The Time Is Now: Writing Prompts and Exercises

Poetry: An Atmospheric Moment

“Zipping your skirt, you rustle past, / sand hissing through a glass, / with the bedouin snap and flash / of static-electric / sparks disturbing fabric.” In “Static,” which appears in Bright Thorn: Poems 2000–2026 by Devin Johnston, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in May, sound is a significant component of how meaning is expressed. The poet carefully observes a subject’s actions, capturing the ways in which a single movement or gesture can communicate a vast complexity of sentiment. From the tactility of fabric and the sibilant sounds and motions of “zipping” a skirt to the “sparks” of consonance, an intimate tone is set. Write a poem that employs a variety of sounds to convey the complex feelings within a resonant image or moment. How does the variance in sound and actions create a sense of productive tension?

Fiction: In My Backyard

In Sarah Wang’s debut novel, New Skin, published by Little, Brown in May, a young woman named Linli Feng is drawn back to her hometown to tend to her mother in the aftermath of her latest string of disastrous plastic surgeries. Through the eyes of Linli, the environment around her reflects components of her own reality, full of signs of destruction and disrepair, including grass that is “as brown and dry as any in Los Angeles,” a fruitless fig tree that has been damaged after her mother backs her car into it, and a thicket of bougainvillea with “deep magenta bracts” dying and falling to her feet. Write a short story in which the setting displays characteristics that reveal both the mindset of your main character and themes you wish to interrogate in your narrative. How might elements that may conventionally be seen as positive or beautiful take on hints of menace or darkness through the story’s landscape?

Nonfiction: Observations, Dreams, Stories

In the author’s note to his debut novel, The Copywriter, published by Scribner in February, poet and copywriter Daniel Poppick lists the types of writing that can be found in the work, a compilation of observations, questions, stories, lyrics, lists, fragments, and other forms that together constitute a portrait of contemporary life, language, and ideas, from the perspective of a poet sharing his notebook. “What follows is a work of fiction. But if it makes nothing happen, call it poetry,” writes Poppick. Spend a week keeping a journal or notebook of your own. Jot down bits and pieces of overheard, seen, or invented language as it occurs, allowing yourself the freedom to simply record without worrying too much about context or explication. Then comb through your notes and group your favorite snippets into a more coherent narrative, using recurrent themes or images to paint a portrait of your own life at this moment.

Suggested Reading

Three Six Five: Prompts, Acts, Divinations (an Inexhaustible Compendium for Writing) (Siglio Press, May 2026) by Lucy Ives  

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From the author of three inventive novels, including Life Is Everywhere (Graywolf Press, 2022), as well as collections of poems, short stories, and essays, comes a unique book that is at once a compendium of intriguing writing exercises (“Write about a character who invents her own readers”), a collection of questions (“Who is writing this book?”), and a “diary of contemplation and imagination.” At home alongside Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit and Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style, Three Six Five presents fresh ways of thinking about writing and the endless possibilities it contains. “Locate the shadows nearest you,” Ives writes in No. 65 of an entire year’s worth of entries and encourages writers to describe them, first in terms of their qualities, then: “What do these shadows hide or reveal? What is inside them?” For writers with a love of play and a spirit of discovery, Three Six Five offers encouragement and inspiration for a year of literary exploration.