good essay starters for books

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How to Write an Essay Introduction (with Examples)  

The introduction of an essay plays a critical role in engaging the reader and providing contextual information about the topic. It sets the stage for the rest of the essay, establishes the tone and style, and motivates the reader to continue reading.

What is an essay introduction , what to include in an essay introduction, how to create an essay structure , step-by-step process for writing an essay introduction , how to write an introduction paragraph , how to write a hook for your essay , how to include background information , how to write a thesis statement .

Argumentative Essay Introduction Example:
Expository Essay Introduction Example

Literary Analysis Essay Introduction Example

Check and revise – checklist for essay introduction , key takeaways , frequently asked questions .

An introduction is the opening section of an essay, paper, or other written work. It introduces the topic and provides background information, context, and an overview of what the reader can expect from the rest of the work. 1 The key is to be concise and to the point, providing enough information to engage the reader without delving into excessive detail.

The essay introduction is crucial as it sets the tone for the entire piece and provides the reader with a roadmap of what to expect. Here are key elements to include in your essay introduction:

Hook : Start with an attention-grabbing statement or question to engage the reader. This could be a surprising fact, a relevant quote, or a compelling anecdote.
Background information : Provide context and background information to help the reader understand the topic. This can include historical information, definitions of key terms, or an overview of the current state of affairs related to your topic.
Thesis statement : Clearly state your main argument or position on the topic. Your thesis should be concise and specific, providing a clear direction for your essay.

Before we get into how to write an essay introduction, we need to know how it is structured. The structure of an essay is crucial for organizing your thoughts and presenting them clearly and logically. It is divided as follows: 2

Introduction:  The introduction should grab the reader’s attention with a hook, provide context, and include a thesis statement that presents the main argument or purpose of the essay.
Body:  The body should consist of focused paragraphs that support your thesis statement using evidence and analysis. Each paragraph should concentrate on a single central idea or argument and provide evidence, examples, or analysis to back it up.
Conclusion:  The conclusion should summarize the main points and restate the thesis differently. End with a final statement that leaves a lasting impression on the reader. Avoid new information or arguments.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to write an essay introduction:

Start with a Hook : Begin your introduction paragraph with an attention-grabbing statement, question, quote, or anecdote related to your topic. The hook should pique the reader’s interest and encourage them to continue reading.
Provide Background Information : This helps the reader understand the relevance and importance of the topic.
State Your Thesis Statement : The last sentence is the main argument or point of your essay. It should be clear, concise, and directly address the topic of your essay.
Preview the Main Points : This gives the reader an idea of what to expect and how you will support your thesis.
Keep it Concise and Clear : Avoid going into too much detail or including information not directly relevant to your topic.
Revise : Revise your introduction after you’ve written the rest of your essay to ensure it aligns with your final argument.

Here’s an example of an essay introduction paragraph about the importance of education:

Education is often viewed as a fundamental human right and a key social and economic development driver. As Nelson Mandela once famously said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” It is the key to unlocking a wide range of opportunities and benefits for individuals, societies, and nations. In today’s constantly evolving world, education has become even more critical. It has expanded beyond traditional classroom learning to include digital and remote learning, making education more accessible and convenient. This essay will delve into the importance of education in empowering individuals to achieve their dreams, improving societies by promoting social justice and equality, and driving economic growth by developing a skilled workforce and promoting innovation.

This introduction paragraph example includes a hook (the quote by Nelson Mandela), provides some background information on education, and states the thesis statement (the importance of education).

This is one of the key steps in how to write an essay introduction. Crafting a compelling hook is vital because it sets the tone for your entire essay and determines whether your readers will stay interested. A good hook draws the reader in and sets the stage for the rest of your essay.

Avoid Dry Fact : Instead of simply stating a bland fact, try to make it engaging and relevant to your topic. For example, if you’re writing about the benefits of exercise, you could start with a startling statistic like, “Did you know that regular exercise can increase your lifespan by up to seven years?”
Avoid Using a Dictionary Definition : While definitions can be informative, they’re not always the most captivating way to start an essay. Instead, try to use a quote, anecdote, or provocative question to pique the reader’s interest. For instance, if you’re writing about freedom, you could begin with a quote from a famous freedom fighter or philosopher.
Do Not Just State a Fact That the Reader Already Knows : This ties back to the first point—your hook should surprise or intrigue the reader. For Here’s an introduction paragraph example, if you’re writing about climate change, you could start with a thought-provoking statement like, “Despite overwhelming evidence, many people still refuse to believe in the reality of climate change.”

Including background information in the introduction section of your essay is important to provide context and establish the relevance of your topic. When writing the background information, you can follow these steps:

Start with a General Statement:  Begin with a general statement about the topic and gradually narrow it down to your specific focus. For example, when discussing the impact of social media, you can begin by making a broad statement about social media and its widespread use in today’s society, as follows: “Social media has become an integral part of modern life, with billions of users worldwide.”
Define Key Terms : Define any key terms or concepts that may be unfamiliar to your readers but are essential for understanding your argument.
Provide Relevant Statistics:  Use statistics or facts to highlight the significance of the issue you’re discussing. For instance, “According to a report by Statista, the number of social media users is expected to reach 4.41 billion by 2025.”
Discuss the Evolution:  Mention previous research or studies that have been conducted on the topic, especially those that are relevant to your argument. Mention key milestones or developments that have shaped its current impact. You can also outline some of the major effects of social media. For example, you can briefly describe how social media has evolved, including positives such as increased connectivity and issues like cyberbullying and privacy concerns.
Transition to Your Thesis:  Use the background information to lead into your thesis statement, which should clearly state the main argument or purpose of your essay. For example, “Given its pervasive influence, it is crucial to examine the impact of social media on mental health.”

A thesis statement is a concise summary of the main point or claim of an essay, research paper, or other type of academic writing. It appears near the end of the introduction. Here’s how to write a thesis statement:

Identify the topic:  Start by identifying the topic of your essay. For example, if your essay is about the importance of exercise for overall health, your topic is “exercise.”
State your position:  Next, state your position or claim about the topic. This is the main argument or point you want to make. For example, if you believe that regular exercise is crucial for maintaining good health, your position could be: “Regular exercise is essential for maintaining good health.”
Support your position:  Provide a brief overview of the reasons or evidence that support your position. These will be the main points of your essay. For example, if you’re writing an essay about the importance of exercise, you could mention the physical health benefits, mental health benefits, and the role of exercise in disease prevention.
Make it specific:  Ensure your thesis statement clearly states what you will discuss in your essay. For example, instead of saying, “Exercise is good for you,” you could say, “Regular exercise, including cardiovascular and strength training, can improve overall health and reduce the risk of chronic diseases.”

Examples of essay introduction

Here are examples of essay introductions for different types of essays:

Argumentative Essay Introduction Example:

Topic: Should the voting age be lowered to 16?

“The question of whether the voting age should be lowered to 16 has sparked nationwide debate. While some argue that 16-year-olds lack the requisite maturity and knowledge to make informed decisions, others argue that doing so would imbue young people with agency and give them a voice in shaping their future.”

Expository Essay Introduction Example

Topic: The benefits of regular exercise

“In today’s fast-paced world, the importance of regular exercise cannot be overstated. From improving physical health to boosting mental well-being, the benefits of exercise are numerous and far-reaching. This essay will examine the various advantages of regular exercise and provide tips on incorporating it into your daily routine.”

Text: “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee

“Harper Lee’s novel, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ is a timeless classic that explores themes of racism, injustice, and morality in the American South. Through the eyes of young Scout Finch, the reader is taken on a journey that challenges societal norms and forces characters to confront their prejudices. This essay will analyze the novel’s use of symbolism, character development, and narrative structure to uncover its deeper meaning and relevance to contemporary society.”

Engaging and Relevant First Sentence : The opening sentence captures the reader’s attention and relates directly to the topic.
Background Information : Enough background information is introduced to provide context for the thesis statement.
Definition of Important Terms : Key terms or concepts that might be unfamiliar to the audience or are central to the argument are defined.
Clear Thesis Statement : The thesis statement presents the main point or argument of the essay.
Relevance to Main Body : Everything in the introduction directly relates to and sets up the discussion in the main body of the essay.

Writing a strong introduction is crucial for setting the tone and context of your essay. Here are the key takeaways for how to write essay introduction: 3

Hook the Reader : Start with an engaging hook to grab the reader’s attention. This could be a compelling question, a surprising fact, a relevant quote, or an anecdote.
Provide Background : Give a brief overview of the topic, setting the context and stage for the discussion.
Thesis Statement : State your thesis, which is the main argument or point of your essay. It should be concise, clear, and specific.
Preview the Structure : Outline the main points or arguments to help the reader understand the organization of your essay.
Keep it Concise : Avoid including unnecessary details or information not directly related to your thesis.
Revise and Edit : Revise your introduction to ensure clarity, coherence, and relevance. Check for grammar and spelling errors.
Seek Feedback : Get feedback from peers or instructors to improve your introduction further.

The purpose of an essay introduction is to give an overview of the topic, context, and main ideas of the essay. It is meant to engage the reader, establish the tone for the rest of the essay, and introduce the thesis statement or central argument.

An essay introduction typically ranges from 5-10% of the total word count. For example, in a 1,000-word essay, the introduction would be roughly 50-100 words. However, the length can vary depending on the complexity of the topic and the overall length of the essay.

An essay introduction is critical in engaging the reader and providing contextual information about the topic. To ensure its effectiveness, consider incorporating these key elements: a compelling hook, background information, a clear thesis statement, an outline of the essay’s scope, a smooth transition to the body, and optional signposting sentences.

The process of writing an essay introduction is not necessarily straightforward, but there are several strategies that can be employed to achieve this end. When experiencing difficulty initiating the process, consider the following techniques: begin with an anecdote, a quotation, an image, a question, or a startling fact to pique the reader’s interest. It may also be helpful to consider the five W’s of journalism: who, what, when, where, why, and how. For instance, an anecdotal opening could be structured as follows: “As I ascended the stage, momentarily blinded by the intense lights, I could sense the weight of a hundred eyes upon me, anticipating my next move. The topic of discussion was climate change, a subject I was passionate about, and it was my first public speaking event. Little did I know , that pivotal moment would not only alter my perspective but also chart my life’s course.”

Crafting a compelling thesis statement for your introduction paragraph is crucial to grab your reader’s attention. To achieve this, avoid using overused phrases such as “In this paper, I will write about” or “I will focus on” as they lack originality. Instead, strive to engage your reader by substantiating your stance or proposition with a “so what” clause. While writing your thesis statement, aim to be precise, succinct, and clear in conveying your main argument.

To create an effective essay introduction, ensure it is clear, engaging, relevant, and contains a concise thesis statement. It should transition smoothly into the essay and be long enough to cover necessary points but not become overwhelming. Seek feedback from peers or instructors to assess its effectiveness.

References

Cui, L. (2022). Unit 6 Essay Introduction.  Building Academic Writing Skills .
West, H., Malcolm, G., Keywood, S., & Hill, J. (2019). Writing a successful essay.  Journal of Geography in Higher Education ,  43 (4), 609-617.
Beavers, M. E., Thoune, D. L., & McBeth, M. (2023). Bibliographic Essay: Reading, Researching, Teaching, and Writing with Hooks: A Queer Literacy Sponsorship. College English, 85(3), 230-242.

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How to Start an Essay About a Book: A Comprehensive Guide

Starting an essay about a book might seem like an uphill endeavor, but with the right approach, you can create an engaging introduction that sets the tone for your entire paper. Whether you’re a student or an aspiring writer, this guide will provide you with practical insights, creative ideas, and actionable steps on how to start an essay about a book that leaves a lasting impression on your readers.

Introduction: Setting the Stage for Literary Analysis

Writing an essay about a book is an opportunity to delve into the world of literature, explore themes, characters, and narratives, and express your unique perspective. The introduction serves as the gateway to your essay, inviting readers to join you on your literary journey. Let’s explore the art of crafting captivating introductions for essays about books.

Related: Can I Start My College Essay with a Quote? Tips and Insights

How to Start an Essay About a Book

Embarking on the journey of writing an essay about a book requires careful consideration and strategic planning. Here are essential steps to guide you through the process:

1. Understand the Book’s Context and Significance

To create an impactful introduction, begin by understanding the book’s historical context, the author’s background, and the broader significance of the work. This contextual knowledge will help you establish the relevance of the book and its themes to your readers.

2. Choose an Intriguing Angle

Diving into the vast sea of literary elements, select an angle that piques readers’ curiosity. Whether it’s a thematic exploration, character analysis, or a critical review, a unique angle sets the stage for an engaging introduction.

3. Craft a Compelling Thesis Statement

Your thesis statement is the backbone of your essay. It should succinctly convey your main argument and guide your readers on what to expect. A well-crafted thesis statement is both thought-provoking and informative.

4. Open with a Captivating Hook

Draw readers in with a captivating hook that sparks their interest. This could be a thought-provoking question, a surprising fact, a relevant quote, or a vivid description. A compelling hook sets the tone for an engaging essay.

5. Provide Brief Contextual Background

Offer a concise overview of the book’s plot, main characters, and central themes. Provide enough information to orient readers without giving away too much. Leave them curious and eager to explore further.

6. Introduce Your Approach

Outline the approach you’ll take in your essay. Briefly explain the key points you’ll be discussing and the insights you aim to uncover. This gives readers a roadmap for what’s to come.

7. Use LSI Keywords for Depth

Incorporate Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords related to the book and its themes. This not only boosts SEO but also enhances the depth and relevance of your introduction.

8. Incorporate Relevant Quotes

Weave in relevant quotes from the book that supports your thesis. Quotes add credibility and allow readers to connect with the text on a deeper level.

9. Highlight the Book’s Impact

Discuss the book’s impact on literature, society, or culture. Explain why it remains relevant and worth discussing. This shows your awareness of the book’s broader implications.

10. Pose Thought-Provoking Questions

Engage readers by posing thought-provoking questions related to the book’s themes. Encourage them to reflect on their own interpretations and viewpoints.

11. Share Personal Connections

If applicable, share personal anecdotes or connections you have with the book. This personal touch adds authenticity to your introduction.

12. Offer a Glimpse of Analysis

Give readers a glimpse of the analytical journey ahead. Mention the key aspects you’ll delve into and the critical lenses you’ll apply.

13. Address Counterarguments

Acknowledge potential counterarguments or differing interpretations of the book. Demonstrating a balanced perspective strengthens your credibility as an essay writer.

14. Build Anticipation

Create anticipation for the rest of your essay. Tease the insights and revelations readers can expect in the subsequent sections.

15. Power Keywords for Impact

Incorporate power keywords that evoke emotion and create impact. Words like “profound,” “intriguing,” or “riveting” add a dynamic flair to your introduction.

16. Incorporate a Compelling Anecdote

Share a brief and relevant anecdote that relates to the book’s themes. Anecdotes humanize the topic and engage readers on a personal level.

17. Outline Structure and Flow

Provide a brief overview of the essay’s structure and how you’ll navigate through different sections. A clear roadmap enhances readability.

18. Address the Reader Directly

Speak directly to the reader, inviting them to explore the book alongside you. This creates a sense of connection and involvement.

19. Utilize Rich Formatting

Enhance readability by using rich formatting such as bold, italics, and bullet points. These elements visually break up the text and highlight key information.

20. Reference Credible Sources

When discussing the book’s significance or impact, reference credible sources such as literary critics, scholars, or reputable articles. This adds depth to your introduction.

21. Transition to the Main Body

Conclude your introduction with a seamless transition to the main body of the essay. Create a logical bridge that encourages readers to continue reading.

Related: What Brings You Joy College Essay Example

Step-by-Step Guide on How to Start an Essay About a Book

Step 1: Choose the Book

Select a book that you want to write about. Ensure that the book is relevant to your essay’s topic and aligns with your thesis or main argument.

Step 2: Understand the Assignment

Read the essay assignment or prompt carefully. Understand the specific requirements, such as the length, format, and any guidelines provided by your instructor.

Step 3: Read and Analyze the Book

Read the book thoroughly, taking notes on key plot points, characters, themes, and any literary devices used by the author. Analyze the book’s significance and consider why it’s worth writing about.

Step 4: Determine Your Approach

Decide how you want to approach the essay. Will you be analyzing a specific theme, character, or literary technique? Clarify your main focus and identify the key points you want to discuss.

Step 5: Craft Your Thesis Statement

Develop a clear and concise thesis statement that outlines your main argument or purpose for writing the essay. This thesis will guide the direction of your essay.

Step 6: Choose an Engaging Opening Strategy

Now, let’s delve into different strategies for starting your essay about the book:

1. Quotation: Begin with a relevant and impactful quote from the book. Explain its significance and how it relates to the themes you’ll be discussing.

2. Anecdote: Share a short anecdote or personal story that connects to the book’s themes. This can help create an emotional or relatable entry point.

3. Question: Pose a thought-provoking question related to the book’s themes or characters. Invite the reader to think critically about the topic.

4. Contrast: Highlight a sharp contrast between elements in the book or between the book and real-world situations. This can create intrigue and set the stage for your analysis.

5. Shocking Fact: Present a surprising or shocking fact related to the book’s content, themes, or impact. This can capture the reader’s attention immediately.

Step 7: Provide Context

After your engaging opening, briefly introduce the book by mentioning its title, author, and publication date. Provide a concise overview of the book’s plot or central idea.

Step 8: Preview Main Points

Give the reader a preview of the main points you’ll be discussing in the essay. This helps them understand the structure and flow of your analysis.

Step 9: Transition to Your Thesis

Smoothly transition from the introduction to your thesis statement. Explain how the opening strategy you chose connects to your main argument.

Step 10: Revise and Edit

Review your introduction for clarity, coherence, and grammar. Make sure it effectively introduces the book and sets the tone for your essay.

Remember, a well-crafted introduction can captivate your readers and set the stage for a compelling essay. Experiment with different opening strategies to find the one that best suits your writing style and the content of your essay.

FAQs on How to Start an Essay About a Book

How do i choose the right book for my essay.

Select a book that resonates with you personally or aligns with the theme of your course. Consider books that offer rich material for analysis and discussion.

Can I start my essay with a question?

Absolutely! Starting with a thought-provoking question can be an effective way to engage readers and introduce your essay’s central ideas.

What if I haven’t read the entire book?

While it’s ideal to read the entire book, you can still write a compelling essay by focusing on specific sections or chapters that relate to your chosen angle.

Should I provide a detailed summary in the introduction?

Avoid excessive summarization in the introduction. Instead, provide a concise overview that leaves room for an in-depth exploration of the main body.

How can I make my introduction stand out?

Infuse your introduction with your unique voice and perspective. Be creative, bold, and authentic in your approach.

Is it okay to share personal emotions in the introduction?

Sharing personal emotions or connections to the book can add depth to your introduction, but ensure it aligns with the tone and purpose of your essay.

Final Verdict

Crafting the perfect introduction for your essay about a book is an art that requires a combination of creativity, analysis, and strategic thinking. By following these steps and incorporating engaging elements, you can start your essay on a strong note, capturing your reader’s attention and setting the stage for a captivating exploration of literature.

Remember, the introduction is just the beginning of your essay-writing journey. As you delve into the main body, keep the momentum going with insightful analysis, well-supported arguments, and a cohesive structure.

So, go ahead and embark on your literary adventure. Start your essay about a book with confidence, and watch as your words transport readers into the fascinating world of literature.

Related: How Do You Write a Book Title in an Essay

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Sentence Starters: Ultimate List to Improve Your Essays and Writing

Ashley Shaw

This blog post is going to be about … No. Too boring.

Today, I am going to talk to you about ... No. Too specific.

This is a blog post for all writers ... Nope. Too generic.

Has this ever been you while writing? I get it. Writing a good sentence can be hard, and when you have to string a whole lot of them together, the task can become daunting. So what do you do?

From the first sentence you write to the very last, you want each one to show your style and motivate your reader to keep reading. In this post, we are going to think about how you start your sentences.

What Is a Good Sentence Starter for an Essay Introduction?

What is a good sentence starter for a body paragraph, 25 useful transitions, can i repeat a sentence starter, how can i rephrase "in conclusion".

The first paragraph of a paper can make or break your grade. It is what gets your audience into the topic and sets the whole stage. Because of this, it is important to get your readers hooked early.

The first sentence of a paper is often called the hook. It shouldn’t be anything ordinary. It should have strong language and be a little surprising, with an interesting fact, story, statistic, or quote on the topic.

Because it is designed to pull the reader in and surprise them a little, it is often good to avoid pre-written sentence starter examples when writing your hook. Just get into it here, and worry about the flow later.

Here are some examples:

Spider webs were once used as bandages.

I taught myself to read when I was three. At least, that’s the story my parents tell.

Recent studies suggest that the average person lies at least once in every conversation.

“The world is bleeding and humans wield the knife,” or so says environmental scientist So Andso.

(P.S. Except for example 1, which is true, I just made all of these up to demonstrate my point. So, please don’t quote me on these!)

Once you jump right in with your hook, it is time to start working on ways to move sentences along. Here is where you may need some sentence starter examples.

In your first paragraph, you basically want to connect your hook to your thesis. You’ll do this with a few sentences setting up the stage for your topic and the claim you will make about it. To do that, follow the tips found in the next section on body paragraphs and general sentence starter tips.

Many of the tips I am about to discuss can be used anywhere in a paper, but they are especially helpful when writing body paragraphs.

Let’s start with one of the most important types of sentence starter in essay writing: transition words.

How Do I Use Transitions in an Essay?

If you want to start writing terrific sentences (and improve your essay structure ), the first thing you should do is start using transition words.

Transition words are those words or phrases that help connect thoughts and ideas. They move one sentence or paragraph into another, and they make things feel less abrupt.

