Writing Prompt Generator

Creative Writing Prompt Generator: 30 Story Starters

Characters

1. A lighthouse keeper receives a letter addressed to someone who died fifty years ago.
2. A shy robot is chosen to give the school speech.
3. Two neighbors discover they have been leaving notes in the same library book.
4. A girl finds a door in her wardrobe that is only open on Tuesdays.
5. An old fisherman who has never caught anything finally catches something that talks.
6. A boy inherits a map from his grandfather, with a single word on it: "Wait".

Places 7. A town where it rains upward. 8. A train station that only appears at midnight. 9. A library where books rearrange themselves when no one is looking. 10. A school on the roof of the world. 11. A market where people sell memories instead of food. 12. An island that moves a little each day.

What if 13. What if everyone woke up able to hear what animals are thinking? 14. What if shadows could take a day off? 15. What if your reflection did something different from you? 16. What if every door in the city opened onto the same room? 17. What if the moon was just a very big lamp, and someone forgot to pay the bill? 18. What if you could trade one day of your life for someone else's?

First lines 19. "The last bus had gone, and that was when the fox began to speak." 20. "Nobody noticed the clock had stopped, except me." 21. "On my tenth birthday, I was handed a key with no door." 22. "The mountain was quiet until Tuesday." 23. "Every morning, a different bird sat on the same branch, and every morning it sang a different language." 24. "We found the boat tied to nothing."

Quick challenges 25. Write a story in exactly 50 words. 26. Write a conversation between two objects in your kitchen. 27. Write a story where every sentence begins with the next letter of the alphabet. 28. Describe a place using only sounds. 29. Write a letter from a place to the person who lives there. 30. Tell a story backwards, starting at the end.

Writing Prompt Generator for Kids

Young writers do best with short, concrete prompts and a drawing step. Spin, draw the scene for five minutes, then write three sentences about the drawing. For older kids, add a rule that the story must end with a surprise. Praise a finished page over a perfect one. Prompts 2, 4, 7, 13 and 25 work well for children.

Make Your Prompt Stronger With a Random Word

A prompt gives you a start. Add a twist with the random object generator. The object must appear in the story. Or use the random letter generator for a rule like "the hero's name starts with this letter". For a picture prompt, see drawing ideas.