Prompts · library

A library of cold starts.

A growing collection of writing prompts, organised by what they ask you to do. Steal any of these. Bend them. Reject them. Send the result to a critique circle.

First Lines

One opening line, no context. Make the second sentence the one that makes the reader stay.

  1. 01A door that won't open from the inside.
  2. 02She had been told three things about the lighthouse, and only one of them turned out to be true.
  3. 03The dog came back. The dog had been gone six years.
  4. 04He started lying about small things first.
  5. 05The boat was small and badly painted and moving against the tide as if it didn't know any better.
  6. 06It was the tenth day, and she had not seen another person in nine.
  7. 07The letter had not been opened. The letter would not be opened.
  8. 08On the morning of her sister's wedding, the river finally rose past the kitchen window.

Last Lines

Endings, not beginnings. Write toward one of these. Or use it as the very last sentence and reverse-engineer from there.

  1. 01And then, for the first time in her life, she was bored, and she was happy.
  2. 02The light went on in the lighthouse, as it had every night for ninety years.
  3. 03He didn't write back.
  4. 04She closed the door. She did not lock it.
  5. 05It was the kind of weather you couldn't trust, and she had learned not to.
  6. 06The boat had gone. The morning was the morning again.

Found Objects

Drop one of these into a scene. Make the rest of the scene be about what your character does with it.

  1. 01A library card belonging to someone who died in 1974.
  2. 02A typed letter, unsigned, addressed to no one.
  3. 03A receipt for a coat that costs more than your character has ever spent on anything.
  4. 04A photograph of a room that is unmistakably the room they're standing in, taken before they were born.
  5. 05A key that doesn't fit any door they own.
  6. 06A child's drawing of a man who is not their father.

Dialogue Only

Write a scene that's nothing but dialogue. No tags, no description. The reader should know who is who, where they are, and what is at stake by the end.

  1. 01Two strangers, on a train that has stopped between stations.
  2. 02A parent and an adult child, the morning after the funeral.
  3. 03Two people who used to be in love, ten years on, by accident, in a queue.
  4. 04A teacher and a student who has plagiarised something good.
  5. 05A doctor and a patient, neither of them telling the truth.

Setting as Character

Write the place first. Make it have an opinion. The plot is whoever shows up in it.

  1. 01An empty pool in the wrong season.
  2. 02The kitchen of a house that has been sold but not yet vacated.
  3. 03A small bookshop on a street that was famous in the 1960s and isn't anymore.
  4. 04The chapel of a hospital, after midnight.
  5. 05A market town the day after the festival.
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