Creative Writing Prompts

Here are several prompts that may give you some ideas for your creative writing.

1.  Choose a photograph from a published collection of black-and-whites, of humans in uncertain conditions.
Write the story of one of the individuals or one of the groupings. 
Describe what happened just before the photo was taken. 
Describe what happened just after the photos was taken.
Tell about the person behind the camera. 

2. Choose a moral dilemma (for example, you see someone pocket several items at a CVS; you’re in a car at night, with people you don’t know well, and the driver hits a dog that ran into the road; you learn that a friend is having unprotected sex, etc) and explain what you would do.  More importantly, explain why you would do it. What do you know about yourself that accounts for such a decision?

3. Create a short story that is 26 sentences long, each sentence beginning with the next letter of the alphabet. (Add other, arbitrary conditions, if desired, such as one sentence should be one-word long; there should be one question mark, one quotation, etc.) Rigid rules often produce fascinating results—such as with well-written sonnets, which have 14 lines and tight rhyme schemes, each line governed by a specific number of syllables and alternating stressed and unstressed s5.yllables.

4. Create a how-to manual for something you can do well (clean a fish, change a flat tire, restring a guitar, make sushi, shop for groceries). Describe the process so that someone else could complete the task based on your directions. Use present tense verbs.

5.  Select a classified ad from a local newspaper.  Write a story to tell why this item is being sold or wanted.