The good thing about transition words is that you probably know a lot of them already and currently use them in your speech. Now, you just need to transition them into your writing. (See what I did there?)

Before we get into examples of what a good transition word is, let’s look at a paragraph without any transitions:

I went to the store. I bought bacon and eggs. I saw someone I knew. I said hello. I went to the cashier. They checked me out. I paid. I got my groceries. I went to my car. I returned home.

Yikes! That is some boring writing. It was painful to write, and I am sure it is even worse to read. There are two reasons for this:

I start every sentence with the same word (more on this later)
There are no signposts showing me how the ideas in the paragraph connect.

In an essay, you need to show how each of your ideas relate to each other to build your argument. If you just make a series of statements one after the other, you’re not showing your instructor that you actually understand those statements, or your topic.

How do we fix this? Transition words. Roughly 25% of your sentences should start with a transition word. If you can hit that number in your essay, you’ll know that you’ve made meaningful steps towards demonstrating your understanding.

Of course, hitting that number isn’t enough—those transitions need to be meaningful. Let’s look at the different types of transitions and how you can use them.

What Are Words Like First , Next , and Last Called?

You probably already use some transitions in your essays. For example, if you start a paragraph with firstly , you’ve used a transition word. But transitions can do so much more!

Here are 25 common transitional words and phrases that you could use in your essay:

Additionally / In Addition
Alternatively / Conversely
As a result of
At this time
Consequently
Contrary to
First(ly), Second(ly), etc.
In contrast
Nonetheless
On the other hand
Particularly / In particular
In other words

This list isn’t exhaustive, but it is a good start.

These words show different types of relationships between ideas. These relationships fall into four main categories: Emphasis , Contrast , Addition , and Order .

What Are Emphasis Transition Words?

These phrases are used when you want to highlight a point. Examples from my above list include clearly , particularly , and indeed . Want to see some more? Follow my bolded transitions: Undoubtedly , you understand now. It should be noted that you don’t need to worry.

How Do You Use Addition Transitions?

These words add on to what you just said. These are words like along with , moreover , and also . Here are some more: Not only are you going to be great at transitions after this, but you will also be good at writing sentences. Furthermore , everyone is excited to see what you have to say.

How Can I Use Transitions to Contrast Ideas?

This is the opposite of addition, and you use it when you want to show an alternative view or to compare things. Examples from my list include words like nonetheless , contrary to , and besides .

Here are some more: Unlike people who haven’t read this article, you are going to be really prepared to write great sentences. Even so , there is still a lot more about writing to learn.

How Do I Order Ideas in My Essay?

A good first step is using order transition words.

This set of transitions helps mark the passage of time or gives an order to events. From the list, think of things like first and finally . Now for some extras: At this time yesterday , you were worried about starting sentences. Following this , though, you will be an expert.

Now that you get the concept of transitions, let’s go back to that poorly written paragraph above and add some in to see what happens:

This morning , I went to the store. While I was there, I bought bacon and eggs. Then I saw someone I knew. So I said hello. After that , I went to the cashier. At that time , they checked me out. First , I paid. Next , I got my groceries. Following that , I went to my car. Finally , I returned home.

(Notice the use of commas after most of these transitions!)

This isn’t the best paragraph I’ve ever written. It still needs a lot of work. However, notice what a difference just adding transitions makes. This is something simple but effective you can start doing to make your sentences better today.

If you want to check your transition usage, try ProWritingAid’s Transitions report . You’ll see how many of each type of transition word you've used so you can pin-point where you might be losing your reader.

prowritingaid transitions report for essay

What Are Some Linking Phrases I Can Use in My Essay?

As well as individual words, you can also use short phrases at the beginning of your sentences to transition between ideas. I just did it there— "As well as individual words" shows you how this section of the article is related to the last.

Here are some more phrases like this:

As shown in the example,

As a result of this,

After the meeting,

While this may be true,

Though researchers suggest X,

Before the war began,

Until we answer this question,

Since we cannot assume this to be true,

While some may claim Y,

Because we know that Z is true,

These short phrases are called dependent clauses . See how they all end with a comma? That's because they need you to add more information to make them into complete sentences.

While some may claim that chocolate is bad for you, data from a recent study suggests that it may have untapped health benefits .
Since we cannot assume that test conditions were consistent, it is impossible to reach a solid conclusion via this experiment .
As a result of this, critics disagree as to the symbolism of the yellow car in The Great Gatsby .

The bolded text in each example could stand on its own as a complete sentence. However, if we take away the first part of each sentence, we lose our connection to the other ideas in the essay.

These phrases are called dependent clauses : they depend on you adding another statement to the sentence to complete them. When you use a sentence starter phrase like the ones above in your writing, you signal that the new idea you have introduced completes (or disrupts) the idea before it.

Note: While some very short dependent clauses don’t need a comma, most do. Since it is not wrong to use one on even short ones (depending on the style guide being used), it is a good idea to include one every time.

Along with missing transitions and repeating sentence structure, another thing that stops sentences from being great is too much repetition. Keep your sentences sharp and poignant by mixing up word choices to start your sentences.

You might start your sentence with a great word, but then you use that same word 17 sentences in a row. After the first couple, your sentences don’t sound as great. So, whether it is varying the transitional phrases you use or just mixing up the sentence openers in general, putting in some variety will only improve your sentences.

ProWritingAid lets you know if you’ve used the same word repeatedly at the start of your sentences so you can change it.

The Repeats Report also shows you all of the repeats in your document. If you've used a sentence starter and then repeated it a couple of paragraphs down, the report will highlight it for you.

Try the Repeats Report with a free ProWritingAid account.

Now that you have your introduction sentences and body sentences taken care of, let’s talk a little about conclusion sentences. While you will still use transitions and clauses as in the body, there are some special considerations here.

Your conclusion is what people will remember most after they finish reading your paper. So, you want to make it stand out. Don’t just repeat yourself; tell them what they should do with what you just told them!

Use the tips from above, but also remember the following:

Be unique. Not only should you vary the words you use to start different sentences, but you should also think outside of the box. If you use the same conclusion sentence starter everyone else is using, your ideas will blend in too.

Be natural. Some of the best writing out there is writing that sounds natural. This goes for academic writing, too. While you won’t use phrases like "at the end of the day" in essay writing, stilted phrases like "in conclusion" can disrupt the flow you’ve created earlier on.

Here are some alternatives to "in conclusion" you could use in an essay:

To review, ... (best for scientific papers where you need to restate your key points before making your final statement)
As has been shown, ...
In the final analysis, ...
Taking everything into account, ...
On the whole, ...
Generally speaking, ...

If you’re looking for more ways to rephrase "in conclusion," take a look at our complete list of synonyms you can use.

There may not be a set word or words that you can use to make your sentences perfect. However, when you start using these tips, you’ll start to see noticeable improvement in your writing.

If you’ve ever heard people talk about pacing and flow in academic writing, and you have no idea what they mean or how to improve yours, then this is your answer. These tips will help your writing sound more natural, which is how you help your ideas flow.

Take your writing to the next level:

20 Editing Tips from Professional Writers

Whether you are writing a novel, essay, article, or email, good writing is an essential part of communicating your ideas., this guide contains the 20 most important writing tips and techniques from a wide range of professional writers..

Be confident about grammar

Check every email, essay, or story for grammar mistakes. Fix them before you press send.

Ashley Shaw is a former editor and marketer/current PhD student and teacher. When she isn't studying con artists for her dissertation, she's thinking of new ways to help college students better understand and love the writing process.

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College Essays

If you've been sitting in front of a blank screen, unsure of exactly how to start a personal statement for college, then believe me—I feel your pain. A great college essay introduction is key to making your essay stand out, so there's a lot of pressure to get it right.

Luckily, being able to craft the perfect beginning for your admissions essay is just like many other writing skills— something you can get better at with practice and by learning from examples.

In this article, I'll walk you through exactly how to start a college essay. We'll cover what makes a great personal statement introduction and how the first part of your essay should be structured. We'll also look at several great examples of essay beginnings and explain why they work, how they work, and what you can learn from them.

What Is the College Essay Introduction For?

Before we talk about how to start a college essay, let's discuss the role of the introduction. Just as your college essay is your chance to introduce yourself to the admissions office of your target college, your essay's beginning is your chance to introduce your writing.

Wait, Back Up—Why Do Colleges Want Personal Statements?

In general, college essays make it easier to get to know the parts of you not in your transcript —these include your personality, outlook on life, passions, and experiences.

You're not writing for yourself but for a very specific kind of reader. Picture it: your audience is an admissions officer who has read thousands and thousands of essays. This person is disposed to be friendly and curious, but if she hasn't already seen it all she's probably seen a good portion of it.

Your essay's job is to entertain and impress this person, and to make you memorable so you don't merely blend into the sea of other personal statements. Like all attempts at charm, you must be slightly bold and out of the ordinary—but you must also stay away from crossing the line into offensiveness or bad taste.

What Role Does the Introduction Play in a College Essay?

The personal statement introduction is basically the wriggly worm that baits the hook to catch your reader. It's vital to grab attention from the get-go—the more awake and eager your audience is, the more likely it is that what you say will really land.

How do you go about crafting an introduction that successfully hooks your reader? Let's talk about how to structure the beginning of your college essay.

How to Structure a Personal Statement Introduction

To see how the introduction fits into an essay, let's look at the big structural picture first and then zoom in.

College Essay Structure Overview

Even though they're called essays, personal statements are really more like a mix of a short story and a philosophy or psychology class that's all about you.

Usually, how this translates is that you start with a really good (and very short) story about something arresting, unusual, or important that happened to you. This is not to say that the story has to be about something important or unusual in the grand scheme of things—it just has to be a moment that stands out to you as defining in some way, or an explanation of why you are the way you are . You then pivot to an explanation of why this story is an accurate illustration of one of your core qualities, values, or beliefs.

The story typically comes in the first half of the essay, and the insightful explanation comes second —but, of course, all rules were made to be broken, and some great essays flip this more traditional order.

College Essay Introduction Components

Now, let's zero in on the first part of the college essay. What are the ingredients of a great personal statement introduction? I'll list them here and then dissect them one by one in the next section:

A killer first sentence: This hook grabs your readers' attention and whets their appetite for your story.
A vivid, detailed story that illustrates your eventual insight: To make up for how short your story will be, you must insert effective sensory information to immerse the reader.
An insightful pivot toward the greater point you're making in your essay: This vital piece of the essay connects the short story part to the part where you explain what the experience has taught you about yourself, how you've matured, and how it has ultimately shaped you as a person.

How to Write a College Essay Introduction

Here's a weird secret that's true for most written work: just because it'll end up at the beginning doesn't mean you have to write it first. For example, in this case, you can't know what your killer first sentence will be until you've figured out the following details:

The story you want to tell
The point you want that story to make
The trait/maturity level/background about you that your essay will reveal

So my suggestion is to work in reverse order! Writing your essay will be much easier if you can figure out the entirety of it first and then go back and work out exactly how it should start.

This means that before you can craft your ideal first sentence, the way the short story experience of your life will play out on the page, and the perfect pivoting moment that transitions from your story to your insight, you must work out a general idea about which life event you will share and what you expect that life event to demonstrate to the reader about you and the kind of person you are.

If you're having trouble coming up with a topic, check out our guide on brainstorming college essay ideas . It might also be helpful to read our guides to specific application essays, such as picking your best Common App prompt and writing a perfect University of California personal statement .

In the next sections of this article, I'll talk about how to work backwards on the introduction, moving from bigger to smaller elements: starting with the first section of the essay in general and then honing your pivot sentence and your first sentence.

How to Write the First Section of Your College Essay

In a 500-word essay, this section will take up about the first half of the essay and will mostly consist of a brief story that illuminates a key experience, an important character trait, a moment of transition or transformation, or a step toward maturity.

Once you've figured out your topic and zeroed in on the experience you want to highlight in the beginning of your essay, here are 2 great approaches to making it into a story:

Talking it out, storyteller style (while recording yourself): Imagine that you're sitting with a group of people at a campfire, or that you're stuck on a long flight sitting next to someone you want to befriend. Now tell that story. What does someone who doesn't know you need to know in order for the story to make sense? What details do you need to provide to put them in the story with you? What background information do they need in order to understand the stakes or importance of the story?
Record yourself telling your story to friends and then chatting about it: What do they need clarified? What questions do they have? Which parts of your story didn't make sense or follow logically for them? Do they want to know more, or less? Is part of your story interesting to them but not interesting to you? Is a piece of your story secretly boring, even though you think it's interesting?

Later, as you listen to the recorded story to try to get a sense of how to write it, you can also get a sense of the tone with which you want to tell your story. Are you being funny as you talk? Sad? Trying to shock, surprise, or astound your audience? The way you most naturally tell your story is the way you should write it.

After you've done this storyteller exercise, write down the salient points of what you learned. What is the story your essay will tell? What is the point about your life, point of view, or personality it will make? What tone will you tell it with? Sketch out a detailed outline so that you can start filling in the pieces as we work through how to write the introductory sections.

How to Write the First Sentence of Your College Essay

In general, your essay's first sentence should be either a mini-cliffhanger that sets up a situation the reader would like to see resolved, or really lush scene-setting that situates your audience in a place and time they can readily visualize. The former builds expectations and evokes curiosity, and the latter stimulates the imagination and creates a connection with the author. In both cases, you hit your goal of greater reader engagement.

Now, I'm going to show you how these principles work for all types of first sentences, whether in college essays or in famous works of fiction.

First Sentence Idea 1: Line of Quoted Direct Speech

"Mum, I'm gay." ( Ahmad Ashraf '17 for Connecticut College )

The experience of coming out is raw and emotional, and the issue of LGBTQ rights is an important facet of modern life. This three-word sentence immediately sums up an enormous background of the personal and political.

"You can handle it, Matt," said Mr. Wolf, my fourth-grade band teacher, as he lifted the heavy tuba and put it into my arms. ( Matt Coppo '07 for Hamilton College )

This sentence conjures up a funny image—we can immediately picture the larger adult standing next to a little kid holding a giant tuba. It also does a little play on words: "handle it" can refer to both the literal tuba Matt is being asked to hold and the figurative stress of playing the instrument.

First Sentence Idea 2: Punchy Short Sentence With One Grabby Detail

I live alone—I always have since elementary school. ( Kevin Zevallos '16 for Connecticut College )

This opener definitely makes us want to know more. Why was he alone? Where were the protective grown-ups who surround most kids? How on earth could a little kid of 8-10 years old survive on his own?

I have old hands. ( First line from a student in Stanford's class of 2012 )

There's nothing but questions here. What are "old" hands? Are they old-looking? Arthritic? How has having these hands affected the author?

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. (Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre )

There's immediately a feeling of disappointment and the stifled desire for action here. Who wanted to go for a walk? And why was this person being prevented from going?

First Sentence Idea 3: Lyrical, Adjective-Rich Description of a Setting

We met for lunch at El Burrito Mexicano, a tiny Mexican lunch counter under the Red Line "El" tracks. ( Ted Mullin '06 for Carleton College )

Look at how much specificity this sentence packs in less than 20 words. Each noun and adjective is chosen for its ability to convey yet another detail. "Tiny" instead of "small" gives readers a sense of being uncomfortably close to other people and sitting at tables that don't quite have enough room for the plates. "Counter" instead of "restaurant" lets us immediately picture this work surface, the server standing behind it, and the general atmosphere. "Under the tracks" is a location deeply associated with being run down, borderline seedy, and maybe even dangerous.

Maybe it's because I live in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, where Brett Favre draws more of a crowd on Sunday than any religious service, cheese is a staple food, it's sub-zero during global warming, current "fashions" come three years after they've hit it big with the rest of the world, and where all children by the age of ten can use a 12-gauge like it's their job. ( Riley Smith '12 for Hamilton College )

This sentence manages to hit every stereotype about Wisconsin held by outsiders—football, cheese, polar winters, backwardness, and guns—and this piling on gives us a good sense of place while also creating enough hyperbole to be funny. At the same time, the sentence raises the tantalizing question: maybe what is because of Wisconsin?

High, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two professors of English Literature approached each other at a combined velocity of 1200 miles per hour. (David Lodge, Changing Places )

This sentence is structured in the highly specific style of a math problem, which makes it funny. However, at the heart of this sentence lies a mystery that grabs the reader's interest: why on earth would these two people be doing this?

First Sentence Idea 4: Counterintuitive Statement

To avoid falling into generalities with this one, make sure you're really creating an argument or debate with your counterintuitive sentence. If no one would argue with what you've said, then you aren't making an argument. ("The world is a wonderful place" and "Life is worth living" don't make the cut.)

If string theory is really true, then the entire world is made up of strings, and I cannot tie a single one. ( Joanna '18 for Johns Hopkins University )

There's a great switch here from the sub-microscopic strings that make up string theory to the actual physical strings you can tie in real life. This sentence hints that the rest of the essay will continue playing with linked, albeit not typically connected, concepts.

All children, except one, grow up. (J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan )

In just six words, this sentence upends everything we think we know about what happens to human beings.

First Sentence Idea 5: The End—Making the Rest of the Essay a Flashback

I've recently come to the realization that community service just isn't for me. ( Kyla '19 for Johns Hopkins University )

This seems pretty bold—aren't we supposed to be super into community service? Is this person about to declare herself to be totally selfish and uncaring about the less fortunate? We want to know the story that would lead someone to this kind of conclusion.

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. (Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude )

So many amazing details here. Why is the Colonel being executed? What does "discovering" ice entail? How does he go from ice-discoverer to military commander of some sort to someone condemned to capital punishment?

First Sentence Idea 6: Direct Question to the Reader

To work well, your question should be especially specific, come out of left field, or pose a surprising hypothetical.

How does an agnostic Jew living in the Diaspora connect to Israel? ( Essay #3 from Carleton College's sample essays )

This is a thorny opening, raising questions about the difference between being an ethnic Jew and practicing the religion of Judaism, and the obligations of Jews who live outside of Israel to those who live in Israel and vice versa. There's a lot of meat to this question, setting up a philosophically interesting, politically important, and personally meaningful essay.

While traveling through the daily path of life, have you ever stumbled upon a hidden pocket of the universe? ( First line from a student in Stanford's class of 2012 )

There's a dreamy and sci-fi element to this first sentence, as it tries to find the sublime ("the universe") inside the prosaic ("daily path of life").

First Sentence Idea 7: Lesson You Learned From the Story You're Telling

One way to think about how to do this kind of opening sentence well is to model it on the morals that ended each Aesop's fable . The lesson you learned should be slightly surprising (not necessarily intuitive) and something that someone else might disagree with.

Perhaps it wasn't wise to chew and swallow a handful of sand the day I was given my first sandbox, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. ( Meagan Spooner '07 for Hamilton College )

The best part of this hilarious sentence is that even in retrospect, eating a handful of sand is only possibly an unwise idea—a qualifier achieved through that great "perhaps." So does that mean it was wise in at least some way to eat the sand? The reader wants to know more.

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina )

This immediately sets readers to mentally flip through every unhappy family they've ever known to double-check the narrator's assertion. Did he draw the right conclusion here? How did he come to this realization? The implication that he will tell us all about some dysfunctional drama also has a rubbernecking draw.

How to Write a Pivot Sentence in Your College Essay

This is the place in your essay where you go from small to big—from the life experience you describe in detail to the bigger point this experience illustrates about your world and yourself.

Typically, the pivot sentence will come at the end of your introductory section, about halfway through the essay. I say sentence, but this section could be more than one sentence (though ideally no longer than two or three).

So how do you make the turn? Usually you indicate in your pivot sentence itself that you are moving from one part of the essay to another. This is called signposting, and it's a great way to keep readers updated on where they are in the flow of the essay and your argument.

Here are three ways to do this, with real-life examples from college essays published by colleges.

Pivot Idea 1: Expand the Time Frame

In this pivot, you gesture out from the specific experience you describe to the overarching realization you had during it. Think of helper phrases such as "that was the moment I realized" and "never again would I."

Suddenly, two things simultaneously clicked. One was the lock on the door. (I actually succeeded in springing it.) The other was the realization that I'd been in this type of situation before. In fact, I'd been born into this type of situation. ( Stephen '19 for Johns Hopkins University )

This is a pretty great pivot, neatly connecting the story Stephen's been telling (about having to break into a car on a volunteering trip) and his general reliance on his own resourcefulness and ability to roll with whatever life throws at him. It's a double bonus that he accomplishes the pivot with a play on the word "click," which here means both the literal clicking of the car door latch and the figurative clicking his brain does. Note also how the pivot crystallizes the moment of epiphany through the word "suddenly," which implies instant insight.

But in that moment I realized that the self-deprecating jokes were there for a reason. When attempting to climb the mountain of comedic success, I didn't just fall and then continue on my journey, but I fell so many times that I befriended the ground and realized that the middle of the metaphorical mountain made for a better campsite. Not because I had let my failures get the best of me, but because I had learned to make the best of my failures. (Rachel Schwartzbaum '19 for Connecticut College)

This pivot similarly focuses on a "that moment" of illuminated clarity. In this case, it broadens Rachel's experience of stage fright before her standup comedy sets to the way she has more generally not allowed failures to stop her progress—and has instead been able to use them as learning experiences. Not only does she describe her humor as "self-deprecating," but she also demonstrates what she means with that great "befriended the ground" line.

It was on this first educational assignment that I realized how much could be accomplished through an animal education program—more, in some cases, than the aggregate efforts of all of the rehabilitators. I found that I had been naive in my assumption that most people knew as much about wildlife as I did, and that they shared my respect for animals. ( J.P. Maloney '07 for Hamilton College )

This is another classically constructed pivot, as J.P. segues from his negative expectations about using a rehabilitated wild owl as an educational animal to his understanding of how much this kind of education could contribute to forming future environmentalists and nature lovers. The widening of scope happens at once as we go from a highly specific "first educational assignment" to the more general realization that "much" could be accomplished through these kinds of programs.

