Creative Writing Prompts
The Subject of Sport
Are there any stories, yours or someone else's around the topic of competitive sport? Here are some ideas for writing a short story about your favourite (or not so favourite) sport.
Write a Story About Being Alone
Some ideas on writing a story about isolation and living alone on a small remote island.
How to Avoid Clichés When Writing the Weather
How writing the weather into your scenes can affect your characters and scenes. Play with contrast and form but do try to avoid the cliches.
What Do You See?
What story can you find in this week’s picture? Ask yourself: what do I see?
Connect Your Mind With Your Body
To write a story with life and vitality you need to connect your mind with your physical self.
Let’s Invent a People
Do you enjoy writing science-fiction or fantasy? Here’s an idea from author N.K. Jemisin on how to go about inventing a new race of people.
There’s a Story I Know
Write a story to be read out loud, a family story you’ve told many times before.
The Weather, Emotions and Your Writing
Ideas on how to weave the weather into the emotional substance of your story.
Practice Writing Nonverbal Emotion
What are nonverbal emotions? All those teeny tiny physical clues that reveal how your characters experience a moment or a scene.
Write From Within Your Characters
Here's another piece of writing advice from Chuck Palahniuk - write from within the point of view of your characters not about them.
Describing Taste and Smell
Write a story, from memory or imagined, exploring a sense of taste or smell.
Finding Stories in Strange Places
Have you ever found yourself somewhere you did not expect to be? Sometimes you find a story when you least expect it.
Create Tension in Your Scenes
Try this wonderful advice from Chuck Palahniuk in his book on writing Consider This, on building tension in your scenes.
Conjuring Ghosts and Monsters
What was the monster that occupied your imagination when you were a child?
Where is the Space in Your Story?
A sense of space can mean different things: geographical space, physical space, emotional space, outer space and personal space. What story can you find here?
Writing Your Memories of Food
Memories of food can be significant. The food you hate. The food you love. Do you cook? Or is the microwave your friend?
What is the Story Here?
Imagine yourself standing with the mannequins. What would the story be?
Learning to Swim
Write about swimming. Or sea creatures. Or your favourite swimsuit. Or your fear of water. It’s all good.
A Letter To Your Future Self
Write a letter a day over the next week, to your future self. Your future self could be one month from now, one year or thirty. You choose.
9 Creative Writing Prompts
There are many ways writers find inspiration for writing a story. Here are nine more.

