So, I have this itch to write but I don't know what to write... I've been taking Creative Writing for so long it's difficult for me to write without a prompt and I would love it if anyone had prompts or ideas for writing they have. Please, suggest away!

Something with rain as both a condemning and a purifying component.

Take a book off your shelf you've never read, write down the first sentence of the story, close the book, and then use that first sentence as the starting-off point for your own story. Classic creative writing prompt.

You should try asking here.

They give you prompts in a creative writing class?


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Generally they do. The structure tends to be prompt-based writing for the majority of the course and finishes with a longer piece that has no requirements. The idea is to exercise a given skill, but they also tend to be on the broad side.

For instance, in the past I've had things like "retell a fairytale in a modern setting," or "write a dialogue about a character with an obsession." Feel free to grab either of those if you want something simple.

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NightSwan also said that she wanted to peg me, once, but I'm not sure whether to take that as a compliment or a threat...

Oh, I've had the completely wrong impression of a creative writing class then.

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♪MONSTARR~ will eat all your cookies and steal your bishies~♪ Φ_Φ

Yes! Simple is nice after not writing anything that is not academic. Yeah, they give out prompts but trust me, it takes your writing from here I-----------------------all the way to here----I especially if the teacher knows what they're doing. I had an amazing wonderful Creative Writing teacher, and I think that makes all the difference because I can easily say that class changed my perspective on everything. If they have a beautiful way of reading things out loud it's even better I remember one time my teacher read "Eyes of a Blue Dog" out loud and everybody was so quiet and moved and it made you realize exactly what you needed to write. Each prompt was designed to help you in certain areas of writing, like plot, dialogue, voice, etc., if you like writing and hear about a good Creative Writing course, you should try it

By the way, examples always help. Does anyone have examples to go with their suggested prompts?

I'm also asking for prompts because I started a Creative Writing Club in High School and now that I've graduated they are having trouble finding things to write about

Last edited by DorkFishOK at 7:35 pm, Nov 15 2011

Capote's "Miriam" is a good example of an obsession. The Master and Margarita is a solid fairytale retelling (assuming Faust and/or the story of Pontius Pilate qualifies as a fairytale.)

"Write a story with only dialogue" is another good one. The whole experimental "story without a conventional plot" (ala "The Library of Babel") can also be a lot of fun.

My advice, though, is to lose the prompts entirely and just write. If you don't have inspiration, read something you know is wonderful instead, and then write once you're in the mood again. That tends to produce less, let's say restricted, results.

At the risk of sounding overly snarky, I hope in addition to whatever they taught you, the professor was conscientious enough to also warn you against arbitrarily capitalizing subject matter like "creative writing" and "high school." Unless we're living several centuries earlier than my understanding of reality, anyway. : P.


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Reviews of my Work:
You are kind of boring - Blackorion
Congratulations! Ur an asshole! - tokyo_homi
Your awesome!!! - Cherelle_Ashley
NightSwan also said that she wanted to peg me, once, but I'm not sure whether to take that as a compliment or a threat...

That's exactly what I was trying to channel, I was trying to be Romantic Creative Writing is my deity, who walks hand in hand with Nature whilst I... whatever haha I'm not sure why I capitalized "high school", though it could be because I've been trying out this thing where you type without looking at the keyboard. Actually, the exact words out of my professor's mouth were, "At least the grammar in your writing is better than when you speak."
Anyways, I've tried writing without a prompt and well, it does not seem as good as when I have direction. When I don't have prompts I end up writing something that I don't think can be turned into a story or a poem.

I don't have a writing prompt suggestion, but I wanted to tell you about what my creative writing professors always say. A writer should strive to be in a constant open and receptive state, observing and thinking about what they observe. Writing depends on what we observe around us: how people talk, their mannerisms, what the night sky in October looks like, how a hot cup of tea feels in your hand, everything. This is what grounds the writing and makes it convincing.

The other aspect of that state of observation is that when you observe things closely enough, for long enough, you eventually see things you've never seen before, and find inspiration. For example, I was going for a walk on a nearby beach and I noticed how the waves were smoothing the sand out. This made me think of a metaphor. And as I kept observing things of my walk, I kept coming up with more lines. When I got back home I went straight to my computer and wrote the rough draft of a poem.

Something else you could try is freewriting. That's when you get up in the morning and immediately sit down and spend 10 or 15 minutes writing anything you think of, the important thing being to write and by doing so loosen up your "writing muscles." It doesn't matter if what you write is shit, because it gets you thinking and can lead to something that's not shit.

Anyhow, I hope this helps at least a little.

Hmm, very nice! That really makes me miss creative writing. My writing and I have a bit of tumultuous relationship, and well, ever since then I feel like my writing has surpassed itself. Of course with a little work brain vomit can turn into magnificence, but... brain vomit is full of so much, so many thoughts wriggling all against each other and my brain vomit now... struggles to even lift off the page. I don't... recognize my writing anymore, the way it was when I took creative writing. Which I just realized that I'm kind of forcing writer's block on myself. Ergh.
Thank you for your suggestions and advice, it's jarring my memory of all the things my own creative writing teacher used to say.