Pivot Idea 2: Link the Described Experience With Others

In this pivot, you draw a parallel between the life event that you've been describing in your very short story and other events that were similar in some significant way. Helpful phrases include "now I see how x is really just one of the many x 's I have faced," "in a way, x is a good example of the x -like situations I see daily," and "and from then on every time I ..."

This state of discovery is something I strive for on a daily basis. My goal is to make all the ideas in my mind fit together like the gears of a Swiss watch. Whether it's learning a new concept in linear algebra, talking to someone about a programming problem, or simply zoning out while I read, there is always some part of my day that pushes me towards this place of cohesion: an idea that binds together some set of the unsolved mysteries in my mind. ( Aubrey Anderson '19 for Tufts University )

After cataloging and detailing the many interesting thoughts that flow through her brain in a specific hour, Aubrey uses the pivot to explain that this is what every waking hour is like for her "on a daily basis." She loves learning different things and finds a variety of fields fascinating. And her pivot lets us know that her example is a demonstration of how her mind works generally.

This was the first time I've been to New Mexico since he died. Our return brought so much back for me. I remembered all the times we'd visited when I was younger, certain events highlighted by the things we did: Dad haggling with the jewelry sellers, his minute examination of pots at a trading post, the affection he had for chilies. I was scared that my love for the place would be tainted by his death, diminished without him there as my guide. That fear was part of what kept my mother and me away for so long. Once there, though, I was relieved to realize that Albuquerque still brings me closer to my father. ( Essay #1 from Carleton College's sample essays )

In this pivot, one very painful experience of visiting a place filled with sorrowful memories is used as a way to think about "all the other times" the author had been to New Mexico. The previously described trip after the father's death pivots into a sense of the continuity of memory. Even though he is no longer there to "guide," the author's love for the place itself remains.

Pivot Idea 3: Extract and Underline a Trait or Value

In this type of pivot, you use the experience you've described to demonstrate its importance in developing or zooming in on one key attribute. Here are some ways to think about making this transition: "I could not have done it without characteristic y , which has helped me through many other difficult moments," or "this is how I came to appreciate the importance of value z, both in myself and in those around me."

My true reward of having Stanley is that he opened the door to the world of botany. I would never have invested so much time learning about the molecular structure or chemical balance of plants if not for taking care of him. ( Michaela '19 for Johns Hopkins University )

In this tongue-in-cheek essay in which Michaela writes about Stanley, a beloved cactus, as if "he" has human qualities and is her child, the pivot explains what makes this plant so meaningful to its owner. Without having to "take care of him," Michaela "would never have invested so much time learning" about plant biology. She has a deep affinity for the natural sciences and attributes her interest at least partly to her cactus.

By leaving me free to make mistakes and chase wild dreams, my father was always able to help ground me back in reality. Personal responsibilities, priorities and commitments are all values that are etched into my mind, just as they are within my father's. ( Olivia Rabbitt '16 for Connecticut College )

In Olivia's essay about her father's role in her life, the pivot discusses his importance by explaining his deep impact on her values. Olivia has spent the story part of her essay describing her father's background and their relationship. Now, she is free to show how without his influence, she would not be so strongly committed to "personal responsibilities, priorities and commitments."

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College Essay Introduction Examples

We've collected many examples of college essays published by colleges and offered a breakdown of how several of them are put together . Now, let's check out a couple of examples of actual college essay beginnings to show you how and why they work.

Sample Intro 1

A blue seventh place athletic ribbon hangs from my mantel. Every day, as I walk into my living room, the award mockingly congratulates me as I smile. Ironically, the blue seventh place ribbon resembles the first place ribbon in color; so, if I just cover up the tip of the seven, I may convince myself that I championed the fourth heat. But, I never dare to wipe away the memory of my seventh place swim; I need that daily reminder of my imperfection. I need that seventh place.

Two years ago, I joined the no-cut swim team. That winter, my coach unexpectedly assigned me to swim the 500 freestyle. After stressing for hours about swimming 20 laps in a competition, I mounted the blocks, took my mark, and swam. Around lap 14, I looked around at the other lanes and did not see anyone. "I must be winning!" I thought to myself. However, as I finally completed my race and lifted my arms up in victory to the eager applause of the fans, I looked up at the score board. I had finished my race in last place. In fact, I left the pool two minutes after the second-to-last competitor, who now stood with her friends, wearing all her clothes.

(From "The Unathletic Department" by Meghan '17 for Johns Hopkins University )

Why Intro Sample 1 Works

Here are some of the main reasons that this essay's introduction is super effective.

#1: It's Got a Great First Sentence

The sentence is short but still does some scene setting with the descriptive "blue" and the location "from my mantel." It introduces a funny element with "seventh place"—why would that bad of a showing even get a ribbon? It dangles information just out of reach, making the reader want to know more: what was this an award for? Why does this definitively non-winning ribbon hang in such a prominent place of pride?

#2: It Has Lots of Detail

In the intro, we get physical actions: "cover up the tip," "mounted the blocks," "looked around at the other lanes," "lifted my arms up," and "stood with her friends, wearing all her clothes." We also get words conveying emotion: "mockingly congratulates me as I smile," "unexpectedly assigned," and "stressing for hours." Finally, we get descriptive specificity in the precise word choice: "from my mantel" and "my living room" instead of simply "in my house," and "lap 14" instead of "toward the end of the race."

#3: It Explains the Stakes

Even though everyone can imagine the lap pool, not everyone knows exactly what the "500 freestyle" race is. Meghan elegantly explains the difficulty by describing herself freaking out over "swimming 20 laps in a competition," which helps us to picture the swimmer going back and forth many times.

#4: It Has Great Storytelling

We basically get a sports commentary play-by-play here. Even though we already know the conclusion—Meghan came in 7th—she still builds suspense by narrating the race from her point of view as she was swimming it. She's nervous for a while, and then she starts the race.

Close to the end, she starts to think everything is going well ("I looked around at the other lanes and did not see anyone. 'I must be winning!' I thought to myself."). Everything builds to an expected moment of great triumph ("I finally completed my race and lifted my arms up in victory to the eager applause of the fans") but ends in total defeat ("I had finished my race in last place").

Not only that, but the mildly clichéd sports hype is hilariously undercut by reality ("I left the pool two minutes after the second-to-last competitor, who now stood with her friends, wearing all her clothes").

#5: It Uses a Pivot Sentence

This essay uses the time expansion method of pivoting: "But, I never dare to wipe away the memory of my seventh place swim; I need that daily reminder of my imperfection. I need that seventh place." Coming last in the race was something that happened once, but the award is now an everyday experience of humility.

The rest of the essay explores what it means for Meghan to constantly see this reminder of failure and to transform it into a sense of acceptance of her imperfections. Notice also that in this essay, the pivot comes before the main story, helping us "hear" the narrative in the way she wants us to.

Sample Intro 2

"Biogeochemical. It's a word, I promise!" There are shrieks and shouts in protest and support. Unacceptable insults are thrown, degrees and qualifications are questioned, I think even a piece of my grandmother's famously flakey parantha whizzes past my ear. Everyone is too lazy to take out a dictionary (or even their phones) to look it up, so we just hash it out. And then, I am crowned the victor, a true success in the Merchant household. But it is fleeting, as the small, glossy, plastic tiles, perfectly connected to form my winning word, are snatched out from under me and thrown in a pile with all the disgraced, "unwinning" tiles as we mix for our next game of Bananagrams. It's a similar donnybrook, this time ending with my father arguing that it is okay to use "Rambo" as a word (it totally is not).

Words and communicating have always been of tremendous importance in my life: from silly games like Bananagrams and our road-trip favorite "word game," to stunted communication between opposing grandparents, each speaking a different Indian language; from trying to understand the cheesemonger behind the counter with a deep southern drawl (I just want some Camembert!), to shaping a script to make people laugh.

Words are moving and changing; they have influence and substance.

From an Essay by Shaan Merchant ‘19 for Tufts University

Why Intro Sample 2 Works

Let's take a look at what qualities make this essay's introduction particularly memorable.

With the first sentence, we are immediately thrust into the middle of the action —into an exciting part of an argument about whether "biogeochemical" is really a word. We're also immediately challenged. Is this a word? Have I ever heard it before? Does a scientific neologism count as a word?

#2: It Shows Rather Than Tells

Since the whole essay is going to be about words, it makes sense for Shaan to demonstrate his comfort with all different kinds of language:

Complex, elevated vocabulary, such as "biogeochemical" and "donnybrook"
Foreign words, such as "parantha" and "Camembert"
Colorful descriptive words, such as "shrieks and shouts," "famously flakey, "whizzes past," and "hash it out"
"Fake" words, such as "unwinning" and "Rambo"

What's great is that Shaan is able to seamlessly mix the different tones and registers these words imply, going from cerebral to funny and back again.

#3: It Uses a Pivot Sentence

This essay uses the value-extraction style of pivot: "Words and communicating have always been of tremendous importance in my life." After we see an experience linking Shaan's clear love of his family with an interest in word games, he clarifies that this is exactly what the essay will be about—using a very straightforward pivoting sentence.

#4: It Piles On Examples to Avoid Vagueness

The danger of this kind of pivot sentence is slipping into vague, uninformative statements, such as "I love words." To avoid making a generalization the tells us nothing, the essay builds a list of examples of times when Shaan saw the way that words connect people: games ("Bananagrams and our road-trip favorite ‘word game,'"), his mixed-language family ("grandparents, each speaking a different Indian language"), encounters with strangers ("from trying to understand the cheesemonger"), and finally the more active experience of performing ("shaping a script to make people laugh").

But the essay stops short of giving so many examples that the reader drowns. I'd say three to five examples is a good range—as long as they're all different kinds of the same thing.

The Bottom Line: How to Start a College Essay

The college essay introduction should hook your reader and make her want to know more and read more.

Good personal statement introductions will contain the following features:

A killer first line
A detailed description of an experience from your life
A pivot to the bigger picture, in which you explain why and how this experience has shaped you, your point of view, and/or your values.

You don't have to write the introduction first, and you certainly don't have to write your first sentence first . Instead, start by developing your story by telling it out loud to a friend. You can then work on your first sentence and your pivot.

The first sentence should either be short, punchy, and carry some ambiguity or questions, or be a detailed and beautiful description setting an easily pictured scene. The pivot, on the other hand, should answer the question, "How does the story you've told connect to a larger truth or insight about you?"

What's Next?

Wondering what to make of the Common Application essay prompts? We have the complete list of this year's Common App prompts with explanations of what each is asking as well as a guide to picking the Common App prompt that's perfect for you .

Thinking of applying to the University of California system? Check out our detailed guide on how to approach their essay prompts and craft your ideal UC essay .

If you're in the middle of the essay-writing process, you'll want to see our suggestions on what essay pitfalls to avoid .

Working on the rest of your college application? Read what admissions officers wish applicants knew before applying .

Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points? We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download them for free now:

Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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140 Creative Writing Prompts For Adults

Learning how to become a better writer includes knowing how to come up with a solid idea. With so many elements to consider when starting your novel, the plot itself may begin to slip away from you. Use these creative writing prompts for adults to get you started on the right path to a successful story and suffer from writer’s block for the last time. .

This list of writing prompts for adults can be taken and used in any way you want. Details can be changed and characters can be added or removed.

They are meant to be a fun way to get your creativity flowing and your next story developing. For even more writing ideas, check out the writing prompt generator . Here, you will find 500+ prompts of all kinds that will give you some ideas. Take control of that blank page and create something awesome.

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Dramatic Writing Prompts for Adults

Nothing beats some good old-fashioned drama once in a while. You can turn these writing prompts into a dramatic love story , an exciting short story, or morph them into a different genre. How you use them is up to you.

For a novel that is specifically romance, we have created an exclusive list of exciting and genre-bending romance writing prompts .

A young boy discovers that he is the only adopted child among his four siblings. Feeling confused and betrayed, he runs away to find his birth parents. After two months on the road, he runs out of money and still hasn’t found them. Does he go home? Or does he continue his quest?
Two couples are fueding and haven’t spoken in years. It is discovered that their two children have become best friends at school, and they want a playdate. Will this increase tension between them or lead to reconciliation?
Identical twins are attending the same college. They switch places and take each other’s classes depending on strengths and weaknesses. They’ve gotten away with it for two years until their observant professor of a father is transferred to the school they attend.
Two childhood best friends stopped talking after a huge fight in high school. Five years later, they find themselves sitting next to each other on the same 16-hour international flight.
Write about a passionate romance that crosses religions.
He’s only been in office for a year. He is already being tempted by a corrupt group of criminals who want him to sabotage a series of public safety projects in exchange for funding his entire reelection campaign.
Your main character is being offered a promotion from the high school principal to the district director. Sadly, she knows her replacement will cut funding to all of the art programs. How does she manage the situation?
A high profile general learns that the opposing army will surrender if he hands himself over. Will he prioritize his own safety, or sacrifice himself for his country?
Write about a successful businesswoman who has built herself from the ground up. The business is suddenly threatened by the son of a rich local contractor who started a similar business out of boredom.
A successful lawyer knows that his client is guilty of the murder for which he has been charged. He is a good liar and could easily win the case. The case is getting constant media coverage and would guarantee him making partner at his firm.
Your main character has lived a sheltered, isolated life. When their delusional and overbearing father dies. They are thrown into the real world and unsure of how to cope.
The doorbell rings and your character answers it – finding nothing but an envelope with nothing on it. They open it and follow the instructions to attend a secret underground event. Afterward, they become a part of a huge resistance that the rest of the world knows nothing about.
After a family member’s funeral, you arrive home to a stranger on your doorstep claiming the person is not really dead. The funeral was open-casket.
It is your character’s wedding day. While the vows are being said, someone from the crowd yells “I object!”
A huge storm has stopped traffic. Your character is stuck in the car with someone for an unknown amount of time. The person chooses this moment to confess their undying love. The feeling is not mutual.
Your character finds an old, disposable camera on the ground. Feeling, they get the photos developed. What they see tells an unsettling story.
Two old friends are reminiscing on a prominent and life-changing event. They have very different memories from that day.
Your main character is a world-traveling nature photographer. She stumbles upon a small tribe of indigenous people who have found the cure for all cancer in a small local plant.
A young man has been homeschooled all his life and is ready to start college. An attack on his small home town has him being drafted into the army. He is away from home for the first time ever and terrified. However, he becomes a key strategist due to his unique perspective and undiscovered scientific talents.
A middle-aged man is tired of his career in a corporate office. He takes all his vacation and sick days at once for an excursion in the Appalachian Mountains. Everything is fine until a blizzard hits.
A shy and reserved web designer thinks she has found the man of her dreams online. She is actually being catfished by a competing company who wants to get information from her.
A man and women work for two neighboring, rival fast food companies. They always take their lunch breaks together on the bench right in the middle of the two.
An ongoing murder investigation takes an unexpected turn when it is discovered that a prolific group of corrupted police officers were behind the whole thing.
A television star is renowned and respected for his “method” acting. He only interviews or appears on TV in character. But, this is because he doesn’t have a personality outside of his three most famous characters.
A professional gymnast is under fire for her supposed use of performance-enhancing steroids. She leaked the story herself to draw attention away from the fact that she is the leader of a high-profile drug ring.
An older couple on the brink of retirement keeps their life savings in the pages of the books in their home. They are just about to start looking for a retirement home to live in when a fire destroys their house and their cash.

Tips for Writing Drama

Drama is usually character driven , so make use of both your round and flat characters .
Introduce the conflict right away and keep it prominent. A drama will thrive off conflict.
Don’t let the resolution come easily.
Don’t be afraid to kill characters and write difficult situations.
Always show, don’t tell.

Supernatural Writing Prompts for Adults

Supernatural stories are popular. The world is in love with vampires. Write something interesting and unique enough, you might be writing their next favorite book. Use these supernatural story starters for your basic premise.

On her 16th birthday, your main character miraculously survives a deadly car crash without a scratch. Later that week, she watches as a small scratch heals and disappears right before her eyes. Where did this new power come from and what will she do with it?
There is an elite society of high education that wants to test a new drug. They give it to highly gifted students, and it allows them to stay awake for 48 hours and record everything they see, heard, and feel in that time. Unfortunately, some unexpected side effects set in two weeks later.
A middle-aged man is the only one in his famous and high-profile family without a superpower. The local police rely on his super-powered family to help them catch and fight crime. However, the powers are failing them during a specific investigation. Your protagonists “normal” perspective might just save the day.
Your main character suffers a terrible concussion. After recovering, they cannot control the vivid nightmares about the accident. However, they can also take images from their mind and project them into the real world. Doctors think they are crazy and keep them heavily sedated.
Write about a world where technology has given animals the ability to speak.

Tips for Writing Supernatural Stories

Setting the story in the real world will make your supernatural species more believable.
Create the origins of your species and supernatural characters.
Create the physical limitations for your species and beings.
Avoid the cliches of the genre.
Understand your reasons for using supernatural creatures. You shouldn’t be writing them in simply due to their popularity.

Thriller Writing Prompts for Adults

Thrillers can come in many forms and can be incorporated with many genres. Regardless of the details though, they are always meant to excite. Suspense and tension are crucial – it’s always more fun when you don’t know. Writing a good thriller requires a strong set of writing skills. These prompts will give you a good base. If you think you need to improve, try some writing exercises.

If your thriller can get hearts racing, you’ve done a good job.

The body of your main character’s best friend is dumped on their doorstep. They make it their mission to find out who is responsible, even if it means crossing some lines and breaking some laws.
A murderer is on the loose in your character’s hometown. For 10 weeks they have killed one person on the same day at the same time. Your main character is the next victim. They are abducted exactly three days before the planned kill time.
Strange things start happening around town. Your main character decides to find out for themselves what is going on. They do learn the truth, but now they aren’t allowed to leave.
Your character suffers from a condition that causes seemingly random blackouts for varying amounts of time. The only thing they ever remember before these episodes is a yellow car with a dent on the side. One day, that car is parked outside their house. This time, there is no blackout.
Your main character and their friends take an unsolicited mini-vacation to an off-limits island off the coast of their seaside town. Shortly after arrival, they discover the islands inhabitants and the reason why it was off limits.
Your protagonist is in intensive therapy due to extremely vivid nightmares detailing someone’s gruesome death. Many have said it’s just their twisted imagination, but this new therapist seems to think it’s much more than that.
You are legally allowed to kill someone one time in your life. You must fill out a series of paperwork, and your intended victim will be given notice of your plan.
A brilliant serial killer has been getting away with murder for decades. His only weakness is his acute inability to tell a lie. He is finally caught and tried for all murders. Write about how he still manages to walk free, with no charges laid.
Your character is a host at a restaurant. A couple comes in and says they have a reservation. You look it up in the system and find that the reservation was booked 40 years ago.

Tips for Writing a Thriller

Have a story that suits a thriller. This usually involves the protagonist falling victim to someone else and being caught in impossible situations.
Different points of view can add a lot of value to a thriller. It gives several perspectives and allows the reader into the heads of many characters.
Put action as close to the beginning as possible.
Don’t be afraid to make your characters miserable.

Thriller Book Writing Template

Squibler has a book writing template that was created specifically for writing a thriller:

It will walk you through each section of a typical thriller. It includes the basics of a thriller structure, without stifling your creativity. The guidelines are easy to understand, but loose enough that you can insert the details of your story with ease.

Horror Writing Prompts for Adults

The horror genre has always had a cult-like following. Several fictional killers have become household names. Some horror fans will spend their whole lives chasing the adrenaline that comes with a good scare.

If you’re learning how to become a better writer in order to scare your readers, these writing prompts will get you started. A book writing template may be helpful in creating a true horror as setting the stage properly is crucial.

It’s Halloween night and a group of rowdy teenagers break into an infamously haunted house in their town. They soon discover it is not the ghosts they have to fear, but the madman who lives upstairs is poisoning them with hallucinogenic gas.
There is a disease outbreak at a school. It appears at first to be chicken pox but it is actually a virus that is causing violent outbreaks in the children who begin to terrorize the town.
Your main character attends a meditation retreat. It turns out to be a recruiting process for an extremist cult that convinces members to commit dangerous acts of terror. Your protagonist is the only one in the room who is immune.
So overcome by his nightmares, your main character attacks anyone who comes near him. He cannot distinguish between loved ones and the monsters in his head.
A young man has to dive 300 feet into the ocean to rescue his girlfriend caught in a broken submarine. He must cross through a genetically modified shark breeding ground.
An old time capsule is about to be opened and the whole town is present for the celebration. When opened, the only thing found inside is a detached human hand with a threatening note in the grasp. The note is written in your character’s handwriting but dated 50 years before they were even born.

Master horror writer Stephen King reveals some of his thought process: “So where do the ideas—the salable ideas—come from? They come from my nightmares. Not the night-time variety, as a rule, but the ones that hide just beyond the doorway that separates the conscious from the unconscious.”

Horror doesn’t always have to be fantastical and dreamy in nature. Sometimes horror exists in the real world, within people.

Tips for Writing Horror

Don’t be afraid to give that gruesome, bloody description.
Aim to create extreme emotions.
Make sure the readers care about your characters. This will make their horrible situations more impactful.
Consider what scares you the most. Keep this in mind when writing.
Set the stakes high.
Some comic relief or brief periods of peace are okay – necessary even. It can help build suspense.

Crime and Mystery Writing Prompts for Adults

Stories of crime and mystery have been told for ages. There are some classic crime dramas that will never get old. Many non-fiction books have been written on this topic as well.

Creating a proper mystery takes time and much planning. When done correctly though, it makes for a most memorable story.

