WRITING PROMPTS | PROMPTLY WRITTEN
Prompt Yourself: Weekly Prompts July 3–9
Prompts to tempt your muses
Although this is the twenty-seventh week of Weekly Prompts here at PW, it’s my first time taking up the mantle for the intrepid Ravyne Hawke while she takes a well-deserved hiatus. I hope you’ll bear with me and the other PW editors as we find our footing in the new system we’ve devised to fulfill all your prompting needs!
I’m ready to dive right in to this week’s prompts, but before we get started, here are a couple of quick reminders:
How This Works
- Use these prompts to write poetry, fiction, an essay, creative non-fiction, or an article. They are totally open to interpretation! Include a link to the prompt at the bottom of your post.
- If you use one of these prompts, you can submit the result here at PW, to any publication that accepts prompts from other publications, or self-publish. If you submit somewhere besides PW, make sure to include a link to the prompt and tag PW editors so that we do not miss reading your story!
- You don’t have to use PW’s prompts to submit work here. We are an open publication for established and new writers to submit their writing — usually based on writing prompts from here or elsewhere, but unprompted stories are also welcome!
- Please be sure to use the correct Reader Interest Tags when you submit your work to PW so it lands in the right place on the homepage. Use ONE (not multiple) of the following tags: Poetry, Fiction, Essay, or Articles. Your other four tags can be whatever you wish them to be.
- Please ONLY submit drafts. To do this, once you have finished writing, instead of hitting the Publish button, click on the three dots (…), choose Add to Publication, click on Promptly Written, and then submit. This will put it into our queue, and we will publish it on our end.
- Each week, you will find prompts for Monday-Sunday. However, you do not have to use them in the order they are written. Browse them all and use only the ones that resonate with you. Submit your work any time during the week (or long after!).
- If you previously wrote for PW but haven’t in a while, you may need to go to the Submission Guidelines and ask to be a writer again. We went on hiatus a few months ago and stopped accepting submissions; if you were a writer with us before that time, you will need to sign up again.
- Have fun!
Are you ready? Great! Let’s get prompting!
Moody Monday
Write a ‘moody’ piece around any or all of the following:
— Brooding skies — The weight of unspoken words — A bittersweet memory
Tuesday Twosome
Write a poem or story inspired by the following:
Concept — Wild Twosome — Silence and Symphony
Wednesday’s Either/Or
Either Whimsy or Gravity
Bonus: incorporate both concepts in one story or poem
Thursday’s Thoughts
“He wanted to cry quietly but not for himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad, like music.”
— James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Fiction Friday
Use any or all of the following concepts for a story:
— a night at a hotel — Why did the marriage fail? — distant music
Random Words Saturday
Choose up to 5 of these 10 random words (you may use any form of these words, including plurals, any tense, or changing to a noun/verb/adjective):
- Linger
- Indigo
- Vibrant
- Thirst
- Cascade
- Adventurous
- Vein
- Captivate
- Refrain
- Dawn
Normally, this section is a prompt based on the theme “Spiritual Sunday.” As a very secular person, I’ve decided to add my own twist:
Secular Sunday
Chance encounter:
— Write about a time you had a run-in with an unexpected person. or — Write a story about a chance encounter between two strangers.
Bonus Prompt —Write a ‘serene’ poem, flash fiction (500 words or less), or essay.
Don’t forget, there are Writing Sparks available in the Monthly Theme!
Also, check out my latest ‘AI Made Me Do It’ prompts.
There you have it! A week’s worth of prompts to tempt your muses. I hope I did alright for my first time! I look forward to reading your submissions.
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