For some reason or another, I have an unaccountable attachment to the bathroom. The floors are often minute, and the toilet and sink recline comfortably next to each other, nestled within a space that is only identifiable when I displace the air with the traffic of my body. I sit on the toilet seat. I am without a doubt momentarily, each state of disposition seems to cancel each other out. Sensations march upon the wall like a row of slick ants, upon the cold breach of my feet oblong and soft like rising bread dough. The image is feasted upon. How does the bathroom identify itself? If the smallest spot of consciousness laced over the walls with the weariness of a lattice, could it feel itself become empty then filled? Sitting upon the toilet seat covered with a maroon, furry toilet cover, I am becoming motionless, thus the bathroom retreats into my stillness. Precariously. I am entering each moment with the room in tow, with the sink clear and memorized by water. My thoughts pine for the ideal, for the pleasantry of planning. Today, I will finish Virginia Woolf, clean the house and tiptoe towards tomorrow. The paintstrokes must quicken, for it is my thoughts that distill them, knocking them sideways into an array of impressions that is expressed through a manner of stealing reality. To make a bright word brighter, a swollen word softer, I wander through vowels and consonants and concepts. Sound and image come together to make a word, yes. It is a marriage beyond celebration, a partnership that is so natural the clash resonanates into becoming. Without pronouns, definitions, tidy explanations it always falls between. The flower is a moment between rising and falling. The bathroom is a moment between emptiness and fullness. We are attached, and yet unattached. A crowd and a shadow. The word brings the distraction of physical together.
Ah! I've come to my bedroom now, the bed accepts me gratefully. It's soft cushions were made to be grateful, to be sweet as a lover's body. I want the bed to love me. I want the walls that have witnessed my slumber and wailing to press over me as the river smooths down the pebbles tumbling beneath it. I stretch and the bed reacts beneath me, creaking and rejoining silence. The Universe stretches over me, and it lays upon me. We bed the Universe, reacting only when it stretches and flops down upon us. I am filled with the purest sense, beyond love or sensations my thoughts flicker. The peacefulness is accompanied by the chill of winter, and I hold it tightly against my body so that it won't slip past me. On the TV in the next room, a woman explains the mechanics of keeping a refrigerator stocked the right way. Her solemn voice could be speaking about the miracles of god or of physics, and her voice stumbles through physical and space to reach my ear, a cloud twisted on the jet stream. Outside my window the clouds become the snow which would be on the ground had it not been for us. Had it not been for the echoes of the worst part about us, snow would placate the fields which had balded to make room for their usual seasonal companion. The clouds are cold, as cold as the communication of telephone lines. They are like envelopes. My thoughts want to fret and I think of those poor envelopes, so white, discarded but for the words we stuff in their mouths, Words they must carry without speaking, without giving up their secrets until they are forced out. With even a knife at times. They are constantly becoming empty, spitting out declarations and bank statements before the sender has time to scratch their name on the white, white skin. Why should I care about envelopes or clouds? I am losing sensation to time now. I am losing, Virginia Woolf sits propped beneath my shin. Up close her words distress the thin pages of the Norton Anthology that could kill a man a thousand times over with its weight alone. I pull my face back and her words become focused upon the focus of a mark on the wall. Her thoughts are heavy enough to elicit another creak out of my bed, they swim through my fingers and I want to catch them and yet watch them swim about before me. I put my book down and stare at the wall, my bones mumbling in sleepless protest. There are no marks.
There! I tried it!

Last edited by DorkFishOK at 1:16 pm, Nov 17 2011

Wow! You sure wrote a lot. I noticed that you used quite heightened language.

I could see this condensing into a poem. After all, many poems are about ordinary things looked at deeply. These lines seemed particularly poetic and with potential to me:

"The flower is a moment between rising and falling. The bathroom is a moment between emptiness and fullness. We are attached, and yet unattached. A crowd and a shadow."

I could also see some of the character traits here being incorporated into a fictional character--for example, the attachment to the bathroom.

i got something for you =3.

there's a train on the train tracks going roughly 60 mph. The brakes failed on the train so the train cannot top. There are 3 people tied up on the train tracks and will die. But you are there and there is a lever right next to you. The lever will lead the train to another set of tracks. If you pull the lever the train will move and you will save the 3 people. But there is 1 person tied up on the other set of tracks and he will be sacrificed. Would you pull the lever kill 1 man but save the other 3?

Another scenario:

similar scenario (with the runaway train). Except you are on top of a bridge. And there is a hefty man right next to you. below the bridge (where the train tracks are) there are 3 people tied down on the tracks. Now in this universe, if you push the hefty man the hefty man will be able to stop the train from killing those 3 people, but he will die in the process ( i know its not physically possible in reality but just play along). Would you push the man to save the 3 people?

The average response to scenario 1 is that most people will pull the lever to save those 3. The average response for scenario number 2 is that they will not push the hefty man down to save those 3.

My question to you is, why is it okay to sacrifice 1 man's life in scenario 1, but not in scenario 2?
(i never had to think so hard on a paper before lol)

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