2022 WRITING PROMPT JOURNEY

Fiction Writing Prompts — Week Four

Prompts for January 22nd to 28th

The other night I had a Zoom meeting to attend. It was made up of 53 people I didn’t know, which had me anticipating the dreaded get-to-know-you game: “Tell us who you are, and tell us a fun fact about yourself.”

I tortured myself for an hour before the meeting trying to come up with the perfect fun fact. That exceptional balance of funny and interesting. Perhaps I could tell that I’m a big fan of kickboxing workouts, but also an extraordinary clutz, so kickboxing workouts often include me accidentally punching my own glasses off my face. Or maybe I should bring up the piece of Batman fanfiction I wrote as a freshman in college that actually became quite popular?

“Are either of these facts particularly interesting or funny?” I asked myself.

All that planning, and guess what? That get-to-know-you moment never came.

I couldn’t help but think how this mirrors the way we sometimes approach writing. We torture ourselves trying to come up with the perfect idea to write, when we could just sit down without all that agony and get started.

That is exactly what prompts help me with. And that is exactly how I hope they help you! Let’s not always stress ourselves out so much worrying about what to write about or what happens when we put pen to page. It is so much more freeing to just let ourselves create.

So let’s get started right now! Your three fiction prompts for this week are below. Have fun!

I challenge you, this week, to just pants your story. No planning allowed (unless you absolutely must)! Just grab a prompt, sit down, and let your story flow.

The simple rules for this Journey:

1. Pick a prompt (or two or three!) every week or as often as you have time, and get writing.

2. Post anywhere, on your own page or in a publication, and share a link in your post that links back to the original Prompt post.

3. Share a link to your post in the comments of the weekly Prompt post. This is optional, but I would love to be able to read what you come up with.

4. Finally, tag your post with “Writing Prompt Journey”.

Prompt 1

The haunted washroom.

Prompt 2

A birthday party (with a twist no one would expect).

Prompt 3

You return from an international trip to realize your whole town has developed a weird habit simultaneously, but they don’t realize anything is abnormal…

Remember to check out the Non-Fiction and Poetry Prompts for Week Four which will be going up as well very shortly. You can also go back to see the previous weeks’ prompts here.

And please don’t forget to post links to your prompted fiction in the comments, and link back to this post in your writing so more people can join the journey. I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Chelsea Marie is a writer by night and graphic designer by day. She is a West-Coast Canadian with a bad case of wanderlust and a dream to travel the world with her severely airplane phobic partner. Why do the easy way when a complicated route makes a much more interesting story? She’s on Instagram @c.the.storyteller writing and posting poetry in her spare time.

Before you go…

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