WritingFix: Random Writing Prompts

WritingFix's Random Daily Prompt Generator
Welcome to WritingFix's very FIRST interactive tool for writers, first posted on April 14, 2001

Would you like a printable version of these 500+ prompts? Corbett Harrison, who created this prompt generator for WritingFix, is offering a 30-page document which features 504 of the best writing prompts from this page on a single document. Click here to visit Corbett's website for details.

This is the page that actually started the WritingFix website. In 2001, we posted the first fifty prompts with a button that allowed you to randomly receive one. Six years later, we have over 500 prompts.

Where do these prompts come from? From Corbett Harrison, WritingFix's webmaster: "I am fortunate because I am invited to visit many classrooms to watch good writing instruction in action. Here in Northern Nevada, we have many teachers who use daily journals or writer's notebooks. Over the years, I have collected many excellent writing prompts, which I began storing on this page at WritingFix in 2001."

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

Each prompt purposely begins with a question. If students have trouble starting a piece of writing based on the prompt, encourage them to pretend they have been asked the question, and to let their first sentence be their answer to the question.

If you have ideas for prompts to include in the generator below, please send them to us at webmaster@writingfix.com.