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Writing Prompts: Daily Writing & Journal Prompts
choice-inspired writing prompts for daily writing in journals or notebooks

Welcome to the page that actually began the WritingFix website. On April 14, 2001, we posted the first fifty prompts on this page, with a button that allowed you to randomly receive one. Eight years later, we now feature over 500 prompts.

Daily Choice and student choice...This popular page of writing prompts is based on these two important classroom elements. Require your students to write daily in their journals or notebooks, but be sure they feel they have choice in what they can write about. Here we provide hundreds of prompts to inspire daily writing, and allow students to click the button below until they find the prompt that fits them for the day.

During our Northern Nevada Writing Project's Invitational Summer Institute, we encourage our participating teachers to use Sacred Writing Time in their classrooms. SWT is time set aside each day for students to respond to a writing prompt, or for students to freely write about a topic that is currently on their minds. The prompts on this page are excellent ones to offer your students during your own version of SWT. They are also excellent prompts to offer yourself, if you're trying to write daily.

Why do the prompts all begin with a question? Each prompt purposely begins with a question. If students have trouble starting a piece of writing based on the prompt, encourage them to pretend they have been asked the question, and to let their first sentence be their answer to the question that's been posed. This is a great technique for helping students write more interesting leads to their writing. Try it! It really works.

Want six WritingFix prompts e-mailed to you every Sunday?

Join The Daily Topic Yahoo Group by clicking here, and start enjoying this free feature.

Want a printable version of this page's journal prompts?

Visit Corbett Harrison's Always Write website to see how you can order this 30-page resource.

Ready to do some writing?
 WritingFix's Random Daily Writing Prompts

Instructions for student writers: Click the button until you discover a writing prompt that sparks an idea in your brain. Write freely for ten or fifteen minutes, not worrying about the conventions or writing. Just get some good ideas down on paper that you can expand upon later.



 

Current number of writing prompts:  542
Date of most recently added prompt:  May 31, 2009

A Tip: If you accidentally click past a prompt you wished you hadn't, use your right-click button on the white screen above, select undo, and you can go backwards through the prompts you've seen.

 

Publish Writing Done to the Prompts Above at our Blog

Share a Writing Prompt from your classroom!

In 2009, we created a blog for students who use the prompts on this page. If your students write something powerful inspired by one of the topics here, encourage them to revise and edit their journal writing, and then to post them at our Daily Topic Blog.

Here are some writing prompts submitted by teachers who use this page. If you have a prompt to add, send it to us at prompts@writingfix.com.

  1. Write about someone who had an embarrassing moment. (Fiction or Nonfiction)
  2. Think about your favorite TV show or movie.  Become one of the main characters and write a diary entry based on the last episode or, if a movie, based on a specific scene.  Start with "Dear Diary,"
--Heidi Grassi, Nevada


If you are an only child, what would your life be like (hypothetically) if you had siblings? If you are a sibling, what would your life be like (hypothetically) if you were an only child?

--Trina Grant, Alabama teacher

  1. Once in a while you come across a special one, and you think, "There is an old soul." Write about your pet or make up an animal friend that has more than just affection behind their eyes.
  2. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What kind of person can catch your gaze for reasons other than their looks? Are they more beautiful in their personality and presentation, or are they simple, fearful, and only pleasing to the eyes on the outside? What's the difference?
  3. Ever notice how two people can hear the same statement, and react two completely different ways? Think about running into an old friend, and how they might react to two versions of your greeting. They might remember you as a nice, interesting person if you say something one way, or they might remember how annoying you were one time if you say it differently.
    --Hannah Jacobson, North Carolina teacher

Suppose pencils were never invented...

--Carla Annese, New Jersey teacher

  1. Write a funny** story involving socks. (**You can change 'funny' to any emotion--sad or angry or mushy, etc, and 'socks' to any normally boring overlooked topic, but for some reason, socks seem to work best as a prompt.)
  2. You wake up tomorrow morning and you're in your favorite book (or cartoon or movie or tv show).  What happens?
  3. Create a new character for your favorite tv show or book.  Convince the creators that your character should be included in the next edition or episode.  How? Why? What does this character offer that isn't already there? Why should it be there?

