31 Writing Prompts That Work

...because they draw from the "great lake" of writing

Dear Friends,

A poem is not a game of Mad Libs. We’re not pouring language into a pre-existing mold. My approach to offering students writing prompts is this: the prompt should be flexible enough to serve any literary form and invite creativity that isn’t programmatic.

Ideally, a prompt will get us closer to that quiet voice and knowing that pulls us alo…