Writing Prompts & Exercises

The Time Is Now

The Time Is Now offers three new and original writing prompts each week to help you stay committed to your writing practice throughout the year. We also curate a list of essential books on writing—both the newly published and the classics—that we recommend for guidance and inspiration. Whether you’re struggling with writer’s block, looking for a fresh topic, or just starting to write, our archive of writing prompts has what you need. Need a starter pack? Check out our Writing Prompts for Beginners.

Tuesdays: Poetry prompts
Wednesdays: Fiction prompts
Thursdays: Creative nonfiction prompts

Get immediate access to more than 2,000 writing prompts with the tool below:

11.20.19

Herb strewer, runemaster, toad doctor, bobbin boy. These are all occupations listed on a Wikipedia list of obsolete occupations—job positions that existed in the past that were rendered obsolete at some point because of technological advances and other sociocultural changes. Write a story that revolves around a character working a job that seems to be outdated or on the brink of obsolescence. How can you revitalize the job and its value in your story? Considering the rapid transformations brought about by technology in current times, what are the larger implications? 

11.13.19

Queering the Map is an online interactive mapping project where users can post queer stories, memories, and anecdotes that are geolocated on a browsable world map. In Condé Nast Traveler, Melissa Kravitz writes, “Rather than centering the stories around a building or historical monument, it adds a bench carved with the initials of a couple on the west coast, the spot where a person came out to themselves, or the site where a fundraising group collected money for AIDS victims to the collective queer history.” Write a scene in a story that establishes the setting by noting a memory that is attached to a mundane item or physical structure. How does this infusion of a backstory inform the relationships that your character develops?

11.6.19

“I wanted to write a story and fit it all on a menu and call it ‘Myself as a Menu,’ writes Lynne Tillman in Frieze about a story she wrote for Wallpaper magazine in 1975. “This way I would have a structure and humorously author ‘a self’ as an assortment of so-called ‘choices’, while representing a text as arbitrary, like a menu of disparate dishes and tastes.” Write a story inspired by this menu form, perhaps using a real restaurant menu as a template or launchpad. Create a persona by choosing certain “courses” or “sides” to further elaborate on your character’s personality.

10.30.19

A marine heat wave known as a blob has recently been detected in the Pacific Ocean around Hawaii, similar to the hot spot discovered several years ago that led to massive amounts of coral reef bleaching. In other blob news, a unicellular organism, also known as a blob, has just gone on display at the Paris Zoological Park. The bright yellow slime mold can move an inch and a half per hour, is comprised of 720 sexes, is capable of solving problems, and can split itself into multiple parts and fuse back together. Write a short story in which a blob of your own making appears. Does it bring foreboding, mayhem, or wondrous joy?

10.23.19

Earlier this month the transcription of a long-lost chapter from The Tale of Genji was found in a storeroom in the Tokyo home of a descendant of a feudal lord. Often called the world’s first novel, the eleventh-century masterpiece written by Murasaki Shikibu recounts the love life of a fictional prince named Genji. In the recently discovered chapter, the prince meets his future wife, Murasaki, who shares the same name as the book’s author. Write a new chapter from a story or novel you know well. What occurs in this portion of the story that might fill in some gaps or offer a new discovery? How does it fit in with, or transform, the meaning of the original text? 

10.16.19

“I try to produce work to help somebody know something of a world they don’t know,” says Reginald Dwayne Betts, author of Felon (Norton, 2019), in “Name a Song,” a conversation with Mahogany L. Browne in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. This week, think of the various worlds that you’re privy to, perhaps through your geographical location, cultural background, work history, hobbies and passions, or life experiences. Write a short story inspired by an expansion and fictionalizing of one of these worlds, providing a glimpse of a world you know well.

10.9.19

Can’t fall asleep? Would it help if a voice soothed you with murmured reassurances and flattering serenades? A recent New York Times article featured the creator of DennisASMR, a YouTube channel in the growing genre known as A.S.M.R. (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) boyfriend role-play. The teenager who lives with his parents in Savannah, Georgia creates eerie scenarios of one-sided conversations that are watched by millions of viewers. Write a short story that imagines the lives of characters viewing these videos. Why do they look to these videos for comfort? How does this role-play help or hinder their lives?

10.2.19

“Sometimes the narrator tries to steer her thoughts in directions she prefers, or recoils from certain darker avenues of thought, but she can’t keep it up for long,” writes Lucy Ellmann in a Washington Post interview about her new novel, Ducks, Newburyport (Biblioasis, 2019), which is comprised of a single sentence that extends over a thousand pages. Write a short story that is entirely contained within one sentence. Allow for detours and interruptions—tidbits of song lyrics, physical sensations, flashbacks—to flow and come out. How do all the thoughts and distractions combine to form a bigger picture or statement?

