prompts

The list of writing prompts -- with deadlines -- for the 2009/10 YWP Newspaper Series. Submissions due by 3 p.m. on Fridays. A PDF of the years' prompts is attached below!!

DUE THIS WEEK (FRIDAY): Avoidance. What do you avoid? What do you do to avoid doing it? Tell a story about a time when you avoided something. Make it funny. Alternate: Intolerance. In your life have you seen intolerance or prejudice or discrimination? Have you seen it in more than way? Is there intolerance towards students who look different or dress differently? Or who aren't in a popular group? Write about intolerance; tell a story about your own experience or observation.

Hello all. I'm helping out over here at the YWP offices this week, and GG gave me the lovely job of typing up all the prompts that people wrote on the giant sheet of paper at the most recent workshop. In between some random tic-tac-toe games and nonsensical musings, I found a fair amount of good prompts (it was quite a challenge to move the paper around.) Here they are: AND GG IS SCREAMING (sort of) TO ADD YOUR OWN SUGGESTIONS IN THE COMMENTS BELOW!

MUSIC- Why do you like it?

End a story with the words, “Oh yeah- this is fiction. You know that, right?”

Describe a rainbow. Don’t use any color names (at all)

Write about your best experience in the rain.

Use the words “carnivorous plants attacked” in a poem.

Tell the story of a small building and how it adjusts to all the new
owners, changes, etc.

Write an entire poem without the use of two letters (ie. S, U, B…)

Write a nonsense piece that somehow makes sense.

27. Memorable moment. Tell a story about a moment – a minute or a split second – in which something happened that you will always remember. It could be on the sports field, on stage or in the woods. Use detail. Tell us why it moved you so.
Alternate: Humor. What’s the hardest thing to do? Tell a joke when you’re asked to tell a joke. What’s the second hardest thing to do? Write a funny story when you’re asked to write a funny story. But we want one. We want the story you told your friends that almost made them pee laughing. Or make something up. You know you’ve got one. And get in the right mood when you write it.
Deadline: April 24 .

Winter Tales.

Each year we ask students to send us a story, poem or an essay about winter. They can focus on the holidays or the seasons -- the weather, the outdoors or the emotions. The work can be real or made up. Long or short.

These were the writing prompts for the 2006-07 school year. Feel free to use them, and you can make submissions on these topics under "General" in the 2007-08 year, but we have new prompts for 2007-08 year.

Last year's prompts: