15 of the Most Creative Writing Prompts from Reddit
Creative writing is a fantastic way to escape reality for a moment and let your imagination run wild. I find it difficult to know where to start with a fun story and that’s when I use a writing prompt to ignite my flow. There’s a writing prompt sub-group on Reddit where individuals from around the world can post a prompt or reply to one with a short story of their own. If you dream of being a published author someday, you might want to consider posting publically so that others can read your writing and provide feedback. It’s a good way to see resonates with people and test out your writing style.
If you’re more of a private creative, browse the prompts and respond to it in your private JRNL. (Remember, you can keep a separate journal for your creative writing vs. a daily journal for your day’s events.) The Reddit prompts are meant to inspire new writing and inspire they do! Occasionally one of them will capture my attention and before I know it, I’ll be sucked into reading all the short stories that go along with it. Here are a few that I enjoyed.
The Best Creative Writing Prompts from Reddit
- On your 21st birthday, your biggest accomplishment becomes your official title – no matter how trivial. You wait anxiously in line for your village elder, Glenda, Devourer of 53 Chicken Nuggets In A Single Sitting, to assign you your new title.[ Link ]
- Your ability to see people’s age in years as an invisible number above their heads has made you the perfect bouncer. One day you see a four-digit number. [ Link ]
- You never kill the spiders in your home, you just whisper “today you, tomorrow me” when you set them outside. Now, in your most dire moment, an army of spiders arrives to have your back. [ Link ]
- Due to a rare brain condition you’ve spent your entire life hallucinating the presence of a six-foot-tall penguin. You’re on a date one day when you’re asked, “So what’s the deal with the penguin?” [ Link ]
- Death is just a predator much higher on the food chain than we are, and our perception of it is as limited as an ant’s perception of a child with a magnifying glass. [ Link ]
- You have $86,400 in your bank and someone steals $10. You spend all the rest of your money trying to get revenge. [ Link ]
- We finally get men to Mars and they discover an old Soviet flag placed down decades ago. The Soviets won the space race but for whatever horrifying reason didn’t say anything. [ Link ]
- At the age of twelve, you started randomly seeing a green line and a red line appear on the ground. You always followed the green line and have lived a successful and happy life. Ten years later you are on top of the world, but bored. Time to see where the red line leads. [ Link ]
- A man draws a gun in a dark alley and asks for your wallet. You begrudgingly obey. He throws it on the ground, shoots it till it screeches, and turns to you; “you’re safe now”. [ Link ]
- A friendship between a time traveler and an immortal. Wherever the time traveler ends up, the immortal is there to catch him up to speed. [ Link ]
- You’re a thief who breaks into homes but you try your best to stay undetected. You lubricate the hinges to prevent squeaky noises, you sweep the floor to get rid of footsteps, etc. Eventually, you fix more than you take, and rumors spread about a mysterious, helpful fairy in town. [ Link ]
- You are born without emotions; to compensate this, you started a donation box where people could donate their unwanted emotions. You’ve lived a life filled with sadness, fear, and regret until one day, someone donates happiness. [ Link ]
- When you die, your ghost remains in the world until the last person who remembers you also die. 15,000 years after your death, you are still here. [ Link ]
- Your father leaves the house to buy milk, 50 years later he comes back with milk in hand and hasn’t aged a bit. [ Link ]
- One day, at the library, you find a book written by an author with the same name as you. As you start to read it, you come to realize it’s an exact telling of your life. As you continue to read, you reach the story of finding this very book, though you’re not even close to halfway through it. [ Link ]
Which one of these prompts is your favorite? If you found a really good one on Reddit that isn’t listed above, be sure to let us know in the comments so that we can add it to the list.
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COMMENTS
How did you learn to write creatively (Paragraph structure, how to create suspense, how to describe people/surroundings). I'm trying to improve my writing, although it's not quite easy without the proper materials. I didn't learn the guitar by simple playing a bit. I had a book and a teacher.
Writing is editing, therefore just pick up a pen and write, if it doesn't work out it's only destiny's fault. Studying writers’ routines won't reveal a magic ingredient. Another logical shortcut, whereby being a good writer is an inherent skill that doesn't need any external influence to develop.
I've taken four creative writing classes each with different instructors and I would say from each class I learned something invaluable about my writing but also how to be good at workshopping.
Creative writing is a skill that can be learned and practiced like any other. Techniques such as ABDCE structure, 1st or 3rd person point of view, “show don’t tell”, dialogues, and tropes can be easily learned through the online courses in this guide. Three courses are entirely free or free-to-audit.
Creative writing is a fantastic way to escape reality for a moment and let your imagination run wild. Writing prompts help to ignite your flow. Try one of these creative prompts that we found on Reddit.
Below are the two general writing subreddits—the differences lie in the size, personality, and attitudes you'll encounter in each one. The first is the largest subreddit and community dedicated to writing, but the latter is more typically open to critiques and has more flexible rules around what you're allowed to post.