Creative Writing Prompts

By Eleanor Hayes, writer & literary editor · Updated 23 May 2026

These 40 original creative writing prompts for PEN USA West are designed to spark fiction, poetry, memoir, and script ideas for writers of every level. Use them for a workshop, a daily practice, or whenever you need a fresh spark to fill the page. See also our guide to creative writing.

40 creative writing prompts

1. Write a short story that opens with a locked door and a key that no longer fits.
2. Describe a city where every citizen is required to tell one lie per day, through the eyes of someone who refuses.
3. Compose a poem in the voice of a river that remembers every person who ever crossed it.
4. Write a letter from a character to the version of themselves they were ten years ago.
5. Tell the story of the last bookstore on Earth from the perspective of its final customer.
6. Write a scene where two estranged siblings meet again at their childhood home for the first time in twenty years.
7. Invent a myth that explains why a particular constellation disappeared from the sky.
8. Write a monologue for a censor who begins to fall in love with the words they are told to erase.
9. Describe a courtroom drama where the defendant is on trial for remembering something everyone else has forgotten.
10. Write a story told entirely through the margins and annotations of a secondhand book.
11. Compose a piece of flash fiction that takes place in the sixty seconds before a power outage.
12. Write a memoir excerpt about the first time you realized your parents were fallible.
13. Invent a small town whose economy depends entirely on a single strange tradition, and describe a newcomer's first week there.
14. Write a dialogue between a ghost and the new tenant of the house they haunt, neither one frightened of the other.
15. Describe an immigrant's first winter in a new country, focusing on one object they brought from home.
16. Write a story where the protagonist can hear the unspoken thoughts of strangers but not the people they love.
17. Compose a poem about a language that is dying, spoken by its last two fluent speakers.
18. Write a scene set backstage at a play on its opening night, where the actors begin improvising the truth instead of their lines.
19. Tell the story of a journalist investigating a story that could get them deported, and the choice they make at the deadline.
20. Write a piece of speculative fiction imagining a world where dreams can be legally owned and sold.
21. Describe a family recipe passed down for generations, and the secret ingredient no one admits to changing.
22. Write a story about a translator who begins altering the meaning of the documents they are paid to translate.
23. Compose a short play in which two prisoners on opposite sides of a wall communicate only through tapping code.
24. Write about a librarian tasked with deciding which books survive a citywide flood and which do not.
25. Describe the last conversation between an author and the character they invented, before the manuscript is destroyed.
26. Write a story that unfolds entirely in the waiting room of an immigration office.
27. Compose a poem addressed to a hometown that no longer exists as you remember it.
28. Write a scene where a whistleblower rehearses what they will say to a reporter, then says something entirely different.
29. Invent a folk tale about a fisherman who catches a fish that begs, in perfect human speech, to be released.
30. Write a story about twins raised in two different countries who meet for the first time as adults.
31. Describe a protest through the eyes of the one person in the crowd who came only to watch.
32. Write a piece of historical fiction set during a single night of a real uprising, told from an ordinary bystander's perspective.
33. Compose a monologue for a statue that has watched its city change for two hundred years.
34. Write a story where a character discovers letters their grandparent wrote but never sent during wartime.
35. Describe an artist creating a mural they know will be painted over by morning, and why they finish it anyway.
36. Write a scene between a parent and child separated at a border crossing, reunited years later as strangers.
37. Compose a poem about the exact moment a language becomes a memory rather than a way of speaking.
38. Write a story about a radio host whose broadcast is the only free voice left in a city under curfew.
39. Invent a scene where an editor removes a single sentence from a manuscript, and the story spirals around what was lost.
40. Write a piece of fiction about a courtroom sketch artist who draws something no one else in the room can see.

See our overview of creative writing, or explore how to write a short story and creative writing tips.

Frequently asked questions