Writing prompts are a great way to flex and practice your writing skills. Here are 75 writing prompts, across every genre for you to use.
You could use these prompts to:
- Spark an idea for a new novel
- Pull you out of writers’ block in your current novel
- Have fun with 10-minute free writes. No editing, no planning, just writing.
Fantasy Writing Prompts
The fantastical can happen in another world or be hidden right in your own backyard. A little magic or an awe-inspiring magical creature are all it takes to transport your reader from the ordinary to the extraordinary. Here are a few writing prompts to add a dash of magic to your writing.
- A world where thoughts literally become reality
- Create a creature that can travel through space and time
- A new building suddenly appears in the small town you’ve lived in your whole life.
- A character wakes up on the back of a griffin and didn’t even know the creatures existed
- A magical item is broken causing a rift in the magic and must be repaired.
- You are about to be attacked by a group of witches/wizards and all you have is a hairpin.
- You hold a secret that could save or destroy humanity.
- Ghosts always do whatever you say, but in a way you never expect.
- One day, you realize that all horses are actually unicorns/Pegasi in disguise.
- You are in charge of creating an organization spell that helps find items in unlimited bags of holding.
- The internet is actually controlled by a giant spider/puppet master
- Everyone’s home is representative of their true thoughts and behaviors. Those who are malicious have moldy and rotten beams while those who are truly kind have beautiful homes. The catch is, if you try to do good deeds just to get a nice house, your home will begin to disappear a piece at a time.
- You are sleeping in your tent, when the smell of magic wakes you.
- Create a magic system based on color, sound, music, or light.
- Write from the pov of a member of a necromancer’s army.
Romance Creative Writing Prompts
Romance can happen anytime, anywhere, between the unlikeliest of people. Because romance is one of the most written genres, it is hard to think outside of the box while still giving readers the tropes that they love and that happy ever after they crave. Here are a few writing prompts to immerse you into a romantic atmosphere.
- Build a snowman that comes to life and marries the two lovebirds.
- Rewrite a scene from your favorite horror novel or movie, as if it was a romance.
- You show up at your wedding and don’t recognize your partner, even though your friends and family do.
- You get a new job to take care of a house and your boss remains faceless behind technology.
- Neither character can have kids, but they meet at an amusement park or kids play place.
- You have to marry the first person you think about who is single.
- Write a love story between an elephant and a panda.
- Your soulmate is your nemesis
- It’s New Year’s Eve and you end up next to an attractive stranger during the countdown.
- Write a scene where the characters really want to kiss but absolutely cannot.
- A date that goes badly.
- Meeting your high school love again after having moved away suddenly in the past.
- Your character writes a love letter/email/text to someone they aren’t in love with.
- Someone objects at the wedding.
Crime Story Prompts
Crime stories have been around since the beginning of time. What mysteries do you want to solve? Different qualities make each detective unique. Think of things that could be stolen or controlled that interest you. A few possibilities follow to inspire your creativity.
- A missing manuscript (*gasp from all us authors)
- All the garden gnomes in town go missing one by one
- You’re a mycologist (mushroom expert) accused of poisoning
- he most famous detective fails to solve the case for the first time in their life
- A stolen kiss
- A rare plant smuggling ring
- The crime of the century was committed in public, but no one can agree on what the perpetrator looked like.
- Your family has a dark, hidden secret
- A stray dog that really eats homework
- The strange wallpaper in the old mansion is really a map to treasure.
- Your detective/criminal is a florist and uses flower language to pass messages to her assistants/accomplices.
- Write your take on a famous unsolved mystery. What you think happened and why.
- The character spins a globe using their finger to stop it or throws darts at a map to determine their next destination. What sort of mystery do they get involved in on their vacation?
- You saw something on someone’s phone that you shouldn’t have.
Thriller Writing Ideas
Thrillers are a combination of mystery, horror, and action. Often the characters and the readers race from scene to scene with little time to breathe and death is just around the bend if they can’t solve the mystery on time. Here are some ideas for making things tough for your characters.
- Find a sealed doll’s dress in a government official’s safe.
- Your main character is trying to catch a serial killer that only kills unfunny clowns.
