100 Creative Writing Prompts for Middle & High School – 2025

Some high school students dream of writing for a living, perhaps pursuing an English or creative writing major in college or even attending a creative writing MFA program later on. For other students, creative writing can be useful for school assignments—both English and other subjects—as well as preparation for their Common App essays. In a less goal-oriented sense, daily freewriting in a journal can be a healthy life practice for many high schoolers. Not sure where to start? Continue reading for 100 creative writing prompts for middle school and high school students, intended to offer inspiration in a number of genres and styles.

Why Use Creative Writing Prompts?

Similar to how an academic essay prompt provides a jumping-off point for forming and organizing an argument, creative writing prompts are points of initiation for writing a story, poem, or creative essay—both fiction and nonfiction. Prompts can be useful for writers of all ages, helping many to get past writer’s block and just start (often one of the most difficult parts of a writing process).

Creative writing prompts come in a variety of forms. Sometimes, they are phrases used to begin sentences. Other times, they are open-ended questions. They can also involve objects, such as a favorite item or photograph, or sensory observations, such as how it feels to walk, run, or eat. Memories, songs, and abstract ideas are fair game for creative nonfiction, while prompts that play with setting, character, and plot can be excellent starting points for fiction.

How to Use Creative Writing Prompts

Before we dive into the prompts, let’s talk about how to incorporate creative writing prompts into your classroom or personal writing routine:

Interpret the prompt broadly.

The point of a creative writing prompt is not to answer it “correctly” or “precisely.” You might begin with the prompt, but then your ideas could take you in a completely different direction. The words in the prompt also don’t necessarily need to appear in your poem or essay.

Write first, edit later.

While you’re first getting started with a prompt, leave the typos and bad grammar. Obsessing over details can take away from your flow of thoughts. You will inevitably make many fixes when you go back through to edit.

Experiment with different formats.

Prose is great, but there’s no need to limit yourself to full sentences, at least at first. Feel free to begin with a poem, dialogue, or even a list.

Switch up/pile up the prompts.

Try using two or three prompts and combine them, or weave between them. You can do this by choosing a main prompt and a different “sub-prompt.” For example, your main prompt might be “Write about being in transit from one place to another.” Within that prompt, you might also “Describe a physical sensation” and “Watch two people on the street having a conversation, and imagine the conversation they’re having.” This can be a fun way to find complexity as you write.

Write consistently.

It often becomes easier to write when it’s a practice rather than a once-in-a-while kind of activity. For some, it’s useful to write daily. Others find time to write every few days, or every weekend. Sometimes, a word-count goal can help (100 words a day, 2,000 words a month, etc.). If you set a goal, make sure it’s realistic. Start small and build from there, rather than starting with an unachievable goal and quickly giving up.

100 Creative Writing Prompts for Middle School & High School Teens

Below, we’ve collected 100 creative writing prompts that you can use to get started on a wide variety of creative writing assignments. So that they can inspire writing in a variety of forms, we organized our prompts by type rather than genre.

Use the menu below to navigate to your favorite category. Pick and choose the creative writing prompts that inspire you, and enjoy!

• Prompts Using Memories
• Object & Photograph Prompts
• Prompts Using Senses & Observations
• Prompts Inspired by Songs, Books, and Art
• Prompts Using Abstract Ideas
• Prompts Playing with Narrative & Character
• Prompts that Play with Fact vs. Fiction
• Prompts for Experimenting with Dialogue

