It’s time to get the creative juices flowing with some writing prompts! Whether you’re looking to brainstorm a new project, you need a break from your current writing, or you’re just looking for an excuse to have some fun, you’ve come to the right place. 🙂
A writing prompt can be anything that gives us a starting place for our writing. It can be a story premise, a character sketch, a dialog snippet, or pretty much anything. Writing prompts can be useful for helping us to think about the world in new ways, to ask questions, and to be creative. They are great for helping us move past lulls in our writing, overcoming writer’s block, or for breathing new energy into our projects.
Plus writing prompts can be lots of fun!
I enjoy the possibilities and new ideas raised by writing prompts. I have to stop myself sometimes from getting too carried away otherwise I’d have a hundred one page stories and nothing getting actually finished O:-)
While it’s good to keep myself from getting too carried away (usually), there is also value in taking time to brainstorm and enjoy the creative process. It’s also important to be training ourselves to cultivate and encourage inspiration.
Finding Everyday Inspiration
Brainstorming through writing prompts, asking questions, and thinking of new ideas for our writing, is giving us practice in thinking creatively.
Our brains are tricky, mysterious, and wonderful things. They are fantastically complex and are constantly rewiring themselves, changing to adapt to how we think and behave.
Basically the more we practice or do something, the better at it we get. Sound familiar? This is what going to school and training ourselves in new skills is all about.
Let’s invest that work in our writing.
By intentionally thinking about stories and creativity we can increase our ability to be creative.
Day to day, cultivating this inspiration may looks like:
- Creating backstory and imaginary conversations for the people at the grocery store or on the bus on the way to work
- Imagining how things would be different if your current activity, job, or event were taking place on the other side of the world
- Pretend you are seeing something for the first time and ask all the questions without making assumptions, such as how things work or why we do the things we do
- Actually look around ourselves and absorb the details; the colors, sounds, smells, and textures that can enrich and inspire our stories
All around us are a thousand images and pieces that can prompt our writing if only we are looking for them!
Grab Bag Writing Prompts
Beyond the daily inspiration around us, there are lots of other ways to jumpstart our writing. Ready to create a few writing prompts of your own? We’ll get to a few pre created writing prompts in a moment, but first here’s a fun way to mix things up and create a grab bag type of story prompt.
Note: If you want to add to the suspense, make a list of words for the following categories to then insert into the prompts Mad-Libs style. Otherwise, just fill in the blanks below as you get to them. Categories are: fantasy creature, plural noun, food item, location, mode of transportation, animal, occupation, superhero, and type of cheese.
- Write about a (fantasy creature) who collects (plural noun) and always wants to eat (food item).
- Write about a city in (location) whose economy is based on (plural noun) and everyone travels by (mode of transportation).
- Write about a (type of animal) who is a (occupation) but is wants to be (superhero).
- Write about a (fantasy creature) who can only eat (food item) but has a pet (type of animal) who eats (type of cheese).
Okay so some of these prompts are pretty silly, but the idea is to have fun and to get ourselves thinking and writing. No need to take ourselves too seriously all the time after all 😉
Ready for a few more?
These aren’t all traditional story prompts because I think pretty much any writing can be good writing. And sometimes it can be helpful to write different types of things in order to grow as writers and to think about writing in new ways.
So see what you think and give them a try!
Writing Prompts
Poetry:
- Write a haiku describing your surroundings
- Write a limerick about what you ate for lunch
- Write an acrostic spelling out your name
Lists:
- Make a list of 100 questions you have about the world, or about anything at all (yes, I know this is a lot of questions but it will keep us from asking only the first ones that come to mind)
- Make a list of things you would like to write if you had unlimited time and were not afraid
- List out ways your hometown would be different if it was 100 years in the future
Character prompts:
- Write about a girl who could talk to dogs but not to people
- Write about a boy who knows angels exist but isn’t sure if they’re the good guys or the bad guys
- Write about a kid who can solve any complex math problem but is struggling to pass English class
Worldbuilding prompts:
- Create a culture where people don’t kiss or hug to show affection: what do they do instead? What other forms of communication and body language do they use?
- What would the world look like if gravity depended on the weather?
- What if there was a place where whatever you dreamed would actually come true?
There is an abundance of material all around us for us to use in our writing! Whether it’s from one of these prompts or something else, I hope you find inspiration for brainstorming and thinking of cool story concepts.
Happy writing!
What about you? Where do you come up with your writing ideas? Do you have any favorite writing prompts you’d be willing to share?
