Writing Prompts · The Ambitious Girls Club

Writing Prompts

Stuck on writing topics? Here are prompts to get you started:

{credit- book [Writing Down the Bones]}

1. Begin with “I remember.”

Write lots of small memories. If you fall into one large memory, write that. Just keep going. Don’t be concerned if the memory happened five seconds ago or five years ago.

Everything that isn’t this moment is a memory coming alive again as you write.

If you get stuck, just repeat the phrase “I remember” again and keep going.

2. Take something you feel strongly about, whether it is positive or negative.

Write about it as though you love it.

Then flip over and write about the same thing as though you hate it.

Then write about it perfectly neutral.

3. Choose a color—for instance, pink—and take a fifteen-minute walk. On your walk notice wherever there is pink.

Come back to your notebook and write for fifteen minutes.

4. Write in different places

—for example, in a laundromat, and pick up on the rhythm of the washing machines. Write at bus stops, in cafés. Write what is going on around you.

5. Give me your morning.

Breakfast, waking up, walking to the bus stop. Be as specific as possible. Slow down in your mind and go over the details of the morning.

6. Visualize a place that you really love, be there, and see the details.

Now write about it. It could be a corner of your bedroom, an old tree you sat under one whole summer, a table at McDonald’s in your neighborhood, or a place by a river. What colors are there, sounds, smells?

When someone else reads it, she should know what it is like to be there. She should feel how you love it, not by your saying you love it, but by your handling of the details.

7. Write about “leaving.”

Approach it any way you want. Write about your divorce, leaving the house this morning, or a friend dying.

8. What is your first memory?

9. Who are the people you have loved?

10. Write about the streets of your city.

11. Describe a grandparent.