7 Good Sources of Creative Writing Prompts
For some students the hardest part of starting a creative writing
assignment is generating an idea to write about. Here are seven good
sources of writing prompts that you can share with your students.
The Imagination Prompt Generator randomly generates prompts for starting a fictional story.
Imagination Prompt Generator is part of the
Creativity Portal
which offers ideas for free creative projects. Most of the project
ideas in the kids section of the Creativity Portal are appropriate for
elementary school and possibly middle school age students.
Story Wheel is an app for
the iPad and iPhone that is designed to promote audio storytelling. Spin
the Story Wheel on your device and when it lands on an image, dictate a
short story based on that image. When you are finished recording, you
can play your story back with animations generated by Story Wheel. The
basic Story Wheel app is free. You can add more thematic sets of images
like the Pirate theme to the app with a $.99 in-app purchase.
Toasted Cheese
is a daily writing prompt site that publishes prompts on a monthly
calendar. The whole month is laid out for you with a different prompt
each day. Don't see anything you like on the current calendar? That's
okay, click through the previous months to find old prompts.
Periodically,
Toasted Cheese
holds writing contests which you can learn about by clicking on the
links on the calendar. The writing contests are based on one or more of
the prompts from the calendar.
One Word is a simple writing prompt generator. The way it works is the user clicks "go" on the
One Word
homepage and they are presented with one word. Users then have sixty
seconds to write in the text box whatever comes to their minds regarding
that word. The idea is not so much to write definitions of the words,
but rather it is to write sentences using the word.
Plinky is a good place to find writing prompt ideas. Plinky provides users with a new writing prompt everyday. The benefit of
Plinky
over other writing prompt websites is that once you've created an
account you can see how other Plinky users responded to the prompt.
Write Rhymes
is a fun little site where you can find a word to rhyme with just about
any other word. I tried to use words for which I couldn't think of
obvious rhymes, but each time
Write Rhymes came up with something. To use
Write Rhymes simply type a word in the text box then option-click on it to see a list of rhyming words.
Quotes Daddy, as you might
guess from the name, is a compendium of quotes from famous and
not-so-famous people. Each day new quotes are featured on the homepage
of Quotes Daddy. If you have a class blog you can add a Quotes Daddy
widget to your blog.
One Word is a simple writing prompt generator. The way it works is the user clicks "go" on the One Word
homepage and they are presented with one word. Users then have sixty
seconds to write in the text box whatever comes to their minds regarding
that word. The idea is not so much to write definitions of the words,
but rather it is to write sentences using the word.
