Writing Prompts

Writing prompts are a great way to get your creative juices flowing when you feel stuck or lack ideas you intend to write about.

It could be a piece of an idea, a thought process, an event, a feeling, a mood, or a crappy piece of information on the wall that sparks your interest and gives you something to write about.

Writing prompts come in handy in various ways, especially when developing good writing habits and trying to prevent slack in your writing process. Using writing prompts doesn’t mean you’re lazy, it means you acknowledge your strengths and are willing to prevent making excuses for why you can’t write.

Prompts are a great way to start a story in whatever genre you’re writing, write a short story, flex your writing muscles, kill boredom, relieve stress, train your mind, sprint writing, write an article, or flesh out an idea and I’ll be sharing a list of 130 creative writing prompts you can use to get started.

Not having an idea where to even begin is ultimately worse than writer’s block because you need to have an idea before talking about making progress with your stories. As an aspiring author, writing prompts from any source is a great way to never run out of ideas for any new story you embark on because you can always tweak the prompts to suit the needs of your story and your style of writing.

Writing prompts could come from any of the following:

A vague and general idea
A scrap of paper
A question
A poster
A random thought
A conversation
A line of dialogue
An object
A new type of world

Importance of Writing Prompts

Here are some of the importance of writing prompts and why young and budding authors need to consider using them as a springboard for consistent ideas.

Developing Good Writing Habits

An easy way to develop good writing habits is to always have something to write about. If you’re a mood writer like me, you understand better. I write emotional articles when I’m emotional, or sad, questioning articles when I’m in that zone, and generally random ideas when I feel up to it.

With prompts, you can either write randomly with it or use it to flesh out an idea for a story you’d want to pursue or a short story you’d like to add to your collection, or a collection of short stories with the same theme.

Keeps Your Pen on Paper

Writing prompts helps you build consistency in writing. The goal is to never run out of creative ideas and to have a pool of worthy ideas you can always tap from to keep your mind well-oiled and running. If one of your writing habits is to write every day, then having prompts to help guide that goal will be a great asset on your side.

Increases Creativity

At this point, it’s safe to say that with writing prompts, your creative streak will never run dry until you have exhausted every possible idea and every different way a single idea can be tweaked to make a different and better story.

Increased creativity gives you room to be more productive in achieving your writing goal or personal development goals you’ve set for yourself.

It pushes you beyond the norm and makes you see a single idea in different ways. Because you didn’t create this idea, it will be your duty to get creative with it and make a work of art out of it which will inevitability challenge your creative mind.

Encourages Consistency In Practice

When you have a wealth of ideas to tap from, there is absolutely no way you’ll run out of words to practice with. As an aspiring author, you need all the help you can get to build your writing style, understand the rudiments of your genre, and what it takes to make a good story.

You cannot do all that if you’re constantly at a loss of where to begin or what ideas to choose from. Ultimately, you can choose to create your prompts from what has been provided for you within the confines of the 130 creative writing prompts I’ll be sharing with you and make a killer story out of it.

Creative Writing Prompts For Fiction/Non-Fiction Authors

Usually, there are more creative writing prompts for fiction authors than non-fiction authors, and a lot of prompts are based on fiction genres and niches but in this post, I’ll be sharing snippets of these writing prompts and encourage you to download the entire file for yourself.

Romance Writing Prompts

Two people within an arranged marriage fall in love – after getting married
Two lives are changed forever when they embark on a short but sweet love affair.
College best friends marry to avoid one of them being married off
One partner moved away, choosing their career over love. They must earn their ex-lover’s trust and love once again
A thunderstorm ignites a close relationship between total strangers/best friends/platonic friends
Sometimes a holiday makes everything right again and gives you a second chance
Horrible first dates that evolve into something more
One partner moved away, choosing their career over love. They must earn their ex-lover’s trust and love once again

Erotic Writing Prompts

It’s the last day of college and a couple of nerd friends decide it’s time to run wild at a strip club. It certainly ends in a kinky way or could it have been an orgy
You join a sensual movie crew and the first thing they teach you is how sensual the community can be.
A single dad falling for his daughter’s new spicy dance teacher who also happens to be teaching pole dancing. Not that he agrees with her choice of dance, or does he?
Needing to be rid of your V-card before college begins, you approach your crush who happens to be your brother’s best friend to help you out. He reluctantly agrees but you are in for the shocker of your life.
He is obsessed with the tech nerd in his office. He’s also scared she may not be into his kind of kink. Guess what? She may be willing to learn too.
She’s looking for a rebound relationship so she can control the terms. He wants a willing mistress.