9.25.19

A study published last week in the journal Science detailed findings that the North American bird population has dropped by three billion since 1970, a decline of twenty-nine percent in less than fifty years. Write a story that revolves around how an imminent extinction of all birds affects one specific character. Is there a moment of realization when this decimation impacts your character’s life? How does the disappearance of these creatures change the human relationships in your story?

9.18.19

“It was like a plot from one of her own novels: On the evening of Dec. 4, Agatha Christie, carrying nothing but an attaché case, kissed her daughter good night and sped away from the home in England that she shared with her husband, Col. Archibald Christie.” In the New York Times, Tina Jordan writes about mystery author Agatha Christie’s unexplained eleven-day disappearance in the winter of 1926. Jordan’s article unfolds through a series of excerpts and news clippings detailing the incident. This week write a short story that similarly uses fragments from news reports or photographs to slowly reveal information over a period of time.

9.11.19

“When you’re in boarding school you imagine how grand and fine the world is, and when you leave you’d sometimes like to hear the sound of the school bell again.” In Fleur Jaeggy’s 1989 novel, Sweet Days of Discipline, translated from the Italian by Tim Parks and recently rereleased by New Directions, the adult narrator recounts her experiences as a fourteen-year-old boarding school student in postwar Switzerland, a time of conflicting desires and emotions, repetitive routines, and confusing power dynamics. Write a story that takes place in a school, inspired by memories of your own school days. Aside from the knowledge gained from textbooks, what were some of the lessons you learned about relationships and social dynamics? You might choose to integrate narration from an older, more removed character with scenes from an adolescent’s perspective.

9.4.19

How does the atmosphere of a cathedral change when a carnival slide is installed inside of it? A recent New York Times article reported that in an attempt to engage people into visiting and attending their services, a number of ancient churches and cathedrals in England have incorporated installations such as a four-story-tall winding carnival slide, a space-themed exhibit with a reproduction of the moon’s surface, and a mini golf course. Write a story that takes place in a cathedral that has incorporated some untraditional elements. Does the incongruity offer a different perspective of the space? Are the new features considered a disruption or are they welcomed?

8.28.19

“What is the difference between the truth and what the characters are telling themselves? If I can figure that out, then things really start to crack open,” says Téa Obreht in a profile by Amy Gall in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine about a question she poses to herself during the writing process. Keep this question in mind as you try writing a short story that revolves around a main character whose version of the truth—about another character, herself, or an event that has happened—differs drastically from a more objective reality. How does the storytelling perspective demonstrate this discrepancy to the reader? What is hidden underneath this version of the story?

8.21.19

“Glamour Shots was once the coolest store in every mall,” writes Mark Dent in the New York Times article “The Last Five Glamour Shots Locations in the United States.” In the mid-nineties, there were more than three hundred and fifty of these stores—part salon, part photography studio—around the world. Customers were treated to makeovers, and camera filters smoothed out any wrinkles or blemishes, a task that smartphones can now easily accomplish. For this week’s prompt, write a story that takes place in a chain store that has outlived its glory days. Who are the regulars that frequent this space and what ties them together?

8.14.19

Earlier this month, Seamus Blackley, a physicist and the cocreator of the Xbox, baked a loaf of sourdough bread using yeast extracted from 4,500-year-old Egyptian ceramic vessels with the help of an Egyptologist and microbiologist at Harvard. This experiment provoked some to jokingly—or not—wonder if this might unleash the wrath of an Egyptian pharaoh’s curse. Write a short story that considers what kind of consequences, mundane or fantastic, could result from bringing back to life organisms from thousands of years ago. Do problems arise when your characters unleash their creation?

8.7.19

Catacombs decorated with bones in Rome, an underground reservoir in Istanbul from the sixth century, a former subterranean city in northern France with hundreds of rooms, chapels, town squares, and a bakery. In a recent National Geographic article, nine different historic sites around Europe that are located underground are rediscovered. Consider what strange activities might be unfolding at any given moment right under your feet. Write a story that takes place in an underground location. Have historical sites been repurposed for an entirely new function, or has something new been built? Is the atmosphere lively and bustling, or cool and foreboding?

7.31.19

Earlier this month, a New York City resident formerly from California posted on social media about his mysterious and shocking discovery of a perfectly intact burger from the West Coast fast food chain In-N-Out Burger lying in the middle of the street in Queens. Write a short story that revolves around a character stumbling upon an inexplicable, mirage-like object on the street, perhaps one that evokes particular nostalgia or poignant longing. Why does it resonate so deeply with your character? Does the discovery result in wild speculation and conjecture when attempting to explain the mystery?