--Audrey deLong, North Carolina teacher

Several years ago I gave my middle school students this previously-used writing proficiency exam prompt:  If your pencil could talk, what would it say about you?  

My students love it, and they have modified it to this: If [fill in your teacher's name] pencil could talk, what would it say about you? 

--Claire Legowski, Nevada teacher

If you could create a new US holiday that celebrates a person or event, what person or event would you celebrate?  Include at least 3 reasons why your new holiday should be celebrated in the United States.

--Rachel Henkel, South Carolina teacher

Would you rather hearing a ringing in your ears all day or would rather have a bright spot in the middle of your vision all day. Give at least three reasons you would pick one over the other and why. You must pick one!

--Sean MacLellan, Oregon teacher

What trait have you inherited from your mother (father, grandmother, etc)? When did you know you inherited it?

--LouAnn Flanagan, Kentucky

Mentor Texts that Inspire Better Journal/Notebook Writing

If you want your students to fall in love with the idea of keeping a journal, have a copy of Amelia's Notebook displayed in your classroom. Author Marissa Moss has done an amazing thing with her first book, which has become a popular series. Writing in the voice of a young girl about to move away from her best friend and school, Moss captures the emotions and everyday life that centers around a real-life experience.

The beauty of this mentor text is that it is published to look like a real composition book. We see Amelia's handwriting. We see the lines and margins one might see in a real journal. Amelia decorates the pages with drawings, side-bars, and artifacts. When I share this text with my students, they realize they're getting permission to decorate and personalize their writing, which is such a simple (but necessary) step in helping students love their journals.

Be sure to point out how Amelia writes about everyday kind of experiences and observation. Fights with her sister, the shape of people's noses, and cafeteria food are some of the topics she explores in her journal. This young journal keeper shows those students who think their lives are uninteresting that everything that happens can be written in an interesting way with an interesting voice.

The Amelia sequels that followed the success of the original are all great too. My personal favorite is the one where Amelia and her family go on a road trip and Amelia journals the whole experience. The tourist sites that Amelia visits seem very familiar to me, and they may remind you of places you and your family have stopped at.

And if Amelia doesn't inspire your boy writers, Marissa Moss has another delightful book to add to your mentor text library: Max's Logbook. Max is a bit more scientific and imaginative than Amelia (who focuses on narrative), but he writes and decorates his own ideas, and this could very well spark the imaginations of your reluctant boys!

--book review by Cathy Craik, Nevada teacher

I use the book A Writer's Notebook: Unlocking the Writer within You by Ralph Fletcher. It's a fast read, and a true inspiration to anyone who wants to write or who thinks he/she should do more writing.  I was given this book during an inservice class from the Northern Nevada Writing Project, and it has become one of the best books in my classroom library for inspiring students to take risks with their own writing.

A writer's notebook is a tool every writer should use.  In its pages, a writer experiments with ideas and writing styles in a non-threatening way.  A writer's notebook is like a journal or a diary, except that it relies rarely on daily narrations to fill its pages.  Instead of daily accounts, each page in the writer's notebook can focus on a topic--past, present, or future--that the writer would like to some day explore more extensively; the notebook's writer explores topics in brain-friendly and creative ways.

I like to compare a writer's notebook to an artist's sketchbook.  Artists fill their sketchbooks' pages with rough drawings of randomly seen things they may or may not use in paintings someday.  Topics in a writer's notebook should be thought of as rough sketches, attempts by the writer to gain more perspective in a manner that isn't permanent and is totally disposable, if the writer chooses to never use it.

If you've never attempted to keep a writer's notebook, get this little book by Fletcher. It'll inspire big ideas in your classroom.

----book review by Dana Nielsen, Nevada teacher

 

 

 

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