Listen to these writing prompts via text-to-speech for the visually impaired.
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Each week, The Coil posts new writing prompts, photo prompts, and keywords to help you bust through your writers’ block.
Happy Monday! It’s time for another round of prompts to get your creative juices flowing. Come back every week for new writing prompts and ideas to help you get out of writers’ block funk and stay active with your pen or keyboard with no pressure. Practice makes perfect! Here are some ideas. Just dabble, and see where it goes. (If you’re someone who thrives on the pressure, then, hey, twist these prompts into something for our monthly 100-Word Stories contest or DaguerreoTyped historical photo prompt challenge!) You can read past weekly writing prompts here for even more ideas.
Writing Prompts
The antique compass, long thought broken, suddenly spins wildly, pointing not north, but directly into the oldest, most overgrown part of the forest behind your house. What does it lead you to?
A newly discovered star system emits a complex, rhythmic pulse that isn’t random noise. When translated, it’s not a message, but a sequence of musical notes that corresponds to a long-lost lullaby.
For years, a small, isolated town has experienced a recurring phenomenon: on the eve of the winter solstice, every clock in the town stops simultaneously for exactly one hour, and no one remembers what happens during that time.
A sudden, inexplicable static fills all electronic devices in your area, and when it clears, familiar landmarks have subtly shifted their positions, as if the world itself has been rearranged by an unseen hand.
You receive a package containing only a single, ordinary-looking seed. When planted, it grows into a tree with branches that glow faintly at night, casting shadows that seem to tell stories of forgotten pasts.
Photo Prompts
ALT TEXT Image Description: A moody black-and-white photograph of an exterior covered gallery of a building’s walkway. The photograph is taken from the ground looking up, and it captures the elegant glass globe lights that would hang over someone’s head who walked through this corridor. The building is old and looks Parisian, with classical columns on both sides holding up the tall ceiling, all of it possibly made of rectangular limestone and circular stone columns. The corridor itself is massive, but it is part of an even larger building that is mostly out of view, perhaps a palace.ALT TEXT Image Description: A closeup photograph of a mountainscape from the viewpoint of someone standing on a side of the mountain, looking forward into a small crevice, maybe leading to a valley or a canyon just out of sight. The swells of the crevice are filled with foggy mist that is both beautiful and haunting, and it would be thick enough that you might get lost if you entered it. On the side of the mountain, peeking through the mist, are the tops of dozens and dozens of straight, tall pine trees towering overhead. Beyond the trees, the mist rolls from low-hanging up into thick white and gray clouds in the sky.ALT TEXT Image Description: An overhead photo shot from high above looking straight down over a sailboat in the ocean. There is no land anywhere around, just the deep dark-blue of the ocean where it is shadowed on one side of the boat and the brighter blue of the ocean where the sun is streaking across the water on the other side. From above, the sailboat looks smaller, and the ocean looks vast. The boat’s sails are unfurled, catching wind, and the faint streaks in the water indicate that the boat recently turned in a new direction.
Keyword Prompts
glossolalia
cornflower
ephemeral
halcyon
susurrus
quiescent
nostalgia
Instructional Prompts
Write a flash piece about a secret garden you discover in an unexpected place.
Describe, in vivid detail, your favorite meal from childhood, including the tastes, smells, and emotions it evokes.
Write an instruction manual for a whimsical, imaginary device that solves a common, everyday problem.
Compose a letter to your future self, to be opened in 10 years, reflecting on your hopes and dreams for that time.
Create a fictional journal entry from the perspective of an animal living in your local park.
For the visually impaired or those using TTS reading aids: this is the end of the prompts.
Each month, The Coil presents an ekphrastic contest for writers and lovers of history. Here is this month’s historical photo prompt. Winner receives $25.
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