Category: Writing Prompts

You’re absent-mindedly singing to yourself, when suddenly the topic of the song comes true.

You’re making your way down a cobbled street when a stocky, red-bearded man beckons you into an alley. He reaches into his coat, produces a locket on a long gold chain, and hands it to you. Upon opening the locket, you find a four-leaf clover pressed beneath a small glass pane….

Write a scene that includes a character speaking a different language, speaking in a thick accent, or otherwise speaking in a way that is unintelligible to the other characters. (Note: You don’t necessarily need to know the language the character is speaking—be creative with it!)

There’s a knock on your door. Upon opening it, you find yourself facing a man dressed distinctly like Sherlock Holmes. He informs you that he is a detective, and that you are a suspect in the disappearance of a person named John Watson. What happens next?

As you almost certainly know, an idiom is a colloquial phrase with a figurative meaning that is not deducible by simply hearing or reading the words at face value. Writing Prompt: Choose one of the following idioms and include it in a story that also includes a literal use of one of the figurative words…

J.M. Barrie once wrote, “The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story and writes another, and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.” Writing as yourself or as a fictional character, reflect upon how your…

You have discovered what appears to be an ordinary room. But as soon as you enter the room, time stops for you. When you leave the room, time picks up right where you left off. What do you use this room for?

You have nearly arrived at your dream destination. Thus far, the trip has been uneventful, and there’s only an hour’s drive left between you and vacation bliss—when suddenly the vehicle breaks down, leaving you stranded. Where are you, and what do you do?

While cleaning out your house, you stumble upon a journal you don’t remember writing in. As you flip through the pages, it becomes apparent that this journal belongs to a fictional character (either a character you’ve written, or a character from one of your favorite books). Share one of the entries…

You (or a character) awaken suddenly from a strange, vivid dream. You remember that the dream involved an unusual object in a distinctive place, but you don’t know what it means. Decide on the object and the setting, then use a dream dictionary to look at common meanings behind those symbols….