Sample Writing Prompts

Writing Invitation: the first 15 Minutes

When students log on to the session, they have 15 or so minutes to write to an invitation. They can choose to write to the invitation but they don’t have to. This serves as a warm-up exercise, but some invitations have turned into longer pieces of writing. Here is one example:

Mini-Lesson and Extended Writing Time

Mini-lessons focus on various aspects of writing fiction or poetry. We return often to the elements of fiction, and I give students writing prompts to help them start stories. They aren’t required to write to the prompt, but they often choose to.

For this writing prompt, we reviewed the elements of fiction before they wrote. This prompt inspired many students who came up with different plots and characters.

What Happened to the Forest?

Every day for your character’s whole life, the first thing they do is wake up and look outside the window to see the forest.

One day they wake up, look outside the window and the forest has disappeared.

Write the story.

• Develop your character, their reaction, their feelings.

• What do they see? Is the forest bulldozed with trees upturned by their roots? Has it been chopped down and you see the remnants of tree stumps? Or did it just suddenly disappear as if someone had picked it up and left emptiness?

• Is this a good thing or is something sinister at play?

• Why has this happened?

• Remember what a story has to have:

  • a beginning, middle, and an end

  • a conflict, setting, character(s)

  • rising actions, climax, and (maybe, falling action), and the resolution