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
Write about what it would be like to be a virus, bacterium, or single-celled organism. (Yes, you can do this from the point of view of a coronavirus! But if that creeps you out, feel free to skip it.) If you do write about the coronavirus, consider submitting your story ...
Make a “blind contour” self portrait. A blind contour is a drawing where you do not look at the paper while you are drawing, and once you have put your pencil or pen on the paper, you don’t lift it again. Get all your materials prepared, and position yourself in ...
Write about someone you know but don't know much about–maybe your neighborhood mail carrier, or the checkout clerk at the supermarket. Think about what their life is like–really think about it. The only rule: you can't interview them ...
Who is telling the story? Try playing around with point of view. Write an outline for a short scene with two characters in conflict (it doesn’t have to be too serious, they could just be disagreeing over who gets to use the bathroom first or eat the last piece of ...
Write a story about a villain who is unaware they are the villain ...
Think about your favorite fictional character, and imagine what will happen to them ten or twenty years after the story they are part of is over. Feel free to think outside the box–what will happen to Harry Potter or Katniss Everdeen once they're forty-something? ...
Write down 5 ideas for some impossible characters - space frogs, singing clocks, walking cactuses - the more unlikely the better. Pick 2 of them. What would happen if they met? Write a story about it ...
What if a misplaced letter in a word changes everything? A story about someone who wins a million dollars would be very different if they actually won a million collars; a painting of a world under the sea would look very different to a world inside a pea. Play around ...
Write about your past self–your babyhood, toddlerhood, or younger childhood. Think about what it would be like to be that age. You can work from memories, ask people about their memories, or make stuff up. Anything goes ...
Who is your reader? And how do you want that reader to feel? Pick a news topic that you feel passionate about. Choose your reader (an adult, a younger child, someone just like you), and the emotion you want them to feel (e.g. joy, anger, excitement). Write a paragraph about ...