Your main character discovers another women’s clothes tucked in the back of her boyfriends closet. She plans an elaborate fishing trip to get him far away for a weekend so she can teach him a lesson.
A new serial killer is on the loose, killing one person every other day within 500 feet of a museum. There must be a connection and a reason, but how will they catch him when he keeps destroying the cameras and escaping?
A young officer is three years sober and committed to getting back on track. That is until he is called to the scene of a high-profile drug bust and is in charge of collecting evidence. Can he control himself around so many drugs?
Abandoned cars start randomly appearing throughout the city. No license plates and nothing inside. That is until one is found to contain several dismembered human limbs.
Your character has been receiving nasty, lifelike drawings in the mail. They ignore them at first, thinking it is some kids being silly. Until the drawings start coming to life. Since they have the drawings, they know what is going to happen next, and in what order.
Your main character and her husband awake one night in the early hours of the morning, both recalling a horrific dream from the night before. They soon learn the dream to be true as they discover a fresh, painful brand in between each of their shoulder blades.
Your character never wakes up feeling rested, no matter how long they sleep for. Medication doesn’t help. They decide to film themselves one night. The next morning they watch as they get out of bed around midnight, smirk at the camera, and wave before disappearing out the door for hours.
Your protagonist is a member of a small religious group. When a precious artifact goes missing, the head elder’s daughter is blamed for it. Your character knows she couldn’t be responsible because the two of them were romantically involved at the time of the theft. Such activities are strictly forbidden and the daughter would rather go down for the theft than admit to breaking that law.
There is a serial killer going after the children of rich and notable families in the area. Your main character is the child of one such family and is terrified every waking moment. Tired of living in fear, they decide to figure out who the killer is and stop them
Your character gets a DNA test, just for fun. After getting the results and doing some more research, they discover that members of their ancestry from all over the world were once all gathered in the same place. The reason is unknown.
Your character receives a strange voicemail from an unknown number. The voicemail ends up changing the course of their entire life.
Your character is in an accident and loses the memory of the last year of their life. There are so many things that don’t make sense. They must retrace their steps to find answers.
The entire town has started sleepwalking, together, every night.
Your character has a short but friendly encounter with a stranger in an elevator. The next day, they are all over TV as the victim of a brutal murder.
Your character is redecorating and takes down a painting. They notice something strange engraved on the back of the frame.
Your character goes to their usual coffee shop and orders “the usual.” The Barista smiles, nods, and slides something entirely different across the counter. She has never made a mistake before.
Your character opens a random book at the library when the cover page falls out. It says “if you are reading this, you have been chosen.”
When looking through some old family photos – going back generations – your character notices a cat in almost every photo. The very same colorful spotted cat with a single docked ear that is sitting on their lap.
When paying for their groceries, your main character mentions to the clerk that there is a mess in aisle 11. The clerk is confused and explains that there is no aisle 11.

Tips for Writing Crime and Mystery

This is a genre where a book writing template can come in handy. The plots are often so complex, it can be overwhelming to keep it all straight.
Draw inspiration from real-life crimes. This will make your story believable.
Also, draw your inspiration from real-life people and give them realistic motives behind their crimes. Crime and mystery are rarely set in a fantasy world, so being realistic is important.
Know how the mystery is solved before you start writing.
Include a few cliffhangers – usually at the end of a chapter.

Science Fiction Writing Prompts for Adults

Science fiction is similar to fantasy in that you can make up a lot of stuff, which is a fun way to write.

This is a versatile genre that can be molded into anything you want.

Sometimes, it is rooted in truth with elements of real scientific and technological advances. Other times, there are many assumptions made about the future of science, and lots of make-believe takes place.

A spaceship that can surpass the speed of light is allowing a few humans on board to escape our solar system and it’s dying sun. How does the world decide who gets to survive?
A shy, introverted tech guy develops a virus that can control human desires, impulses, and choices.
A pet store becomes overrun with kittens and sells them off at a low price. However, these cats are actually an alien hybrid that can body jump. It begins causing the owners of these cats to commit suicide within 24 hours of adoption.
A live TV broadcast from the White House experiences some technical difficulties. They end up broadcasting a top-secret meeting about a pending alien invasion.
Science has developed a brain scanning software that can read thoughts. Before they can decide what to do with it, someone has hacked the system and stolen it.
Your character wakes up on a spaceship with no memory.
The world has developed a genetic system that engineers everyone for a specific job in the community. Your character hates what they were created to do. This never happens.
The world has finally reached a state of all-encompassing peace thanks to a technical system that keeps things regulated. Your character is in charge of keeping the system running. When they discover exactly how the system is kept running, they consider abandoning their post and never turning back.
Your character accidentally traps themselves in an alternate universe that hasn’t discovered electricity or technology yet.

Tips for Writing Science Fiction

Make your story complex, but don’t rush it. Let your audience process information before adding more.
Keep the language simple and easy to understand even if the world isn’t. The majority of your readers will not be scientists or tech experts.
Be consistent in terms of the universe. Physical laws, social classes, etc. Know your own world.

Dystopian Writing Prompts for Adults

Dystopian stories are growing in popularity. The genres itself is growing and evolving all the time as people figure out what works and what entertains.

Dystopian is a fun genre to read and experience, but writing it can be just as enjoyable. Having fun while learning how to become a better writer is of utmost importance.

Be careful you’re not writing Dystopia just because it sells well. Make sure you have a real story to tell and that it’s one you believe in.

A newly married couple become pregnant with twins. Due to growing overpopulation, they are told they must make a choice when the babies are born. Only one will live. Rather than submit to this, they plan their escape across the border.
An amateur teen scientist accidentally discovers an impending alien attack set to destroy earth within a month. He becomes the unwilling leader of the evacuation and defense coalition.
A hacker discovers that the new iPhone can be remotely detonated. Many corrupt political leaders are assassinated in this way on the same day. The world breaks into chaos.
World War III has come and gone. Governments are a thing of the past and money is useless. Survival is the objective. Your main character also has a medical condition to keep under control.
A horrible outbreak of disease devastated the wildlife population 100 years ago. A scientist has recently created a virus that will strengthen the immune systems of the remaining animals. It works too well, and the animals are starting to overtake the human population.
After mental illness devastates a generation, scientists create an airborne substance that balances the levels of all people on the earth. Your character is one of the few who is immune.
Rampant wildfires are taking over the surface of the earth. Your character is part of a group who is trying to find a rumored ocean deep settlement. The settlement doesn’t really exist.
Nature extremists have taken over the government. Any and all activities that are harmful to the land or plants are forbidden and outlawed.
Natural farming is a thing of the past. All food is manufactured artificially and distributed. There is no flavor and it’s the same thing every day. Your character takes a stress-relieving trip to the mountains. Here they find the remnants of some real plants, with a few berries on them.

Tips for Writing Dystopian Fiction

Know what the message of the story is. What is the main character trying to achieve?
A dystopian society is usually one that has taken the current problems of the world and projected them into the future.
Dystopian realities are never good ones – make sure you have enough doom, gloom, and darkness for your readers to understand the state of the world.

Historical Writing Prompts for Adults

Historical fiction can be whimsical and charming. It can be dark and spooky. It can be funny and ridiculous. Stories of history span many genres.

Historical fiction can be a combination of educational and entertaining. It tests a writer’s research skills as well as knowledge. The better depiction you can create of your desired time period, the more effective your story will be.

Learning to research is crucial to know how to become a better writer.

From a first-person perspective, write about the showdown between a criminal and a lion in the Roman Colesseum.
Abraham Lincoln is famous for his top hat. Where did the top hat come from? Who was the president without it? Write a story about the infamous top hat and its life.
The Berlin wall has crashed to the ground and its love at first sight for one lucky couple – whose parents aren’t so impressed.
Your character is a talented composer whose direct competition is Beethoven.
Write about a dinner party where three famous historical figures are in attendance.
Your best friend has invented the very first time-travel machine.
Write about a well-known war, but give it a different outcome.
Write a happy ending for Dracula.
Your character’s husband of ten years has just confessed that he has traveled through time from the fourteenth century. He decided to stay because he fell in love with her.
Write about the thoughts of someone who is secretly watching Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel.
Your character is the only one who knows who really killed JFK. It wasn’t Oswald.
Your character is working under William Shakespeare as his apprentice.
Write about a pair of detectives who solve their cases by traveling back and forth in time.
Write about the experience of someone who has just learned of the Titanic’s sinking. They had a loved one on board.
Choose a major historical event. Write from the perspective of a witness.
Your character wants to travel across the land. No forms of transportation have been invented yet.
Write about someone who worked at one of the first printing presses during the printing revolution of the 15th century.

Tips for Writing Historical Fiction

Do your research! Inaccuracies or incorrect facts about the time you are writing in will break trust with your readers and decrease your credibility.
Choose a specific time period and location. “Early twentieth century” is too broad.
In addition to setting and facts, characters need to match the time period. This includes dress, behavior, and language.
Small details will matter.
Balance the historical facts with the drama and fictional elements.

Humorous Creative Writing Prompts for Adults

Another genre that is especially fun to write as well as read, is a comedy. Nothing beats throwing your head back in full laughter.

The goal here is to make people laugh as much as possible while still balancing a good story and believable characters.

Substitute teachers are tired of not being taken seriously. They come together and form a secret society, with plans to revolt.
An Elvis impersonator is so good that many start to believe Elvis has actually come back to life. Soon, he has been recruited to lead a superstitious Elvis-loving cult.
Three friends are out on the town for a night. Write about the most ridiculous series of events you can think of.
Life has gotten tough and your character is considering moving back in with their parents. Before they are able to make a decision, their parents show up at their door asking if they can move in.
Your character wakes up one day and everything they say rhymes. They can’t control it.
The climate is changing and your main character’s city gets snow for the first time in their entire life. She and her friends are recruited for clean up.
Your main character has never had a real job before. They are starting a job at the biggest, busiest store in town on the busiest day of the year.
Your character is set up on a blind date with their sworn enemy.
Every morning you have a package delivered that contains an item you end up needing that day.
Struggling with writer’s block, an author decides to sit at a local train station for information. They get some good material.
Your characters are holding a high-stakes rock-paper-scissors tournament.
Your main character gets backstage at a concert. What happens back there is much more interesting than the show.
Your protagonist decides to buy an old school bus and travel across the country. Being single without any close friends, they post an ad asking if anyone wants to join. The end up having their pick of travel partners.
Write a story about a low-profile, insignificant but long-unsolved crime is finally cracked.
Your character is a serial killer who kills anyone who hitchhikes along the mountain they live on. One day, they pick up a hitchhiker who kills whoever picks him up.
The world’s greatest detective finally meets his match: A criminal so stupid and so careless that the detective can’t ever predict what he is going to do next.

Tips for Writing Comedy

Test the humor on others. You might find something hilarious, but if no one else is going to laugh, it will be useless to include.
Observe comedy. Your ability to write it will hinge on your experience with it. Watch, read, listen, and speak comedy.
Have fun with it. Comedy is fun. If you’re not laughing at yourself along the way, you’ll never get through to the end.

Fantasy Writing Prompts for Adults

Fantasy is one of the most popular genres of the time. It’s growing every day because of its creative and immersive nature. People love to preoccupy themselves with something magical.

Being transported into another world for a little while – that’s what fantasy can do

In a world of advanced technological and magical advancements, one group keeps their practice of ancient spells a secret. One day, they are discovered and it leads to a fight. What is more powerful – old magic, or new technology?
A large, protected national forest is secretly home to werewolves. One summer there is an especially bad flea epidemic, and the werewolves are greatly affected. The fleas from the werewolves infect the town water supply and start turning everyone into werewolves. The only ones not affected are children under 13.
The world is overrun with vampires and humans are dying out. Different races and factions of vampires are beginning to go to war over the limited supply of human blood.
Your character finds a strange looking egg in the forest. Thinking it will make a great decoration, they take it home. What hatches from that egg surpasses their wildest imagination.
A city has spent centuries living in peace with the water-dwellers who reside in their lakes. Suddenly, the water dwellers declare war and no one knows why.
Your character has always been able to alter their appearance. They hide unattractive features. Suddenly, their powers stop working and their true appearance is revealed.
Your main character has a fascination with untouched societies – such as hidden tribes in the Amazon. She sets out to study them as a living. One day she accidentally allows herself to be seen by one of the members. What this person does is beyond what your character ever thought to be real.
The earth itself is dying and all life on the planet is dying with it.
Some people in the world have magic, others don’t. No one knows why. Your main character has magic, but his best friend doesn’t. The friend is exceptionally jealous and is growing more and more desperate to make the magic his.

Tips for Writing Fantasy

Focus on being unique
Don’t neglect worldbuilding . Inconsistencies will be obvious to readers. This is where a book writing software like Squibler can come in handy. It helps you stay organized and efficient.
Create unique names.
Don’t be afraid to make the journey long and the outcome unexpected.

Fantasy Novel Writing Template

Fantasy is one of the most complicated genres due to the necessity of building a brand new world. Squibler’s fantasy writing template will help you through this daunting process:

This template offers guidelines and suggestions for building your world as well as structuring and creating your storyline. It’s helpful but loose enough to allow your creativity to keep flowing.

Dialogue Inspired Writing Prompts

Sometimes, all it takes is a small exchange or a witty one-liner to get your brain working. Take these words and start something new. Or, insert them into an existing project and see what happens.

“As she stepped onto the train, I fought every urge to jump on after her.”
“He was expensive. Please be more considerate of my money the next time I hire an assassin to kill you.”
“You say that like it was a struggle.”
“I’m your conscience. That is literally my one job.”
“Well, I wish you didn’t love me. I guess no one is getting what they want today.”
“I guess it didn’t take.”
“I was bored so I blew up my house.”
“I taught you how to pick locks, and THAT is how you’re choosing to use the skill?”
“They thought I would forget everything. I remember even more than when they started.”
“Yes. But I don’t care.”
“I killed my mother. Are you really questioning what I can do to you right now?”

Write Your Next Masterpiece With These Creative Writing Prompts for Adults

Whether you have a book writing templat e all filled out or you are starting from scratch, these writing prompts will get your imagination going and make your writing time more productive.

Beat the writer’s block, get your groove back, or just be inspired. Figure out how to love writing again. Whatever you’re looking for, hopefully, these ideas have helped form the story you need to tell.

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Blog • Perfecting your Craft

Last updated on Sep 01, 2022

How to Start a Novel: 8 Steps to the Perfect Opening Scene

With every novel he writes, Stephen King tries to invite the reader into the story with his opening. "Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this." Want to extend your readers an invitation they can't resist? Look no further! Here are 8 powerful steps to help you start a novel:

1. Identify the novel premise

2. pick a point of view for your prose, 3. write a strong opening sentence, 4. set reader expectations in the first scene, 5. introduce major characters early in the writing process, 6. establish conflict-heavy stakes, 7. develop an inciting incident that will drive the plot, 8. edit what you’ve written of the book.

As King says, the best novel openings aren’t just beautiful sentences — they’re invitations into a world of the author’s creation. That means the beginning of a novel should set the tone for all the writing that follows, letting the reader know what to expect as they make their way deeper into the story.

Consider your novel's overall tone

Now, don’t worry if you’re the kind of writer who likes to figure things out as they go . We’re not suggesting you plan out your whole plot scene by scene: there’s still plenty of room for spontaneity here. You should, however, consider the overall tone of your story from the beginning , whether it’s as soft as spun sugar or as sharp as a blade.

Make sure you keep this tone in mind from the very start. An out-of-place opening, after all, is like a bloody knife on the cover of a wholesome romance: sure to have your readers blinking in confusion instead of eagerly turning the pages. To avoid this kind of tonal whiplash, you’ll need to have a sense of where your novel’s going before you craft its opening lines. This is especially important if you hope for this novel to be the first in a trilogy or series.

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With your novel’s overall mood and tone in mind, you’re ready to make one of the most important writing decisions for your book: its point of view. Will you opt for colorful, voice-driven first person like in Huckleberry Finn ? Or adopt a bird’s-eye view of the story with a third person omniscient narrator, like in Pride and Prejudice ?

Of course, these are only two options from a vast array of possibilities. If you’d like to learn more about all the possible POVs and see examples of each in action, check out our detailed guide here .

Determine the right POV for your genre

No matter what, the POV you adopt should serve the needs of your story. Consider what’s typical of your genre — that gives you some indication of which POVs complement the literary conventions you’re likely to play with. Young adult novels, for instance, often use first-person narration so readers can really get to know their quirky, relatable protagonists. Mysteries, however, lean on third person limited to build up suspense and keep readers in the dark.

Now you’ve reached the hardest part of starting a novel — coming up with the actual opening line. Luckily, this is also where it gets really fun. After all, you get to do what you do best: write!

We’ve got a post on how to start a story that’s chock full of tips from editors and examples from the greats. But the truth is, there’s no one right way to craft an amazing opening line. You can startle the reader, like George Orwell...

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

… or enter your story in a low-key way, like Charlotte Brontë.

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

The crucial thing is, whatever you come up with, it has to feel right at the beginning of your novel. And if you want some inspiration for your opening sentence, take a look at First Line Frenzy , where editor Rebecca Heyman critiques first lines submitted by writers like you. She also gives plenty of advice for starting your novel off right.

How do you create a mood for your novel, and keep it going right from the beginning? It’s all about setting your reader’s expectations.

If you’re writing a high-octane spy thriller with a shootout in every other chapter, you’ll need to orient your readers to that fast-paced, action-packed world right away. A more contemplative beginning, where your gun-toting hero reflects on his abandoned Catholic faith while recreating his mother’s gingerbread recipe from memory, might not be the best match. By the same token, your thoughtful, dialogue-driven novel about the psychological pressures of middle age probably shouldn’t open with a car chase.

How to Start a Novel | Make sure your novel strikes the right tone

Again, you don’t have to have every plot point in place to write an opening that’s tonally consistent with the rest of your book. Think of yourself as a painter choosing the palette for your next canvas. You may not have the whole composition in your head just yet, but you know whether to reach for yellow pigment, or blue.

With your opening line in place, you’re ready to ground your story with a human element. That’s right — it’s time to bring some characters on-stage and let them move the story forward.

Go light on the backstory

Introducing characters right from the start helps you avoid one major novel-writing mistake: an overly descriptive, info-dumpy beginning. You may have seen these before. There’s the travelogue opening, which pans slowly over a landscape with nary a human figure in sight. There’s also the worldbuilder’s info-dump: the author piling on details upon details about their alien homeworld or fantasy realm. No matter how beautiful the description or how fascinating the tidbits, this sort of opening will make the reader's mind wander.

How to Start a Novel | Don't introduce too much worldbuilding detail at the beginning of your novel

To avoid a stagnant, detail-clogged opening, introduce a key character — or a few — right away. They’ll act as lightning rods for the reader’s attention and their sympathy, getting them emotionally invested the way a sun-drenched meadow or a lecture on wizarding coinage never could.

Don't start with character description

A word of warning here: don’t replicate all the disadvantages of a scenic opening by starting off with a block of character description! To really hook your readers, make sure your characters come on-stage doing something reflective of their personality, not just gazing at their own reflection for the reader’s benefit.

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Don't introduce too many characters all at once

One bad way to start a novel is opening without any characters. Another bad way? Introducing too many characters right from the get-go. Even if you’re writing a sprawling epic with a cast of hundreds, you want to be selective about the characters you introduce in your opening. Allow too many of them on-stage right away, and your reader’s attention will be split in too many directions. That makes it hard for them to get emotionally invested in any of your characters, or even remember their names!

Starting your novel with well-drawn characters makes it easy for readers to feel like there’s something at stake: these are the people who will hurt when it all goes wrong. And make no mistake — something should go wrong. No one wants to read a novel without any conflict.

Of course, the conflict at the heart of your story doesn’t have to be life-and-death: not every book needs to open on a smoking gun or an unidentified corpse. But a sense of tension should be present from the very beginning of your novel, even if you’re writing the quietest literary fiction.

Show the reader what your character wants

In the end, establishing the stakes comes down to showing what your character wants. Now, that want can be grand, or it can be deeply personal, anything from overthrowing an oppressing regime to getting into college. The key is, it has to matter deeply to the character.

Of course, what your character wants can't be too easy to attain. To give your novel the right about of tension, pursuing their goal needs to put something at risk, whether that's their life or their peace of mind.

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Once you’ve established what’s at stake in your narrative, you have to bring the tension to the forefront with a compelling inciting incident. If you’d like to learn more about this all-important plot element, we’ve got a post that goes into the ins and outs of how to write a great one. But in a nutshell, your inciting incident is the event that sets your plot in motion.

Get to your inciting incident early

The inciting incident triggers the main action in your story, but it doesn’t have to be the first thing to happen. Still, if you want to hook your readers from the get-go, place it early in your novel — don’t make them wade through forty pages of backstory first.

How to Start a Novel | Put your compelling incident early on in your novel

Make sure it strikes the right tone

Like everything else about your novel opening, your inciting incident should be engaging while matching the overall energy of your plot. If you're writing a quieter story, your inciting incident can be far subtler than a car chase.

Say you're writing about a violinist who applies to music school against his parent's wishes. Your inciting incident might be as simple as an acceptance letter from Juilliard showing up in the mail. A big envelope arriving by (non-owl) post may not be as much of a bombshell as Harry Potter learning he’s a wizard. But it gets the story moving without feeling tonally out of place.

Once you’ve written the beginning of your novel — inciting incident and all — you’re not stuck with it forever. In fact, you should revisit it as your story develops. To make sure your opening scene still makes sense in the context of your book as a whole, work your way through this checklist when it's time to revise:

✅ Does the tone of your opening still fit?

The premise — even the genre — of your novel can change over the course of the writing process. Make sure your opening isn't an artifact of an old draft. If you started out with an earnest romance, only to see it morph into something more tongue-in-cheek, your opening scene should now have that satirical bite.

✅ Are you giving the right background info?

Like your genre, your setting can evolve as you write — you might end up refining some worldbuilding that was murkier at first. Make sure all of these changes have been incorporated into your opening. Do the details introduced still make sense, given how the world of your story looks now?