- A masked/costumed person keeps appearing wherever you go.
- The footprints in the snow leading up to the body match your own exactly.
- Your character overheard something they shouldn’t have.A secret organization that controls the internet.
- Your character is trying to fulfill someone’s dying wish while someone is trying to stop them at all costs.
- Your sibling tells you that they feel like they are being watched, and they go missing the very next day. Then you begin to feel like you are being watched.
- Your character made several purchases at a thrift store and now someone wants them dead.
- The character receives an invitation to a mysterious event, accidentally.
- Your character is kidnapped on the way to a retreat/contactless vacation, so no one knows.
- Your character discovers an old diary, and suddenly similar dangerous events begin happening to them.
- Write a scene from the pov of someone who is delusional, but thinks they are perfectly fine.
- The character’s map app leads them to undiscovered murder victim burial sites.
- You are excavating a Mayan ruin in the jungles of South America and someone is stuffing the artifacts being sent out for shipment with illegal substances.
- After a big storm with high winds and heavy rains, a large tree comes down on one of your farm fields and a body is discovered below the roots. Then things start moving around your historic farmhouse and you begin hearing strange noises.
- You come home to crime scene tape and a sign that says do not enter on your front door.
Sci-fi Writing Topics
Sci-fi is like fantasy, but magic is replaced by technology. Authors may take liberties with current technology or invent completely new devices. These stories often take place in space or on distant planets, but could also take place in a secret lab in your own backyard. Here are a few ideas for how science can affect our lives now or in the future.
- Dolphins are an endangered species
- A character wakes up after a coma with the ability to talk to plants
- A world with extra heavy or extra light gravity
- People who underwent a specific medical trial can now walk through walls.
- After a comet passes, everyone who was outside during it has something wrong with them. i.e. they all are deaf, they all grow an extra appendage, they all have their mouths sealed, etc.
- Glasses that actually hide your identity.
- The Amazon company became the ruling government of the world.
- You are the only maintenance worker inside a man-made planet. No one else knows the planet is man made.
- Write from the perspective of an alien that thinks another animal species is the dominant intelligent life on earth.
- Humans are dying out because they can’t procreate.
- You are an archeologist that has discovered cave paintings tens of thousands of years old. You realize the paintings are instructions on how to build spaceships.
- You are a scientist/mathematician who discovers the formula for the perfect amount of sleep based on certain factors of a person’s physique and mental health. When people begin getting the exact amount of rest they need, it changes the world.
- A diver accidentally slips through a hidden barrier protecting an underwater city. Who lives there and why do they want to stay hidden?
- You work in an art and history museum in the distant future. What does it look like, what sorts of items are on display, and how are things displayed?
Fun Writing Prompts
These are some interesting ideas that may test your writing skills and just don’t belong to any specific genre.
- Write a scene in both in first, then in third person.
- Write a scene as a journal entry, a newspaper clipping, email, or text messages
- Rewrite in your own voice a scene from a favorite fairytale, book, movie, or show.
- Consider writing with the main character as an object or setting.
- Write a scene, then rewrite it, switching your protagonist and antagonist.
- Write a scene about someone who is dully average.
- Write a scene from the pov of the antagonist, responding to having lost the big climax battle to the protagonist.
- Try writing a scene using as many semicolons as you can, or exclamation points, or short sentences (7 words or less).
- Write a scene where the characters cannot say what they are thinking or where every sentence has a double meaning.
- Use the game of MASH to write a character’s backstory.
- Sit in a public place and observe an interaction between 2-4 people, then turn it into a scene.
Tips For Using a Writing Prompt
- Only spend twenty minutes on the writing prompt, unless it launches your creativity for a new story.
- Don’t use a current manuscript.
- Practice writing a complete scene focusing on the Fictionary thirty-eight elements; opening hook, POV goal, scene middle, scene climax, and closing hook.
- You don’t need to follow the prompt exactly; it is just a springboard for your creativity.
- Allow your work to sit for at least an hour before you reread it.
- Have fun!
You could use these prompts to:
- Spark an idea for a new novel
- Pull you out of writers’ block in your current novel
- Have fun with 10-minute free writes. No editing, no planning, just writing.