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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 2675 prompts

Start your story with a student on their first day of apprenticeship.

– 17 stories

Set your story in a world where contacting the dead is as easy as making a phone call.

– 34 stories

Write a story where ghosts and the living coexist.

– 69 stories

Write a story about someone trying to raise the dead.

– 49 stories

Write a story about someone who is haunted. Whether by a ghost or something else is up to you.

– 135 stories

Write a story from a ghost’s point of view.

– 133 stories

You’re awakened from your nap by someone asking, “Are you hungry?”. You fell asleep somewhere else entirely.

– 43 stories

Begin your story with a protagonist taking shelter under a bridge during a thunderstorm. An animal scurries past which shouldn’t exist. Against their better judgment, they decide to follow it out.

– 50 stories

As a child you’re helping your grandparent bake. When you’re sent to the pantry to fetch an ingredient, you discover something odd.

– 39 stories

You arrive at a destination you promised an old friend you’d visit after they passed, only to find them there too.

– 65 stories

Start your story with a character walking through a desert landscape, when they stumble across something unexpected. “That shouldn’t be there,” they muse.

– 49 stories

Write a story about someone who breaks an unwritten social rule and the consequences they face as a result.

– 43 stories

Write about someone who is shackled by fears of failure, until they break free.

– 28 stories

Write from the POV of a security guard on the night shift, sitting in front of a wall of CCTV feeds.

– 46 stories

Set your story in a type of prison cell.

– 80 stories

Write a story that includes the line “I think someone’s listening/watching.”

– 51 stories

‘The worst meal I’ve ever tasted.’ Imagine a zero-star TripAdvisor restaurant review: capture the customer’s evening out that compelled them to complain.

– 31 stories

Write a story that begins, ends, or changes with a song played by a busker.

– 27 stories

‘Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once.’ Use the senses to transport a character back to the past.

– 49 stories

Start the story with the absence of a sensory detail (eg. silence when there should be noise).

– 52 stories

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We made a writing app for you

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