Prompts Using Memories

1. For five minutes, write as many memories as you can. Each should begin with the phrase, “I remember…” (à la Brainard’s famous memoir). They can, but do not have to, be connected.
2. Describe a family ritual.
3. Choose an event in your life, and write about it from the perspective of someone else who was there.
4. Pick a pathway you take on a regular basis (to school, a friend’s house, etc.). Describe five landmarks that you remember from this pathway.
5. Write about your house or apartment using a memory from each room.
6. Write an imaginary history of the previous people who lived in your house or apartment.
7. Write about an ancestor based on stories you’ve heard from relatives.
8. What’s your earliest memory?
9. Who was your first friend?
10. Write a letter to someone you haven’t seen since childhood.
11. Write about yourself now from the perspective of yourself twenty, or eighty, years in the future.
12. Write about the best month of the year.
13. Write about the worst day of the year.
14. Rant about something that has always annoyed you.
15. Write about the hottest or coldest day you can remember.
16. Visualize a fleeting moment in your life as though it’s a photograph. For five minutes, write down every detail you can remember about the scene.
17. Draw out a timeline of your life so far. Choose three years to write about, as though you were writing for a history book.
18. Write about a historical event in the first person, as though you remember it.
19. Write about a memory of being in transit from one place to another.

Object & Photograph Creative Writing Prompts

20. Describe the first object you see in the room. What importance does it have in your life? What memories do you have with this object? What might it symbolize?
21. Pick up an object, and spend some time holding it/examining it. Write about how it looks, feels, and smells. Write about the material that it’s made from.
22. Choose a favorite family photograph. What could someone know just by looking at the photograph? What’s secretly happening in the photograph?
23. Choose a photograph and tell the story of this photograph from the perspective of someone or something in it.
24. Write about a color by describing three objects that are that color.
25. Tell the story of a piece of trash.
26. Tell the story of a pair of shoes.
27. Tell the story of your oldest piece of clothing.

Prompts Using Senses and Observations

28. Describe a sound you hear in the room or outside. Choose the first sound you notice. What are its qualities? It’s rhythms? What other sounds does it remind you of?
29. Describe a physical sensation you feel right now, in as much detail as possible.
30. Listen to a conversation and write down a phrase that you hear someone say. Start a free-write with this phrase.
31. Write about a food by describing its qualities, but don’t say what it is.
32. Describe a flavor (salty, sweet, bitter, etc.) to someone who has never tasted it before.
33. Narrate your day through tastes you tasted.
34. Narrate your day through sounds you heard.
35. Narrate your day through physical sensations you felt.
36. Describe in detail the physical process of doing an action you consider simple or mundane, like walking or lying down or chopping vegetables.
37. Write about the sensation of doing an action you consider physically demanding or tiring, like running or lifting heavy boxes.
38. Describe something that gives you goosebumps.
39. Write a story that involves drinking a cold glass of water on a hot day.
40. Write a story that involves entering a warm house on a cold snowy day.
41. Describe someone’s facial features in as much detail as possible.

Prompts Inspired By Songs, Books, and Art

42. Choose a song quote, write it down, and free-write for ten minutes about why you chose it and what it means to you.
43. Choose a song, and write a story in which that song is playing in the car.
44. Choose a song, and write to the rhythm of that song.
45. Choose a character from a book, and describe an event in your life from the perspective of that character.
46. Go to a library and write down 10 book titles that catch your eye. Free-write for 2-3 minutes about each one.
47. Go to a library, choose a random book, and open to a random page. Write down five sentences that catch your attention. Use those sentences as prompts and free-write for five minutes with each.
48. Choose a piece of abstract artwork. Jot down 10 words that come to mind from the painting or drawing, and free-write for two minutes based on each word.
49. Find a picture of a dramatic Renaissance painting online. Tell a story about what’s going on in the painting that has nothing to do with what the artist intended.
50. Write about your day in five acts, like a Shakespearean play. If your day were a play, what would be the introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution?
51. Narrate a complicated book or film plot using only short sentences.
52. Read a short poem. Then, write a poem that could be a “sister” or “cousin” of that poem.

