Short Story Prompt Discussion

Professional writers use all kinds of strategies to get their creativity flowing. One technique that often helps writers generate new ideas is writing in response to prompts. Creative writing prompts can take the form of sentences, single words, or even images. For this journal, you are going to draft a short story in response to a prompt that you choose from the list below.

TIP: Don't worry about finishing your story, or making it perfect. The goal of this exercise is to write as many words as possible about your characters, setting, and action as you can. Have fun with it!

1. Read through the prompts below and choose the one that sparks your curiosity or interest.
2. Open a new Word doc.
3. Set a timer for 10 minutes.
4. Write as much as you can in response to the prompt.
5. When the time is up, take 3-5 minutes to go back over what you wrote. Make any changes you'd like

Prompt 1: Del and Sandy couldn't be sure, but it looked like the door was locked.

Prompt 2: Have you ever met a great athlete? I have. Let me tell you about them.

Prompt 3: (Prefer writing from visuals? Try rolling the story dice (Links to an external site.)for five random images to write about.)

Prompt 4: Space. The final frontier.

Prompt 5: (photo of boy running through sprinkler, laughing)

Photo by MI PHAM (Links to an external site.) on Unsplash (Links to an external site.)

Prompt 6: Kindness.

Prompt 7: Dinner time!

Prompt 8: The Venusians were displeased and threatened to break the truce.

Prompt 9: It was a day like any other.

Prompt 10: (photo of young woman biting pencil and looking at laptop)