Creative journal prompts.
Fifty prompts for playing on the page: quick warm-ups, very short stories, and ways in for the days when nothing comes.
Start with a warm-up, even if you plan to write something longer. Set a timer for five minutes, write fast, and don’t cross anything out until the timer rings.
Warm-ups 10 prompts
Five minutes to loosen up before anything serious.
- Describe the taste of your favourite fruit without naming it.
- Write ten uses for a paper clip, then ten more.
- Write a six-word story about this morning.
- Describe your street as it might look in a hundred years.
- Write a sentence that starts with the last word you read.
- Invent a word for a feeling that doesn’t have one, and define it.
- List every sound you can name in two minutes.
- Write a recipe for a perfect Sunday.
- Describe an everyday object as if it were a rare museum exhibit.
- Write a weather forecast for your mood this week.
Small stories 10 prompts
Short fictions, built from your own day.
- Give the last person who served you in a shop a secret. Write the scene where it comes out.
- Begin a story with: “Nobody noticed the door until Tuesday.”
- Retell something that happened to you today as a fairy tale.
- Write a conversation between two objects on your desk.
- Write the first page of a story set in the room you are in.
- Write a letter from your home to you.
- You find a note inside a library book. What does it say?
- Write a scene in dialogue only, with no names.
- Describe a journey in exactly a hundred words.
- Write the last line of a story first, then the first line.
Looking like an artist 10 prompts
Raw material is everywhere if you look slowly.
- Sit by a window for five minutes. Write down every colour you see.
- Describe a pair of hands you know well.
- What was the most interesting shadow, reflection or shape you saw today?
- Write about a sound you usually ignore.
- Choose one small patch of floor and describe everything in it.
- Which overheard sentence would make a good first line?
- Describe the smell of your kitchen as precisely as you can.
- Write about a photo you took recently. What is just outside the frame?
- Describe a building you pass often as if you were seeing it on holiday.
- List five textures you touched today.
Your creative life 10 prompts
How, when and why you make things.
- What did you love making as a child?
- When do your best ideas tend to arrive?
- What would you make if nobody would ever see it?
- Which creative project have you put off, and what is the smallest next step?
- Whose work makes you want to make something? What exactly does it do to you?
- What do you tell yourself that stops you from starting?
- Which tools or materials do you enjoy just holding?
- When did you last lose track of time while making something?
- What does “being creative” mean to you, outside art?
- How could you make one ordinary task a little more playful tomorrow?
Stuck days 10 prompts
For when nothing comes. Something usually does.
- Write about being stuck. Describe exactly what it feels like.
- Copy out a sentence you love, then write the sentence that might come after it.
- Make a list of twenty bad ideas. Circle the least bad.
- Change one rule: write with your other hand, or only in questions.
- Write for five minutes about the last thing that made you curious.
- Take an old entry and rewrite it from someone else’s point of view.
- What could you make in ten minutes? Start now.
- Write ten lines that each begin with “I remember”.
- Describe what you would make with unlimited time and every skill you need.
- Write the worst possible first line, then improve it three times.
- Let the verbs work. A precise verb often does the job of an adjective: the door creaked says more than the old door. When you reread, swap one weak verb for a sharper one.
- Try the present for stories. You can tell a story in the present simple for a sense of now: She opens the book. A note falls out. Then write the same scene in the past and compare.
Frequently asked
What are creative journal prompts? Prompts that ask you to invent, describe or play rather than report on your day: tiny stories, odd descriptions, lists and games with words.
Do I need to be good at writing to use them? No. They are practice, and nobody else has to read them. Bad first attempts are part of how the warm-ups work.
More prompts: morning · evening · gratitude · self-reflection · goals · writing in English · shadow work · self-love · relationships · new year · 30-day challenge, or all twelve themes. New to journaling? Start with how to start a journal.