Writing prompts for adults start from the pressures of grown-up life: a job that pays and empties you, a parent who needs care, money that changes a friendship, the plan you had at twenty-five. The 100 below are original and grouped into ten areas of adult life. Each group has five prompts for fiction, which hand the pressure to an invented character, and five for a personal essay, which ask what happened to you and what you understand now that you didn't then.
They suit a writing group, an evening class or a notebook kept on the commute. Prompt 18, in the money group, is written out both ways so you can see what changes between the columns. For shorter, private questions, the journal prompts are gentler. For first lines, settings and dialogue, the creative writing prompts are sorted by skill instead of by area of life, and the short story ideas come with the turn already found.
| Area of life | The pressure | Prompts |
|---|---|---|
| Area of lifeWork | The pressureWhat a job pays, and what it costs | Prompts1–10 |
| Area of lifeMoney | The pressureWhat it buys, and what it changes | Prompts11–20 |
| Area of lifeFamily | The pressureParents, siblings and the roles you were given | Prompts21–30 |
| Area of lifeLove and marriage | The pressureStaying, leaving and the long middle | Prompts31–40 |
| Area of lifeFriendship | The pressureThe relationships nobody writes vows for | Prompts41–50 |
| Area of lifeAging and the body | The pressureTime, health and the mirror | Prompts51–60 |
| Area of lifeRegret and second chances | The pressureThe road not taken, and the one that comes back | Prompts61–70 |
| Area of lifeAmbition and failure | The pressureWanting more, and not getting it | Prompts71–80 |
| Area of lifeHome and place | The pressureWhere you're from and where you've landed | Prompts81–90 |
| Area of lifeStarting over | The pressureDivorce, a move, a new career at fifty | Prompts91–100 |
Writing prompts about work
Work takes many adults' best hours, and it's rarely where they say what they think. Give the page the job's real routine and vocabulary: a specific shift does more than a general complaint.
For fiction
- A night supervisor at a distribution warehouse has to choose which of her six workers to lay off, and one of them is her son's best friend.
- A man who has faked enthusiasm at the same company for nineteen years wins the award for most engaged employee.
- A star salesperson realizes the product she has sold for a decade doesn't work, the week she's made head of sales.
- Two colleagues who have shared an office wall for eleven years without becoming friends are sent together to a three-day conference in Omaha.
- A woman returns to work after a year caring for her dying mother and finds her team has learned to do very well without her.
For a personal essay
- Write about the job you were worst at, starting with the moment you knew.
- Write about a coworker you spent more hours with than your family, and what you knew about each other without being told.
- Write about the most useful thing anyone said to you at work, and the situation that made it land.
- Describe a workday you'd like to forget, hour by hour, then name the one detail you'd keep.
- Write about a time you were asked to do something at work you believed was wrong. What did you do, and what did it cost?
Writing prompts about money
Many adults think about money far more often than they talk about it. Put the real figures in. A salary, a debt or a price makes a scene more exact than any adjective. In Charles Lamb's essay “Old China” (1823), the narrator's cousin Bridget looks back on their leaner years: “I wish the good old times would come again,” she said, “when we were not quite so rich.”
For fiction
- Two sisters share a winning lottery ticket worth $2 million. One wants to pay off their brother's debts. The other knows how he ran them up.
- A couple who have hidden their bankruptcy from friends for a year are invited on a group holiday that costs more than they have.
- A woman who grew up poor marries into money and can't stop saving the hotel soaps. Her husband's family finds it charming, until they see the storage unit.
- An accountant learns her elderly client has been sending money for years to a man who claims to be his long-lost son. The son turns out to be real.
- A waiter serving a table of old school friends recognizes the boy who took his lunch money every day in 1996. The man tips him $500 and doesn't say why.
For a personal essay
- Write about the first time you understood your family had less money than the families around you, or more.
- Write about the most expensive thing you have ever bought, and what it actually cost you.
- Write about a time you lent money to someone you loved. Did it come back, and did they?
- Describe how money worked in your house growing up: who paid the bills, where they were kept and what the children were told.
- Write about a raise, a bonus or an inheritance that changed less than you expected.
Prompt 18, written both ways
The two columns aren't separate worlds. Here is prompt 18, lending money to someone you love, first as fiction and then as the opening of a personal essay.
Ray asked for the money in the parking lot of their mother's church, which was how Diane knew it was serious. Four thousand dollars. He said the figure like a date he'd been given, not one he'd picked. She had it, which he also knew. She had it because she had stayed in the job he called a cage, and he had not. “Two months,” he said, and touched the hood of her car as if it could confirm this. She wrote the check that night at the kitchen table, signed it, then sat for a long time looking at the line marked Memo, trying to think of a word that would be true.
In 2011 I lent my brother four thousand dollars, and I can tell you exactly what it bought: a transmission for a Honda Civic, two months of his rent and the end of a certain way we used to talk. He paid back about half. I stopped asking around the time I stopped expecting to. What I didn't understand then, and do now, is that I hadn't so much lent him money as bought a position: the reliable one, the sister who could. The loan was never really his debt. It was the price of a part I had been playing since we were children.
