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Writing Prompts

Join our ongoing contests and win up to $1,500. Flex those creative muscles with these writing prompts.

Showing 2,786 prompts

Center your story around a mysterious painting.

– 69 stories

Write a story that has a colour in the title.

– 126 stories

Write a story with a huge surprise, either in the middle or the end.

– 81 stories

Center your story around a character who successfully — or unsuccessfully — escapes their fate.

– 77 stories

Write a story that keeps a key detail hidden from the reader until the very end.

– 64 stories

Center your story around a character’s addiction or obsession.

– 77 stories

Write a story inspired by the ultimate clichéd twist: it was all just a dream.

– 91 stories

Center your story around a first or last kiss.

– 96 stories

Your character comes across a stray (dog, cat, human — any kind of animal!). What happens next?

– 56 stories

Write about two characters who meet and/or fall in love in a bookshop, café, or at a wedding.

– 63 stories

Write a story about love without ever using the word “love.”

– 124 stories

Set your story in a world where love is prohibited.

– 78 stories

Your character is getting changed in the bathroom of a nightclub or restaurant, then emerges looking completely different. Why?

– 57 stories

Write a story in which a character discovers that a truth they've believed their whole life is either false or not the whole story.

– 68 stories

Write an open-ended story in which your character’s fate is uncertain.

– 84 stories

Write your story as text messages or an online conversation between two characters — and at least one of them isn’t who they say they are.

– 28 stories

Start your story with the lines: “The room is unfamiliar. I don’t know how I got here.”

– 105 stories

Set your story in a place where the weather never changes.

– 43 stories

Start or end your story with someone standing in the rain.

– 89 stories

Write a story where the weather mirrors a character’s emotions.

– 59 stories

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