✅ Is your characterization consistent?

Of course your characters will grow and change over the course of the plot. But there should be a thread of continuity that makes each character recognizable. Take look at everyone who appears in your opening scene. Are they portrayed in a way that's consistent with their behavior in the rest of the book?

Remember, revising the beginning of your novel is an ongoing process. And once you feel you’ve taken it as far as you're able to, you can always loop in a professional editor to polish it even further. The key is to keep tinkering with it until you've got an opening that just feels right . We can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Are you working on the perfect opening for your book? Make sure the chapters that follow are just as strong as our post on how to write a novel !

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500 Writing Prompts to Help Beat Writer’s Block

Looking to get your story started with a writing prompt? You’ve come to the right place. In this post we detail everything you need to know about writing prompts and give you 500 writing prompts broken down by genre. Enjoy!

I want to be a writer… but what if I have nothing to write about?

Ever feel like you’d love to write but you’re fresh out of ideas? Like there’s nothing else that you could possibly write about, or you have no idea where to even get started? We get it. One of the hardest steps in writing a book is often knowing where to get started. Coming up with content, getting your pen (or pencil) to paper, and letting your creativity flow is a challenge that many writers struggle with. As we know, facing writer’s block and fighting personal writing doubt is common. An overwhelming number of professional authors admit to getting stuck well before they get to the point of selling books on Amazon . Thankfully, there’s an answer to the question of where to turn when you feel like you’ve hit that proverbial wall: the writing prompt.

What is a writing prompt?

How often do writers use writing prompts?

There’s no right answer to this question because using writing prompts can often be a personal choice. Some authors find it greatly benefits their ability to turn out creative results. Some authors know that they already have the right ideas for a book in their heads. With using writing prompts, you need to decide on what’s best for you . Whatever method helps you generate ideas is what’s best for your writing!

Is there a writing prompt that’s best for me?

You might be wondering if there’s one type of writing prompt that’s best for you. It’s easy to find selections of prompts that are filtered by specific genres (romance, mystery, and so on). However, we recommend sticking to genre-specific prompts if you want your writing to be more focused. With that being said, you never know when inspiration will strike. If your writing needs are less genre-restricted, reading as many prompts as possible may be the best option for you! Whenever I write for fun, I love to read as many prompts as I can across all genres. Hey, you can get some pretty fun ideas for a thriller story from sci-fi writing prompts.

Where can I find writing prompts?

Easy – the Internet! And books, too. We recommend checking out our collection of prompts first, but there are numerous great sources throughout the web (blogs, social media, and even AI tools like ChatGPT ). Through combing the Internet for great websites and blogs like Reedsy , Screencraft , The Write Practice , Bryn Donovan’s resources , and the @writing.prompt.s Instagram page, we’ve written and gathered 500 writing prompts to help you kickstart your brain into writing mode. Categorized into ten popular genres, we encourage you to grab your mug of coffee or tea, read through our prompts, and get ready to catch the writing bug.

Have any particular writing prompts that help you get focused? Want to tell us about a great website for writing prompts? Feel free to share those in the comments below. Happy writing!

Mystery / Thriller
Science Fiction
Fantasy / Paranormal
General Fiction
Religion / Spirituality
Travel / Adventure
Young Adult

What are some mystery and thriller writing prompts?

You find strange, muddy footprints leading up to your front door.
A stranger sits down next to you on a train and gets up, leaving a package behind. Do you investigate the package?
You hear news of your next-door neighbor vanishing without a trace.
One day the national news channel shuts off. And the next day after that, too.
One day at work, you look across the street to see a hooded figure in a black coat pointing directly at you. What do they want?
You stumble upon a strange house you’ve never seen before on your morning run.
You get a text message from an unknown number saying, “Meet me outside. Now.”
Your parents tell you that they actually don’t know whose child you are.
Someone puts a large black box on your doorstep. A note on the front reads, “Caution: may bite.”
You wake up to discover a completely different, unknown face staring back at you from the mirror.
The protagonist of your story discovers that there is a person who looks exactly like him.
An international spy group recruits you to be their latest member.
You begin to realize that your reflection is no longer appearing in mirrors.
You aunt passes away, leaving you $500,000 in her will under the condition that you resume care for your hundred-year-old home.
Your best friend tells you that she feels like someone’s been watching her. The next day she goes missing.
Three words: Long lost brother.
The day of your wedding, you wake up to find every person in your wedding party has been brutally murdered.
The FBI begs you to come back to work on a special case. Your former partner has turned and is now wanted for the murders of three co-workers.
Local gravestones begin disappearing.
You can solve murders simply by stepping foot at the crime scene. Problem is, no one believes you.
Write a short story where the protagonist has a doppelganger. (Reedsy)
Your fingers tensed around the object in your pocket, ready to pull it out at a moment’s notice. (Reedsy)
You’re sitting by a window watching the flakes slowly and silently fall. Suddenly, you see something outside that snaps you out of your reverie. (Reedsy)
You’re at a huge store scouting out Black Friday deals. You start to notice that all the security cameras in the store seem to be following your each and every move. (Reedsy)
You work for the CIA who send you undercover in the FBI, who send you undercover in M16, who send you undercover in the CIA, who are very confused that you are back after only two weeks. (Reedsy)
A terrorist group has been infiltrated by so many agencies that it is now run by spies, unbeknownst to the spies themselves. This fact becomes apparent to an actual extremist who joins their ranks. (Reedsy)
Ever since childhood, a dark figure no one else can see has been following you around, whispering in your ear. Today you see it lying a few feet away, screaming and asking you to run. (Reedsy)
You’ve lived an average life up until today, your 20th birthday. You just found out that your dad is the runaway son of a doting criminal warlord, and your mom is the daughter of an equally doting secret agent. Both family businesses are looking to make you the next heir. (Reedsy)
She has been walking for hours. Her feet are starting to bleed. But she can’t stop moving… she can’t let him find her again. (Reedsy)
The morning after a blizzard you make your way outside and slowly start to realize everyone has disappeared. (Reedsy)
You find a hand-written note on your windshield that says, “Drive west for 100 miles.” (Reedsy)
You wake up in a jail cell, crusted blood covering your hands. You have no idea how you got there. The cell door clangs open, and an officer walks you to interrogation room where two detectives wait to question you. (Reedsy)
You walk into your job and find a secret, coded note pinned to your desk. What do you do next? (Reedsy)
Guard this with your life. (Reedsy)
A loved one confides in you, but the secret could damage someone else you care about. What do you do? (Reedsy)
As you’re browsing through a rack of sweaters, someone approaches you and says, “I need you to listen to me very carefully.” (Reedsy)
Write a short dark comedy in which a long-unsolved mystery is finally cracked. (Reedsy)
They say a picture is worth a thousand words but you knew the one you’d just taken was worth a million. (Reedsy)
You were the oldest person still living in the town and you remembered things no one else did. (Reedsy)
Looking through old family photos, multiple generations back, you notice there is a cat in almost every group photo. The same cat – color, pattern, one docked ear – that is currently purring on your lap. (Reedsy)
“… and that’s why dividing by three is illegal.” (Reedsy)
You’re a serial killer who murders anyone you see hitchhiking up your mountain. One day, you pick up a hitchhiker who kills anyone who picks them up.
You are legally allowed to commit murder once, but you must fill out the proper paperwork and your proposed victim will be notified of your intentions. (Reedsy)
You hire two private investigators to investigate each other. One month later both come to you to present their findings. (Reedsy)
20 years after your daughter was abducted, a detective finds you to reopen the case. The detective turns out to be your daughter. (Reedsy)
You’re shaking hands with a stranger at a networking event when you ask for their name. “I have no name,” they reply. (Reedsy)
As you’re paying for your groceries, you mention to the clerk, “There’s a mess in aisle 16.” They give you a puzzled look and reply, “There is no aisle 16.” (Reedsy)
The detective didn’t realize they were being foiled by a competing detective. (Reedsy)
The first day you opened your own office as a private investigator, you didn’t expect it to be busy. You were wrong. (Reedsy)
You are the world’s greatest detective. With your near superhuman intellect, you have never failed to solve a case before. One day, you finally meet your match: a criminal so unbelievably stupid that you cannot possibly comprehend and predict what he’s going to do next. (Reedsy)

What are some romance writing prompts?

Left at the altar, you decide to seek revenge on your ex.
You got ditched at the last minute before prom – who will your date be?
A stranger texts the wrong number, and accidentally sends you a declaration of love. The message is so sweet and heartfelt that you know you can’t let it go.
A divorced former couple find each other on the same flight to Paris… Sitting next to each other.
After joining an adult swim league, you realize that your coach is irresistibly cute.
Your husband accidentally sends you a text meant for his mistress.
You and a hot stranger get trapped in an elevator.
Write a love story set at the zoo.
A college professor and their teaching assistant hit it off a little too well.
You get to make one wish to create your dream romantic partner. What is it?
Two strangers on an online chat room hit it off. Turns out they’re childhood sweethearts.
A parole officer falls in love with his parolee.
After their catamaran crashes, a husband and wife on their anniversary trip are left marooned on an island in the tropics.
She’s a burgeoning lingerie model who needs her cute neighbor to take portfolio shots of her.
An alien falls in love with a forbidden human.
Desperate for cash, a med student signs up to be a nude model for a retired women’s art club.
A cutthroat business woman swore she’d never find love until her best friend sets her up on a blind date.
Two widowed people meet at a community garden.
A chef decides to embark on an international culinary tour for inspiration and falls in love with their tour guide.
A daughter tries to set her widowed father up on an online dating app – without him knowing.
A Republican presidential candidate and Democratic presidential candidate fall in love.
You are a popular book heroine’s love interest. You now have 60 seconds to convince them that saving the city is more important than saving you. (@writing.prompt.s)
The love of your life is your brother’s nemesis.
You fall in love with every person you make eye contact with.
You’re a mail order bride arriving at her new home for the first time.
After you move to a new city, you fall in love with your realtor while buying a new house.
You realize that you’ve fallen out of love with your new wife while you’re on your honeymoon.
You and your best friends decide to try a new dating app for the first time.
At your friend’s urging, you begrudgingly attend a Valentine’s Day speed dating event. (Reedsy)
Every day, you return to your apartment and say, “Honey, I’m home. Oh wait, that’s right… I live alone.” But then one day, a voice replies, “I picked up some pizza.” (Reedsy)
Cupid offers to shoot an arrow into the person you love. He warns you that if the person already has a pre-existing affection towards you, it will disappear when the arrow strikes. (Reedsy)
You meet your doppelganger of the opposite sex and find you are strangely attracted to each other. (Reedsy)
Write a romantic comedy. Difficulty: both lovers are emotionally mature and have excellent communication skills. (Reedsy)
In the future, romantic attraction is literal: each person is fitted with an electromagnetic bracelet which, they claim, will pull you to your soulmate. It’s the day they turn the magnets on, and you’re waiting. (Reedsy)
A fortune teller falls in love with their client who has their palm read every month. (Reedsy)
It wasn’t love at first sight. But now you were starting to see them in a new light… (Reedsy)
Someone with anxiety falls in love with someone extremely adventurous. (Reedsy)
The lives of two people are changed forever when they coincidentally meet and engage in a weekend-long affair. (Reedsy)
They lived in a world where PDA is forbidden. One day, they slipped up and held hands on the street. (Reedsy)
Two characters who are perfect for one another are foiled by bad timing. (Reedsy)
Two mortal enemies fall in love when they’re trapped in an elevator together and begin to see the other person’s perspective. (Reedsy)
Valentine’s Day at a retirement home. (Reedsy)
Well, that was a New Year’s Eve kiss you won’t forget any time soon. (Reedsy)
You have the ability to make anyone fall in love with you. You’ve just fallen in love for the first time. Do you use your power? (Reedsy)
You and your partner finally have the most romantic vacation planned. Problem is, your in-laws decided to tag along at the last minute.
You never would have guessed that in 48 hours you’d be married. (Reedsy)
A dog lover and cat lover fall in love… and must find a way to get their animals to fall in love, too.
You’ve been bumping into the same stranger for months. Finally, you decide to say hello. (Reedsy)
They might have aged 50 years, but when they held you, those hands felt exactly like they did the first time. (Reedsy)
An avalanche strands two mortal enemies together… and they start to fall in love.

What are some science fiction writing prompts?

You wake up one morning to find out that you get to move to any planet of your choosing.
Your wife is a droid.
Every day, you get one hour to revisit any moment from your life. What do you pick?
Gravity no longer exists.
You are chosen to go on the first ever recreational space journey.
After people die, their spirits can be brought back from death but at the cost of one random human life. Is it worth it?
Everyone in the world has the ability to read thoughts. Except for one person.
You have to power to build one separate planet. How do you build it? Who gets to live there?
What team do you gather to fight the largest alien and terrorist threat on Earth?
The world is dying. In order to save it, you’ve been commanded to sacrifice yourself to an invading alien group.
You are the first person able to breathe in outer space.
A rare form of cancer is the newest superbug. With a team of scientists, you all must find a cure before the population is wiped out.
Human beings begin to find themselves growing extra limbs as global warming amps up.
It turns out humans have been the aliens all along.
You are in charge of a secretive government agency that aligns people’s fates. Their livelihood is entirely up to you and what you want to do with it.
Technology becomes illegal.
All plant life on the planet is wiped out, except for in Florida.
You are one of the mechanics on the first ever self-flying airplane.
Walking through the woods one day, you come across a small animal that has the ability to instantaneously clone itself.
Your whole family has fought in the space military, but you’ve decided to no longer take part in it.
In an alternate universe where global warming has ruined the planet, you’ve spent your entire life living in an airplane on autopilot.
You’re a 15-year-old in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. However, a cure has been found that not only rids the infected person of the virus before they turn but prevents it altogether. Only one problem… Your parents are anti-vaxxers. (@writing.prompt.s)
Nasa engineers monitor the curiosity rover’s actions. All seems normal until the robot suddenly changes its course. The scientists attempt to correct it over and over until they suddenly receive a transmission from the rover: “Will Save Oppy” (@writing.prompt.s)
What if a nuclear submarine was ordered to launch their nuclear arsenal onto the world? (Screencraft)
What if the world we live in is actually a computer simulation? (Screencraft)
What if the past and present timelines began to merge? (Screencraft)
What if your stepfather or stepmother is actually your future self? (Screencraft)
What if the sun began to die? (Screencraft)
What if the universe as we know it is actually someone’s imagination? (Screencraft)
Everyone on earth begins to experience universal amnesia.
The year is 2200. What does the world look like to you?
In the future, we no longer require water, air, or food. We are a super efficient team of robots.
What do you think happens when the grid goes down?
Describe your perfect utopian world.
Your penpal lives on the opposite side of the universe.
Aliens who only communicate with sign language invade. To avoid war, our governments must engage a vastly marginalized portion of the human population: the hearing-impaired. (The Write Practice)
A rogue planet with strange properties collides with our sun, and after it’s all over, worldwide temperature falls forty degrees. Write from the perspective of a someone trying to keep his tropical fruit trees alive. (The Write Practice)
Ever read about the world’s loneliest whale? Write a story in which he’s actually the survivor of an aquatic alien species which crashed here eons ago, and he’s trying very hard to learn the “local” whale language so he can fit in. Write from his perspective the first time he makes contact. (The Write Practice)
An alien planet starts receiving bizarre audio transmissions from another world (spoiler: they’re from Earth). What does it mean? Are they under attack? Some think so…until classic rock ‘n’ roll hits the airwaves, and these aliens discover dancing. Write from the perspective of the teenaged alien who first figures it out. (The Write Practice)
Take anything we find normal today (shopping malls, infomercials, products to remove facial hair, etc.) and write a story from the perspective of an archeologist five thousand years in the future who just unearthed this stuff, has NO idea what any of it was for, and has to give a speech in an hour explaining the historical/religious/sociological significance. (The Write Practice)
House cats are aliens who have succeeded in their plan to rule the world. Discuss.
A high schooler from fifteen hundred years in our future is assigned a one-page writing project on a twenty-first century person’s life based entirely on TV commercials. Write the beginning of the essay. (The Write Practice)
Time travel works, but only once in a person’s life. Write from the perspective of someone who chooses to go back in time, knowing they can never return. Where do they go and why? (The Write Practice)
So yeah, ancient Egypt really was “all that” after all, and the pyramids turn out to be fully functional spaceships (the limestone was to preserve the electronics hidden inside). Write from the perspective of the tourist who accidentally turns one on. (The Write Practice)
Ten years from now, scientists figure out how to stop human aging and extend life indefinitely—but every time someone qualifies for that boost, someone else has to die to keep the surplus population in check. Oh, it’s all very humane; one’s descendants get a huge paycheck. Write from the perspective of someone who just got a letter in the mail saying they’re the one who has to die. (The Write Practice)
In the future, neural implants translate music into physical pleasure, and earphones (“jacking in”) are now the drug of choice. Write either from the perspective of a music addict, OR the Sonforce agent (sonance + enforcer) who has the job of cracking down. (The Write Practice)
It’s the year 5000. Our planet was wrecked in the great Crisis of 3500, and remaining human civilization survives only in a half dozen giant domed cities. There are two unbreakable rules: strict adherence to Life Quality (recycling doesn’t even begin to cover these laws), and a complete ban on reproduction (only the “worthy” are permitted to create new humans). Write from the perspective of a young woman who just discovered she’s been chosen to reproduce—but she has no interest in being a mother. (The Write Practice)
In the nineteenth century, there’s a thriving trade in stolen archeological artifacts. Write a story from the perspective of an annoyed, minimum-wage employee whose job is traveling back in time to obtain otherwise unobtainable artifacts, then has to bring them back to the present (the 1800s, that is) and artificially age them before they will sell. (The Write Practice)
Steampunk! Write a story from the perspective of a hot air balloon operator who caters to folks who like a little thrill… which means she spends half her time in the air shooting down pterodactyls before the paying customers get TOO scared. (The Write Practice)
Creation myth! Write from the perspective of a crazy scientist in the year 28,000 who, determined to discover how the universe began, rigs up a malfunctioning time machine, goes to the “beginning” of the universe, and ends up being the reason for the Big Bang. (Logic? Causal effect? Pfft. Hush, it’s time-travel, and that was never logical.) (The Write Practice)

What are some fantasy and paranormal writing prompts?

A mysterious creature speaks to you in your dreams and tells you that when you awake, you will have the ability to see into another realm.
Your pet dragon transforms into a person.
You are gifted with the strongest, most elusive sword in the kingdom, but if you use it you will never be able to speak again.
A magical world exists underground. To get there, you’ll need to start digging.
You wake up and find out that you’re the only living person left on the planet.
On her deathbed, your grandmother tells you that there’s a hidden treasure buried in her backyard. The family has been trying to locate it for decades. It’s up to you to finally find it.
The ocean becomes the sky.
You must save your kingdom from ruin by learning how to breathe fire.
You have the power to read the lost language, making you the only person to decipher the scroll.
Fairies are tired of being used for free labor.
Your favorite fairy tale is now set in 2019.
You are kidnapped by a knight who demands your assistance in sleighing the city’s most dangerous dragon.
A man and his wife own the largest potion store in town. Little do the townspeople know, but they’re all being slowly poisoned by the potions.
A magical toad begins talking to you, but you’re the only person who can hear him.
You come into possession of a ring that can change the weather to whatever you decide.
You’re selected to take part in a secretive, underground magic university… but you have to kill someone to go.
You wake up to find yourself a member of King Arthur’s Round Table.
An underwater society decides to overtake the world.
Regular person by day, a shape shifter by night.
Satan puts you in charge of Hell.
You are the king. After your daughter was kidnapped by a dragon, you offered the standard reward to whoever rescued her. You weren’t expecting a different dragon to rescue her. (@writing.prompt.s)
A woman has been dating guy after guy, but it never seems to work out. She’s unaware that she’s actually been dating the same guy over and over; a shapeshifter who’s fallen for her and is certain he’s going to get it right this time. (@writing.prompt.s)
The cocky main character of a popular book is sent to the real world. He is shocked to find that the fans of his book not only like the villain more but favor his side kick over him. (@writing.prompt.s)
You’re an immortal who lives at a beach resort. You have many summer flings with mortals on getaways. One day you see someone you had a hot romantic night with 50 years ago. They look exactly the same. (@writing.prompt.s)
The stars have been watching you your whole life, as you laughed and cried, loved and suffered. Today, you’re finally going to do something that none of them can bear to watch. They blink out, the whole night sky turning dark, just as you’re about to do it. (@writing.prompt.s)
A lord takes a fancy to a peasant girl and kidnaps her for his own. Little does he know that she’s a trained assassin who has been preparing to take his life for years. (@writing.prompt.s)
You are the last person on Earth, and you are able to make one wish. What do you wish for?
You and your family are on a hike when you stumble upon a group of witches in the forest, in the midst of casting spells.
You have the power to transform into whatever mystical creature you choose.
You and your ghost best friend are an infamous crime-solving team.
No, there’s absolutely no way that ghosts are real. Sure, you just saw a mysterious fuzzy figure you appear before you in your house, but that had to be your imagination… right?
You’re the one human who is capable of seeing ghosts. It’s up to you to save them from being removed from the human world for good.
You were born to be a villain, but you find yourself leaning more and more towards the good as you get older.
Spend some time working on world building. How can you create a believable fantasy world that readers can picture clearly? What types of characters does your world include?
Dream up your own, one-of-a-kind mythical race.
You and your adventurous crew on a quest for the old King’s hidden gold. Just one problem – so is the rest of your village.
10 cm of snow had fallen overnight, just as the weatherman predicted. The only thing is… the snow isn’t white. (Reedsy)
You start realizing that at least one aspect of every dream you have comes true the next day. (Reedsy)
You can buy a pill that lets you decide exactly what you will dream about while you sleep. (Reedsy)
You find a polaroid camera that seems to predict the future: its pictures show what will happen exactly 5 minutes from the moment you take them. (Reedsy)
You were on your way to see a doctor who promised to know the secret to making yourself fall out of love with someone. (Reedsy)
Write a story that includes a character hearing their fate by a fortune teller. (Reedsy)
As a joke, you put on a tinfoil hat. Suddenly your mind goes completely silent. (Reedsy)
Silence is now literally golden. For every day of total silence a person completes, they receive a piece of gold. (Reedsy)
A new candy had been invented that allowed the person who ate it to relive any memory they wanted. There was a lineup outside the shop. (Reedsy)
It’s 1AM at night. But the sun is out. (Reedsy)
You wake up 10 years younger. What do you do? (Reedsy)
I wish I could skip next week, you think as you get into bed that night. In the morning, you wake up 100 years in the future. (Reesy)
They found out about us. They’re coming. They were the words the kingdom had feared hearing for thousands of years. (Reedsy)
A group of scientists on a submarine are alarmed when they spot what looks like a functioning lighthouse at the bottom of the ocean. (Reedsy)

What are some general fiction writing prompts?

You’re chasing your dream of being the first person to fly.
Coffee is illegal and you have to single handedly smuggle it into the country.
You have to get to the bottom of your family’s deepest secret.
What was the strangest thing you’ve ever seen in public?
Detail the life of the person who inspires you the most.
Imagine what would happen if you woke up one morning unable to see, speak, or hear.
Think about what you are most proud of. Follow the story of how you got to that point.
By way of a lottery system, the king chooses you to be his queen.
Use five points of view to describe one situation.
Describe the life of a struggling author attempting to make it “big.”
Tell the story of one woman on the mission to find her lost biological daughter.
Your dream is to open a restaurant and be a top chef, but how can you do that when you were born without taste buds?
You’ve just returned home from war only to find your family missing without a trace.
A famous shoe designer asks you to quit your job and be his latest model.
You have the power to create, and star in, your own reality show. What does it look like?
The dark family secret that’s always been hidden comes to light.
As an 80-year-old, you decide to finally learn how to swim so you can participate in a triathlon.
Write a scene detailing your greatest fear. Now imagine that has come true for your character.
What’s the greatest advice you’ve ever been given? What if you lived solely according to it?
You live in a world with no stress and fear.
Death has been flirting with you for a long time, but they’ve become a bit annoying. After another attempting to hang out with you again, you jokingly tell them, “If I was the last person on Earth, I’d maybe give you a chance.” Death believes you and will double their efforts.
When people are born, they are assigned a soulmate. They have a song in their head that only them and their soulmate know. How do you find your soulmate? (@writing.prompt.s)
Write a story about a character waking up to something absurd. (Reedsy)
Write a story about a character waking up to the best news of their life. (Reedsy)
Write a short story with an unreliable narrator that readers can never quite trust. (Reedsy)
Write a short story in which the main “character” is the setting: for example, a house. (Reedsy)
Write a story about someone who would be described, above all else, as honest. Or kind. Or intelligent. (Reedsy)
Using only dialogue, write a short story about a first date, a reunion between old friends, an argument that gets heated, an adult explaining something to a child, or the reveal of a long-hidden secret. (Reedsy)
Imagine telling the story of a professional hypnotizer. (Reedsy)
Tell a story through text messages.
Tell the story of what you would do if you won the lottery.
Write your own obituary.
Tell a story from your favorite era.
Imagine how you would help solve the greatest challenges that the world faces. What would your plan be?
What would a world be like with no poverty? What would change? What would stay the same?
Tell the story of the first time that you learned to do something really well.
Imagine what it would be like to be a pop star.
Tell a story through song.
Write from the perspective of your worst enemy.
Tell a story using only one sense – seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, or touching.
After years on the job search, you’ve finally gotten your dream job – but it changes you for the worst.
You own a tiny mom and pops-type store that you run with your family.
The worst thing that you could imagine happening happens.
You’re the judge of the annual pie contest in your hometown but, unbeknownst to you, one of the pies is poisoned.
You go on a road trip to visit your late father’s grave.
Tell the story of seeing the ocean for the first time. Or the last.
You’re allergic to oxygen.
Imagine what would happen if every person in the world woke up in a good mood every day.
You’re put in charge of taking care of your elderly grandmother towards the end of her life.
You get one chance to talk to any person in the world. Who do you choose?

What are some religion and spirituality writing prompts?

What makes you believe in God?
God speaks directly to you – what does He say?
What do you find to be most beautiful in the world?
You get to build a religion of your own. What do you make it into?
You must live every single day according to a holy text of your choice. What happens?
Explore what it means to be religious versus spiritual.
What helps you meditate?
What is the greatest wisdom that you would like to impart on the world?
Who is one religious figure you would like to have dinner with? What do you talk to them about?
Describe your idea of heaven.
Detail your favorite story in the holy text of your choosing.
You live in a world where no Gods exist.
What does karma mean to you?
What would your ideal world look like?
You have the power to make every single person in the world ether religious or nonreligious. What do you do? What changes about the world?
What makes you a religious or spiritual person?
Describe what a church means to you. Have you had positive or negative experiences in a church?
Write a poem about your religious path in life.
Write a religious comedy.
What happens when a priest decides he doesn’t want to be a priest anymore?
Think about what morality means to you.
What is the difference in good versus evil? How do you know?
How does one know what is innately good?
What makes you religious?
What makes you non religious?
Put yourself in the shoes of someone who has completely opposite spiritual or religious views from you. Why do they think a certain way?
Describe what your childhood views in spirituality or religion were.
What do you hope your religious or spirituality path to look like as you age?
How would you advise someone to strengthen their faith?
If you could talk to God, what would you want to say?
The Southern Baptist Convention elects its first woman president, though she is subsequently removed from the position due to an obscure rule. In protest, every woman leaves the Southern Baptist denomination to form an independent, women-only sect of Baptists.
God needs a vacation from heaven, so he comes to earth to experience life as a dog. He is captured by animal control and is impounded, and you adopt god-the-dog after a tragedy that makes you question your faith.
An opiate addict going through severe withdrawal symptoms has a conversation with the Buddha – what did they talk about, and was it the result of a fever dream, or a spiritual awakening?
You record a video that seemingly shows a woman walking on water at a small rural pond. The video goes viral as proof that Jesus has returned, and Christians begin to wonder if Christ was the Daughter, not the Son, of God.
A secular Jew and a devout Muslim debate food and faith on a train from Quebec to Montreal.
What are your personal ten commandments?
When was a specific moment where you felt a “divine presence” in your life?
Have you ever felt like you’ve experienced a glimpse into the afterlife?
What form do you think the afterlife will take, if you believe that it exists?
Have you ever had an out of body experience?
William Blake, famous British poet, thought that to love was to be in tune with the divine. Do you think this is true? How have you experienced divine love?
How have you experienced the divine through love?
Emanuel Swedenborg believed that there was a soulmate for every person, and that you couldn’t get into heaven until your soul mate had also passed away. Do you believe in the concept of soul mates?
Do you believe in reincarnation?
What would reincarnation look like to you?
Some religions believe that animals and plants have souls. Do you agree with this? Why or why not?
Describe a particularly spiritual moment in your life. What were you doing? Were you by yourself or with someone else?
What is your most taboo religious belief?
Some religions believe that human beings could never truly represent a higher power in art. Do you agree with this? What is an example of art or words that you feel represent the higher power?
What are your thoughts on love languages?

What are some travel and adventure writing prompts?

Write about your favorite vacation.
What culture interests you the most?
You get lost in a foreign city with no cell phone and no money. What do you do?
Your favorite chef asks you to join them on a culinary tour of the world.
What country have you always dreamt of traveling to?
What’s your dream vacation?
Tell the story of the worst traveling experience of your life.
A country of your choosing fuses with North America.
You and your best friends go on a road trip across America, with no budget and for however long you want.
You are asked to review a luxury hotel on the beach.
You are forced to leave your home and move to a remote foreign country. What do you pack with you?
What about traveling excites you?
Go back in time to the era of your choosing and describe how you live.
Rate your top five favorite places in the world. What do you like about each place? What do you dislike?
If you could have any travel-related job in the world, what would it be?
You and your partner are kidnapped on your honeymoon.
Describe a 100-day walking journey around your state.
Imagine if you had never left your home in your entire life and then were forced to go outside and never come back to your house.
What do you say to your family in a postcard from a new location?
Describe what it’s like to sit in rush hour traffic in one of the busiest cities in the world.
A journey to a new location is disrupted by natural disaster.
Describe what it’s like to travel with a crippling fear of airplanes.
What is it that you love about traveling? Explore that feeling.
What is frightening about traveling? Explore that feeling.
What stories would you most like to share about the town that you’re from?
You have the opportunity to move anywhere in the world. Where do you choose?
Explore what your travels in Asia have been like.
Explore what your travels in Europe have been like.
Explore what your travels in South America have been like.
Explore what your travels in North America have been like.
Explore what your travels in Africa have been like.
What is the most unusual place you’d like to travel?
What do you think is most misunderstood about the culture of your home country?
What cultural norms are you most interested in exploring from foreign countries?
Describe the foreign foods that you most want to try.
Imagine that you are a successful chef in a foreign city.
Describe a time when you have been excited to explore a new place.
What is the most beautiful image that you have ever seen while traveling?
You get to go to any museum in the world. Which one do you choose?
What is your greatest horror story from traveling?
What is your happiest story from traveling?
Picture yourself on a foreign vacation with a person of your choosing. What do you do?
If you had to move to a foreign country tomorrow, what five items would you pack with you?
Set the scene for a beautiful beach that you have never traveled to.
Set the scene for a gorgeous castle that you have never traveled to.
A three day visit to Budapest becomes a maritime adventure down the Danube River to the Black Sea.
You are a sales representative for a roulette table manufacturer. While visiting the Harrah’s Cherokee Casino for work, you decide to discard all your possessions, cash out your minimal savings, and hike the Mountains-to-Sea trail from Clingmans Dome to the Ocracoke Lighthouse.
While en route to visit your college roommate in Kyoto, Japan you meet a stranger at Tan Son Nhat International Airport who needs your help finding a prophetic monk hiding from persecution in Saigon.
You have to make it from Cairo to Alexandria (Egypt). You have no money. Your only mode of transport is a temperamental camel.
In a high-stakes game of poker in the French Quarter, you wagered your soul to a voodoo doctor on a pretty bad hand. The only way to null the bet is to find a woman in Port-au-Prince, Haiti who has an item – the only item – the man is willing to trade for.

What are some horror writing prompts?

You wake up to a world in which all prisons are shut down, releasing dangerous prisoners into your neighborhood.
A masked stranger appears at your front door with a knife.
A random number texts you saying, “Don’t forget, you’re next.”
Someone knocks at your door. You open it to find your deceased grandfather who has come back from the dead to pay you a visit. What does he want?
Animals take over the world.
Strange murmuring sounds being to come from the door that leads to your basement.
While watching the evening news, the anchor looks directly at the camera and begins screaming before the camera cuts to black.
A polar vortex freezes the entire planet.
Whatever building you enter, you can see all of the people who died there.
You wake up in a strange room, tied to a chair, with a single knife on the floor pointed at you.
A chilling voice appears in your head. It won’t go away. One day, it tells you that you have to run.
The old cuckoo clock at your grandmother’s home is haunted.
You’re driving at night when you can’t help but shake the feeling that there’s a person in your back seat.
One day, while you’re in the shower, you hear your front door open and close. “Hey, roomie, I’m home!” Someone shouts. You don’t have a roommate.
A strange man living down the street begins leaving presents at your doorstep.
The cruise ship is haunted.
While working at a clothing store, you’re closing up the shop for the night when you see five men walk in through the front door and lock it behind them.
You’re in the middle of a bank robbery – hiding in the bathroom.
Your dog won’t stop barking at a sunken spot in your living room floor.
For the last few days, you’ve been getting ominous messages written in blood on your bathroom mirror. Turns out, they’re from an awkward ghost with a serious crush on you. (@writing.prompt.s)
The reason no one has ever seen the real Santa Claus is because everyone who sees him dies. You just saw him and now you need to survive. (@writing.prompt.s)
You wake up bound to an electric chair, moments before your imminent death.
A woman afraid of clowns is forced to work in a travelling circus. (Screencraft)
A treasure hunter finds a tomb buried beneath the dirt. (Screencraft)
A bartender serves last call to the only remaining patron who is the Devil himself. (Screencraft)
A boy’s stepfather is actually a murderous werewolf. (Screencraft)
A man wakes up with no mouth. (Screencraft)
Deceased soldiers return to their Civil War-era homes. (Screencraft)
Suburbia is actually purgatory. (Screencraft)
A man suffers from sleep paralysis at the worst possible time. (Screencraft)
A man murders his wife while sleepwalking.
What appears to be a ghost approaches your car while you’re waiting at a stoplight.
It’s late at night, and you hear footsteps in the cellar—but you’re definitely home alone… or so you thought. (The Write Practice)
You’ve put that doll in the cabinet, in the closet, in the attic, but no matter where you tuck it, it always shows back up on the sofa. On Halloween night, you come out to find it watching you… (The Write Practice)
A bad-tempered businessman is driving home after a long day of work. He thinks he sees his kids trick-or-treating and stops to pick them up—but those aren’t costumes. (The Write Practice)
A young woman goes to her grandmother’s house for tea on Halloween night. They have a wonderful time together, sharing stories, joy, and the best times of family. The next day, the woman learns her grandmother has been dead for a week and no one could get ahold of her to tell her. (The Write Practice)
Aliens have just landed on Earth—and boy, did they pick a weird day to come. How do they respond to Halloween, supernatural or otherwise? Do they decide this place is just too bizarre and get the heck out . . . or do they stick around and join in the fun? (The Write Practice)
On Halloween night, lovers get to come back and spend the evening together one more time. One couple from the Roaring Twenties decides to come back from the grave to help their extreme nerd great-grandchild or the kid will never get married. (The Practice)
A little boy’s lost in the woods, but at least his faithful dog is with him. As they look for the way out, the dog defends his master against terrifying monsters and animals. Finally, the boy arrives safely on the other side, beautiful green field, no more fog or night. Then the dog goes home . . . where his owner, the little boy, has died. The good doggy guarded him all the way to his final rest. (The Write Practice)
You wake up in the middle of the night to see a dark figure crawling across your floor.
Moments after taking off for a flight, the entire plane begins to shake dramatically. The pilot comes on the speaker and says, “This is very bad.”
You awake in a dark, small box and can hear strange noises outside.
Several weeks after buying your dream house, you start getting strange letters delivered in the mail warning you to move out.
Your dog has been acting very strangely recently. Some would say… almost human.
You stumble across a website that contains clues to some very disturbing crimes.
As you’re settling in to bed for the night, you hear an unusual scratching sound at your bedroom window.
You’re on vacation in a new city for the first time. As you walk down a busy boulevard, you suddenly look up to realize you have no idea where you are or how you got there. Come to think of it, you don’t even know who you are.
On your way to work, you notice that no one is driving on roads. The busy rush hour traffic is nonexistent, and there are no people walking around, either. It’s just you. What’s going on?
You discover, much too late, that your downstairs neighbor is a cannibal.
During a renovation of your home, you and your spouse find human remains underneath your back porch – a crime that you are now being charged with.

What are some children’s writing prompts?

Your dog begins speaking in a human voice one morning.
The sky turns purple.
Your best friend’s head turns into a mushroom.
Dinosaurs come back to earth.
You and your family rescue a turtle who was hit by a car and nurse him back to health.
You turn into a goldfish.
What would happen if you could turn any food into cotton candy?
Rain turns into soda.
Your family adopts a pet monkey.
The new kid at school wants to be your friend, but you’re very shy.
You and your boy scout troop get lost in the middle of the forest.
Your parents tell you they’ll give you $20 if you eat your vegetables with every dinner. Do you do it?
Write about a special memory from your childhood.
What parent were you closest do? What are some of your favorite memories of spending time with them?
Write about yourself at age five.
Write about yourself at age ten.
What was your greatest dream when you were a child?
Write about your favorite childhood pet.
Get inspiration for your writing by thinking about a vacation you took as a child.
What would happen if you woke up one day and kids ruled the world?
Tell the story of a child who has just transferred to a new school.
Tell the story of a platypus.
Imagine running away with a group of your childhood best friends – where would you go?
Dream up your own imaginary world.
Children’s books are known for their fun and creativity. What’s the craziest, kookiest new breed of animal you can imagine?
Give advice to new parents.
Give advice to your younger self.
Imagine what it would be like to live in a world where instead of taking the school bus, you ride a dragon to classes!
Write about your favorite childhood game.
Tell the story of a family who decides to hire a new babysitter or nanny.
Your parents tell you one day that you’re going to be a big sister – but you really like being the only child!
If the world could be any color, what would you want it to be?
If you could taste a specific flavor any time you ate something, what would you want it to be?
Describe a trip to the zoo with your class.
You and your best friends get to leave school to have lunch anywhere in town. Pizza, candy – anything! Tell the story of where you go.
Tell the story of your first time at summer camp.
Tell the story of your first time away from home.
What if we lived in a world where kids were treated like adults? And adults were treated like kids?
Take a spin at your very own Dr. Suess-esque book and use rhymes to tell a kooky, crazy story!
You’re in charge of babysitting your little sibling for the first time.
You decide to run away from home – what are some of the challenges that you face?
Picture a world where everything is upside down! What’s life like for you?
Write a book advising children on how to overcome adversity.
Write a book advising children on how to be a good friend.
Write a book advising children on how to be a kind sibling.
Bobby the Bunny wants to make friends with a fox pup who recently lost its family.
A giraffe and an ostrich live together in a zoo, where they bond over similar neck characteristics and learn how to play one another’s games.
A dragon wants to be loved and befriended, but every time he farts, fire erupts from his rear end.
Bruce the German Shepherd loves to run through the woods with his human. When he and his human get separated from one another, Bruce has to learn from his forest friends how to get back home.
Tell the story of the tooth fairy… Imagine that she just started her job and has to be trained.

What are some young adult writing prompts?

It’s your first day of middle school. But when you’re half human, half dragon, that makes things a little tough.
What happens when you begin working at the same yogurt shop as your crush?
Both of your parents die in a car accident, leaving you an orphan who gets shipped off to your mysterious aunt’s house in Europe.
One day you find out that you never have to return to high school. What do you decide to do instead?
You’re chosen to go on a school trip to Africa where you’ll be helping to build wells. You’ve never been out of the country, though, and are worried.
Your mom disappears one day, and you never see her again.
Tell the story of the best high school summer of your life.
Your boyfriend gets in a horrible car accident and ends up in the ICU. Another girl is found in the car with him, too – but she died. Who is she?
You find out that your brother is adopted.
During her freshman year of college, she found out that people in her dorm started to disappear. Almost from thin air.
A group of high school freshmen learn that the teachers and administrators at their boarding school are actually human like AI working towards the Singularity and human enslavement. If they don’t act fast, the robots win.
A group of at-risk teenagers are on an overnight camping trip with a wilderness counseling group in Badlands National Park when an arctic blast forces them out of a blizzard and into a cave. On day three, their counselors go out in search for help – and never return.
Your high school sweetheart dumps you suddenly because of something you posted on social media. But you didn’t post it, and you have to figure out just how different – and difficult – your life is now that you’ve been hacked.
Imagine that the world is run amok with vampires. Or zombies. Or authoritarian dictatorships in a dystopian future.
In the near future, climate change has led to the extinction of butterfly and bee pollinators. A small group of teen geniuses band together to develop autonomous, robotic insects to replicate the functions of insect pollination before the global food shortage turns from disastrous to extinction-level.
You find out that your best friend’s dad is responsible for the growing number of missing people in your hometown. How do you get everyone to believe you?
You did it – after years of hard work and try outs, you finally won the coveted spot on the football team. But here’s the thing – you’re the first girl to ever play.
One night you wake up to find yourself levitating over your bed. The next morning, strange wings start to grow from your shoulders. Are you turning into some sort of mystical bird?
It was pretty freaky to wake up for school one morning, only to see that my parents were literally frozen into blocks of ice in the kitchen. Even freakier? Every adult in town is frozen solid, too.
A boy pursues his list of wildly ambitious New Year’s resolutions, with hilarious and touching results. (Bryn Donovan)
A girl on the swim team transforms into a part-time mermaid. (Bryn Donovan)
A group of “outsiders” become a clique that eventually excludes others. (Bryn Donovan)
A girl’s favorite author plagiarizes her fanfiction. (Bryn Donovan)
A boy learns who believed his sister died finds out she’s very much alive. (Bryn Donovan)
A teenager’s best friend goes missing—and is widely believed to be the murderer of a family member. (Bryn Donovan)
Two teens begin to write a fantasy novel together and then cross over into the world they’ve created. (Bryn Donovan)
In a dystopian future, college admissions boards have access to video footage of students’ entire lives. (Bryn Donovan)
A girl always hangs out at a particular little nook at the library. Then the same boy starts taking the space every day. (Bryn Donovan)
A boy learns something terrible about his parents.(Bryn Donovan)
In a modern-day Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, three girls ditch class for a day filled with adventures. (Bryn Donovan)
35. A girl who wants to be a virgin until she gets married faces social pressure about her decision. (Bryn Donovan)
A teen gains the ability to take the form of any other person she chooses. (Bryn Donovan)
A girl’s science fair project yields results that attract the government’s attention. (Bryn Donovan)
A teen’s suspicions about a teacher lead him to conduct a private investigation. (Bryn Donovan)
A girl struggles with the decision to tell authorities about what the star quarterback did. (Bryn Donovan)
Soon after a boy was born, his father went missing. Now, a skeleton has been discovered in the basement of their former home. (Bryn Donovan)
You check out a book from the library and discover that it’s telling the story of your life. Do you decide to read ahead and find out what happens, or let it be a surprise?
Your beloved dog goes missing, resulting in a cross-country chase to reunite her with your family.
Put yourself in your favorite anime or manga series. What type of character would you play?
You and your best friends have been playing in a band in your mom’s garage for years. Now you’ve gotten discovered by a major Hollywood scout, but they only want you to go on to fame.
Some friends go to an escape room only to discover it’s being run by one of the most elusive serial killers in history.
After going to see the circus with your parents, you decide to run away to join the troupe. What act do you take on?
What would you tell your younger self as a teenager? What do you wish you had done differently, or not done at all?
What would your younger self tell you now? What would they think about your life?
Tell the story of someone who switches places with themself as a 14-year-old.
Think Princess Diaries – you’ve just found out you’re part royal with a massive inheritance to look forward to. What changes about your life?
A small spaceship crash lands in your backyard with nothing inside but an instruction manual on how to rebuild the aircraft. Do you take it back into space?
You have the power to shift into whatever creature you want – bear, wolf, etc. When do you choose to utilize your powers?
What would happen if you changed places with a rockstar?
Your big brother has always been the more successful, studious one of the family. You’ve finally got a chance to prove yourself and one up him – how do you do it?

