(Why Most) Writing Prompts Suck

Most free writing prompts suck…and worse than that: they waste your time and energy. Here’s what to do instead…

Last year I excitedly signed up for two different ‘a year of free writing prompts’ from sources I have turned to for writing inspiration and instruction for decades…and every time I open the weekly email, they make me sad.

The prompts kind of suck.

They feel worth what I paid for them: nothing.

In fact it’s worse than that. The cost isn’t 0.

The cost is my time and energy, spent opening the emails, looking at the prompt, and losing a little more hope every week.

Every time I see an offer for one of those free prompt subscriptions, I feel like I should sign up, if I’m serious about my writing. Shouldn’t I be doing everything I can, to advance my writing.

If you feel the same way, let me help you out: no. You should feel no guilt about walking away. Why?

It’s Not You, It’s Them…

Maybe you’re like me: I’m a lifelong journaler who doesn’t need prompts to journal. Many people throw out ‘writing prompts’ that are really just instructions to ‘write about a time when you…’. 

There’s little direction about how to make that writing time useful, or ways to develop your skills, and really, what writer needs more ideas?!

Or maybe, like me, you’re a short story writer or novelist.

While you can use journaling prompts to hone your description and dialogue skills, wouldn’t you rather be doing that while writing a story? For some reason, few writing prompt writers bother to spark actual stories.

Some writing prompts give you a genre, a character, and an object and tell you to write a story from that.

But, while that might help you come up with a premise for a story, there’s more to a story than that. For example,

  • How do you decide what the character wants? 
  • How do you know what the character decides to do with the object?
  • Why does the object matter?
  • What are the genre norms?
  • Do you even want to write in that genre?

Does the prompt help you think about any of these things? Rarely.

Ideas are easy. Crafting them into a compelling piece of writing is the part that matters. And it’s frustrating when a prompt leaves you high and dry.

Frustrated No More

If you’ve found writing prompts as frustrating as I have, I have an invitation for you, this week, and that’s to check out a free sample of my StoryAWeek newsletter.

In 15 years of running StoryADay May, I’ve learned a lot about what helps writers to start and finish stories. 

And it’s more than giving you a simple idea or a premise and saying, ‘good luck with that! Seeyabye!”

It’s also 

  • Supplying brainstorming questions to help you find a way into your writing
  • Teaching craft and writing-practice techniques in bite-sized chunks, tailored to the prompt
  • Sharing examples of stories that exemplify the best of the craft
  • Sending words of encouragement, that help you remember you’re not alone, and that you can do this. Of course you can!

A prompt should, er, prompt you to write. It should inspire you; spark connections in your brain; send you scurrying to the page, eager to craft a new piece of writing.

Torturing A Metaphor

Prompts that give you ideas for fragments are like plastic pony beads you buy from the craft store: 

  • Mass produced
  • Colorful, but uniform, inspiring nothing unique
  • Not something that often contributes to creating a valuable finished object.

A prompt that inspires you to craft a written piece readers will enjoy, is more like a natural pearl: 

  • Created by a slow but reliable process, 
  • Subtle in its variation as you hold it up to the light of your imagination 
  • a treasure that can be used to create other treasures.

Am I over-selling the importance of NOT wasting your time and energy on crappy writing prompts? 

Forgive me. I feel strongly about this.

You don’t have to subscribe to the StoryAWeek Newsletter (52 weeks of hand-crafted, lovingly spun writing lessons, prompts and letters of inspiration taken from my years of experience), but I hope you will at the very least give yourself permission to walk away from all those worthless writing prompt offers, and trust your own writerly instincts.

If you are looking for a weekly reminder to sit down with your writer-self and develop some new stories and scenes, delivered to your inbox, please do consider the StoryAWeek Newsletter

Wear Your Life Jacket

How writing keeps you afloat in the rough seas of life

On the US Coast Guard’s website, there’s a whole page dedicated to why and when to wear your life jacket.

(tl;dr: always wear a life jacket if you are on or around water.)

I think our writing is exactly like that life-jacket: something not to be ignored and neglected because when we need it, we NEED it.

How does a life jacket help?

