Are Creative Writing Prompts a Help or Hindrance?

Let’s look at the pros and cons of using writing prompts to decide if we’re fostering creativity or frittering away time.

I remember the pleasure of writing about ladybugs for my high school freshman English class based on the prompt written on the board.1

And then there was the book I found a year or so at the library: Write to Discover Yourself. The author suggested we “portrait” the important people in our lives.2 I wrote pages and pages about my dad based on that prompt.

Prompts continued to play a big role in my creative writing journey when college professors supplied our class with poetry prompts.

Those prompts did exactly what they were designed for: they sparked creativity, teased out long-buried memories, and helped me spin creative storylines I would never have imagined on my own. Prompts have so effectively opened me up, I decided to gather a collection for others to use called 52 Creative Writing Prompts, to help get pens moving and ideas flowing. 

Do Prompts Distract or Delight?

But am I doing a disservice? Are prompts mere distractions, diverting writers from purposeful, goal-oriented writing?

Some argue we need to stop using prompts and only write toward public-facing projects. Why waste time on writing prompts that fill notebooks and journal pages, when we’re struggling to find time for the writing we claim we want to do? Why write in response to a random prompt instead of composing the essay we want to submit, the book we want to draft, the article we want to pitch?

Let’s peek at arguments for both sides, the pros and cons of prompts, to see if we need to embrace or abandon them in our creative writing life. 

Pros of Creative Writing Prompts:

On the plus side we have benefits of creative writing prompts, such as how they:

1. Spark Fresh Ideas

Creative writing prompts inspire writers who struggle to generate any ideas at all by giving them an energizing starting point. Prompts also spark fresh ideas in writers who tend to return again and again to topics they’ve written about before. Prompts press writers to explore subject matter outside their comfort zone, breathing new life into their rotating collection of pet topics and pillar content. 

2. Overcome Writer’s Block

Prompts offer a lifeline to writers grappling with writer’s block—they invite a “stuck” writer to write freely for ten, 15, or 20 minutes without those words needing a destination or purpose other than to get the ink flowing.

3. Provide Low-Stakes Practice

Writing prompts intended as practice serve as low-stakes exercises, encouraging writers to play and experiment without the pressure of immediate evaluation by editors or readers. Prompts allow writers to refine their craft and explore techniques in the safety of their writing notebooks and journals. In time they may develop a more captivating style.

4. Prepare for Assignments

Freelancers who’ve been assigned a topic for a magazine or essayists who have entered themed writing contests benefit from writing from prompts. It’ll prepare them for assignments based on narrow parameters. 

5. Offer a Writing Warm-up

When writers tap out a few words in response to a prompt before diving into their long-form/high-stakes project, they can enjoy a brief warm-up that loosens them up.

6. Enhance Honesty and Depth

With prompts, writers delve into deeper personal experiences, memories, emotions, and themes without fear of judgment, leading to more honest and profound writing.

7. Lead to Personal Growth and Healing

When intentionally selecting prompts that invite reflection—maybe even under the direction of a therapist—writers can experience transformation through personal growth and healing. It’s no surprise that when we spend time in personal writing such as journaling, we grow and mature as people, which in turn makes us better writers.

Cons of Creative Writing Prompts:

To be fair, we need to look at the cons of creative writing prompts and how they might hinder our writing.

1. Waste Time

Critics argue that writing prompts can lead to aimless scribbling on topics unrelated to our writing goals and projects—time we could have dedicated to a work-in-progress. Instead, it’s being swallowed up by an unrelated prompt. Marion Roach Smith wonders why we can’t try warming up by writing toward the main project itself. Her big argument: when you write from prompts “you’re frittering away your time” instead of writing “with intent” and “for real.”3

2. Spit Out Stilted Prose

Savannah Cordova observes, “If you choose a prompt that’s too far out of your comfort zone (or one doesn’t really inspire you), it’s no surprise that the response will usually come out sounding forced.”4

3. Lack Purpose

Prompts are usually random—in fact, some websites offer random prompt generators. These offer no clear direction or purpose; they simply invite us to write a random scene. Lacking purpose, have we strayed from our goal of completing a project?

4. Allow Writers to Avoid Feedback

While some writing groups use prompts and offer input from the group, writing to prompts privately means we miss the opportunity of receiving input and feedback from real readers. In contrast, when we write for readers in public in a place like Substack, we can see our work resonate with others when they respond in the comments.

5. Encourage Procrastination

Are some writers using prompts to avoid their main project? Relying on prompts for this purpose could be a form of procrastination i