Need a starting point? Try these creative writing prompts to get you started on the right foot.

These creative writing prompts act as your launching pad to help you use your brain to start a story right away.

If you have a story idea in mind, but you aren't sure how to start it, try one of these prompts to get you out of the starting blocks. It doesn't have to be a perfect start, you just need to start! If you never put down word one of the greatest story ever told, it will never be told.

Update for 9/19/14: 

During some desperate times, I took desperate measures by writing these aptly named desperation writing prompts. 

Check out these creative writing prompts for authors. 

The first list of prompts I ever wrote can be found right here! 

It is not easy to access those deep down parts of yourself that can really stand out on a piece of paper. This next set of prompts will help you deal with that. Read on to write a little bit about love. 

The other side of the coin: creative writing prompts that center on that all important end, death. 

You can't live with 'em. You have their name on your birth certificate :). Here are some creative writing prompts about family. 

There are people you can actually choose to spend your time with, and those lucky individuals would be your friends. Here are some creative writing prompts based on your friendships.

There are times when a writer does not feel like writing about his life. Something a bit...on the strange side would feel more appropriate. Take a look at these creative writing prompts a bit more dark, disturbing, and weird.

Sometimes writing makes you hungry. But other times, food makes you write! Try on these prompts inspired by food. To get food, you of course need money, which many writers think about all the time. Wouldn't it be great if money wasn't an issue for you? Prosperity is a great state of mind to help you to be inspired by some more writing prompts.

Holidays can be great inspiration for memories (both happy and sad) that can make us want to rush to our note pad right away! These pages of creative writing prompts about Halloween, the 4th of July New Years Eve, Thanksgiving, and birthdays can help you to remember even your most obscure holiday memories. Other memories you may want to remember or forget include these creative writing prompts about school, childhood, college, prom, divorce, work, travel, and lastly your general regrets. If you are extremely health conscious, you may feel the need to write about diets or exercise. Interested in how the world works? No? Well, some people are and they may want to write about politics, media, religion,home, the American Dream, law, and in a more historical sense archaeology.

For those varsity letter winners among us, here are a few sport prompts to bring you back: Baseball, Wrestling, and Football. On the flip side, for you creative types, here are some prompts about improv, music, and acting. The world is always chugging along around us humans, and for that reason, here are some prompts about water, animals, and nature. For those who are more concerned about society here are prompts about race, technology, manhood, health, memory, time, and the Internet.

Interested in the cycle of the four seasons? Try on Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter to get your seasonal writing fix. If you just plain like being outside, you may get your writing jollies from these prompts about camping and the beach.

For literary nerds like me, try out these creative writing prompts about Shakespeare, language, and books or these prompts about the fantasy and mystery genres. Two prompts that unfortunately go hand in hand are prompts about the concept of celebrity and drugs. A few others to check out are these prompts about success, heaven and hell, pregnancy, sleep,paranormal, and the Action genre.

A few more prompt pages to check out include more genre prompts like horror, science fiction, romantic comedy and some prompts for the kiddies like those for first grade, second grade, third grade students. Try these out to get your students (or yourself) writing! Also, try out these Christmas writing prompts, a page of Christmas creative writing ideas and a Thanksgiving writing prompt list! For the Jews among us, here is a page of Hanukkah writing prompts.

After seeing how popular my writing prompts for students have been, I decided to add 45 additional pages of student prompts. For first graders, I have added creative writing prompts on the subjects of friends. Check out over 40 more prompts for kids by visiting the writing prompts for kids list page!

And for older students here is a high school writing prompt list, an expository writing prompt list, a list of narrative writing prompts and a fiction writing prompt list. And here is a list of creative writing lesson plans along with two lists of journal writing ideas, journal writing topics and journal writing prompts. And here are pages of middle school writing prompts, elementary writing prompts, essay writing prompts and creative writing essay ideas. Here are some general student writing prompts.

My latest set of writing prompts is for a new book centering on character writing prompts. Check out a set of these new prompts focused on heroes. Here is a list of over 70 other character writing prompts! Here is another page full of holiday writing prompts with 1,000 prompts for the most momentous holidays of the year!

Looking for some more general prompts? Take a look at this creative writing topic list, a list of descriptive writing prompts and a page of short story topics. Here is a compilation of some of my favorite free writing prompts on the site and here is another top ten list on the writing prompts online page. Here is a list of poetry writing prompts for the verse writer inside of you!

I have also started a new series of writing prompts related to the months of the year. To start us off, here's one for December writing prompts. Here is another one dedicated to January writing prompts.

Here are some new prompts for 2012 with free writing prompts about basketball and free writing prompts about shopping! Dream a dream of times gone by with these sets of writing prompts on dreams and goals. Don't be afraid of these writing prompts about your fears. Have you ever been in love? If so, you may enjoy these writing prompts about Valentine's Day. Happy Independence Day! Enjoy some independence day writing prompts right here. 

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