An amazing number of writers look for the best creative writing prompts on a daily basis. These could be college students who were asked to write a fictional or narrative essay, published authors looking for their next big idea, or young people who want to explore something inspiring in their future work. Creativity is everything, and the success of any venture depends on the topic you’ve chosen. In 2020, many popular prompts have lost their novelty.
Usual stories about the journey that turned into disaster when you got lost and your things were all stolen, a secretary falling in love with her boss, a ghost-hunting adventure — this is no longer as interesting topic as it was ten years ago. Now, people look for newer and fresher ideas, but the logical question occurs: where to find them? Regardless of why you need creative prompts, we’re prepared to share some of them!
In Search of Creative Essay Topic: Best Tips
Let’s imagine that you’re writing a creative story or an essay. All you need is to trigger your inspiration, but what if today, your fantasy decided to take a break? No worries: there are some tips that could be useful if you’re stuck with picking topics:
- Brainstorm with your friends or family. Thinking by yourself could be great, but if it doesn’t work, use someone else’s input. Meet up with friends or classmates and bounce topic ideas back and forth between each other. Maybe one of them will offer stunning creative writing ideas you could use.
- Play a game. Close your eyes. Walk somewhere carefully, turn around a couple of times, then open your eyes and look around. Choose the first thing or person and create topic or essay idea around it. Beginners could face some difficulties at first, but the main thing is practice! After several awkward stories, your skill level will increase.
- Look through online lists. There are many cool topics you could find online. People have developed lists specifically to satisfy writers’ needs, so check some of them out in our list just below.
100 Unique Creative Essay Prompts
We prepared 100 different topic examples for your future essay. Read through them all or sort them by category — maybe you’ll find something truly inspiring.
Extended Creative Essay Topics on Social Issues
Small tragedies are everywhere, wherever we look. A woman who smiles tiredly could be barely holding back her tears. A running girl is trying to make it home in time to protect her brother from their drunk uncle. Here are some similar ideas.
- Addiction: Daughter took her mother to live with her, but it turned out that the woman has serious psychological issues. She’s addicted to alcohol and she keeps bringing rubbish from streets into her room. The story of love and pain ensue.
- Euthanasia: Person is dying slowly and they ask their nurse for euthanasia. The laws forbid it, though, and the nurse is getting more and more torn about letting the patient suffer or following the law.
- World Chaos: Due to the deadly virus that spread all over the planet, no medicine is available. Character struggles with accepting the idea of this new world and its cruel rules.
- Bullying: The bullied girl gets fed up with the world around her, so she takes actions to ensure that nothing and no one can ever hurt her again.
- Kindness: The lonely woman has more money than she could ever spend. She decides that doing kind things is the only validation she can find, so she starts trying to make all people she meets happy.
- Gossip: Two young men dream about taking part in a reality show, but when it happens, they understand how many ugly lies are beneath it.
- Stalking: Man is being stalked by a woman, but no one takes him seriously… until it is too late.
- Indifference: A bird is lying in a puddle, dying, as people pass by with no care. Then, a girl notices it, and she takes it home to nurse it back to health.
- Discrimination: Young girl thinks she is aromantic and asexual, but her family and friends are all convinced that she just hasn’t found the right person yet.
- Harassment: Old but enthusiastic employee starts a new job, and he doesn’t understand why his boss hates him & tries to humiliate him at every turn… until he suddenly remembers about their shared past.
Creative Fantasy Essay Ideas
Some of the best creative writing assignments fall into fantasy category.
- World Peace: Something happened that resulted in peace all over the world. People are happy, animals are healthy, and there is no anger or hatred left. But something is not right, and slowly, unexpected problems begin to emerge.
- Prophesies: A woman named Julia desperately wants to become the president. She learns of the prophecy claiming that her country will be saved by the woman, but the problem is, the prophecy woman’s name is Hannah. Determined to make herself fit, Julia officially changes her name.
- Reincarnation: Two people in love keep being reborn. One of them remembers everything, but another one remains ignorant.
- Soulmates: People dream about their soulmates even before they meet them. Character A meets Character B, but while A is happy, B prefers to ignore him.
- World End: Terrible monsters are crawling all over the planet. The man not interested in survival survives, but when he is saddled with an orphaned child, his life suddenly gains new meaning.
- Time of Death: People know how soon they’ll die from the moment of their birth. Some of them accept it; others fight it.
- Secrets Exposed: Woman can tell people’s secrets just by looking at them. Sometimes it’s a blessing; other times, it is a curse.
- Divine Punishment: Psychopath loses one of his senses every time he acts on his dark impulses.
- Forever and Ever: Character lives forever. At first, it was exciting, but now it is weighing heavily on them.
- Predictions: Whatever prediction this person makes, it comes true. Can they resist such terrible power?
Fiction Topics
How about creative writing topics in the genre of monster hunting or dark romance? Many writers find it fascinating because of the challenge involved. Here are some good prompts.
- Serial Killer: After hunting numerous victims down, a killer is stopped short by a red-haired girl he sees. He begins to stalk her, and in this process, he falls in love.
- Beloved Pet: Imagine you’re a pet living in the family who loves and coddles you. How does that feel?
- Unhealthy Relationship: Two narcissists hurt each other, and yet they can’t live without each other.