The fiction invents its details freely: a church parking lot, a hand on the hood of a car, a memo line she can't fill. The last of these carries the feeling, which is show, don't tell doing its job. The essay can't invent, so it handles memory differently. It gives only what the writer can vouch for: the year, the amount, what the money paid for. Where memory runs out it says “about half” instead of making up a figure, and it summarizes the asking rather than reconstructing it, so it never puts words in his mouth. Then it does what fiction usually avoids. It steps back and tells the reader what the writer understands now, and that change in understanding is the essay's turn. For complete essays built this way, see the narrative essay examples and the reflective essay examples.
Prompts about family and parents
Fairness is hard in family writing. Give every person, the difficult ones included, a reason that makes sense to them.
For fiction
- At her father's funeral, a woman learns he had been paying her brother's rent for twenty years, and nobody else's.
- A mother of four finally takes the solo trip she has planned since her twenties. On day two, her youngest calls to say he's in Rome too.
- A man who has been the family peacemaker for forty years decides, at his sister's sixtieth birthday dinner, to stop.
- Twins of forty-five who haven't spoken in a decade must both sign the papers to sell their mother's house, and the notary will only see them together.
- A daughter moves her mother in after a fall and discovers that her mother has a second life online, as a bestselling romance novelist.
For a personal essay
- Write about the role your family gave you as a child (the funny one, the responsible one, the problem) and whether you still play it.
- Write about one afternoon of caring for a parent, in detail, from the first task to the last.
- Write about what your family did with anger: who shouted, who left the room, who started cooking. Or, as fiction, tell one argument in an invented family through the child listening from the stairs.
- Write about an inheritance that wasn't money: a temper, a recipe, a laugh, a way of saying goodbye.
- Write about a relative the rest of the family has written off, and what you know about them that the others don't.
Prompts about love and marriage
Adult love stories often happen after the wedding. These are about staying, leaving and the long middle.
For fiction
- Planning a surprise party for his wife's fiftieth, a man finds a number in her phone under a name he doesn't know, called every Sunday for twenty years.
- Two people in their sixties, both recently widowed, meet on a hiking trail and agree on one rule: no talking about the dead.
- A marriage counselor and her husband are clearly heading for divorce, and can't agree on whether to see a counselor.
- A couple divorced for ten years have to share a hospital waiting room for two days while their daughter gives birth.
- A woman goes on her first date in thirty-five years, coached by text throughout by her teenage granddaughter.
For a personal essay
- Write about the moment you knew you were going to marry someone, or knew you weren't.
- Write about the argument you've had a hundred times in a long relationship, and what it's really about. A repeated fight is a motif in disguise.
- Describe the most romantic thing anyone has done for you that would look like nothing to a stranger.
- Write about a love that ended without a fight, and how you knew it was over.
- Write about the habits you picked up from a partner and kept after they left.
Writing prompts about friendship
Adult friendship has no wedding, no anniversary and no rule for how it ends, which makes it rich ground. Write a friend as specifically as you would a lover.
For fiction
- Two friends who swore at eighteen to open a bar together finally do it at fifty-five, with their pensions.
- A woman discovers that her best friend of twenty years is writing a novel in which she is the villain.
- A man is asked to be best man by a friend he hasn't spoken to since college, and can't work out why him.
- Four friends from a shared college house rent the same beach cottage every August. This year one of them doesn't come and won't say why.
- Out of kindness, his late wife's friends keep inviting a widower to their book club, and he starts to love it.
For a personal essay
- Write about a friend you outgrew, or who outgrew you, and the moment one of you noticed.
- Write about the friend who knew you best at twenty: the last time you saw them, and the first thing you'd have to explain if they walked in now.
- Write about a time a friend told you a truth nobody else would.
- Write about the first time you asked someone to be your friend after forty: the invitation, the wait for a reply, the first plan you made.
- Write about a friend you have had to forgive, or who has had to forgive you, and the conversation where it happened, or the one that never did.
Prompts about aging and the body
Bodies change while minds insist they're thirty. These prompts work best with physical detail: the stairs, the reading glasses, the new doctor who is younger than your children.
For fiction
- A retired ballerina of seventy-four takes a job as a hospital receptionist, and a young physical therapist asks her to help a patient learn to walk again.
- A man turns sixty and decides to do everything on the list he made at sixteen, starting with the tattoo.
- Two old rivals from the town council end up in neighboring beds on a rehabilitation ward after hip replacements.
- A woman starts losing her hearing and finds she likes some of the silence more than she expected, including her husband's.
- On the morning he is due to retire, a surgeon's hands shake for the first time, and he has one last operation on the schedule.
For a personal essay
- Write about the first time someone treated you as old.
- Write about a part of your body you have finally made peace with, or haven't, starting with the last time someone commented on it. Or give the body and the comment to a character, in the third person.