7.24.19

“Among my obsessions I include cows, pencils and all things Greek,” writes Mary Norris in her New York Times essay “Golf Balls! Pencils! Whales! What Makes an Author’s Obsession a Thrill, Not a Bore?” in which she contemplates the pleasure of relating to another’s preoccupations through reading the work of obsessive writers. Write a short story in which one of your own obsessions is transferred to the main character. How does your character handle or respond to this obsession in ways both similar to and different from how you would?

7.17.19

What happens to your sense of time when the sun doesn’t set for sixty-nine days in a row? Residents of the Norwegian island Sommarøy, where the sun stays above the horizon from the middle of May to the end of July, have a “time-free way of living,” doing away with the constraints of tightly scheduled hours and deadlines. This week, write a short story that takes place in a location that has become a time-free zone. Have the residents adjusted smoothly to a flow of life that passes in a timeless blur, or are there unexpected hiccups and misunderstandings? 

7.10.19

We must believe in our souls that we are somebody, that we are significant, that we are worthful, and we must walk the streets of life every day with this sense of dignity and this sense of somebody-ness.” In Colson Whitehead’s seventh novel, The Nickel Boys (Doubleday, 2019), the protagonist, Elwood Curtis, replays these powerful words by Martin Luther King Jr. from a record album he received as a young boy in the early 1960s, which he considers “the best gift of his life.” Throughout the book Elwood repeatedly refers to King’s words as a source of guidance, inspiration, and morality. Write a short story in which your main character is similarly inspired by an important historical figure’s words—words of wisdom written or spoken by an artist, author, or activist. How did your character first come across these words? Are they comforting or provocative? Does the meaning or significance of the words change over time as the character evolves?

7.3.19

“We think of the walls of a house as defining our domestic space, but in the novel these boundaries start to soften, for inside the house it’s as wild as outside,” says Chia-Chia Lin about her debut novel, The Unpassing (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), in an interview with Yaa Gyasi in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. In the novel, an immigrant family lives in a house in Alaska and deals with isolation, grief, and the vulnerability of the house to infiltration. Write a short story in which the stability of a house as a domestic space has been compromised. What happens when what was once thought as safe and interior becomes blurred with what’s presumed to be wild and exterior?

6.26.19

How would you experience everyday life differently if you had eight arms? If you could turn your skin metallic or reflective, or blend into any background and remain unseen, would you use this power to escape from dangerous or awkward situations? In celebration of Cephalopod Week, write a short story in which your main character possesses some type of octopus, squid, or cuttlefish characteristic. Describe the benefits of newfound capabilities, and what might prove unexpectedly difficult with these peculiar attributes.

6.19.19

This is a novel. All facts are true, but I have imagined feelings, thoughts, and dialogue. I used intuition and deduction rather than actual invention…. When I read about him, something happened. He started to live in my head like a character in a novel,” writes Catherine Cusset in the prologue to her latest book, Life of David Hockney: A Novel (Other Press, 2019), translated from the French by Teresa Fagan, which offers a portrait of the famous painter through a blend of biography and fiction. Think of an artist whose work you admire, whose character or life circumstances resonate with you in a personal way. Research some basic facts about this artist’s life, and then write a short story that focuses on emotional truth, using your intuition to imagine feelings and thoughts. 

6.12.19

In “Job Opening: Seeking Historian With Tolerance for Harsh Weather, the Occasional Bear,” MPR News reporter Euan Kerr interviews Lee Radzak about his retirement this spring after thirty-six years as the lighthouse keeper at Split Rock Lighthouse on Lake Superior in Minnesota. Radzak says many of the romantic notions about lighthouses can be attributed to the physical space they inhabit on “the edge—the edge of land and of water,” but that there are also difficult and tedious tasks that accompany his job. This week, write a story about someone who resides and works in a space that is intermittently peopled and completely isolated—a national park, a large estate, or a new planet. How do these extremes affect the life of your character? 

6.5.19

“Experiencing gives you a ‘first’ person perspective. You see others while you act. Watching gives you a ‘third’ person perspective. You learn something about how others see you,” says Elizabeth Loftus, a UC Irvine professor who studies memory, in Julia Cho’s New York Times piece on how watching a recording of an event can alter one’s initial memory of the experience. Write a scene in which your character attends or participates in a performance, party, or special occasion. Explore how her initial memory of the experience changes once she watches a video of the event. What stands out from the recording that hadn’t been noticed before? How does this reshape her memory?

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