts
A title can suggest an entire fairytale before you know anything about its characters or plot. Choose one of these giant-inspired titles and imagine the story behind it, from forgotten creatures sleeping beneath mountains to strange kingdoms where humans are the ones who seem impossibly small.
The Giant Beneath the Mountain
Where the Giants Sleep
The King and the Last Giant
The Girl in the Giant’s Pocket
The Giant Who Collected Crowns
A Castle Built for Giants
The Giant’s Smallest Daughter
The Valley of Sleeping Giants
The Giant at the End of the World
When the Mountain Woke
3. Opening Line Prompts
The first line of a fairytale can introduce danger, mystery or something impossible before the reader has time to question it. Choose one of these opening lines and continue the story, following the questions it creates to discover your characters, world and conflict.
Everyone in the village knew not to climb the mountain after sunset, but nobody had ever told Elian that the mountain could climb down.
The giant arrived at the palace gates on the morning of the princess’s wedding.
For three hundred years, the enormous stone hand had remained closed.
Mara had lived inside the giant’s castle for eleven years before she realised there was another human there.
The king had promised that there were no giants left in his kingdom.
When the mountain opened its eyes, every church bell in the valley began to ring.
The giant kept many strange things in glass jars, but only one of them knew how to speak.
Nobody noticed the enormous footprints until they appeared inside the castle walls.
Every winter, the giant left a single golden coin outside the baker’s door.
On the morning of her eighteenth birthday, Princess Elodie woke to discover that her feet no longer fitted inside her bedroom.
4. Closing Line Prompts
Starting with the final sentence lets you build a fairytale backwards. Choose an ending that intrigues you and imagine what bargain, adventure, betrayal or discovery could have brought your characters to that final moment.
And beneath the distant mountains, the giants began to wake.
She placed the tiny crown in the giant’s palm and watched him close his fingers around it.
Nobody ever discovered where the giant went, although every spring enormous flowers appeared along the northern road.
Only then did the king understand why the giant had spared him.
The mountain had disappeared by morning.
She looked down at the tiny kingdom beneath her feet and finally understood where she belonged.
From that day forward, the villagers left one empty chair at every midsummer feast.
The giant smiled, stepped backwards into the clouds and was never seen again.
Beneath the palace floor, something enormous opened its eyes.
And so the smallest girl in the kingdom became the first human queen of the giants.
5. Character Prompts
Giants do not have to be simple monsters waiting for a hero to defeat them. Use these character prompts to create giant rulers, children, guardians, outsiders and humans whose lives have become unexpectedly entangled with the giant world.
The youngest son of a brutal giant king secretly collects tiny human books and dreams of leaving the mountains to see the kingdoms he has only read about.
A celebrated knight has spent twenty years hunting giants, only to discover that the creature blamed for destroying his childhood village may have been innocent.
A curious young giantess has been forbidden from approaching human settlements because her mother insists that humans are dangerous, deceitful creatures.
An impossibly old giant remembers the kingdom before its castles, roads or royal families existed—and knows that the current king has no right to the throne.
An ordinary shepherd is secretly responsible for protecting a group of sleeping baby giants disguised by enchantment as sheep.
A giant born barely taller than a human is treated as an embarrassment by his enormous family but discovers that his size allows him to enter places no other giant can reach.
A formidable giant queen wears the crowns of defeated human kings around her wrist like a bracelet, yet she has unexpectedly sent an offer of peace to the human kingdom.
A human woman has survived for years as a cook in a giant’s castle, preparing enormous feasts while quietly helping captured travellers escape through the kitchen.
A guardian carved from the mountainside wakes only when the kingdom faces a threat powerful enough to destroy it.
The only giant child born in a century is hidden deep within the mountains because an old prophecy claims that whoever controls the child will control every giant still alive.
6. Setting Prompts
A world built for giants can make even familiar fairytale locations feel strange again. Use these settings to explore enormous castles, forgotten landscapes, hidden settlements and places where the history of humans and giants has quite literally shaped the land.
An enormous kitchen where cauldrons are as wide as ponds, knives resemble swords and human prisoners hide inside cupboards, flour sacks and cracks between the floorboards.
A peaceful green valley where the hills are actually ancient giants who lay down to sleep thousands of years ago.
A crumbling giant castle hidden above a permanent layer of clouds, filled with enormous abandoned rooms and treasures no human could possibly carry.
A forbidden landscape scattered with colossal bones, broken weapons and stone monuments carved with the names of giants forgotten by human history.
