Writing Prompts: 200+ Creative Writing Prompts

Write a short film set entirely inside a car at a drive through window, where the voice taking the order knows things about the driver that nobody should.

A babysitter finds a second baby monitor in the house that the parents never mentioned. Write the five minutes after she turns it on.

Write a scene where a family plays hide and seek in their new house, and the count of people hiding is one too many.

A night cleaner at a closed primary school finds that the class register has been filled in for today, with one name she does not recognize. Write her shift.

Write a short film that takes place during a single power cut, where the only light is a phone at five percent battery.

Two hikers find a cabin stocked with food and a note that says eat everything before dark. Write the moment they decide whether to obey.

Write a scene where a woman hears her own voice leave a message on her answering machine while she is standing beside it.

A pawnshop owner is offered a wish in a jar as collateral for a small loan. Write the negotiation.

Write a short film about a lighthouse keeper whose lamp guides ships that sailed centuries ago, and tonight one of them answers back.

A girl discovers that the shadows of everyone in her town are on strike. Write the scene where she tries to bargain with her own.

Write a scene where a retired dragon applies for a job at a bakery and has to explain the gap in its employment history.

A mapmaker realizes that anything she erases from her maps disappears from the world. Write the morning she has to decide what to erase first.

Two strangers are stuck sharing the last table in a crowded cafe during a storm, and each has a first date who never shows. Write the hour.

Write a short film where two people fall in love entirely through the notes they leave for each other on a shared laundromat machine.

A couple married for forty years practice their first dance again for their granddaughter's wedding. Write the rehearsal, and let one of them forget a step on purpose.

Write a scene where two strangers both try to buy the last bunch of flowers at a petrol station at midnight, each for a different apology.

Two wedding guests who were each the other's first love are seated at the same table of strangers. Write the dinner without either one saying it out loud.

Write a short film set in the waiting room of a clinic where people go to have one memory removed, and two patients compare which ones they chose.

A delivery drone malfunctions and starts bringing a lonely man the parcels of everyone on his street. Write the day he decides to deliver them himself.

Write a scene where the first human to receive a reply from space realizes it is a polite rejection.

An old woman's smart home has been running her late husband's routines for a year. Write the night she finally asks it to stop.

Write a scene in which a robot vacuum cleaner witnesses a crime and is the only witness the detective has.

Write a scene where a piano tuner, working in an empty mansion, realizes one key has been tuned to sound like a scream.

A teenager inherits her grandfather's crossword puzzles and finds that the answers spell out the location of something. Write her solving the first one.