Writing prompts can be a great source of inspiration but you don’t want to waste your precious writing time by hunting down the perfect prompt. That’s why I compiled this list of 52 weekly writing prompts so that you’ll have writing inspiration all year long and you won’t have to settle for stale story starters you’ve seen a million times already.
Whether you do these prompts in order doesn’t matter at all – just pick one that speaks to you right now. If you’re prone to overthinking, though, you might just want to do them in order. Don’t get stuck because of analysis paralysis, just write.
And if you miss one week? Who cares! Just get back to writing as soon as you can.
Related posts: Why writing prompts are useful – Conflict ideas for stories – Story ideas from Save the Cat genres – Plot questions to fatten up your story
Writing inspiration for every week of 2025
I was thinking of different genres when coming up with these prompts but I leave it up to you what genre to use them in. Perhaps your scifi novel could really use a romantic scene. It’s also up to you whether you write a whole new story based on the prompts or use them in an existing project.
Some of these prompts mention “you”, suggesting that you’re writing in first person point of view. Feel free to change that if you’d prefer third person instead. Whenever I’ve used a name, you can keep it in your writing or change it how you see fit.
With that out of the way, let’s see what we’ve come up for your year of writing.
Week 1: “There’s nothing you can do to fix things, you can’t take a kiss back.”
Week 2: Opening line: The strangest thing happened while I was dead for five minutes.
Week 3: A cruise ship full of travel influencers and vloggers disappears in a storm. GPS signals from their devices are suddenly coming from different corners of the world.
Week 4: Use these words in one story: myriad, myrmecologist, Manchester, manta ray.
Week 5: You’re a science fiction author, writing about 2025, in the year 1925.
Week 6: Use one of these titles for your story: The Lizards of March, Crying in the Library, The Unlikely Life of Ronnie McDonald, Tasting the Asteroids
Week 7: It’s the year 2900 and you have nothing to do but go through the photos and other files you found in something called a “cloud storage”. You start parsing together how the owner of those files lived and you become obsessed with the early 2000s.
Week 8: It’s the best party you’ve ever been invited to, what a shame it’s starting to look like you’re the only human there.
Week 9: “I’m impressed how you’ve handled being shot, were you in the army?” “No, but my grandmother had anger issues.”
Week 10: Closing line: The fractures in my bones were the only thing that remained.
Week 11: “Nobody has made me socks like these since my mum died ten years ago.”
Week 12: The king’s guard Danjel became a knight because he couldn’t stand the idea of working on his father’s farm, but it’s his love for inns and gossip that has made him so successful and not his brawn.
Week 13: You’re letting your best friend stay in your extra bedroom – life would be perfect if only she’d stop leaving muddy footprints on the walls.
Week 14: Your psychologist suggested you should try being more social so you start crashing funerals to meet people and get free snacks.
Week 15: Juniper is sick of robbing and scamming people, it’s time to start an old-timey candy shop and fall in love with a cute barista.
Week 16: You don’t know how a recipe book could be cursed, but all your neighbours move away the day after you made that special cake.
Week 17: Opening line: The tree stopped growing the same year I buried my dog under it.
Week 18: “That radio frequency shouldn’t even exist.”
Week 19: It’s your first day as a shapeshifter. Time to commit crimes.
Week 20: If you don’t yet have a best friend, you can always order one from the catalogue. Let’s hope they’re ethically sourced!
Week 21: Write about a fantasy world that doesn’t have the colour green anywhere.
Week 22: Gabby has been fired from every job she’s ever had, but perhaps sourcing cursed items from Facebook Marketplace will become more lucrative than it sounds.
Week 23: When you have no family, a dishwashing robot is a good enough substitute, right? …Right?
Week 24: Yes, you should be afraid of the dark.
Week 25: Write a poem about the last cat you saw.
Week 26: Write a story of friendship from its first day to the very last.
You’re halfway through! Here are even more weekly writing prompts to become a better writer
Week 27: You’ve finally saved enough money to buy a hamster or a guinea pig, or perhaps a budgie, whichever they have at the pet shop. Unfortunately, they’ve run out of all the normal pets, but you’re not going home empty-handed.
Week 28: “You’re wrong, the spiders have always been there.”
Week 29: Angie’s sick of being a goody two shoes. She quits her job as a palliative nurse and sets out on a journey to make people’s lives worse.
Week 30: Lance learned to knit out of pure spite, and finally it has consequences.
Week 31: When two true crime podcasters go missing, it’s up to you to find out if that’s just a coincidence or perhaps a sign of something worse about to happen.
Week 32: “If you’ve been overseeing this space station this entire time, how do you explain one missing astronaut and one doppelganger?”
Week 33: Opening line: After I catalogued all the injuries in the prehistoric skeleton, something started to look familiar.
Week 34: The Event happened 40 years ago but you’ve been sheltered all your life. Now it’s time to find out what life is really like outside the compound.
Week 35: You should verify you’re human. Unfortunately, that’s impossible.
Week 36: Plants are the only thing that you’re good at keeping alive.
Week 37: Getting chicken pox and finding out your crush has a crush on you in the same weekend is far from ideal.
Week 38: Four coworkers end up living together in the same house. It’s 3AM, why are they all up?
Week 39: Write about the last cemetery on earth.
Week 40: “I’ve imagined this moment countless times but not once were you wearing a gym teacher’s uniform.”
Week 41: “Don’t tell him we loved how he shot the burglar with the cannon. He must never know how cool it looked.”
Week 42: Brit is sick of not getting recognition in the scientific community so she decides to go for notoriety instead. Should she claim that Europeans are genetically closer to aliens than other people or that laugh tracks in TV shows cause colon cancer?
Week 43: Write a story about a character who’s dead. The story starts five minutes after the funeral and you can’t have flashbacks.
Week 44: “A flash in a pan. Two ships in the night. Those kinds of words people will use to describe us.”
Week 45: Take an old myth, a biblical story or any other old story and make it happen in 2025.
Week 46: Closing line: And I was never hungry again.
Week 47: Use these words: syringe, synergy, sinner, cyan, sixfold.
Week 48: Use one of these titles: My Heart Is Gelatin, The Radioactive Relationship, An Avalanche of Missing Memories, Letters From the Freight Train.
Week 49: “I would have always forgiven you, if only you’d come back. And now you can’t.”
Week 50: Three people are together for the last time but they don’t know it yet.
Week 51: Opening line: The line to the only open till snaked through the frustrated crowd.
Week 52: Write a poem about something that no longer exists.
Where to find more writing prompts and writing inspiration
You did it, you just went through a full year of weekly writing prompts. But what if you want more?
Many of my blog posts come with story ideas, but if you’d like a full collection of carefully thought of and curated writing prompts, check out what I offer in my Etsy shop. I have collections of dark writing prompts, romantasy writing prompts, spicy writing prompts and much more. Can’t find what you’re looking for? Leave a request and I’ll see what I can do!
Where to find unique story ideas
If you’d like to find your best story ideas, you should check out my free workbook that has already been used by hundreds of writers. Just fill in the form below and start mining for inspiration from your own awesome brain.
Protagonist Crafts is a blog about writing fiction, written by a published author and creative writing teacher. You can find more writing tips and inspiration in the blog and you can get the best author tools at Writer Lifestyle on Etsy.
