40 Writing Prompts for Your Creative Writing

June is here! In this post, you’ll find 40 diverse and imaginative writing prompts designed to inspire fiction, poetry, or even personal essays.

From unusual character scenarios to speculative world-building and emotional dilemmas, these prompts are meant to help you push past writer’s block. They are divided in categories: fantasy, mystery, romance and world building.

Perfect for daily writing exercises, classroom use, or just jumpstarting your next great story: pick a prompt, set a timer, and let your imagination run wild.

Let’s get writing.

Fantasy Writing Prompts

1. A young apprentice discovers their master is actually the villain they were trained to defeat.
2. A kingdom where magic is only accessible during solar eclipses faces an unexpected invasion.
3. A sentient sword refuses to be wielded by anyone unworthy, but now it's stuck with an unlikely thief.
4. Dragons once ruled the skies, but now they’ve turned to politics. What does their council look like?
5. A forgotten god awakens in the body of a child born under a blood moon.
6. A wizard tries to reverse a spell but accidentally swaps bodies with their familiar.
7. A cursed forest trades memories for safe passage: what does your protagonist give up?
8. Every time someone tells a lie in the city, a piece of the sky darkens.
9. The royal family has been secretly replaced by doppelgangers. One servant knows the truth.
10. A rebellion is led not by warriors, but by bards whose songs alter reality.

Mystery Writing Prompts

1. A detective who solves crimes in their dreams wakes up with blood on their hands.
2. A locked-room murder, except the room is an elevator stuck between floors.
3. An old diary hints at a decades-old conspiracy buried under a modern skyscraper.
4. A small-town librarian begins noticing strange coded messages in returned books.
5. Someone is recreating historical murders (exactly) and no one can figure out how.
6. A famous illusionist dies during a performance. Was it the final act, or a cover-up?
7. A photo surfaces showing a missing person alive... in a place that no longer exists.
8. A journalist receives anonymous tips for crimes before they happen.
9. An amnesiac wakes up with a map, a name, and a gun but no idea who they are.
10. The suspect swears they were framed. The evidence swears they’re guilty. One juror begins to doubt.

Romance Writing Prompts

1. Two rivals in a cooking competition are forced to share a kitchen after a scheduling error.
2. A person falls in love with a ghost who only appears in reflections.
3. A time-traveler keeps accidentally bumping into the same person across centuries.
4. A fake dating contract between a pop star and their bodyguard starts to feel very real.
5. A florist and a funeral director bond over a mysterious bouquet that keeps reappearing.
6. Enemies turned allies on a dangerous journey begin to understand each other’s scars.
7. A love letter is accidentally delivered to the wrong address and changes two lives.
8. A wedding planner falls for the sibling of the groom.
9. A bookstore owner discovers someone has been leaving annotated love poems in returned books.
10. After losing a bet, two coworkers must go on five dates and report back to their boss.

Worldbuilding Writing Prompts

1. What does justice look like in a society where everyone knows the exact day they will die?
2. Design a world where sunlight is toxic but dreams are a shared, public experience.
3. What kind of economy develops in a floating archipelago where islands drift unpredictably?
4. Create a religion based on celestial events, and what happens when one fails to occur.
5. A society where memories can be traded: who becomes powerful, and who becomes empty?
6. Explore the cultural impact of a language that changes meaning depending on the speaker’s emotions.
7. Design a city built inside the ribcage of a long-dead leviathan.
8. In a world where everyone has one magical talent, what’s the least useful ability and how could it matter?
9. What are funerals like in a civilization where people can be reborn from soil?
10. How does society evolve in a land where books are living beings that choose who can read them?