  • By providing buoyancy if you unexpectedly find yourself in the water.
  • By providing buoyancy if you purposely jump into the water to save someone else.
  • By providing buoyancy when you are no longer able to keep yourself afloat due to fatigue, injury, or cold.
  • By providing buoyancy if you are a weak or non-swimmer.

–US Coast Guard

Why Wear Your Life Jacket?

No one on a boat hopes to need their life jacket, but the most experienced boaters will always put one on, just in case.

Writing is our life jacket on the rough seas of life.

Writing keeps us buoyant. It keeps our head above water. It keeps our hearts strong.

Public life is often — if you’re paying attention — choppy.

Private life goes through calm spells and then suddenly, out of nowhere: a giant wave threatens to capsize your vessel.

You want to have your life jacket on — your writing practice up and running and ready to sustain you — at all times.

Dealing with the Unexpected

If you find yourself dealing with an unexpectedly challenging moment in life having a writing practice can keep you afloat and steady while everything else is a mess.

It might be journal, or it might be taking some time out to visit your imaginary friends, but either way, it gives you a way to deal with the complexities of being human, and to exert a little control .

Your writing might help you get out of the situation

  • by selling a piece of work that provides much-needed funds,
  • or by helping you examine and analyze the facts that are driving your emotions about your situation. Writing balances heart and head.

Writing keeps your head above the water.

Jumping In To Help Others

If you intentionally wade in to a challenging situation, to advocate for others, or to right an injustice, having your writing skills in tip top shape gives you the tools you need.

When your writing is fluid, you can persuade people

When your writing flows, you can regulate your own responses.

Whether you are penning editorials, or creating fictional worlds that show a better way, you don’t want your writing to be rusty when your moment arrives.

Keeping your writing life jacket on, means you have the ability and confidence to jump in, if someone else needs you.

When You’re Tired

When you get tired or sick and feel you don’t know what to do, knowing that you can write about it (or about something that is absolutely not the ‘it’ that is dragging you down) is a healthy way to keep afloat.

Our writing life jackets keep our hearts strong.

When You’re Still Learning

If you’re not a great writer (yet), developing a consistent practice of playing with words will keep you bobbing along, as the current pulls you closer to your cherished dream of being a writer that you and others admire.

“Which Life Jacket Should I Wear?”

The Coast Guard site has a whole page of information and specs for different types of flotation devices for different people and purposes, with strong recommendations.

But before all of that they start with the simple line:

“The best lifejacket is the one you will wear.”

Likewise with your writing practice.

The best writing practice for you is not the one Stephen King has developed, or that I have developed, or that your favorite author talked about in that article you read, once.

The best writing practice is one you’ll a, do and b, enjoy.

And, like a kid growing out of their Type III PFD Life Vest, you’ll grow beyond whatever writing practice you start with, and that’s OK.

  • There will be times when Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages work great for you and times when you don’t need that practice.
  • There will be seasons where writing after everyone else has gone to bed works, and times when you only have that energy first thing in the day.
  • There will be times when all you can do is journal, and times when fiction surges up powerfully, like a fair weather waterspout

But keep writing.

It’s your life jacket.

What practice will you begin to build, this week, to help your writing serve as your life jacket? Leave a comment and let us know!

No Matter What

A sensible sailor wouldn’t let their kids talk them out of insisting on life jackets, even if the weather looks fair.

Don’t let your inner critic talk you out of writing, even if you’re not sure what purpose this particular piece will serve.

More Resources

People in the StoryADay Superstars group have been having having a lot of success lately working on 100 word stories lately. Want to give them a try? Here’s some instruction and inspiration.

Want to spend 52 weeks getting writing lessons and prompts in your inbox? Sounds like you need to sign up for the StoryAWeek newsletter!

Why Before How

how a post-partum exercise class made me a more dedicated writer

Happy Friday, Writers.

I’m back, as promised, with a little Something for the Weekend.

First, a story, then some prompts:

Why Before How

His chubby little hands reached out for mine and I raced up the grassy slope to scoop up my little boy and whirl him around. He’d never been in any danger. He just wanted his mum. So I ran.

This was the image I kept in my head, throughout the series of exercise classes I attended after I had my second kid. I wasn’t there to ‘get my figure back’

I was there because I wanted to be the kind of mum who could run to my kids if they needed me — or wanted me, or simply if I wanted to.

