Writing prompts are a great way to get your creative juices flowing when you feel stuck or lack ideas you intend to write about. It could be a piece of an idea, a thought process, an event, a feeling, a mood, or a crappy piece of information on the wall that sparks your interest and gives you something to write about.
Writing prompts come in handy in various ways, especially when developing good writing habits and trying to prevent slack in your writing process. Using writing prompts doesn't mean you're lazy, it means you acknowledge your strengths and are willing to prevent making excuses for why you can't write.
Prompts are a great way to start a story in whatever genre you're writing, write a short story, flex your writing muscles, kill boredom, relieve stress, train your mind, sprint writing, write an article, or flesh out an idea and I'll be sharing a list of 130 creative writing prompts you can use to get started.
Not having an idea where to even begin is ultimately worse than writer's block because you need to have an idea before talking about making progress with your stories. As an aspiring author, using writing prompts from any source is a great way to never run out of ideas for any new story you embark on because you can always tweak the prompts to suit the needs of your story and your style of writing.
Writing prompts could come from any of the following:
- A vague and general idea
- A scrap of paper
- A question
- A poster
- A random thought
- A conversation
- A line of dialogue
- An object
- A new type of world
Importance of Writing Prompts
Here are a few importance of writing prompts and why it is essential for young and budding authors to consider using them as a springboard for consistent ideas.
- Developing Good Writing Habits
An easy way to develop good writing habits is to always have something to write about. If you're a mood writer like me, you understand better. I write emotional articles when I'm emotional, or sad, questioning articles when I'm in that zone, and generally random ideas when I feel up to it.
With prompts, you can either write randomly with it or use it to flesh out an idea for a story you'd want to pursue or a short story you'd like to add to your collection or a collection of short stories with the same theme.
- Keeps Your Pen on Paper
- Increases Creativity
At this point, it's safe to say that with writing prompts, your creative streak will never run dry until you have exhausted every possible idea and every different way a single idea can be tweaked to make a different and better story.
Increased creativity gives you room to be more productive in achieving your writing goal or personal development goals you've set for yourself.
It pushes you beyond the norm and makes you see a single idea in different ways. Because you didn't create this idea, it will be your duty to get creative with it and make a work of art out of it which will inevitability challenge your creative mind.
- Encourages Consistency In Practice
You cannot do all that if you're constantly at a loss of where to begin or what ideas to choose from. Ultimately, you can choose to create your prompts from what has been provided for you within the confines of the 130 creative writing prompts I'll be sharing with you and make a killer story out of it.
Creatives Writing Prompts For Fiction/Non-Fiction Authors
Usually, there are more creative writing prompts for fiction authors than non-fiction authors, and a lot of prompts are based on fiction genres and niches but in this post, I'll be sharing snippets of these writing prompts and encourage you to download the entire file for yourself.
Romance Writing Prompts
- Two people within an arranged marriage fall in love - after getting married
- Two lives are changed forever when they embark on a short but sweet love affair.
- College best friends marry to avoid one of them being married off
- One partner moved away, choosing their career over love. They must earn their ex-lover's trust and love once again
- A thunderstorm ignites a close relationship between total strangers/best friends/platonic friends
- Sometimes a holiday makes everything right again and gives you a second chance
- Horrible first dates that evolve into something more
- One partner moved away, choosing their career over love. They must earn their ex-lover's trust and love once again
Erotic Writing Prompts
- It's the last day of college and a couple of nerd friends decide it’s time to run wild at a strip club. It certainly ends in a kinky way or could it have been an orgy
- You join a sensual movie crew and the first thing they teach you is how sensual the community can be.
- A single dad falling for his daughter’s new spicy dance teacher who also happens to be teaching pole dancing. Not that he agrees with her choice of dance, or does he?
- Needing to be rid of your V-card before college begins, you approach your crush who happens to be your brother’s best friend to help you out. He reluctantly agrees but you are in for the shocker of your life.
- He is obsessed with the tech nerd in his office. He’s also scared she may not be into his kind of kink. Guess what? She may be willing to learn too.
- She’s looking for a rebound relationship she can control the terms. He wants a willing mistress.
 |
Horror Writing Prompts
- There were five reasons nobody went to that old place anymore
- They’d been screaming non-stop for an entire week
- There wasn’t supposed to be a door here
- There were fresh dug graves, dinner tables with twinkling lights, and bags of crude tools behind the seats.
