"Your Mother..." Creative Writing Prompt
One of my writing teachers used this prompt with good results in class one day. As the name suggests, you use an everyday phrase, "Your mother" to spark a new story.The Blues: A Creative Writing Prompt
Here, an energetic exercise for kids by Maya Angelou (published by the Poetry Foundation), is adapted for people of all ages.Things Lost and Found Creative Writing Prompts
These creative writing prompts encourage you to delve into two of the most fertile topics for writing. Begin by focusing on things that you've lost and then switch gears entirely.Hands: A Five-Part Creative Writing Exercise
This creative writing exercise begins with a description of someone's hands, and then prompts you to build on that description in unexpected ways.What If You Were Invisible?
I found this prompt in Beth Baruch Joselow's Writing Without the Muse, but it just as easily could have come from Woody Allen's Alice. In it you're asked to imagine a scene you might observe only if you were invisible.Dictionary as Writing Prompt-Generator
Sometimes simply using new words can inspire your writing to take a new direction. In this exercise, a few words chosen at random will provide a new focus for today's writing.The Storyteller
This exercise is based on one in Julia Cameron's book on writing, The Right to Write, reviewed for this site several years ago. When I recently reviewed her classic book The Artist's Way, I remembered this writing exercise and thought it worthwhile to share it here, as an exercise in its own right and as an example of the kinds of suggestions she gives in her book.
Ten-Minute Writing Exercise
If you think you don't have time to write, think again. See what you can produce with a simple set of writing prompts and ten minutes of your time with this creative writing exercise inspired by Rita Dove's exercise "Ten-Minute Spill."
Prompts & Exercises from the Monthly Challenges
Each month from September to May, the fiction writing site at About.com supplies a monthly writing challenge and posts reader responses. It's a good source of new writing prompts and exercises, and the responses provide examples of how the exercise might be approached. (If you attempt the current challenge, be sure to submit a response of your own.)
Work on specific writing skills with writing craft exercises.