There you have it, we hope these 500 writing prompts help you on your way to publishing your next book . For more resources on self-publishing, book marketing, and general indie author trends, make sure you check out these resources . You can also sign up for our free author newsletter to stay up to date on the latest news.

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49 comments on “ 500 writing prompts to help beat writer’s block ”.

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Thanks for sharing the prompt ideas! I am thinking to start writing a book since a long time. But I wasn’t getting any good heads. Your article has helped to understand my area of interest, especially in which I can write a book successfully.

very nice story I like it

Writer’s doubts never end here is a way to solve this issue with 500 writing prompts. It is such a research based and praiseworthy blog, it is a must read. Thank you for this article! This is really very informative for us.

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With all 500 of these, I should have no trouble finding something to write about. Thanks so much for these prompts.

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My friends and I are doing a competition to see who is the best FANTASY writer. Here’s the catch, you need to include twins, homeless people and abused animals in your story. Plz help???

Hi Ebony! Maybe try a slightly post-apocalyptic slant? I know that subgenre can veer on Science Fiction (instead of Fantasy) but you could definitely apply those required themes to a post-apoc story.

Urban fantasy set in a modern day. The protagonist is a homeless person who has a pet dove-griffin (also called winged rats). One day, he is assaulted and they take his companion, leaving him for dead. He survives, and uses his background as a hunter to track down the people who wronged him, stumbling in the process upon a ring of fantasy animal traffickers called the Chain of Cerberus, which is ruled by three brothers, triplets. He has to fight against all odds using his skills and save his only friend and companion.

The secret motivation for the protagonist is atonement for his past as a hunter, since he helped rich people (like the Triplets) to capture the fantastic animals they were after.

I call it ‘Fantasy John Wick’

Thank you for sharing such a wealth of prompts! These are fantastic. What a tough job to choose 500! If you’re interested in more open-ended prompts (just to switch it up), check out my instagram for (almost) daily writing prompts as well: @sharp.writer .

This is the complete list of writing prompts over the internet. Thanks for sharing.

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SoI made like a short script bit of a prompt like the one bout you looking in a mirror to see something that does not look like you.

Its 5 o’clock in the morning. As I came out of my cream sheets with speckles of generally grey all around, I fixed my bed. From patting down pillows to rearranging my duvet for the most part placing my silk pretty black blanket to definitely finish it off. I basically was heading for the fridge to get the creamer for coffee when I stared into the actually metal fridge looking for my reflection but instead kind of found that something looking back at me and it was not my reflection, which really is quite weird. Its kind of looked nothing like me, or so I thought. I really tried to really come up with excuses; I am in a daze, I am still half-asleep, I for the most part am asleep. IT CAN’T BE. I said, until I saw that it can. But that thing in the mirror particularly was scaring me because it stared back at me and it was waving now in a kind of like I AM WATCHING YOU kind of way. but before I could do anything it….

I found your blog very helpful in my writing project someday. Thank you for sharing your wonderful article.

I’m so glad this was helpful to you, Monique. You’re very welcome!

I have been reading posts regarding this topic and this post is one of the most interesting and informative one I have read. Thank you for this!

You’re very welcome, Patricia!

i need to do a story in which the main character is a demigod (as in percy jackson yknow) and i don’t know what to write.

Here’s one you might enjoy , Anika! Found on the #demigod prompts Tumblr page.

This is an excellent list of prompts! For me, though, I don’t lack story ideas or character scenarios. After plotting out my story, I tend to get stalled after a few chapters or in a particular scene, even when I have a good conflict for the characters to work through. ****** I found this great little book on Amazon called “What Would Your Character Do?” It really helped me because the prompts are designed to get you brainstorming about your character’s next actions when you’re stuck in a scene. I can always find a prompt in the book to get me unstuck! I’ll definitely share this particular list with my writer friends though!

Great recommendation, Jackie! Thanks for sharing

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thank you for these prompts. they really helped with my writer’s block

these are so helpful! I’ve been trying to figure out how to continue my dystopian story for weeks then I found this website! I can’t wait to continue working!

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Thank you so much for compiling such an array of prompts. Reading through these and of course changing them up in my head has me scrambling to write again. Have a Blessed Day!

Was looking for some takes regarding this topic and I found your article quite informative. It has given me a fresh perspective on the topic tackled. Thanks!

What a great list of writing prompts. I have saved this page to share with my writing partner. I am sure we will use some of these.

Hello! I wanted to ask you, if I am allowed to use some of you prompts. (of course I will give credits to you and add a link to this site). I am leader for a community on an app called Amino, it’s quite similar to Instagram, where the member can post some stuff. I wanted to post some writing prompts, since everyone there likes to write. So I wantet do aks, if i can use some of your prompts. (And sorry for my bad english, I have a german community there, since I speak german…)

Absolutely, please feel free to share and we would appreciate linking back!

Of course I do, thank you!

This was so helpful! Every prompt in this article was amazing You’ve really outdone yourself Kelsey!!!!!<3

This is extremely helpful. I am in 2nd year of high school and struggle with writers-block. I decided to do number three in the ‘horror’ section, and the options written in this article are extremely ‘flexible’ — there is a prompt for everyone. Thank you.

These writing prompts are fun! Thanks for putting it all together.

I’ve started several books. None completed, Although a few stories were published in a small town newspaper. A couple of years ago I began a book when the work came to an abrupt end. My husband fell off the roof. Now, after 2 years, I find myself wanting to write, but stymied as how to pick up where I left off. I’ve read your prompts. Some of the fiction, thriller, mystery and prompts in other areas have been true life experiences for me. Now, as I stand in the aftermath of the train that hit me, in need of a battery jump to restart, I have hopefully found a way forward.

I absolutely loved these! Thanks so much! Writing prompts really help me keep the wheels turning.

Thanks so much for these amazing prompts! I had nailed down a genre and topic but needed some help getting down to the nitty gritty specifics. You saved the day (and my essay). Thank you!

I am impressed with your sharing. Helpful for new writers. Thanks for your share.

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Unbeatable listing. A lot of quality and tremendous compilation.

I love these prompts! They help me get started when I’m feeling stuck.

I have all the actual writing material I need, but I am using writing prompts to get myself in the zone for writing. This list is outstanding. It’s a bit of a struggle to stop perusing because there are so many that entice me. I’m pretty sure that many of these will little warm-ups will end up in my Ideas file. Thanks so much for this.

To the prompt about scientists figuring out how to extend life but someone has to die:

The mail held a few worthless ads, nothing to be worried about. But then my heart stopped at the sight of a letter. My hands trembled as I took it out of the box. I wracked my brain for ways to escape. If I never read it, could I claim ignorance? No, it would never work. Shakily I tore open the envelope and unfolded the paper inside. When it began with “We sorrowfully regret to inform you,” I recognized the words from my sister’s letter and the grief came flooding back. Half for her and half for myself. I wasn’t ready to let go of the wonderful life I had. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. But it didn’t matter. Getting this letter meant I was going to die, and it also meant that I had no choice.

Just a blurb. Thoughts?

These gave me some great ideas!

The Best Writing Books For Beginners 2024 (My 10 Favorites)

Being a beginner writer is overwhelming. There are so many options, and beginners often don’t know where to start. It seems like every blog and YouTube video is recommending a different set of tools, resources, and books for writers.

There are a lot of good books out there, but what are the best writing books for beginners?

Here are the best writing books for beginners:

The Secrets of Action Screenwriting

Writing a breakout novel workbook.

Save the Cat

The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes

Writing for emotional impact, secrets of story, dialogue secrets, act two secrets.

Scene Secrets

Supporting Character Secrets

I’ve kept a running list of my favorite writing books ever since I started over 20 years ago. In this post, I’m going to share with you my top 10.

My Criteria for Choosing the 10 Best Writing Books for Beginners

Table of Contents

Here are my criteria for choosing these 10 books.

My criteria: I’ve actually read the book, learned a ton, and consistently apply its principles and practices to my writing on a regular basis. The book consolidates practical, clear, and concrete writing lessons that have transformed my writing.

Not my criteria: I listen to the recommendations of other people but, if I’m completely honest, I think a lot of their recommendations are trash. Not that the books themselves are bad, but they don’t have the practical insight and tools that have helped me when I sit down at my keyboard to type.

Here’s also what was NOT my criteria:

What I thought were popular books (popularity doesn’t equal good or helpful)
What I thought you expected to hear (There are some surprises on the list)
What I thought you might buy through one of my affiliate links (I’ve only listed books that I personally own and use regularly)
What bestselling authors or popular authors say (There are many decent writing books out there. These are by far the best I’ve come across)
What I wanted you to believe, like my own books (I didn’t put any of my own books on the list)
Pretty book covers (Some of the book covers on the list look terrible and cheap. I didn’t choose the books for appearance; I chose them for content)

My ultimate criteria was: did this book change my life as a writer, level up my skills, and help me to write a better story?

If so, it made the list.

The 10 Best Writing Books For Beginners in 2023 (My Personal List)

My list has changed some over the last two decades, but most of the books on here have remained largely the same.

If I could go back 20 years and give my younger self 10 books on writing, these are the books I would gift.

Action Screenwriting Writing book for beginners image

Yes, this is a screenwriting book.

Trust me, it doesn’t matter. This is by far the best writing book I have ever read in my life. It’s my absolute favorite and that’s why I listed it first. It’s a gold mine of practical understanding of what a story is and how to write a really good one.

There are so many tools and techniques in this book, I really think that it should be an entire course that’s into the hundreds of dollars.

I 100% believe it’s that valuable. If you only get one book on this list, please do yourself a favor and go get this book right now.

I read all of these books on this list every time that I write a new novel, but this is by far the one that I read the most intensely and from which I apply the most tools and techniques.

Here are the book details:

My biggest takeaways from the book are all the specific and practical writing techniques such as how to build out scenes from your theme, connect your characters, and connect internal conflict to external conflict…

I could literally go on for days. This is also the book that gave me my favorite definition of story.

Breakout-Novel-image-for-best-writing-books-for-beginners

I put this book second because this is the oldest book on my list.

I’ve literally had it for three decades and go back to it time and time again to make sure that I understand and apply the techniques to my stories.

Yes, it’s a workbook, which means there’s an actual book that goes with it.

I’ve read that book, too, and honestly, I prefer the workbook. It has the same information and, in my opinion, the information is more effectively communicated in the workbook.

There are practical exercises with writing techniques very clearly laid out.

Basically, the book goes over the main elements of a blockbuster or best-selling story from one of the best literary agents in the world.

Book Details :

Save The Cat

Oh look, another screenwriting book.

This is a very popular book among writers and screenwriters because it is a simple and straightforward outline of a successful story.

I really like that this book gives you a complete approach to outlining the major plot points of a novel or script.

It really covers everything from the start of the novel all the way to the conclusion.

My biggest takeaway is the 15-point outline or “beat sheet” for the major events of the story.

I also really enjoyed the idea of the different sections of a story that he calls thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. I just think it’s a good framework for understanding what needs to happen in each segment of the story.

There are a couple of cool techniques like “save the cat” (from which the book got its title) and “pope in a pool” that I have never forgotten and continue to use in all of my stories.

38 Fiction Writing Mistakes for best writing books for beginners

This is one of the most beginner-friendly writing books I’ve ever read.

It covers a lot of ground but it does so very clearly and with good examples. The other thing I really like about this book is that it teaches you 38 practical writing lessons that, to get elsewhere, you’d have to read (at least) 5 and 10 separate books.

As a beginning writer, it’s a very approachable book with easy-to-understand and apply lessons.

And, just like the title suggests, by reading the book you can avoid some of the most common writing mistakes. That, in and of itself, is invaluable.

My biggest takeaways are the simple lessons that save you a lot of time and pain as a writer learning the ropes.

writing for emotional impact for best writing books for beginners

This is more of a dense book so not one that I would start with, which is why I put it here in the middle of the list.

But, it’s a really good book that can take your writing to a much deeper and more impactful level. There are tons of tools here to add emotional depth to your characters, scenes, and stories.

Add it to your beginner writer bookshelf.

Book Details:

Secrets of Story Well Told for best writing books for beginners

What I love about this book is how it helps you break or build out a story based on the theme.

The model in the story is called the thematic method. It’s all about how to develop a very connected story that is layered and powerful. You learn how to create characters, secondary characters, and scenes that all include the “DNA” of the story.

It’s another very practical book full of useful tools for writers. Storytelling is, after all, the most important part of being a novelist.

Dialogue Secrets for best writing books for beginners

This book is a gold mine of dialogue techniques.

I really can’t explain how thorough and complete your education about dialogue will be after reading this book. Super practical, super actionable, and incredibly informative.

Tons of examples make applying the techniques to your own writing as easy as possible.

You will learn more about dialogue from this one book than from a whole collection of other books on the same topic.

Dialog is a key element in writing a story because most scenes include some form of dialogue. And many writers really struggle with how to write realistic dialogue that reveals character while also advancing the story.

You can learn so many techniques (over 50) to level up your dialogue from this book. It’s a must-read.

Book details :

Act-2-secrets-for-best-writing-books-for-beginners.

As a beginner writer, one of the most important lessons to learn is how to write the middle section of your stories.

This is called act 2 in screenplays.

Don’t be put off by this being another screenwriting book. Again, screenwriters seem to understand the practical structure and techniques to put together a story much better than most novelists or writing teachers.

This book will teach you everything you need to know about what to put in that middle section of your story to:

Escalate the conflict
Advance the plot
Deepen character
Keep the reader engrossed in the story

In many ways, act two is the story.

At least, it is the most important part of the story because it’s the biggest section where most of the story happens. So, understanding the middle of the story and how to write it well is essential to Your growth as a writer.

This book puts so many different pieces of the story puzzle together for me.

Scene S ecrets

A story is a collection of scenes.

This book explores every angle and aspect of what makes a compelling scene. you’ll find the answers to the following questions: What kinds of scenes do you include in your story and what kinds do you leave out?

What’s the best way to write a scene? What do you actually put in a scene? How do you make scenes more compelling to the reader?

It’s a fantastic addition to your writing library.

Supporting Character Secrets image for best writing books for beginners

This book explains clearly and in detail everything you need to know about how to create secondary characters and subplots for your story.

This is an area where many writers get confused, lost ,and go wildly astray.

You can really shorten your learning curve by reading and applying the ideas in this book.

You’ll learn what secondary characters are, how to create them, and how to interweave subplots into your overall narrative. Lots of examples are included from different genres so that all of the points are super concrete.

A Few Comments About My List of Best Writing Books

You probably noticed that many of the books on the list are written by the same author (William C. Martell).

Martell is a practicing screenwriter and not a novelist.

One of my biggest aha moments as a writer in the last two decades is to realize that screenwriters, in general, seem to have a better grasp on the practical structural techniques of a story.

There are certainly differences between the visual medium of movies and the more personal and intimate experience of writing fiction.

However, I have found that the vast majority of story principles, tools, and techniques cross over very well.

That’s true of fiction and nonfiction.

I’d go so far as to say that I never understood story as well as when I read these “blue books”. You don’t have to believe me, just read the books, (they’re very cheap Kindle books on Amazon), and watch the results you get with your own writing.

There are a lot of good books on writing that I didn’t include in this list that many other people include on their list, like Writing Down the Bones , On Writing Well , War of Art , and I could go on.

What I found in my own journey is that after reading a few of these books about the main elements of a story (characters, conflict, plot, etc.) all the other books on the same subject mostly said the same thing.

Even if they did say a few extra little things that helped, those books never seemed to leapfrog me ahead in my understanding of story or my ability to write a good yarn.

The exception were the books on my list in this post.

These are the books that have stayed with me for many years, some of them for the entire two decades. Every time I write a new novel, I go back to them and reread them to make sure that I understand their ideas and apply their techniques.

I think you’ll find them amazing books that will level up your writing.

There are no shortcuts to being a great writer. The key seems to be to write a lot and read a lot, get feedback and continually push yourself to improve.

These 10 books are the best books to get you to great writing faster.

Honorable Mentions for Writing Fiction

On W riting

Part memoir and part writing instruction, Stephen King’s book on writing is fabulous.

If you are interested in his story interspersed with some very clear and practical writing advice, please do check it out. I consider it an essential book in any writer’s library.

However, it’s not a book that I return to over and over again to reread.

That’s why it’s not on the main top 10 list. But it’s still very good.

Plot and Structure

James Scott Bell has several good books on writing that are practical and useful.

You might check out some of his books and see if any of them resonate with you. I actually really like this book and it was helpful for my understanding of plot and structure.

It’s just not a book that I go back to year after year.

Best Nonfiction Writing Book for Beginners

I didn’t want to leave the nonfiction writers out of this list. So, I made a very short list of what I consider to be the best nonfiction writing books for beginners.

100 Ways to Improve Your Writing

There are so many nuggets of information here on how to write faster, keep readers engaged and simply write better. All of the tips are very short and actionable so it’s a quick and easy read.

How-to-Write-and-Sell-Informational-Products.

How to Write and Sell Simple Information for Fun and Profit: Your Guide to Writing and Publishing Books, E-Books, Articles, Special Reports, Audio Programs, DVDs, and Other How-To Content

This is literally a book about how to write other how-to books. I’ve never read a more simple, straightforward, and practical book on how to create a very valuable resource for others.

If and when you write your book, you’ll probably want to know some good eBook Marketing Strategies .

What’s the Overall Best Writing Book for Beginners?

I’d say without a doubt it’s the Secret to Action Screenwriting .

It just covers all the bases of a story (and I mean all). The book is incredibly thorough in covering all of the essential story elements.

It doesn’t matter if you write screenplays or novels or in which genre you write.

This book is the key to taking your storytelling to a whole new level. It will literally teach you more than most other writing books combined.

Final Thoughts: The Best Writing Books for Beginners

Those are the 10 best writing books for beginners (plus lots of other freebies and recommendations). I truly believe you’ll find these books to be fantastic resources that you’ll be using decades from now.

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Realistic Fiction Story Ideas: 50+ Prompts to Get You Started

For some writers, it's easy to come up with a story about space aliens, vampires, superheroes, or magical beings. But what if you're looking to write a more grounded, realistic short story or book? Well, you might need some realistic fiction story ideas. Luckily, that's just what we have for you in this article. We'll talk about different ways to come up with realistic fiction ideas, and we'll provide you with a list of realistic fiction story prompts to get you going.

Let's get going!

What realistic fiction is
How to come up with story ideas in this genre
Prompts for realistic fiction stories
How to test your idea before you write

What is Realistic Fiction?
Choose a Theme
Draft Some Characters
Realistic Fiction Story Prompts
Vetting Your Realistic Fiction Idea
Realistic Fiction Story Ideas: Final Thoughts

As the name suggests, realistic fiction defines fictional stories that are grounded in reality. There are believable characters , the situations are easily recognizable, and the conflicts are genuine. These storylines can take place at any time, but they're usually contemporary to the author's life. A realistic fiction tale may seem like a true story, but it's not.

Realistic fiction is not a genre of its own. There is some definite overlap with other genres , like literary fiction and historical fiction. The main characters can be anyone from high school kids to elderly adults. Even children can be major players in a realistic fiction story. But one thing has to hold true: they need to be realistic characters in realistic settings.

Coming Up With Realistic Fiction Story Ideas

There are about as many ways to come up with story ideas as there are writers. Obviously, no one can tell you what to write, but you can get inspiration from anywhere. And the following tips should help do just that.

Writing with an overarching theme in mind can help get the ideas rolling. And there are some common themes in realistic fiction that have held true over the years.

Love – All different types of love — new, old, unrequited, platonic, fading — make excellent themes for realistic fiction.
Growing Up – Some of the best realistic fiction is about changing from childhood to adulthood, or from adulthood to old age.
Life Changes – From divorce and sickness to getting fired and learning to truly live, life changes have made for many a great story in this literary genre.
Self-Discovery – The successful woman realizes there's more to life than working 60 hours a week. The college student suddenly realizes that his true passion lies in religion after a near-death experience. Everyone goes through self-discovery, which makes it an excellent theme.
Bravery/Perseverance – Finding the will and the way to face unbeatable odds is a very human thing. We take solace in others learning to live their best lives in the face of great adversity.
Social Issues/Injustice – Some of the most impactful realistic fiction stories deal with social issues such as racism and injustice. Creative writing in the realistic fiction genre is all about exploring these kinds of issues through compelling and believable characters .