Horror Writing Prompts

There were five reasons nobody went to that old place anymore
They’d been screaming non-stop for an entire week
There wasn’t supposed to be a door here
There were fresh dug graves, dinner tables with twinkling lights, and bags of crude tools behind the seats.
If she moved, they’d hear her. If she didn’t move, they’d find her
They weren’t supposed to play that dumb game. Now, they have awoken a great evil and it’s coming for them.
You wake up in a dimly lit tunnel with no idea how to escape
A house finds a way to kill every visitor on its premises
A group of friends plays truth or dare. Suddenly, all the lights go out, and in those ten seconds of darkness, one of the people in the group is killed

Mystery Writing Prompts

He works as a Janitor – but seems to be present at the scene of every murder.
Something had been ripped from the dead man’s lapel
Why were specific names crossed off the list stapled to the dead man’s tongue?
It looked like someone had been searching the house and behind a clue to be found.
They claimed she was their daughter. But something felt odd and eerily uncomfortable about them.
One of your classmates mysteriously stops coming to school. It’s been nearly a month since you last saw them. What could have happened to them?
A couple about to board a plane is caught red-handed with the missing national jewel in their bags. But did they steal this jewel?
A new couple moves to your neighborhood but they hardly ever socialize. Yet, every night, their house is filled with people moving around who never come out or enter through the main gate.
Someone has been making calls to the police, stating when and where a dead body will be found. It’s taken as a prank call until bodies start turning up dead.
For over 5 years, your twin sister was missing. But there she is – Suddenly walking in the middle of the street. Where has she been? What happened to her?

Sci-Fi Writing Prompts

A race against time in zero gravity
Nobody knew he was a clone
A computer virus infects humans
The scientists agreed that the public shouldn’t know
A soldier fighting in a far-off space war decides to mutiny and crash-lands with her crew on planet Earth, bringing the fight with her
She wakes up from a coma—to find she’s no longer a human, but a robot. They had to replace her body with metal for her to survive
Your billionaire uncle gives you a hi-tech robot for your birthday. He was supposed to be a humanized AI, but….
An alien crashed its ship in your garden. Not only that, it comes with a warning for the people of earth. What happens next?

Fantasy Writing Prompts

The tower went silent ten years ago. That’s all anyone knew
They always underestimated our kind
It shouldn’t have been possible to open portals inside this hall
The wand her grandmother gave to her suddenly comes alive on her eighteenth birthday.
A magical gauntlet falls into the wrong hands
The teenage boy had been mute since birth. But one day he discovered he could talk with animals
The staff glowed with a fiery light
Forging a sword for a special purpose
The town clock struck thirteen for the first time in 100 years.
The cloak given to you by your grandfather twitched for the first time on your twenty-fifth birthday.

Children Story Prompts

Write a story about a gift you always dreamt of having and suddenly, an angel gifts it to you on your birthday after asking you to make one wish.
Write a story about a kid who is moving to a new school. How do you think they might feel?
Imagine your parents waking you up one morning to tell you they will take you to do anything you want to do for the whole day – you don’t even have to go to school or do your chores. What would you choose to do and why?
You are writing a letter to someone who is having a hard time making new friends at school. What do you write? What advice do you give them?
Pretend you walked outside to find a sleeping dragon in the grass! Why is the dragon there? Is it a friendly dragon? What do you do?

Non-Fiction Story Prompts

Write about an experience, whether positive or negative, that led to a big change in your life. Think of where you would be now if it hadn’t happened
Do you have a story that you’ll never tell your parents about? Write it in the form of a confession that only you will ever read
Revisit your first heartbreak and write about how it changed you. What lessons did you learn, and what steps did you take to be a better person?
Recall a tense or scary situation you’ve been in. Re-explore it by imagining it from another point of view
Write a self-help book about an issue that you’ve faced and overcome
Think about a talent or skill you have. Write an instruction manual about it
Choose a strong emotion and think of two memories associated with it. What are the links between those two memories?

Endnotes:

What do you think you’ll do for your next writing project with all these and more to choose from? I want to believe you’ve got your creative mind spinning around a lot of these ideas. Also, it is important to note that, you could blend two ideas from different genres into one story. There are horror-romance stories, mystery-romance, sci-fi horror, fantasy-romance, and a lot more blend you can try.

130 Creative Writing Prompts For Aspiring Authors