July 2025 Fun Creative Writing Prompts
- bridget hosey
- Jun 25
- 6 min read
Updated: Jul 1
40+ Creative writing prompts that will make you actually want to write daily!
Writing Daily
Not to beat a dead horse, but… if you want to be a writer, you should be writing every day. Writing daily will sharpen your writing muscle and build your confidence. But remember, writing every day should be fun!
Sometimes, as writers, we forget about why we started writing. We get caught up in the nitty-gritty, the drudgery, the monotonous to-dos of our manuscript. If this is you, it will help to set your manuscript aside for a bit and let your imagination run wild with these prompts.
Consider creativity, imagination and fun as the goals of these prompts; they can be as nonsensical or logistical as you want. So, release your inner critic, writers! And enjoy the prompts below.
Consider creativity, imagination and fun as the goals of these prompts.
Story Starter Prompts
Story starters are the most common type of creative writing prompt, and for good reason – they give writers a start, the writer just needs to decide where the story will go. Here are 10 of my own story starters below.
The girl emerged from a deep, dark wood. In her tiny hand she held….
The hunter caught his reflection on the pond’s surface, but for a split second he thought he saw…
The scientist snuck into the lab late at night. Her footsteps echoed in the hall. Suddenly she smelled…
It was finals week. He was desperately studying in the library. Soon, his eyes glazed over and he was drooling in his textbook. At 2 AM when he awakened, the library was…
She awoke one morning to find huge, muddy boot prints outside her bedroom window, so she…
Her beach ball tumbled toward the moored boat, she ran after it and saw…
The ancient cartographer finished the map but every compass he drew seemed to evaporate into the parchment…
A hush fell upon every creature in the zoo. The zoo goers looked to the skies and saw…
He had tried to grow these plants all spring. He tended them diligently, but to no avail. Then one day, as if by magic, he discovered…
They stared at the painting for such a long time that they soon found themselves…
Characters + Crisis = Story Prompts
In his book ‘On Writing,’ Stephen King shares that he sometimes starts with the situation of the story first, intentionally leaving the characters flat. Leaving characters flat in the beginning, and rather starting out with a situation, allows the situation to influence, change, and round-out the characters in a way that is inextricable from the plot / situation. This method is actually quite genius. And what else would we expect from the King?
By the way, I recommend his book ‘On Writing,’ to all authors, published or unpublished. You can read more about it here. Anyway, that inspired me to create this unique creative writing prompt. You will see a flat character, a setting, and a crisis. Imagine how the crisis changes the character within the setting.
Although using a situation works great for the horror genre, I’ve adapted it to a crisis, simply because this can be used across all genres. Feel free to adapt the crisis to fit your individual genre, and remember to raise the stakes to make the crisis more critical. If you don’t know how to raise the stakes, you can read all about it in my blog here
Character | Setting | Situation / Crisis |
Marine Biologist | Coral Reef | The fish keep dying because… |
Childhood Friends | Old Treehouse | They just discovered a family secret. |
A Little Boy | A Theme Park | The boy loses his parents. |
Old Couple | Their New Home | They witness a crime, but… |
Movie Director | Hollywood | The set for his movie is cursed. |
Group of Bros | Trip to Japan | They are lost and can’t find their hotel. |
Big Sister | Trailer Park | A tornado occurs suddenly. |
Visual Prompts
Written prompts are indeed wonderful, but sometimes just an image can inspire entire plotlines in a writer’s mind. Are you one of these writers? If so, please choose an image below that is most compelling to you and imagine the story behind it.
Sometimes just an image can inspire entire plotlines in a writer's mind.
