Writing Prompts

I used to be in the habit of posting writing prompts. Today I was thinking about starting that up again, which meant going through all thousand+ posts on this weblog to find the ones I already used.  Probably something I should do anyway, but that’s a long-view goal. And it requires some research. My favorite kind of writing prompt has always come from short news stories, and I may repost a few of them. But for immediate gratification I decided to look to other writers and websites, and I found some great resources.

Reddit

Reddit has a huge Writing Prompts subsection. Many prompts are very short, and there’s a definite leaning toward sci-fi, but there are also some gems. Examples:

“Passengers, this isn’t your captain speaking”

Your wife’s last words are surprising. So surprising in fact, that you put down the knife and let her finish speaking.

Awesome Writing Prompts

These are short and tend to run to formula. You are give a title (“Any Given Psycho”) and have to write the story that fits it. Or three nouns that have to figure prominently in your story (a rooster, an empty bag of peanut M&Ms, a diary with a broken lock).  This kind of prompt — a handful of nouns or a simple phrase — often work well for me. I wrote a story called “Emergency Exit Only” following from a similar prompt.

Poets & Writers Magazine

On their website they have a weekly feature called The Time is Now. One example:

Random First Line Prompts

From the UK, a generator that gives you a first line. Example “Why had nobody ever mentioned Mom’s twin?”

Creative Writing Now

This site has a pretty good stash of prompts. Example: “A babysitter is snooping around her employer’s house and finds a disturbing photograph.”

If you know of a really great on-line resource for writing prompts, please let me know in the comments.