Writing Prompts

Here are links to all the prompts I've put up in the past here at Writing About Writing.  Most are prompts I've done myself in some writing class or another or have had to design as part of other projects.

Some are whimsical and mostly free writing. Some are extremely structured and will require you to write exactly the amount or time that they call for. While each "rule" in a prompt often has a reason (most people write better under a time pressure than they do with none, for example) the only real rule with any prompt is to get you writing, so if you feel inspired by parts of the prompt but not the rest, feel free to cheerfully ignore whatever isn't quite working for you.

It's All About the Food                                    Recombine, Reconfigure, Reconstruct
Sunday Prompts--Disney Style                       Fast and Random
Get Into The Head of Your Characters           Metaprompts: The Prompts About Prompts
Concrete Detail                                               Dental Writing Prompts?  Oh yeah.
Writing as a Child                                           Truth and Compassion...And Politics
Make Yourself Aware of Filtering                   Significant Details Eulogy
First Sentences                                              Practice Daily Goal Setting
Sonder: Deepening Minor Characters         The Paradox of the Human Condition-A Civil War Prompt
From a Slightly Different Angle                      NaNoWriMo Warm Up (best done before NaNo)
A New Year's Inventory                                 What Does Success Look Like?
Look Down Your Own Mountain                    The Genre Shell Game
Pinterest Story                                                 "Scene 2"
What Have You Done for me Lately?             Short and Timed
Subvert Expectations (Bango)


If you're enjoying this blog, and would like to see more articles like this one, the writer is a guy with a rent and insurance to pay who would love to spend more time writing. Please consider contributing to My Patreon. As little as $12 a year (only one single less-than-a-cup-of-coffee dollar a month) will get you in on backchannel conversations, patron-only polls, and my special ear when I ask for advice about future projects or blog changes.