Creative Writing Prompts

Even the best creative writers suffer from writers block during their career. There are many ways that writers – both amateurs and professionals – can help trigger their imagination and cure writers block.

In this guide we shall look at creative writing prompts as one of these ways.

What are Creative Writing Prompts?

Creative writing prompts are used by writers to help spark the imagination and give a starting point when writing a story. They are particularly popular with teachers who use them as a way of teaching students creative writing and can help them find a good place to start when writing.

A creative writing prompt can either be a word, a scenario, a sentence or a question. In fact it can be anything that gives you inspiration for a story.

Often creative writing prompts are thought-provoking questions such as: “If greed is an addiction, how can it be cured?” Questions like these might be a little deep; however you can use more basic questions. If you are using creative writing prompts to take your story in a new direction then questions such as: “What is your main characters biggest fear?” This leaves extensive room for your imagination to run wild and come up with all sorts of exciting ideas for your story.

Other writing prompts may simply be a word that they have picked out of the dictionary that can trigger your creative writing brain.

Pictures and images are also fantastic creative writing prompts. Perhaps you see an image of some kids playing in the ocean and it just triggers something that makes you want to write a story about what they are thinking – what are their parents doing? What are their ambitions in life? Even the simplest images can be the beginning of a fantastic story.

Why Use Creative Writing Prompts

Creative writing prompts are used for many purposes when writing. Not only are they helpful in giving you an idea of how to begin your story but can also help if you are looking for a new direction for your story or characters if it is starting to become a little lackluster or stale.

They are also fantastic for use within the classroom. It can be hard to motivate kids to learn so if you can provide them with fun creative writing prompts then they may be more inclined to take part and actually enjoy the class. Why not give them funny scenarios as prompts to their creative writing?

Essentially creative writing prompts are useful for many circumstances and can be a fantastic resource for both student and professional writers.

Where to Find Creative Writing Prompts

There are plenty of places to find creative writing prompts – many people may just look through their dictionary for inspiration or maybe pick a topic in the newspaper. Anything in written form can act as a prompt!

However, one of the best places these days to find creative writing prompts are on the internet. The internet is a fantastic resource for almost everything – including creative writing prompts! There are hundreds of websites specifically dedicated to providing writers with the tools and facilities to help them improve their writing. A large number of these include many different types of writing prompts for you to use for free.

Some have random writing prompt creators where you can go on and the website will randomly select writing prompts for you to use. If the first one doesn’t trigger anything then try another one!

Not everyone wants to use the internet to help them find creative writing prompts. There are plenty of fantastic books available that are created specifically to help writers who have writers block. Some are simply a book full of thought-provoking questions others are books with interesting images in them. There are books that are specifically for professional writers and others that provide creative writing prompts specifically for use in the classroom.