Feed Your Creativity with Writing Prompts
Part 1
By: Anna Hallett, Director, The Writing Party
Hungry for new story ideas? Feed your creativity with Writing Prompts. Savory, sweet, sour, or bitter, a prompt is meant to whet your appetite so you can create a feast.
Writing is an art, a craft, and a skill. It takes practice. You may know exactly what you want to write and have a story bubbling over into words. Excellent. Go for it. Most of the time, however, we need a little nudge to get started. A story prompt is a jolt of caffeine for your creativity. You may choose to read a selection of prompts and pick the one that whispers (or shouts if you’re lucky) its story to you or you may pick a prompt at random and challenge yourself to build a story around it. Either way, find a prompt, start writing, and see where it takes you.
Below is a selection of writing prompts to get you started. Turn these ideas into your next short story, poem, novel, or screenplay.
Writing Prompts
- You took an ancestry genetics test and parts of your DNA came back unidentifiable. Are you an alien?
- You enter a single-story office building and find an elevator. Upon entering the elevator, you see all the buttons indicate upper floors. Which button do you press and where do you end up?
- You are the host of a long running trivia game show. One day you realize that all of the “correct” answers are wrong, but no one else notices.
- Last night you had a vivid dream in which you wrote the numbers 16, 42, 53, 97, 832. What do they mean?
- Your best friend books a flight on a space tour. The tour is a quick trip up to orbit and back, but the rocket vanishes. You need to locate the missing rocket and your friend.
- You have a big project due for work tomorrow and you fall asleep working on it. When you wake up, the project is complete and your boss loves it, but you don’t remember doing the work.
- You are reading the latest best seller and realize the story is describing your life, but it goes on to describe events that have not happened yet.
- You purchase a used car. When you return home with the car, you find something wedged under the driver’s seat.
- You have won a lottery sponsored by the United International Space Organization (UISO) and you can now put together a communication that will be broadcast into space. You may include whatever you like: music, art, literature, history, news, media, personal narrative, etc. What do you include? What do the aliens think about your communication? How do they react?
- A fire has destroyed your home and everything in it. You realize this is your opportunity to start a new life.
We would love to read your latest creation. Please share your work in the comments for everyone to enjoy.
For more writing ideas, order The Writing Party Inspirations or Contact Us to schedule a Writing Party event in your area, for your private group, or as a corporate team building event.
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