- Complex Relationship: Character A destroyed the life of Character B’s parents. Years later, they fall in love.
- Age Difference: Being in love with someone older hurts.
- Social Difference: He is rich, she is not. He’s ready to ignore the difference, but she isn’t.
- Taboo: An orphaned boy is adopted by new doting guardian, yet the feelings he develops for them are far from appropriate.
- Abduction: Two girls are abducted during New Year. They don’t know why they were taken, but gradually, they realize that they have a chance to start the whole new life.
- Unexpected Bonding: Two students are stuck in detention for fighting each other. But feelings start growing before they know it.
- Beauty: She was the definition of beauty, yet the more she loved, the more her beauty was destroyed.
- Toys: Child is sure her toys are dancing at night.
- In a Movie: Boy falls into the universe of his favorite movie.
- Rocks: You’re the rock that existed for centuries. What do you see?
- Speaking with animals: The day you started understanding your pet.
- Love Hurts: It causes physical pain.
Creative Journal Prompts for Essays
Basing your ideas on notes in journals is both creative and realistic.
- Character lost in the forest is trying to survive by writing.
- A journal is found on an empty island.
- From first love to disillusionment.
- Watching seasons change.
- Saving up for an expensive purchase.
- An imagined year of life day by day.
- Message to your future self.
- Description of nightmares.
- Every message sent to you on Facebook.
- Observing your love interest.
- Describing every hobby you ever had.
- Finding yourself in the past & writing about it.
- 5 awkward speeches.
- Watching your child grow.
- List what you’d buy if you had a million dollars.
Creative Humor Essays Topics
If you have great humor, take a look at these fun creative writing prompts.
- Write a tragedy made of random sentences from your online messages.
- Meeting your real muse: awkwardness ensues.
- Hiding your golden finger from everyone to avoid turning them into gold.
- Love letter for the first person you see.
- Meeting TV character.
- Interview that goes very wrong.
- The most shameful moment from your life.
- Stealing a painting & finding out it’s a copy.
- Being accidentally turned into a Barbie.
- Write short story where every word starts with the same letter.
Creative Essays Topics About Death
Death is painful, but it gives birth to many ideas for creative writing. Your essay will be engaging with these topics:
- Losing the loved one never gets easier.
- Keeping ashes of the deceased beloved close.
- Characters realize they are doomed to die every day.
- Character is preparing to commit suicide and is saying goodbye to family.
- A bloodthirsty creatures entices people to kill themselves.
- Speech on the grandfather’s funeral.
- Living in an empty apartment where happy voices of a family can still be heard.
- Every loss feels like dying: family, friends, pets.
- Character embraces death and cries happy tears upon being reunited with people they loved.
- Character gets tired of living and tries to die & discovers they are immortal.
Health and Medicine
Healthcare could be a category with lots of creative writing prompts for adults. Nail your essay with one of this topics.
- OCD woman tries to make sense of her life.
- Man with amnesia starts each day as a new life.
- A ghost haunts the hospital for a decade and observes what they see.
- Each time this girl recovers from panic attack, she feels like she was reborn.
- Create unique disease for your character & describe their life.
- Narrator reflects whether it’s better to live with pain or not live at all.
- A surgeon describes her surgeries & acknowledges she needs nothing else.
- A paranoid patient is convinced he’s dying and refuses to listen to doctors.
- The blind person seeing colors for the first time.
- Person fears being kidnapped & looks for poison just in case.
Creative Essays Ideas About Dreams
Our dreams are a mix of reality and fantasy. These writing prompts for creative writing reflect it.
- Mother dreams of reuniting with her missing child. Years later, her dreams is realized.
- What you dreamed about yesterday will come true tomorrow.
- Contacting people through dreams.
- As soon as you have a dream, you know the opposite will happen in reality.
- A killer learned how to kill people via dreams.
- A person’s biggest dream is about realizing what their dream is.
- Having dreams costs money. Who will agree to have them?
- Only people who share dreams are allowed to get married.
- Life is fair: happy people only have nightmares while unhappy people have happy dreams.
- Cure against dreams: who would take it?
Creative Education Topics
A million creative writing essays topics could be based on education.
- Story of how time in college was the happiest in one’s life.
- A bully falling in love with their victim and trying to earn their forgiveness.
- What character sacrificed in order to afford tuition.
- After all she has been through, she finally got into the university of her dreams… and she hates it.
- A heartbreaking choice between working & studying.
- A teacher saying to a successful student: “I haven’t graduated with honors, so you won’t either.”
- School and I: it was hatred from the first sight.
- The time I fell asleep during my lesson.
- Having a crush on your teacher & coming to realize why it’s wrong.
- You are the director at made-up university: how would it look like?
Have Fun Writing With Creative College Essay Topics
If you’re having a bad day and cannot summon even a spark of creativity, we’re here to help you! Use an idea we offered above — just give it a good title. If you like it, then it is all that matters — you’ve already crossed half of the way toward absolute success. In case having a prompt is not enough and you still feel no inspiration, you could always leave it to us.
We have amazing specialists whose creativity knows no boundaries: they could write a short fictional story, craft a quirky essay, or develop some personalized creative prompts for you. Share your request with us, supply us with all details, and we’ll make sure to fulfill every one of them. There is nothing wrong with asking for help, and we are always happy to provide it.
