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Writing prompts

Drafts, edits, rewrites. For when the words exist but refuse to line up.

• creative Summarise a Novel or Non-Fiction Book Into a Shareable Reading Note

  Turn your book notes into a shareable reading note that tells someone whether and how to read it.

• creative Translate a Piece of Feedback Into a Brief for the Next Draft

  Turn a set of feedback notes into a practical brief you can work from in the next draft.

• creative Translate a Poem Into a Form It Was Not Written In

  See what happens to a poem when you force it into a completely different form.

• creative Summarise Your Creative Influences Into a Personal Style Statement

  Extract the pattern in your creative influences and distil it into a personal style statement.

• creative Decide Whether to Share a Personal Story in a Public Piece of Writing

  Work out whether your personal story belongs in the piece or just belongs to you.

• creative Translate Scene Notes Into Screenplay Format

  Convert rough scene notes into correctly formatted screenplay pages without rewriting your story.

• creative Summarise a Content Strategy Into an Actionable Weekly Posting Schedule

  Turn a content strategy document into a realistic week you can actually execute.

• creative Compare Two Headline Options for an Article or Email

  Get a direct verdict on two headline options without having to run a split test.

• creative Summarise a Long Article Into Three Formats for Three Different Audiences

  Turn one article into three summaries, each calibrated for a different audience's needs.

• creative Compare Two Endings for a Piece of Fiction

  Choose between two possible endings for your story using narrative logic rather than gut instinct.

• creative Critique a Social Media Bio for Clarity and Distinctiveness

  Find out what your social media bio is actually saying, then make it say the right thing.

• creative Explain How to Make Feedback on Your Creative Work More Useful

  Design feedback requests that get useful responses and process contradictory feedback without losing your voice.

• creative Translate Vague Feedback on Creative Work Into Specific Revisions

  Turn vague creative feedback into technical interpretations and specific revision experiments.

• creative Explain How to Build a Sustainable Writing Habit Without Relying on Motivation

  Build a writing habit that runs on system design rather than waiting to feel like it.

• creative Reframe a Piece of Harsh Creative Feedback Into Actionable Craft Notes

  Extract the usable craft instruction from feedback that landed badly or made no practical sense.

• creative Critique the Structure of a Short Story Before You Edit the Prose

  Find out whether your story has a structural problem before you spend more time on the prose.

• creative Critique a Piece of Your Creative Work From the Perspective of a Critical Stranger

  Get a specific, unsentimental critique of creative work that identifies what would lose a critical stranger.

• creative Reframe a Creative Rejection as Calibration Data

  Stop reading a rejection as a verdict on your work and start reading it as calibration data.

• creative Explain the Difference Between Showing and Telling in Fiction

  Understand the show-versus-tell rule precisely enough to know when to break it.

• creative Reframe a Draft That Is Not Working as a Diagnostic Signal

  Find out whether your stuck draft has a writing problem or a thinking problem, then fix the right one.

• creative Summarise Your Character Arc for a Writer Looking for the Emotional Shape

  Find the emotional shape of your protagonist's arc so you know what the story is actually about.

• creative Translate a Personal Essay into a Pitch for a Publication

  Turn your finished personal essay into a pitch that sounds like it belongs in a specific publication.

• creative Summarise the Subtext in a Scene You Cannot Get Right

  Find out what your scene needs to carry beneath the surface before you rewrite it again.

• creative Rewrite Your Story's Opening Scene to Hook the Reader in the First Paragraph

  Rewrite your opening paragraph so the reader does not stop after the first page.

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