by Bryn Donovan
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
FICTION PROMPTS
50 Ways to Begin a Story
PLOT PROMPTS BY GENRE
150 Fantasy Prompts
150 Science Fiction Prompts
150 Horror Prompts
150 Mystery Prompts
150 Romance Prompts
150 Young Adult Prompts
150 Historical Fiction Prompts
150 General Fiction Prompts
CLASSIC PLOT PROMPTS
50 Plots From the Bible
50 Plots From European Fairy Tales and Mythology
50 Plots From Shakespeare and Other Elizabethan Literature
50 Plot Prompts from Regency and Victorian Novels
50 Plots From Classic Cinema
CHARACTER PROMPTS
37 Prompts Based on Personality Typing
13 Prompts Based on Psychological Disorders
Animal Instincts: 50 Prompts
Action Is Character: 50 Action Prompts
True Colors: 50 More Action Prompts
This, and Also That: 50 Prompts for Complex Characters
Clothes Maketh the Man (and Woman): 50 Sartorial Prompts
100 Prompts Based on Real People
100 Prompts Based on Occupations
Shame: 50 Reasons Why Your Character Feels Guilty
Cringe: 25 Writing Prompts to Embarrass Your Character
Grrr: 25 Writing Prompts to Annoy or Anger Your Character
Sigh: 25 Writing Prompts to Make Your Character Feel Lonely
If Only: 50 Writing Prompts Based on Character Regrets
25 Natural Enemies Prompts
50 Big Realizations for Your Characters
SETTING PROMPTS
50 Indoor Setting Prompts
50 Outdoor Setting Prompts
100 Historical Setting Prompts
50 Prompts on Cars, Planes, Trains, Boats, and More
DIALOGUE PROMPTS
200 General Dialogue Prompts
50 Topics for Arguments
50 Things Someone Can Ask
50 Things Someone Can Explain
OTHER FICTION PROMPTS
100 Title Prompts
200 Image Prompts
50 Prompts Based on Sounds
50 Prompts Based on Smells
50 Prompts Based on Touch and Physical Sensations
25 Christmas Prompts
150 Unusual and Beautiful Words as Prompts
50 Writing Prompts Inspired by Tarot
25 Prompts to Melt People’s Hearts
50 “Meet Cute” Ideas
50 Cute Date Ideas
50 Fight Scene Ideas
50 Desperate Measures
50 Happy Ever After Prompts
100 POETRY EXERCISES
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL AND BLOGGING PROMPTS
100 General Autobiographical Prompts
50 Prompts About Childhood
50 Prompts About Your Identity and Personality
50 Prompts About Your Beliefs and Values
50 Prompts About Family
50 Prompts About Friendships and Relationships
50 Prompts About Health and Appearance
50 Prompts About Home
50 Prompts About Your Town and Your Country
50 Prompts About School and/or Work
50 Prompts About Music, Movies, Books, TV, and the Internet
500 Blog Post Ideas
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
5,000 WRITING PROMPTS:
A Master List of Creative Exercises, Plot Ideas, and More
Copyright 2019 Stacey Donovan
First edition, March 2019
Print: 978-0-9967152-5-6
eBook: 978-0-9967152-6-3
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in print or electronic form without prior permission of the author.
This book is dedicated to Gill Donovan, my husband, soul mate, and best friend.
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to 5,000 Writing Prompts!
This book is for all kinds of writers and storytellers—novelists, short story writers, essayists, poets, screenwriters, playwrights, memoirists, bloggers, improv actors, fans of role-playing games, and more—as well as for teachers and anyone else who wants inspiration. Although I’ve broadly classified the prompts as “Fiction Prompts,” “Poetry Exercises,” and “Autobiographical and Blogging Prompts,” they can all be used in many different ways.
Why I Wrote This Book
I’m a publishing professional and an author who also blogs about writing and teaches creative workshops. Because of this, I talk to a lot of writers and aspiring authors.
People often say things like:
“I want to write, but I don’t know where to start.”
“I haven’t written in a long time. How can I get back into that creative mindset again?”
“I have a fictional world and characters I love, but I don’t have a plot.”
“I want to start a blog, but what if I can’t think of enough things to write about?”
In all of these cases, people need a little extra spark of inspiration. I felt like I was in a unique position to help because I’m an inveterate list maker. I have journals and notebooks filled with creative idea starters, from master plots and essay subjects to character quirks and fascinating words. I have a particular obsession with identifying and compiling the smaller elements that can go into a script, short story, blog, personal essay, play, or novel. I’ll never be able to use them all in my lifetime, so why keep them to myself?
