Our Weekly Creativity prompts challenge you to make a piece of writing (a poem, a journal entry, a story outline, a review) or art, or music, or a spoken word recording, or other piece of creative work. All the prompts we have written are brought together on this page – see below. The first prompt of the month is also a Flash Contest!
You can find more writing and art activities on our Activities pages.
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Creativity Prompts
Pick a postcard from this digitized historical collection at the New York Public Library. Write a historical fiction short story that involves a character sending this postcard to someone. What do they write on the postcard? Who are they sending it to? Make sure to take note of what year ...
Create a short memoir about an event in your life. Only, instead of using just words, add illustrations to tell the story. In other words, make it a graphic novel memoir ...
Write about two characters who have reunited after many years apart. How have they changed? Do they still interact with each other the same way? ...
Write a story within a story. Maybe one of your characters reads a book, watches a movie or sees a play that informs the overarching plot ...
Write a short story that begins with “Once upon a time, in a land far away...” and ends with “...and they all lived happily ever after.” This prompt is our November Flash Contest. Please check the Contest page for full details ...
Pick a subject and draw it as if you were looking at it through a thermal camera ...
Write a story set in medieval times ...
Spend 15 minutes thinking about HEAVINESS, and write down every word you associate with it–different nouns, verbs and adjectives; colors, sounds, weather, moods, places, people–as many as you can. Read through your word list, and use the images and ideas that most appeal to you to write a one-page story ...
Write a poem that can be read both from top to bottom, and bottom to top ...
Write a story about yourself, or someone you know, as a superhero ...