You may have noticed that all these themes are very human. Of course, you could argue that every story is, at its core, human. But these themes are especially human because they're about struggles that people from all walks of life have to deal with. They're about humans dealing with very human problems . If you keep that in mind, you won't go wrong while crafting your realistic story.

Format Beautiful Professional Books

Easy to use, and and full of amazing features, you can quickly turn your book into a professional book.

Remember that characters in realistic fiction won't have superpowers, magical abilities, or the ability to read other people's thoughts. They won't live in a futuristic science fiction civilization. They're just people, which means you can take inspiration from real life .

Try to nail down some character specifics for your protagonist first. Will she be an aging woman who just lost her husband of forty years? Will he be an accountant who saves a young boy's life on his way to work?

Your main character should absolutely have a story arc , so think about what you want that arc to be. Uplifting stories generally have a positive arc with a relatively happy ending. But, like life, there's no guarantee of a happy ending in realistic fiction.

Also, think about some traits or quirks you want your main character to have. Not only physical traits, but beliefs, habits, and compulsions, as well . Check out this article for more on making believable characters .

The following prompts are designed to get the ideas flowing. You can choose a writing prompt and stick close to it, or you can let it take you in any direction you please. The story you end up with may look nothing like the writing prompt you started with! Let each prompt be the story idea that sparks a novel or a short story.

1. Write a story about a character learning that the most important aspect of a relationship isn't what she once thought it was.

2. Write a story about a group of close friends becoming a family after one of their own passes away.

3. Explore the meaning of love through the eyes of two different characters from opposite sides of the world.

4. Write about a character learning about self-fulfillment vs happiness the hard way.

5. Write about an old couple finally going on a train trip through Europe in an effort to save their marriage.

6. Write a story about a character who struggles with self-esteem and vanity.

7. Explore where true confidence comes from.

8. Write a story about characters learning what's truly important as they move from adolescence to adulthood.

9. Write about a woman who meets the love of her life as a result of the 9/11 attacks.

10. Explore the importance of learning to help others during tough times.

11. Write a story in the form of a personal narrative from the perspective of a cult leader.

12. Explore the life of a fictional 19th-century suffragette.

13. Weave the story arcs of several seemingly disparate characters into one surprise ending where they all get what they've been searching for — together.

14. Write a story about a character who loses one of their five senses but learns to live better for it.

15. Write about a character overcoming drug addiction.

16. Write about a character who willfully decides to turn around their philosophy about life, learning to live with intention.

17. Write a story about an author who struggles with writing until something drastic happens in their life.

18. Explore where morals come from and why there's such a big wide range of them.

19. Explore a situation (either real or fictional) in which the majority was wrong about something that affected people's lives.

20. Write a story about a character learning that his concept of love is unhealthy.

21. Write about a family of refugees struggling to survive as they flee their war-torn country.

22. Write a story about an aging athlete who does the impossible.

23. Write about two characters struggling to shift their priorities and keep their relationship intact as they age.

24. Explore a character's trip through the criminal justice system as she is wrongfully convicted of a crime.

25. Write about an entrepreneur's journey to start a small business while his larger competitor sabotages him.

26. Write about a man's journey to return a lost child to his parents.

27. Write about a character learning to love herself before she can love anyone else.

28. Explore the implications of obsession.

29. Write about two characters who used to be best friends when they were kids reconnecting after many years.

30. Start your story with a small moment that has outsized and unforeseen consequences.

31. Write about a teenager who runs away from home after an argument with his parents.

32. Write about the last citizens of a dying town, struggling to revitalize the area.

33. Explore a historic earthquake or natural disaster through the eyes of fictional characters experiencing it.

34. Write about two children who are accidentally left at an amusement park.

35. Write a story about characters during the Great Depression.

36. Write about a dispute between neighbors that gets quickly out of hand.

37. Explore the meaning of Christmas through the eyes of a character who has just lost her family.

38. Explore the trials and tribulations of a character who was devastated by the 2008 financial crisis.

39. Write about a person who leaves everything behind to join a cult (e.g. Peoples Temple or Heaven's Gate).

40. Explore the implications of a husband who is caught spending time with a son he's just learned about.

41. Write a story about parents who struggle with a teenager who has mental health issues.

42. Write a story about siblings who struggle to deal with the mental and physical deterioration of one or both parents.

43. Write a story about a kid who has to deal with bullying at his new school.

44. Write a real-life fairy tale without the magic. Set it in modern times.

45. Explore the high-stakes corporate world through the eyes of a woman who encounters a glass ceiling.

46. Write about a poll worker who is accused of doctoring ballots during a particularly virulent election.

47. Explore the implications of a gender reassignment operation through the eyes of the person undergoing the operation.

48. Write a story about a young woman who struggles with anxiety as she makes her way through the world.

49. Write a story about a pair of identical twins who have to learn to live their own lives after spending so much time together as children.

50. Write a story about a town that suffers a severe earthquake.

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In the realistic fiction genre, good writing is a combination of compelling story elements , characters that feel real, and situations that are easily recognizable. Of course, a knack for narrative writing is also a plus. Fortunately, all these things can be learned.

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This tool does the heavy lifting for you, searching through Amazon to bring you information on keywords, categories, and competition. Learn more about Publisher Rocket here .

Each writer has their own writing process, but the prompts and tips above should help you get into the creative flow. Whether you use a prompt as the spark of inspiration for a full-length book or for a short story idea doesn't really matter. Many great realistic fiction writers got good with short stories before moving on to novels. What matters is that you stay consistent and keep writing. The more you write, the better you'll get!

Dave Chesson

When I’m not sipping tea with princesses or lightsaber dueling with little Jedi, I’m a book marketing nut. Having consulted multiple publishing companies and NYT best-selling authors, I created Kindlepreneur to help authors sell more books. I’ve even been called “The Kindlepreneur” by Amazon publicly, and I’m here to help you with your author journey.

Parts of a book [from cover to cover], how to write a whodunit, top 8 best scrivener alternatives for writers (+ the only one that matters), sell more books on amazon, amazon kindle rankings e-book.

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How to Write a Good Hook & Start Your Novel with a Bang!

June 13, 2018 by Sara Shepard (Guest Blogger)

Start Your Novel with a Bang! How to Write a Good Hook

In this age of instant gratification, short attention spans, and tons of other great fiction to compete with, a story’s beginning needs to grab the reader. Otherwise they might deem the book a big DNF (did not finish) — or if they’re perusing the sample pages online or first pages in a bookstore, they might not make the purchase at all. So how can you start your novel with a bang? Here are 12 tips for how to write a good hook!

1. Startle readers with the first line.

Shocking readers immediately with a jarring moment, visual, or confession will get them excited to read on. One of my favorite novels, the Pulitzer-winning Middlesex , starts with a doozy of a first line:

“ I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.”

It’s surprising and mysterious, and it gets the reader right into the main character’s head — it’s a confession of sorts, which unravels throughout the novel. For me, there was absolutely no way I could put the book down.

2. Begin at a life-changing moment.

A life-changing event for a protagonist can be their “inciting incident” — a moment that thrusts him or her into the conflict they must resolve or overcome by the end of the story. The first chapter of Jodi Picoult’s Handle with Care talks about a baby’s birth — always exciting! But things get even more interesting when the baby emerges with a whole host of health problems — forcing her parents to make a heart-wrenching decision.

This “inciting incident” all happens within the first ten pages of the novel. By the end of chapter one, the reader knows the whole situation at hand, and can’t turn the pages fast enough to see what happens next.

3. Create intrigue about the characters.

When writing first chapters — of thrillers, especially — it’s fun to hint at trouble, lies, secrets, and scandal, but not give away everything. In my novel, The Heiresses , I start with the lines: “You know the Saybrooks. Everyone does.”

This family is wealthy, NYC royalty, living a charmed life. But at the bottom of page one, things start to darken — I mention that every family member has a secret, and that they’re a bit cursed. Who isn’t tempted to read on about that ?

4. Use a setting as the inciting incident.

I’ve already mentioned the “inciting incident” — the story beat that really gets the plot going. Sometimes, a place itself can cause or be the inciting incident. If it is, why not start the character there (or at the very least, on a mode of transport going there) to dive right in?

A great example is in The Shining , where Jack is at the infamous Overlook Hotel interviewing for a new job. The reader thinks this is going to be a fresh start for him and his family… but of course, they’re wrong. Stephen King could have filled the first pages with exposition of Jack back in his old life, but starting the novel at the hotel — which is a character in itself — plunges the reader into the story.

5. Up the stakes within the first few pages.

In a thriller, it’s always great to start with a murder, a body found, or someone going missing — it sets up the problem and goal for the rest of the novel. In my series The Amateurs , the introduction is all about how main character Aerin Kelly’s sister, Helena, goes missing — and throughout the rest of the book, Aerin and the group of detectives she meets up with aim to figure out what happened.

Another example of this is in The 57 Bus , the true story of a hate crime involving an agender teen in California. The first scene shows us that crime, but then the author rewinds a bit from the perspectives of both the perpetrator and the victim, diving deeper into each of their realities. The way author Dashka Slater lays out those first scenes in a confessional, conversational sort of way, the reader feels pulled into the action and compelled to know what series of events caused this horrible tragedy — and how it could have been avoided.

6. Introduce something ominous right away.

Withholding information about something seemingly normal can make it ominous — and intrigue readers to read on. One of my favorite novels when I was a kid was I Know What You Did Last Summer , by Lois Duncan, the queen of YA thrillers. In the first chapter of this book, Duncan doesn’t mess around — she gets right to the note that unravels the main characters’ lives immediately : “The note was there, lying beside her plate when she came down to breakfast.”

Right off the bat, readers ask: What is the note? Why does it matter? Where does it come from? And they’ll want to read on to find out. (By the way, it was this anonymous note that partly inspired me to create the villain A in Pretty Little Liars — there is nothing scarier than someone watching you and knowing all your secrets!)

7. Set the mood.

Setting the mood of the book right off the bat — whether it’s of doom, mystery, mischievousness, or snarkiness — says to the reader, “This is what the world is, you’re now immersed in it, and here we go.” In the classic dystopian novel 1984 , George Orwell’s first line reads: “It was a bright cold day in April, and all the clocks were striking thirteen.” Immediately, the reader knows that this is both a world they understand — same weather patterns, same terms for months in the year — but also a world that is foreign to them. And by choosing “thirteen,” a number so often linked to unluckiness, Orwell immediately creates tension and mystery. This is not going to be a cheerful novel, he telegraphs. Ominous things are going to happen.

Another great example is Nick Dunne’s first line in Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl : “When I think of my wife, I always think of her head.” It’s so chilling upon first read, and though Nick pulls back a little and corrects our preconceived notions about what he means, his words still set the tone about who he is and what the book is going to be like.

8. Make your characters sympathetic — and relatable — immediately.

In a character-driven novel, it’s key to make the characters loveable to readers as soon as possible. In the introduction to the first Pretty Little Liars , readers get a look at Aria, Hanna, Spencer, and Emily on the very first pages. The girls are all relatable — Aria’s the goofball smelling the grass, Emily’s the girl with the strict parents, Hanna’s the klutz, and Spencer is the uber-competitive girl who didn’t make the JV cut for hockey. To readers, these girls feel like people they might already know — and this is all packed into two pages. That way, by the time their BFF Ali goes missing — and A starts to torture them — the reader already feels for these girls, and is invested in their stories.

9. Draw in the reader with a strong voice.

Some of my favorite novels are told from the first person, and it’s the compelling voice that makes the first pages sing. A classic example is Holden Caulfield from The Catcher In the Rye :

“ If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

Through these lines, the reader forms an immediate opinion of Holden. It’s also compelling how he addresses the reader directly, almost making them feel like a friend. I also love this first-person line from Feed by MT Anderson: “We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.” Again, the reader gets a sense of character, mood, and world — all in a simple sentence!

10. Start at a moment of confusion.

The classic jolting awake and not knowing what’s going on trope is always a fun way to begin a story. In my latest novel, The Elizas , the main character, Eliza Fontaine, awakes in a bed she doesn’t recognize. She is finding out along with the reader what happened to her — she fell into a pool and is now in the hospital — and it soon becomes clear that it’s her mission to fill the holes in her memory and track down who made her almost drown. This structure works well because it’s a book about hazy memories and confused brains, but readers can search alongside her to put together all the pieces.

11. Don’t get bogged down with exposition.

It can be tempting to reveal everything about a character — their background, their struggles, their secrets — within the first few pages. This way readers will truly know them, right? But I advise against it. Having more active first few pages or chapters using some of the tips outlined above will create more of a page-turning experience, and you can get to that nitty-gritty character stuff later.

A professor in my MFA program gave me great advice once: Pretend your characters are at a party, and they’re talking to you, the reader, for the first time. Would they really tell you their whole history right away, or would they do so only getting to know you? A few telling character traits here and there can go a long way toward getting us to sympathize with a character. Once the reader is hooked, then it might be time delve into that backstory. It’s a delicate balance, but in the beginning of a novel, less is often more!

12. End the first chapter with a killer cliffhanger.

We’ve talked a lot about how to start first chapters, but what about how to end them? One of the biggest challenges I have when writing a novel is working in enough cliffhangers to keep readers wanting more. (Stephen King is a master at this.)

In Pretty Little Liars, my last lines of the introduction are: “It was horrible to think Ali might be dead, but… if she was, at least their secrets were safe. And they were. For three years, anyway.” Which immediately has the reader asking, “Wait? What happens? Does Ali come back ?”

In I Know What You Did Last Summer , Duncan ends the first chapter with Julie opening the note and… OMG. It reads, I know what you did last summer! Straight to the point, in a perfect setup of what’s to come, Duncan says to the reader: “I dare you not to turn the page.” This is what you want to accomplish in those first chapters: Create an irresistible experience that readers can’t possibly put down.

So there you have it! What are some of your favorite first lines — and your own tips for how to write a good hook?

The views and opinions expressed in this guest post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of BookBub.

Want to share this post? Here are ready-made tweets!

Click to tweet: See how to hook readers from page one with these fantastic tips from @sarabooks, bestselling author of Pretty Little Liars! http://bit.ly/2l3VYaY

Click to tweet: Check out these great tips for how to write a good hook! What would you add to the list? #amwriting #writetip http://bit.ly/2l3VYaY

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COMMENTS

How to Write an Essay Introduction (with Examples)
Here are the key takeaways for how to write essay introduction: 3. Hook the Reader: Start with an engaging hook to grab the reader's attention. This could be a compelling question, a surprising fact, a relevant quote, or an anecdote. Provide Background: Give a brief overview of the topic, setting the context and stage for the discussion.
How to Write an Essay Introduction
Table of contents. Step 1: Hook your reader. Step 2: Give background information. Step 3: Present your thesis statement. Step 4: Map your essay's structure. Step 5: Check and revise. More examples of essay introductions. Other interesting articles. Frequently asked questions about the essay introduction.
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The basic structure of an essay always consists of an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. But for many students, the most difficult part of structuring an essay is deciding how to organize information within the body. This article provides useful templates and tips to help you outline your essay, make decisions about your structure, and ...
How to Start an Essay About a Book: A Comprehensive Guide
Step 3: Read and Analyze the Book. Read the book thoroughly, taking notes on key plot points, characters, themes, and any literary devices used by the author. Analyze the book's significance and consider why it's worth writing about. Step 4: Determine Your Approach. Decide how you want to approach the essay.
Sentence Starters: Ultimate List to Improve Your Essays and Writing
Because it is designed to pull the reader in and surprise them a little, it is often good to avoid pre-written sentence starter examples when writing your hook. Just get into it here, and worry about the flow later. Here are some examples: Spider webs were once used as bandages. I taught myself to read when I was three.
How to Write a College Essay
Making an all-state team → outstanding achievement. Making an all-state team → counting the cost of saying "no" to other interests. Making a friend out of an enemy → finding common ground, forgiveness. Making a friend out of an enemy → confront toxic thinking and behavior in yourself.
How to Start a College Essay Perfectly
The Bottom Line: How to Start a College Essay. The college essay introduction should hook your reader and make her want to know more and read more. Good personal statement introductions will contain the following features: A killer first line. A detailed description of an experience from your life.
Sentence Starters ⇒ Words and Phrases to Start Sentences
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Sentence Starters for Reader Response Essays and Journals
A reader response can be a personal reaction to the text, or it can be a more impersonal analysis of the ideas and writing in the text. In a reader response essay, you can talk about one or more of the following: Your feelings about the topic. Your thoughts about what the author said. What this reminds you about in your own life.
140 Creative Writing Prompts For Adults
Use these creative writing prompts for adults to get you started on the right path to a successful story and suffer from writer's block for the last time. . This list of writing prompts for adults can be taken and used in any way you want. Details can be changed and characters can be added or removed. They are meant to be a fun way to get ...
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How to Write a Great College Essay Introduction
Good example. I wiped the sweat from my head and tried to catch my breath. I was nearly there—just one more back tuck and a strong dismount and I'd have nailed a perfect routine. Some students choose to write more broadly about themselves and use some sort of object or metaphor as the focus.
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Realistic Fiction Story Ideas: 50+ Prompts to Get You Started
Write a story about a character who struggles with self-esteem and vanity. 7. Explore where true confidence comes from. 8. Write a story about characters learning what's truly important as they move from adolescence to adulthood. 9. Write about a woman who meets the love of her life as a result of the 9/11 attacks. 10.
101 Story Starters You've Never Seen Before
Story starters. The young girl's phone rang in the middle of the night, a voice from the other end whispered a prophecy. In a small town where everyone knows everyone, a strange character moves in, wearing clothes from another era. A wrong suitcase at the airport led James on an adventure he never expected, opening a door into another world.
How to Write a Good Hook & Start Your Novel with a Bang!
Here are 12 tips for how to write a good hook! 1. Startle readers with the first line. Shocking readers immediately with a jarring moment, visual, or confession will get them excited to read on. One of my favorite novels, the Pulitzer-winning Middlesex, starts with a doozy of a first line:
Famous First Lines Reveal How to Start a Novel
Here's an array of famous first lines—and seven strategies to craft a great story starter of your own. Zachary Petit. Jan 18, 2013. On this day in 1873, writer and politician Edward Bulwer-Lytton died. One thing he left behind: The first line from his novel Paul Clifford: "It was a dark and stormy night …". The sentence went on to serve ...
41 Good Writing Prompts to Delight You » JournalBuddies.com
41 Good Writing Prompts & Journal Ideas to Delight You. Get to it and use the following essay prompts for high school students (and for all!) in your classroom today to beat writer's block, help students improve their personal writing skills, and learn to love the writing process. Write about a female role model in your life.

How to Write an Essay Introduction (with Examples)

Table of Contents

Literary Analysis Essay Introduction Example

Examples of essay introduction

Argumentative Essay Introduction Example:

Expository Essay Introduction Example

Related Reads:

Similarity Checks: The Author’s Guide to Plagiarism and Responsible Writing

How to Start an Essay About a Book: A Comprehensive Guide

Introduction: Setting the Stage for Literary Analysis

How to Start an Essay About a Book

1. Understand the Book’s Context and Significance

2. Choose an Intriguing Angle

3. Craft a Compelling Thesis Statement

4. Open with a Captivating Hook

5. Provide Brief Contextual Background

6. Introduce Your Approach

7. Use LSI Keywords for Depth

8. Incorporate Relevant Quotes

9. Highlight the Book’s Impact

10. Pose Thought-Provoking Questions

11. Share Personal Connections

12. Offer a Glimpse of Analysis

13. Address Counterarguments

14. Build Anticipation

15. Power Keywords for Impact

16. Incorporate a Compelling Anecdote

17. Outline Structure and Flow

18. Address the Reader Directly

19. Utilize Rich Formatting

20. Reference Credible Sources

21. Transition to the Main Body

Step-by-Step Guide on How to Start an Essay About a Book

FAQs on How to Start an Essay About a Book

Can I start my essay with a question?

What if I haven’t read the entire book?

Should I provide a detailed summary in the introduction?

How can I make my introduction stand out?

Is it okay to share personal emotions in the introduction?

Final Verdict

Sentence Starters: Ultimate List to Improve Your Essays and Writing

Ashley Shaw

What Is a Good Sentence Starter for an Essay Introduction?

How Do I Use Transitions in an Essay?

What Are Words Like First , Next , and Last Called?

What Are Emphasis Transition Words?

How Do You Use Addition Transitions?

How Can I Use Transitions to Contrast Ideas?

How Do I Order Ideas in My Essay?

What Are Some Linking Phrases I Can Use in My Essay?

Take your writing to the next level:

20 Editing Tips from Professional Writers

Be confident about grammar

Get started with ProWritingAid

Choose Your Test

What Is the College Essay Introduction For?

Wait, Back Up—Why Do Colleges Want Personal Statements?

What Role Does the Introduction Play in a College Essay?

How to Structure a Personal Statement Introduction

College Essay Structure Overview

College Essay Introduction Components

How to Write a College Essay Introduction

How to Write the First Section of Your College Essay

How to Write the First Sentence of Your College Essay

First Sentence Idea 1: Line of Quoted Direct Speech

First Sentence Idea 2: Punchy Short Sentence With One Grabby Detail

First Sentence Idea 3: Lyrical, Adjective-Rich Description of a Setting

First Sentence Idea 4: Counterintuitive Statement

First Sentence Idea 5: The End—Making the Rest of the Essay a Flashback

First Sentence Idea 6: Direct Question to the Reader

First Sentence Idea 7: Lesson You Learned From the Story You're Telling

How to Write a Pivot Sentence in Your College Essay

Pivot Idea 1: Expand the Time Frame

Pivot Idea 2: Link the Described Experience With Others

Pivot Idea 3: Extract and Underline a Trait or Value

College Essay Introduction Examples

Sample Intro 1

Why Intro Sample 1 Works

#1: It's Got a Great First Sentence

#2: It Has Lots of Detail

How to Write an Essay Introduction (with Examples)  