Photo Credits:
Truck and RV Photo by Clément Proust: https://www.pexels.com/photo/un-pickup-camping-car-dans-monument-valley-vanlife-route-16498077/
Library Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/library-high-angle-photro-159775/
Couple New York Photo by Dante Muñoz: https://www.pexels.com/photo/not-expected-15481196/
Grayscale girl looking at sky Photo by Nailka Papakerashvili: https://www.pexels.com/photo/grayscale-photo-of-a-person-tilting-her-head-12342793/
White lonely house Photo by Jeffrey Czum: https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-concrete-building-on-green-grass-field-under-white-sky-4492596/
Two children Photo by Ahmed akacha: https://www.pexels.com/photo/kids-peeking-on-the-hole-of-the-broken-curtain-9993429/
Pumpkins Photo by Monstera Production: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-holding-two-orange-pumpkins-5634815/
Playing chess Photo by Merve Nur Türker: https://www.pexels.com/photo/playing-chess-with-metal-pieces-17277357/
Soldier Photo by igovar igovar: https://www.pexels.com/photo/grayscale-photo-of-man-holding-rifle-4654986/
Library Photo by Matt Hardy: https://www.pexels.com/photo/trinity-college-dublin-library-interior-view-32595985/
Die Roll Prompts
Another fun creative prompt is to roll a die. It’s somewhat similar to the aforementioned character + crisis, except that it leaves the crisis up to you! Each number correlates to a certain aspect of the story. First, roll the die to get your setting. Roll a second time to get your character. And roll a third time to get your item. Try to involve the item somehow in the story. There are many similar prompts to this one online, because they really are a lot of fun!
And if you don’t have any dice near your desk, never fear, google is here! Google has a virtual dice roll here:
Song Lyric Prompts
Another great way to get story inspiration is through the power of song! There are so many great songs with fascinating lyrics. I challenge you to really listen (or read online) the lyrics to one of your favorite songs, and try to imagine a story surrounding it. Or you can choose from my list below. Here are some of my favorite songs & my suggestions for turning them into stories.
Don’t be fooled by the music video, this is a beautiful song about a love that lasts.
My suggestion: Let the ‘Fields of Gold’ be fields in some other world, or even heaven, not earth. You could write a story about two lovers whose love was doomed on earth, and their memories of earth in heaven.
This song was famously created when the artists were stuck in England, sick of rain. But I imagine an epic journey across the American desert every time I listen.
My suggestion: Imagine this story in a futuristic or dystopian setting. Perhaps an America that has become a mostly desert climate due to climate change or war.
This folk song is said to be inspired by the red district in NOLA. But if you add tones of grace, redemption, and forgiveness, you would have quite a compelling story. Athens Creek already combined this song with Amazing Grace.
My suggestion: Uncover the story behind the song. Imagine who the story is about, what time period of New Orleans history, how does their life turn out?
If you’re in the mood to write something thrilling or horrific, this song could be right up your alley. & if you want to listen to a fun version of the song, I recommend the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain’s version here
My suggestion: Imagine a dual story; one of the psycho killer and the telepathic detective pursuing him. But the telepathic detective has limits to his ability to hear the killer’s thoughts.
I suppose I should include at least one song written after the 2000s. (Sorry friends! Can you tell I like classic rock?) I adore this song because it is already narrative in style. The story premise is just so endearing and true-to-life. Not to mention the music video itself is just lovely.
My suggestion: The main artist says this story was inspired by a woman he met in the Republic of Georgia, but it is more about the untold stories of older generations. Stories that are often unasked by young folks. So my suggestion is to choose an old person; real, imagined, historical, whatever! And tell their story.
How to Incorporate these Prompts into your Daily Writing
There you have it, 40+ creative writing prompts that you can incorporate into your daily writing for the month of July! There are many ways to use these prompts. You can write a prompt as a warm-up prior to getting into your manuscript. You can involve these prompts into your manuscript to gain a new perspective. Or perhaps you don’t have a manuscript yet and are searching for a story. If so, you could use these prompts to find that story, or just to practice writing daily while you wait for that bold story idea to come to you!
However you use these prompts, I truly hope that they help you and spark your creativity! Check back soon for August’s creative writing prompts!
As a side note, these prompts are all original and made by yours truly without the use of AI. So if this post was helpful, feel free to share this with your writer friends. And if you want to see prompts like this as you scroll instagram, give me a follow at @inkstainsediting on instagram. It will really help me out.
Thanks for reading and happy writing!
-Bridget Hosey
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