A royal court built inside a hollow mountain where giant nobles gather beneath chandeliers made from entire trees.
A magnificent walled garden where ordinary flowers grow taller than houses, strawberries are the size of carriages and dangerous creatures hide beneath enormous leaves.
A secret human settlement built beneath the furniture of an enormous abandoned giant’s house, where generations have lived without ever seeing the outside world.
An ancient stone bridge spanning an impossible chasm, built for enormous travellers and guarded by the last creature who remembers where the road once led.
A vast kingdom beyond the mountains where humans are considered creatures of legend and tiny human objects are displayed in royal collections as mysterious ancient artefacts.
A remote island shaped by the presence of a solitary giant, where enormous footprints have become lakes and abandoned household objects have become landmarks.
7. Picture Prompts
Pictures can provide the first spark for a story without giving you any rules about where that story has to go. Look closely at each giant picture prompt below and consider who the characters might be, what has happened immediately before the scene and what could happen next. Use the setting, expressions, clothing, objects or relationship between the giant and human characters as inspiration, then take the story in any direction you choose.
Go Deeper into Writing Fairytale Giant Stories
A giant can be much more than an enormous obstacle for a hero to defeat. The most interesting giant stories explore what it means to live at a completely different scale, how humans and giants understand—or misunderstand—one another, and what happens when ancient creatures collide with kingdoms that have forgotten they ever existed. Once you have chosen a prompt, use these ideas to develop it into a richer fairytale.
◆ Play with scale. Think beyond simply making your giant tall. A teacup might become a bath to a human, a staircase could take hours to climb, a garden could feel like a dangerous forest and an ordinary cat might become a terrifying beast.
◆ Decide how giants fit into the world. Are they common enough that kingdoms have learned to live alongside them, or are they creatures most humans believe disappeared centuries ago? Their place in history will shape how characters react when one appears.
◆ Give your giant a desire. Instead of making the giant dangerous simply because they are a giant, decide what they actually want. They might be searching for a lost child, protecting their home, collecting beautiful objects, seeking revenge, longing for companionship or trying to reclaim land stolen generations ago.
◆ Explore the human perspective. A giant who gently picks up a traveller may believe they are helping, while the terrified human experiences it as an abduction. Differences in size, language and customs can create conflict without either character deliberately causing harm.
◆ Turn the landscape into history. Mountains might be sleeping giants, lakes could fill ancient footprints and strange stone formations might be the remains of a forgotten battle. Let giants leave physical traces on the fairytale world long after they have gone.
◆ Create giant customs and traditions. Consider what giants eat, where they live, how they marry, what they treasure, how they bury their dead and what stories they tell about humans. A few distinctive traditions can make them feel like a culture rather than simply a type of monster.
◆ Use familiar fairytale ideas in unexpected ways. Beanstalks, castles in the clouds, stolen treasure and giant hunters can all appear without recreating Jack and the Beanstalk. Change who holds the power, who is telling the story or what the supposedly dangerous giant is protecting.
◆ Give size a disadvantage. Being enormous should not automatically make a character unbeatable. Giants may struggle to hide, enter human buildings, cross fragile bridges or handle tiny objects. A much smaller character may be able to accomplish something a giant physically cannot.
◆ Build around an old bargain. Fairytales thrive on promises, debts and rules. Perhaps a kingdom owes the giants one golden crown every century, a royal family promised never to cross a mountain pass or humans were allowed to settle the valley only while the giants slept.
◆ Ask who the real monster is. A feared giant may turn out to be protecting the kingdom, while the celebrated giant hunter has built their reputation on a lie. Reversing the reader’s assumptions can transform a familiar fairytale creature into the centre of a much more surprising story.
Final Thoughts
Giants have endured in fairytales because they can represent so many different things: danger, power, isolation, greed, ancient history or simply the fear of encountering something far bigger than ourselves. Whether your giant lives above the clouds, sleeps beneath a mountain, rules a hidden kingdom or quietly protects a human village, try moving beyond the familiar monster-versus-hero story and asking what the world looks like from the giant’s perspective. If you want to keep developing the kingdoms, creatures and magical rules surrounding your story, head to the Fairytales & Folklore Hub for more worldbuilding ideas and inspiration.
You can also explore the Fairytale Story Sparks whenever you want a quick starting point for a new enchanted tale, or browse the Creative Writing Archive for even more writing prompts, story ideas, generators and resources across fantasy, horror, romance and other genres. Choose the idea that catches your imagination, change anything that does not fit your story, and see just how far one enormous footprint can take you.
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