- If she moved, they’d hear her. If she didn’t move, they’d find her
- They weren’t supposed to play that dumb game. Now, they have awoken a great evil and it’s coming for them.
- You wake up in a dimly lit tunnel with no idea how to escape
- A house finds a way to kill every visitor on its premises
- A group of friends plays truth or dare. Suddenly, all the lights go out, and in those ten seconds of darkness, one of the people in the group is killed
Mystery Writing Prompts
- He works as a Janitor – but seems to be present at the scene of every murder.
- Something had been ripped from the dead man’s lapel
- Why were specific names crossed off the list stapled to the dead man’s tongue?
- It looked like someone had been searching the house and behind a clue to be found.
- They claimed she was their daughter. But something felt odd and eerily uncomfortable about them.
- One of your classmates mysteriously stops coming to school. It’s been nearly a month since you last saw them. What could have happened to them?
- A couple about to board a plane is caught red-handed with the missing national jewel in their bags. But did they steal this jewel?
- A new couple moves to your neighborhood but they hardly ever socialize. Yet, every night, their house is filled with people moving around who never come out or enter through the main gate.
- Someone has been making calls to the police, stating when and where a dead body will be found. It’s taken as a prank call until bodies start turning up dead.
- For over 5 years, your twin sister was missing. But there she is – Suddenly walking in the middle of the street. Where has she been? What happened to her?
Sci-Fi Writing Prompts
- A race against time in zero gravity
- Nobody knew he was a clone
- A computer virus infects humans
- The scientists agreed that the public shouldn’t know
- A soldier fighting in a far-off space war decides to mutiny and crash-lands with her crew on planet Earth, bringing the fight with her
- She wakes up from a coma—to find she’s no longer a human, but a robot. They had to replace her body with metal for her to survive
- Your billionaire uncle gives you a hi-tech robot for your birthday. He was supposed to be a humanized AI, but….
- An alien crashed its ship in your garden. Not only that, it comes with a warning for the people of earth. What happens next?
Fantasy Writing Prompts
- The tower went silent ten years ago. That’s all anyone knew
- They always underestimated our kind
- It shouldn’t have been possible to open portals inside this hall
- The wand her grandmother gave to her suddenly comes alive on her eighteenth birthday.
- A magical gauntlet falls into the wrong hands
- The teenage boy had been mute since birth. But one day he discovered he could talk with animals
- The staff glowed with a fiery light
- Forging a sword for a special purpose
- The town clock struck thirteen for the first time in 100 years.
- The cloak given to you by your grandfather twitched for the first time on your twenty-fifth birthday.
Children Story Prompts
- Write a story about a
gift you always dreamt of having and suddenly, an angel gifts it to you on your
birthday after asking you to make one wish.
- Write a story about a kid who is moving to a new school. How do you think they might feel?
- Imagine your parents wake you up one morning to tell you they will take you to do anything you want to do for the whole day – you don’t even have to go to school or do your chores. What would you choose to do and why?
- You are writing a letter to someone who is having a hard time making new friends at school. What do you write? What advice do you give them?
- Pretend you walked outside to find a sleeping dragon in the grass! Why is the dragon there? Is it a friendly dragon? What do you do?
Non-Fiction Story Prompts
- Write about an experience, whether positive or negative, that led to a big change in your life. Think of where you would be now if it hadn’t happened
- Do you have a story that you’ll never tell your parents about? Write it in the form of a confession that only you will ever read
- Revisit your first heartbreak and write about how it changed you. What lessons did you learn, and what steps did you take to be a better person?
- Recall a tense or scary situation you’ve been in. Re-explore it by imagining it from another point of view
- Write a self-help book about an issue that you’ve faced and overcome
- Think about a talent or skill you have. Write an instruction manual about it
- Choose a strong emotion and think of two memories associated with it. What are the links between those two memories?
What do you think you'll do for your next writing project with all these and more to choose from? I want to believe you've got your creative mind spinning around a lot of these ideas. Also, it is important to note that, you could blend two ideas from different genres into one story. There are horror-romance stories, mystery-romance, sci-fi horror, fantasy-romance, and a lot more blend you can try.