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These are all the writing prompts we've used at our meetings to generate flash fiction and ideas. All prompts are open indefinitely, so if you missed one but still want to write for it, go right ahead.
Please come and visit us at our new home, and update your links and bookmarks!
These are all the writing prompts we've used at our meetings to generate flash fiction and ideas. All prompts are open indefinitely, so if you missed one but still want to write for it, go right ahead.
- Ghost story
- Knife and fork
- Solstice
- A boarded-up window
- The longest journey
- Bad jokes
- Remix (definition)
- Text Message (Optional: also write a story that would fit into a real text message, i.e. micro-fiction.)
- Road Sign
- Revenge
- Creation/Destruction
- Self-esteem
- Thesaurus
- Local legends
- Wrong Place, Wrong Time (or Right Place, Wrong Time)
- Scarecrow
In August, 2012, we set a challenge for the group to come up with first lines to stories they've never written. Here are the opening sentences. Feel free to use any of these and write a story using it as a first line:
- Oh no, not again, thought the black crow flying low over the poppy field pockmarked with shell-holes.
- She flounced past our drive straight into number 27, quite unmistakably the girl who we had buried only last Saturday afternoon.
- “Meet me by the Rowan tree at dusk and I’ll lead you to the boat.”
- The bullet went clean through her eye, leaving her porcelain face untouched and her tousled hair free to play unchecked in the breeze.
- He sauntered in jauntily wearing an infectious smile and sat down heavily on a rattan chair.
- They sailed on a south-easterly course out of Poole, her emerald eyes matching the sea and her teeth as white as the waves which playfully smacked against the hull.
- Lars walked to the cliff edge, stones crumbled under his sandals and bounced down, popping to the shingle.
- He balled his fists and drank in salty air, eyes locked onto the straight line ahead where sky met sea.
- It was an in-between sort of day, a bit blue, a bit grey - the same colour as his eyes.
- The small, fat accountant held the power of life and death, love and laughter, fix prix and a la carte over the naked, one-armed witches heaped in the corner of the dance hall.
- The suddenly ability of apples to fall upwards and for water to boil as it cooled should have perplexed me enormously, but instead it left me slightly aroused.
- Harriet burst into the room. "Bloody hell, it's all turning green!"
- "I have disproved the existence of God," shouted the young priest, "and all it took was a bag of sugar and a saucepan!"
- Roland Boyle had been digging for spare change, but he didn't expect to find a razor blade hidden within his pocket lint.
- Everything I tell you is a lie, except for the parts that are true.
- This is not going to be easy, thought Justin somewhat ruefully as he stood on the edge of a sheer drop with the roar of the advancing mob behind him.
- They were paper people, born into words rather than bodies.
- The floorboards creaked and the shutters flapped like trapped souls against the windows; the house had been waiting for me.
- Her head pounded as she gazed up at the clouds, which were dripping at awkward angles over the turrets.
- There was no sense, no logic, but she knew that if she spent another five seconds in that room, there would be no escaping it.
- He rocked gently as the words from his diary spiralled around him.
- The six members of the village committee stood staring at the bloodied carcass lying in front of them.
- Jesmond slipped out from underneath a stack of wet mildew infused towels, snore-swearing as he rolled to the other side of the cabin.
- He could see it all, burning cleanly and brightly.
- As Jeff walked through the doorway he felt the pinch in the back of his neck.
- The human heart is only capable of continuous blood circulation, and nothing more.
- I wished I could begin with page two, as the start of something always terrified me.
- Upon waking, it came as a something of a shock to discover that he had been asleep for 28 years. (or 'she' if writer prefers)
- The dogs are still gathering - last time I looked there were at least 50 of them outside my front door.
- Please believe me, it was not my intention to do this to you, of all people.
- She regretted it, the whole sad, sorry, sordid, stupid episode, even before he withdrew from her, and she knew she would regret it even more as she felt for the revolver under the squashed sweaty pillow.
We'll add to this page as we explore new prompts. Don't forget to check out the Stories page (linked above) for responses to these prompts, plus any other pieces our members have had published.
