Practice Creative Writing With These Prompts

Practice Creative Writing With These Prompts

You need to write a story for your creative writing class? Would you like it to be a horror story, a suspense, a romance or a sci-fi one?

Whatever genre you choose, here are some creative writing prompts for you:

Your Biggest Fan

This one is straight out of the book Misery by Stephen King where a deranged fan kidnaps and tortures her favorite writer. How can you put a twist on a creepy, invasive fan that will make people’s skin crawl?

The Reader Takes Part in the Action

Why not write a book where the narrator slowly falls in love with the reader? How would you describe that?

Haunted House

Is there a creepy old house in your neighborhood that nobody wants to walk past? Are there steep stairs leading up to it like in Psycho? Maybe it’s a mystery who lives there as nobody is ever seen going in or out, yet there’s always a candle in the window at night? What finally brings you to an encounter with the house? A dare from your friends? Did your cat escape and run into the scary house and you have to find it? What do you see when you enter?

Vampires, Monsters and Zombies

Then there are the traditional monster and zombie stories where bloodthirsty supernatural beings invade a town and start a killing spree. Where are you when this happens? How do you escape? What scenes of horror do you witness as you run for your life?

Alternative Dreams

The kids usually dream of becoming ninjas, astronauts, cowboys. Instead, they grow up to become bankers, accountants. Imagine the alternative reality, where a little boy wanted to be a lawyer whereas had to become an FBI agent. How would the story evolve?

Ghosts

These can be some of the scariest stories. Someone has died, but their spirit won’t leave. How do you come into contact with this ghost? How do things develop? In the beginning, you merely sense something strange, but as time goes on, the ghost becomes more and more invasive in your life until you find yourself possessed by it! How do you fight the ghost? With a priest? Why is it tormenting you? How can you put it to rest? What is it’s story?

Another Kind of Death

In this universe, the dead don’t just become limp corpses. They function just like regular bodies, just without a soul. How do they interact with those alive? Why not break the cliché and make zombies good this time?

The Forgotten

You awake and start getting ready for work, you go downstairs and no one in your house knows who you are and your pictures have vanished. What do you do first? How do you make your loved ones remember you?

Buried Alive

As in The Raven where Poe’s fiancée is buried alive slowly, how could you write this theme to evoke the terror of feeling the earth cover you while you’re still alive? Does your victim escape? How do they do it? Who put them there in the first place and why?

Accident

Sometimes there doesn’t have to be a villain for the story to be terrifying. What if you were in an accident, a car crash, or are hanging from a cliff? How do you overcome the situation and make it out alive?

Bring on Some Sci-Fi

You have invented an A.I system that integrates with a human body to automatically provide adjustments that will allow you to evolve and better your life. You are the first person to test new technology out. What adjustments do you think will be made?

A great idea is always vital for a successful story. Pick one of the above or think of one yourself and go ahead, start creating!