Are you looking for some awesome writing prompts for creative writing? I’ve got you! Let me tell you the 5 ways I use to prompt my students into writing creatively. I vary it up a little for my own benefit, but also for my students to find new ways of accessing their creativity, and just plain old keeping it fresh, as well. Wanna try a fresh way, before I even start talking? Download my free Roll-the-Dice Writing Prompts sheet to effortlessly get your students to write a story!
When I first started teaching writing, I did not know where to start. My students thought writing was boring, hard, and embarrassing. I realized this was because they’d never done it before! How can you expect someone to be good at something or even like it, if they’ve never tried it? So I realized I had to start nice and slow, and I had to build a habit in my students. So that’s what I did with the following specific writing ideas for creative writing.
Ideas for creative writing stories
In the rest of this post I will detail the following writing prompts for creative stories:
- Roll-the-dice writing prompts
- Sentence prompts
- Question prompts
- Picture prompts
- Object prompts
Writing prompts for creative stories
Roll-the-dice writing prompts
Roll-the-dice sheets make for excellent writing prompts for creative stories. They work like this: come up with a prompt for each number on a dice. For example, come up with one character for each number (1 = a doctor, 2 = a princess, 3 = a farmer, etc). I always come up with 4 rounds of these, which I categorize as follows: character, setting, object, exclamation. You can create different categories, of course.
After you tell students the designated prompts, have students roll the dice for all the categories. Whichever prompts they roll they must use in their story. This format is great for students that can’t come up with the basic parts of a story. Read more on how and why to use Roll-the-dice sheets here!
Sentence prompts
In this format you would give students a sentence to work with. This can be a sentence that kicks off the story, or one that has to somehow fit into it somewhere, or one that ends the story. A sentence like: “And before she knew it her whole world had changed..” or ““I’m not going in there..,” he said.” spark great creativity if you give your students time to develop something. With this sentence you can sort of determine the genre of the story too. Do you want a scary story, a funny one, a romantic one, or maybe an action-packed story? Or maybe give students the option to choose from several sentences.
Question prompts
Question prompts also make for interesting prompts for creative writing short stories. You could ask any question you want that you think prompts students into writing. Questions like: “What would happen if all people could fly?” or “What if all the water suddenly became melted cheese?” could prompt students into coming up with a fun story.
Picture prompts
Picture prompts for creative writing examples are abundant. You can find many pictures to use for writing if you just google “picture prompts”. And they are SO fun to use! All you have to do is show your students a picture and tell them to write the story behind it. Two pictures that come up on google immediately are the hamster in a tin can in the ocean and the humongous dog that is running after the man. I can’t tell you how many funny stories I’ve gotten from just those two alone.
Object prompts
You can also use objects as prompts for writing. In the past I’ve brought them myself, but lately I just had students bring some interesting objects. I collected them all and then I had students pick a few and write a story around those objects. The fact that they can actually touch their subjects helps inspire lots of creativity. It’s really fun as well, because students often give these objects their own lives. You’d be surprised at how much they come up with!
I hope I’ve given you lots of ideas for creative writing projects to do with your students!
If you don’t want to come up with the prompts I mentioned yourself, then you’re in luck! I’ve made lots of writing resources for my own students, and I share them in my store on Teachers Pay Teachers! Check out the following prompts by clicking below:
Roll-the-dice writing prompts sheets
Sentence & question prompts for winter
One Response