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Writing Prompts: 60 Ideas You Can Use Today

August 23, 2018 | 4 min read

When I was in elementary school, I had a teacher who would have us freewrite to writing prompts he would write on the whiteboard. Every Monday morning, we would spend the first 10 minutes of class writing about dragons, time travel, or our weekends.

I had stopped using writing prompts after that 4th grade English class. This changed once I began writing thousands of words per day. Some days, I just didn’t know what to write about. Other days, I already had a topic in hand, but I couldn’t find the words. Writing prompts have been a great tool to help me defeat writer’s block and swiftly put pen to paper.

A writing prompt is a topic around which you start writing ideas. You’re free to stick to the subject or let your mind wander.

Benefits of Writing Prompts

1. Put pen to paper. Instead of thinking about what to write about, writing prompts give you a topic to start writing about immediately.

2. Practice makes perfect. Writing prompts help you build your writing “muscles”. This habit will help make it easier for you to start writing and will teach you to write longer.

3. Increase your creativity. Writing prompts can make you see the world in a new light, or a way you’ve never imagined.

Maybe you want to buckle down and finish that novel. Or perhaps you needed to complete that blog post yesterday. Regardless of your circumstance, prompts can be your ticket out of uncreative purgatory and back to the writing promised land.

Freewrite writing prompts and inspiration

60 Writing Prompts to Spark Your Imagination

1. What was your favorite childhood vacation?

2. The last words of your novel are, “As night became day, he started to understand the truth.” Now, go write the rest.

3. Turn one of the last texts you sent into a story.

4. Add an original scene to the last movie you watched.

5. Two friends have a disagreement.

6. Write about your favorite teacher.

7. Outside the window, you see something you can’t believe.

8. Write about the first time you held someone's hand.

9. Write about the last thing/person that made you smile.

10. Write about a time you were lost.

11. Write about your first job.

12. Write a letter to your 14-year old self.

13. Write about why you write.

14. Five years from now, I will be.

15. Write about your dream vacation.

16. Do you like to be alone or with company?

17. You have $300 and a Prius, describe the 2,800 mile road trip from NYC to LA.

18. Write about your biggest goal.

19. Write about your biggest fear.

20. A conversation you and a stranger have on a plane.

21. A time you or someone you love was scammed.

22. Turn the last song you listened to into a story.

23. Describe the life of your favorite singer.

24. Write about a piece of furniture in the room you’re in.

25. If I knew then what I know now.

26. If you could travel back in time, where would you go?

27. You have a billion dollars in your bank account. How did you make it?

28. You’ve discovered a new planet. Describe what you see.

29. If you could do anything for work, what would you do?

30. You live on an abandoned island, describe your morning routine.

31. You’re in a foreign country and don’t speak the native language.

32. Describe how you think your grandparents met.

33. Write about a time you failed.

34. You wake up today with the superpower of your choosing.

35. You’re a dog, describe your interaction with a human.

36. Write about someone you admire.

37. Go to Twitter or Facebook and write about the first post you see.

38. Write about a time you were uncomfortable.

39. She tried to forget him, but never could.

40. Just as your flight takes off, you discover a shocking note under your seat.

41. None of your friends remember you, describe yourself to them.

42. An island rose from the sea.

43. Out of the ashes, arose a hero.

44. The whales grew feet.

45. I open the last book on earth.

46. You knock louder and louder on the door, but nobody answers.

47. The door you had locked, is wide open.

48. Just as you fall asleep, the phone rings.

49. She had the perfect party planned, only to have it ruined by her ex.

50. She said her final words and left, there’s no turning back now.

51. A blind man falls in love, describe his feelings.

52. You have the power to stop time, what do you do?

53. The sun rose for the final time.

54. You discover that your partner is a robot.

55. You have 10 days to live.

56. How will cars look in 50 years?

57. This needs to be cleaned, the police will be here any minute.

58. For years, he carefully planned out this day.

59. The birds didn’t go south for the winter.

60. It’s June 13th, the snow won’t stop falling.

Now that you've been inspired, the next step is writing consistently! Writers who use our Freewrite distraction-free writing tools have seen their word counts double. Could a Freewrite be right for you?!

Learn more about the "Draft First, Edit Later" Freewrite philosophy that drives prolific output. And, check out the Freewrite Alpha for an on-the-go writing partner.

For even more prompts, check out the Words Are Hard Creative Prompt Pack from Freewrite.

Carlton Clark loves is a writer, marketer, and entrepreneur. At the age of 14, he founded the media company ballplayerplus.com. Currently, Carlton helps businesses share their stories through social media and blogging.

When he’s not writing or creating content, Carlton coaches youth baseball and plays guitar. You can find him online on Instagram @itscarltonclark and on Twitter @carlton_mukasa.

"In Ireland, novels and plays still have a strange force. The writing of fiction and the creation of theatrical images can affect life there more powerfully and stealthily than speeches, or even legislation."

So we decided to go on a mission to learn from some of Ireland's greatest writers.

Here are just a few of the quotes that struck us:

"A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave."

Oscar Wilde cuts right to the heart of creativity here. What is creativity but the mind striking out of the grooves of regularity?

"I love communicative problems. They always introduce just enough friction for me to feel drawn into a scene, when there’s some slippage between what somebody is trying to say, or feels capable of saying, and what the other person wants to hear or is capable of hearing."

If you've read any of Sally Rooney's award-winning books, you'll recognize this device in her plots. Try the same in your work when things are feeling a little dry or slow.

"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again."

Nobody presents writing truths as concise and witty as Oscar Wilde. Who among us hasn't agonized over a comma for hours?

Sounds like Oscar needed a Freewrite.

"I don’t ever plot. And I do very little research, as little as possible. I prefer to use my imagination. Language is older and richer than we are and when you go in there and let go and listen, it’s possible to discover something way beyond and richer than your conscious self."

Claire Keegan's a freewriter! In this interview, Claire explains that the main character in her award-winning book, Small Things Like These, completely changed over the course of rewrites and revisions.

"The novel space is a pure space. I'm nobody once I go into that room. I'm not gay, I'm not bald, I'm not Irish. I'm not anybody. I'm nobody. I'm the guy telling the story, and the only person that matters is the person reading that story, the target. It's to get that person to feel what I'm trying to dramatize."

Colm Tóibín perfectly sums up the disembodied experience of writing here. The writer disappears and the characters take center stage.

"The important thing is not what we write but how we write, and in my opinion the modern writer must be an adventurer above all, willing to take every risk, and be prepared to founder in his effort if need be. In other words we must write dangerously."

James Joyce was certainly an adventurer, and though his notion to a "modern writer" predates ours by about a century, we don't think all that much as changed. Writers still need to take risks!

"I don’t say I was ‘proceeding down a thoroughfare.’ I say I ‘walked down the road.’ I don’t say I ‘passed a hallowed institute of learning.’ I say I ‘passed a school.’ You don’t wear all your jewellery at once. You’re much more believable if you talk in your own voice."

Maeve Binchy's own voice is apparent in every book she wrote. Her characters speak like real people, and that makes them all the more endearing.

"Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry."

What a poetic way to encapsulate the experience of writing poetry. Yeats certainly knew a thing or two about using that internal quarrel to create beautiful, timeless work.

Learn more