Every time I was tempted to stop leaping around like a fool in font of the mirrors, and catch my breath, I’d conjure up that vision and ask myself if I would keep going, if I was running to save one of my kids.

Knowing WHY I was doing a hard thing made it easier to live through the slog of the ‘how’.

As a writer it can be hard to sustain the long-term effort required to achieve the writing life you want.

Getting clear on why you are doing it, makes all the difference.

You’re not doing it ‘to become a best-seller’ (the writing equivalent of, ‘to get my figure back’ – something other people seem to care about more than we do…).

You’re doing it because you want to. Because it makes you happier. And that’s a good enough reason to put in the effort.

If you can, spend some time this weekend thinking about why you want to write that project you’re working on/avoiding.

  • What does it really mean to you?
  • What will finishing it do for you, in your deepest self?

Once you have the ‘why’, you’ll find it much easier to do the reps you need to do, to reach that goal.

Writing Prompts

Need some inspiration to jumpstart your writing? Here are a few more Story Sparks I shared in January:

(Each dose of inspiration is around 1 minute long and captioned)

To follow along with all the prompts, click here.

I’ll be back in your inbox next week. If you have questions or fears, or are stuck on anything to do with your writing, let me know. in the comments I’ll do my best to address your question in an upcoming missive.

Keep writing,

Julie

P. S. Those little kids I was training to chase? They’re just about to turn 20 and 22. Now I’m exercising for myself, because that long-ago class taught me that I was stronger than I knew…a feeling I want to hang onto! Likewise, it’s OK to pursue your writing to make someone else proud of you. But, stick with it, and you’ll soon find you’re writing to make you proud of yourself!

Of Pachyderms & Prompts

When I surveyed the StoryADay community the message was clear: you’d like a little something for the weekend, to inspire you and remind you to write. So let’s get started.

First, a letter from me-in-January-2025, then some writing prompts.

Elephant In The Room

Writers tend to be a pretty progressive lot.

Our self-imposed job is to think about why people are the way they are. This leads to us having compassion for other creatures and for our environment, and it often leads to an urge to improve our institutions and communities.

This is a tough time for the compassionate.

The loudest voices are, once again, telling us that we’re kidding ourselves, that we’re fools, that we’re being taken advantage of.

But we’re not. (You know that, and you’re not wrong).
And we are not the minority.

Those of us who can, must keep, as cheerfully as possible, reminding everyone of those things.

StoryADay is my sliver of the Writing-sphere and it is resolutely a place where people are welcomed with respect, encouragement, acceptance, and a loving kick in the pants when they’re not living up to their own (sometimes secret) expectations for themselves.

The only thing I will not tolerate is intolerance.

Still here?

OK. I have some more words for you.

Fiction is not about escapism.

I mean, it can be, but mostly creative writing is the spoonful of sugar that helps the truth go down.

The truth of what it is to be human.

The truth of the horrors we see, and the heroes that fight them.

The truth that it is possible to create–and live in–better worlds.

I know you might feel pulled away to pay attention to the news, but remember: your creative writing matters (fiction, or creative non-fiction). Your writing is a lifeline to yourself and others who are drowning in a sea of headlines and clickbait. It’s a respite from the (sometimes brilliant) non-fiction we all consume, daily.

People need a break. Let’s give it to them.

Let’s make good trouble with our writing, as Sen. John Lewis advocated.

And llegitimis non carborundum*, as British intelligence used to say, during the Second World War.

On that note, here are some Story Sparks for you:

Writing Prompts

I’ve been amusing myself by posting Story Sparks as Shorts/Reels this month. Here are the first 7:

I’ve also posted some from my old stomping grounds in Scotland. To see them all (including one with a castle), click here.

I’ll be back next week. If you have questions or fears, or are stuck on anything to do with your writing, or are ready to join me at the writing barricades, leave a comment. I’ll do my best to address your question in an upcoming missive.

Keep writing,

Julie

P. S. *Illigitimis non carborundum is mock-Latin for ‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down’! Words to live by…

Want to receive this missive by email everyweek? Sign up here