I also wanted to write this book because I believe creative possibilities are limitless. When it doesn’t seem that way to us, it’s often because we’ve gotten bogged down with the demands, details, and sorrows of everyday life, and it’s given us tunnel vision. I hope because this book has a lot of writing prompts, it reminds people of all the possible stories inside them…way, way more than five thousand!
Are Writing Prompts “Cheating”?
I thought I’d address this right up front, because some people worry about it! Using one of my writing prompts for a story, poem, or other original work absolutely isn’t cheating, even if you get it published. We writers take inspiration from everywhere: magazine articles, the stories our friends and family tell us, observations of our neighbors or strangers, and yes, other books, TV shows, and movies. It’s the way we treat that little spark of inspiration and what we do with it that makes it original and makes it ours.
I hope this book supports other people’s success. If you purchased the book, checked it out of the library, or received a gift copy purchased by someone else, then if it inspires you to write a novel that makes you a million dollars, you don’t owe me a dollar of those royalties. If your novel wins the Pulitzer, I’d love a shout-out in your acceptance speech…but you probably won’t do that, and that’s okay. I understand. I’ll still be proud of you!
If you still don’t feel comfortable using a specific prompt, just take a minute to ask yourself: “How can I make this different?” Then put your own spin on it.
You’re likely to come up with new ideas of your own just from perusing the pages of this book. You’re a creative person, after all, and that’s just how creative brains work.
How To Use This Book
How To Beat Writer’s Block: The Two-Week Program
If you’ve suffered from writer’s block for weeks, months, or even decades, t
ry this.
Every day at roughly the same time, close your eyes, flip through this book, and point to something on a page. Whatever prompt you’re touching, write about it for fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes! That’s it! You can do almost anything for only fifteen minutes.
I don’t care if you think it’s a stupid prompt. Don’t look for another one. You’re stuck with it. If it’s very different from anything you would ever imagine yourself writing, that’s good. And if it’s a prompt that makes you think, “I know nothing about this subject,” I don’t care. You might know more about it than you realize at first, and anyway, the point is to get your imagination going.
Write a description, a short scene, a conversation, a paragraph—whatever comes into your head is fine. For those fifteen minutes, write fast. Don’t judge what you’re writing. It doesn’t have to be high quality. It just has to be writing. Get it out there.
Do this once a day for two weeks.
Now, while you’re doing it, two weeks may seem like a long time. It’s really not. How many weeks have you spent not writing at all?
You may not enjoy this process. Change is often uncomfortable, and it takes effort. Then again, you may have fun with it. You won’t be under any pressure to create a finished, brilliant story—and that pressure may have been shutting you down in the first place.
Either way, if you do this exercise for two weeks, it’ll switch on the part of your brain that enables you to do creative writing. I bet you’ll be surprised at the new ideas that come to you.
A new journal dedicated to the two-week challenge might inspire you.
Using This Book to Begin a New Story
If you need a story idea, I recommend going to the section of plot prompts by genre first for inspiration. However, any one of the prompts might also kick off a new story for you.
Using This Book to Help You With Your Work in Progress
If you’re feeling stuck in the middle of a story, flip through the fiction prompts and use one of them to spark some new writing. Lots of the fiction prompts will help you add conflict to the story, flesh out a subplot, or make a scene more memorable.
Many of the prompts in this book can help you get to know your characters better. Choose an autobiographical prompt and write out a response to it as your character. Alternately, go to the character prompts that are all about making your character angry, embarrassed, or guilty. Use one of those prompts with your specific character in mind.
Using This Book As a Teacher
In my experience, students of any age do better if they have in-class exercises and not just homework. You might want to try this: put one prompt on a piece of paper for each student in your class and put them in a bag. Have each student pick one of the prompts and write about it for fifteen or twenty minutes.
Thank You
Thanks for getting this book. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope it’s a useful resource for you for years to come. Happy writing!
FICTION PROMPTS
Although I’m calling this section, which comprises the largest part of the book, “Fiction Prompts,” they can also be used for screenwriting, role-playing games, improv troupes, and many other creative endeavors! Keep in mind that I use “he” and “she” more or less at random. You can always change the gender.