Creative Writing Prompts Using Abstract Ideas

53. Write about an experience that demonstrates an abstract idea, such as “love,” “home,” “freedom,” or “loss” without ever using the word itself.
54. Write a list of ways to say “hello” without actually saying “hello.”
55. Write a list of ways to say “I love you” without actually saying “I love you.”
56. Do you believe in ghosts? Describe a ghost.
57. Invent a mode of time travel.
58. Glass half-full/half-empty: Write about an event or situation with a positive outlook. Then, write about it with a miserable outlook.
59. Free-write beginning with “My religion is…” (what comes next can have as much or as little to do with organized religion as you’d like).
60. Free-write beginning with “My gender is…” (what comes next can have as much or as little to do with common ideas of gender as you’d like).
61. Write about a person or character that is “good” and one that is “evil.” Then write about the “evil” in the good character and the “good” in the evil character.
62. Write like you’re telling a secret.
63. Describe a moment of beauty you witnessed. What makes something beautiful?

Prompts Playing with Narrative & Character

64. Begin writing with the phrase, “It all started when…”
65. Imagine an intense scenario. Tell a story that starts in the middle of the action.
66. Write a story that begins with the ending. For inspiration, you can use any book or short story, or even a story you wrote in the past.
67. Choose a story you’ve finished (or at least finished a draft of). Come up with five possible new endings.
68. Write a list of ways to dramatically quit a terrible job.
69. Write about a character breaking a social rule or ritual (i.e., walking backward, sitting on the floor of a restaurant, wearing a ballgown to the grocery store). What are the ramifications?
70. You are sent to the principal’s office. Justify your behavior.
71. Re-write a well-known fairytale but set it in your school.
72. Write your own version of the TV show trope where someone gets stuck in an elevator with a stranger, secret love interest, or nemesis.
73. Imagine a day when you said everything you were thinking, and write about it.
74. Write about a scenario in which you have too much of a good thing.
75. Write about a scenario in which money can buy happiness.
76. Invent a bank or museum heist.
77. Invent a superhero, including an origin story.
78. Write using the form of the scientific method (question, hypothesis, test, analyze data, conclusion).
79. Write using the form of a recipe.

Creative Writing Prompts that Play with Fact vs. Fiction

80. Write something you know for sure is true, and then, “but maybe it isn’t.” Then explain why that thing may not be true.
81. Write a statement and contradict that statement. Then do it again.
82. Draft an email with an outlandish excuse as to why you didn’t do your homework or why you need an extension.
83. Write about your morning routine, and make it sound extravagant/luxurious (even if it isn’t).
84. You’ve just won an award for doing a very mundane and simple task. Write your acceptance speech.
85. Write about a non-athletic event as though it were a sports game.
86. Write about the most complicated way to complete a simple task.
87. Write a brief history of your life, and exaggerate everything.
88. Write about your day, but lie about some things.
89. Tell the story of your birth.
90. Choose a historical event and write an alternative outcome.
91. Write about a day in the life of a famous person in history.
92. Read an instructional manual, and change three instructions to include some kind of magical or otherwise impossible element.

Prompts for Experimenting with Dialogue

93. Write a texting conversation between two friends who haven’t spoken in years.
94. Write a texting conversation between two friends who speak every day and know each other better than anyone.
95. Watch two people on the street having a conversation, and imagine the conversation they’re having. Write it down.
96. Write an overheard conversation behind a closed door that you shouldn’t be listening to.
97. Write a conversation between two characters arguing about contradicting memories of what happened.
98. You have a difficult decision to make. Write a conversation about it with yourself.
99. Write a conversation with a total lack of communication.
100. Write a job interview gone badly.

Final Thoughts – Creative Writing Prompts for Middle School & High School

When it comes to creative writing prompts, the sky is the limit! You can mix, match, and change prompts, experiment with new forms, and let your imagination take over. The only rule? Don’t hold yourself back.

For more writing resources for high school students, check out the following articles:

• Best Summer Programs for Creative Writing & Literature
• 25 Best Writing Competitions for High School Students
• 25 Inspiring College Essay Topic Ideas
• 160 Good Argumentative Essay Topics
• 150 Good Persuasive Speech Topics