Creative Writing Prompts

You are in the chemistry lab late at night, working on experiment with your lab partner. When a chemical reaction goes wrong, you appear to be just fine. Your partner on the other hand, he is looking ________. Describe what is happening to him. Read more

A fortune teller at the local county fair tells you two things. She tells you something good that will happen, and something awful that will happen. What are these events or incidents? Read more

You’re at the movie theater and it’s the climax of the summer’s big blockbuster hit. And someone is talking on their cell phone. When you go to confront them, you find that it is your boss. What do you say to them? Read more

Late at night you awake to find your wife/husband out of bed. Exploring the farmhouse, you find no lights on and the kids are still sound asleep. Past the fields, you see light shining out of the barn. When you walk out there and open the door, what do you find? Read more

Your friend recently signed up for twitter and is still getting the hang of it. He says that someone he doesn’t know has been tweeting at him. You tell him it is probably a fake account. Then, he receives a tweet that has a picture of you both, in his house. Then, there’s a knock on the door. What happens next? Read more

You are about to get married at the wedding ceremony of your dreams. Absolutely everything has gone perfectly, until the best man says that he pawned the ring a couple of days ago. Write this scene. Read more

You’ve been finishing a brick wall for a room in your friend’s basement for a couple of hours. When you step back, you realize that you and your friend forgot to put in a door. He tells you not to worry about it, he planned it that way. How do you react? Read more

You are at a magic show with your family, and your eight year old son is called up on stage as a part of the disappearing act. The magician performs the first part of the act successfully, but is unable to make your son reappear. Read more

As a child, you were prone to night terrors, sleep talking and sleep walking. Now as an adult, you have long since grown out of your old habits. That is, until one night. You awake to find yourself in an unfamiliar place on the phone with a Pentagon official. Read more

You’ve signed up to go tandem skydiving for the first time. On the plane, your instructor says he isn’t feeling well, but jumps with you anyway. When you jump, he passes out. Write this scene and the stream of conscious thoughts as you fall towards the earth. Read more

Playing in the hallway one day, your kids accidentally bump into your grandfather clock, which has been in the family for years. As it smashes into the ground, you find a note hidden inside from your great grandfather, who died two months after you were born. Strangely enough, the note is addressed to you. Read more

One morning you awake to find yourself in a straight jacket, being taken off to an asylum. How do you prove your sanity? What do the guards and psychiatrists say you did? Read more

While preparing your garden at the beginning of spring, you find the blueprints for your house buried in the earth. When you pull it out and examine it, you find that there is a room in the blueprint that doesn’t exist in your house. Both disturbed and intrigued, you set off to find the missing room. Write what happens next. Read more

You are at the neighborhood garage sale, looking for nothing in particular. Something inside an old, wooden box catches your eye. The old woman who is running the sale comes over to say something about the object. What is it? What did she say and why? Read more

You get back to your studio to develop pictures from the hour you just spent in the park. All of the pictures turn out well, except for a select few. In six photographs, there is a man in the frame. Something seems slightly off, and rather strange about each picture. Who is he and what is weird about the photographs? Read more

On your way into work this morning, you look at the car on your left. Inside are two men dressed in dark suits, wearing sunglasses. They simultaneously look at you and meet your gaze. The one in the passenger seat rolls down his window and says something. Write what he says, and what happens next. Read more

Finish these sentences: “Ever day of the week I _________, but Sundays are different. On Sundays, I ¬¬________.” Read more

Walking home, you find a shoe on the side of the road. What kind of shoe is it? Who is its owner? What happened? Why is the shoe there? Where is the other shoe now? You can use all of these questions or just one to explore what happened. Read more

After a long night out, you return to your house to find that every picture and painting in your house can speak to you. What do the characters in the artwork and photographs say? Write a conversation between you and one of them, or a conversation between two of them. Read more

You and your three closest friends decide to go camping. You arrive and set up camp nearly three miles away from where you left your car. Late that evening, as you sit around the campfire roasting marshmallows, one of your friends reveals a deep dark secret that turns what was to be a fun weekend into one of the scariest weekends of your life. Read more

Two men stop you on your way into your local post office. One flashes a badge at you. They tell you about a top secret sting operation they are about to execute and they need your help. They can’t give you any of the details, only that you are to walk into the post office, go up to the counter with the gentleman named Bert working it, and you have to say to him, “My stamps are looking a bit square these days, if you know what I mean.” Write what happens next. Read more

You put your house on the market and, on the first day, a extremely old woman comes knocking on your door. She’s not interested in buying your house, though. Instead she tells you that this is the house she lived in as a child. The friendly mood suddenly changes when she reveals something terrible that took place in the house years ago. Read more

You and two other people are stranded on an island. Both are people who have played an important role in your life, but both are furious with you for different reasons. You become concerned that one (if not both of them) is plotting to kill you. You decide it’s time to save yourself. Read more

The snow storm across the nation shut down many businesses and people went home early. The business where you work had closed for two days. Although you turned off the computer before going home, when you returned to work, your computer had been very active while you were away—plotting a terrorist attack. You now find yourself tasked with stopping the attack. Read more