50 Ways to Begin a Story
Even when you have a basic idea for your story, sometimes it’s hard to know where to begin. I think one of the best things you can do with your first five or ten pages is get the readers to care about what happens to your main character (or to one of them.) Writers are often tempted to go into a lot of backstory at the beginning, telling readers about the world of the novel or about everything that happened before the story begins. It’s usually better to weave that material into the story here and there, and begin with action. But there are exceptions to this rule (the Pixar movie Up, for example), and exceptions to every rule.
The arrival of a letter, email, or package.The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield opens in this way.
The text of a letter, email, or diary.You might want to dive right in with what it says, and let the reader learn later about the character reading it.
An invitation—to join a club, attend a dinner party, or do something shocking.
A main character is in a frustrating situation.This can also give the reader a feel for her everyday life, while making them empathize with her right away. Maybe her car has broken down, or her cat is puking.
A main character is in an awkward or embarrassing situation.This could be momentous. However, it could simply tell the reader about the character’s everyday life, such as an odd private message on a dating site.
An escape—from a boring meeting, or prison.
Someone discovers a dead body.Countless mysteries and thrillers open in this way.
A funeral is held for someone in the family or the community.This is a popular one with authors, and understandably so, because an ending is a new beginning.
A birth.
The beginning or the middle of a disaster.It could be a bombing, a plane crash, or a tornado.
The aftermath of a disaster.
A character does something which will be discovered later: slips a love note in someone’s purse, poisons the wine, or plants a bomb in a car.
A game or contest.
A kiss.
A performance, or the conclusion of one.Bel Canto by Ann Patchett is a wonderful example of this. It also has a kiss in it!
One character rescues another.
A main character declares that he is in big trouble.
Andy Weir’s The Martian is a terrific example of this.
A main character clearly is in big trouble.
A main character is in the hospital.Olivia Butler’s Kindred is an example of this.
A main character sees a house or a city for the first time.
A plane, ship, or train arrives.The character might be on board, or she might be watching it come in.
A plane, ship, or train departs.If the character is on board, you can take the reader on a journey.
Someone gets amazing news.
Someone gets devastating news.
Someone goes on a date.
The main character breaks up with someone or is dumped.
A scene at a party, a bar, or a nightclub.This is another popular one. Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which opens with a soirée, is an example.
A fight.This is a fairly popular opening for novels that are heavy in action. Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi begins in this way. The main character could be watching the fight instead of taking part in it.
An all-out battle scene.
A character moves in to a new place.I love this idea for an opening because I think it would really welcome the reader into the story.
A dramatic moment in the middle or the end of the story.Some stories begin here and then backtrack to show how they got there. Donna Tartt’s The Secret History is a good example of this approach.
Someone is arrested.
A courtroom trial.
A job interview.I really like this idea because you could get a lot of information across about your character naturally. She might be giving appropriate answers while her internal monologue tells you the rest of the story. Also, an applicant at a job interview is in a vulnerable position, which I think would create empathy for your heroine right away.
A main character gets fired from a job.This elicits immediate sympathy for a character while setting up a clear, relatable conflict.
A chase scene.
Characters wait for another character—maybe for an ambush, or maybe for a surprise party.
A visitor shows up at the door.A stray cat? A future love interest? Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep is one example
of this.
A busy street scene.Your character could be getting an errand done or going to visit somebody. For a novel that takes place in an historical, futuristic, or fantasy setting, this can be a good way to establish a sense of place as well as establish your character’s normal life and priorities.
A character or characters get dressed, shave, put makeup on, or do their hair.
A character commits a crime.
A character or characters do a job.Two examples of this are Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens and Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
One character teaches another how to do something.This one is a good way to establish your main character’s personality and his everyday life.
Character or characters prepare or sit down to eat a meal.
A main character comes across a significant object.
Someone teaches or attends a class.
Someone attends a church service.
A main character is in a triumphant situation.Set her up before you knock her down. She could be giving a speech, winning a race, or accepting an award. It could also be a smaller personal triumph, such as successfully fixing a car or turning in her term paper on time.
A birthday party.The beginning of J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings is probably my favorite example.
PLOT PROMPTS BY GENRE
Need a little push on your space opera screenplay or your romance novella? Feel like beginning a sweeping historical epic or a quirky young adult story? Need help on a subplot or an idea for what happens next?
Start right here. A lot of these prompts could also be described as “plot bunnies.” No two writers would handle them in quite the same way.
150 Fantasy Prompts