- Write about a diagnosis, yours or someone else's, and the ordinary errand you ran right after hearing it. Or, as fiction, give the diagnosis to a character and follow them through the errand.
- Describe your face as you see it now, then as your twenty-year-old self would see it.
- Write about the day you found you could no longer do something you used to do without thinking. Then write about something you can do now that you couldn't at twenty-five.
Prompts about regret and second chances
Regret drives a great deal of adult fiction. Make the missed chance concrete: a date, a door, a sentence not said.
For fiction
- At sixty, a man finds out that the scholarship he turned down at eighteen went to the boy who became his boss.
- A woman who turned down a job in Tokyo at twenty-six, for a man she then didn't marry, is offered the same job by the same company at fifty-one.
- Two brothers who haven't spoken since their father's funeral meet by chance at an airport, with a four-hour delay ahead of them.
- A retired judge rereads a sentence he handed down in 1989 and goes to visit the man he sent to prison.
- A woman inherits the diary of an aunt she never met and finds that the aunt's whole life turned on the same choice she is about to make.
For a personal essay
- Write about a decision you would make differently, and the life you imagine on the other side of it. Then argue with that life.
- Write about a second chance you were given: who gave it, what it cost them, and the day you found out whether you'd used it well.
- Write about the day you quit something too early, or finally left something you had stayed with too long. Name what it cost.
- Write about a regret that turned out, years later, to be luck. Start on the day you found out.
- Write about a door you closed on purpose, and whether you have ever been tempted to knock.
Prompts about ambition and failure
Ambition is easy to write when it succeeds and often more interesting when it doesn't. Let your characters want things badly, and pay for them.
For fiction
- A novelist who published one celebrated book at twenty-eight has spent twenty years failing to write the second. Her publisher reissues the first with a new introduction by her ex-husband.
- A woman who has trained eight years for an ultramarathon is told, the week before the race, that her knee won't survive it.
- Two brothers bet their inheritance on rival business plans. One fails spectacularly, and the other succeeds and can't bear it.
- A small-town mayor who once wanted to be president gets a call, at sixty-eight, from a strategist who wants him to run for the state senate.
- A singer who almost made it in 1999 is asked to perform at her daughter's school talent show, against her daughter.
For a personal essay
- Write about a failure you told everyone was fine. Tell the truth about it now.
- Write about someone whose success you envied, and the day you got close enough to see what it cost them.
- Write about the day you stopped trying to be one thing and started being another.
- Describe a competition you lost, including the score.
- Write about a mentor who believed in you more than you did, and whether they were right.
Writing prompts about home and place
Adults choose where to live, or think they do. These prompts ask what a place gives, what it takes and who you are in it.
For fiction
- After eleven moves for her husband's job, a woman finally owns a house, and on the first night she realizes she has no idea how to stay.
- A nurse from Lagos who has worked in Manchester for fifteen years flies home for her mother's funeral, and her siblings ask her to stay and run the family shop.
- The last two families on a street marked for demolition have a month to decide whether to take the city's offer. Their children have become best friends.
- A man inherits a house in the village his grandparents left in 1946 and finds that the family living in it has been there just as long.
- A woman who has never lived outside a city takes a winter job running a mountain hut alone, and learns the hut has a reputation nobody mentioned at the interview.
For a personal essay
- Write about the first apartment you rented on your own: the rent, the neighbors, the thing that was always broken.
- Write about a city that changed you, and what you would tell someone moving there now.
- Write about the place you name when people ask where you're from, and whether it's still true.
- Write about leaving a place on purpose: the last night, the last walk, the last view.
- Write about a home you made for someone else, such as a nursery, a spare room or a parent's new apartment. Start with the first thing you carried in.
Writing prompts about starting over
Some adult stories begin in the middle of a life: after a divorce, a layoff, a move abroad or a long illness. The strongest versions are as specific about the first morning as about the reason.
For fiction
- A woman of fifty-three starts nursing school, and her study partner is nineteen and has never failed at anything.
- A man released after twenty years in prison takes a job at a car wash run by the daughter of the officer who arrested him.
- After her divorce, a woman rents an apartment above a jazz club and starts going downstairs every night, alone.
- A retired couple sell everything to sail around the world, and on day three one of them discovers she is terrified of open water.
- A doctor who has fled her country and can't yet practice in her new one works nights in a pharmacy, where a man brings in a prescription she knows is wrong.
For a personal essay
- Write about the first morning after a life changed: a divorce, a move, a death, a job lost. Begin with what you did with your hands. Or, as fiction, give that morning to a character twenty years older or younger than you.
- Write about something you started late, and what it was like to be the oldest beginner in the room.
- Write about a new name, a new title or a new address, and how long it took you to answer to it.
- Write about the last day of a career you were good at: what you handed over, and to whom.
- List what you carried into your new life and what you left behind on purpose. Then write about the one thing you went back for.
Classic models from adult life
Writers have been turning jobs, debts and marriages into literature for centuries. These are all in the public domain and worth an evening each before you start a prompt in the same area.
| Area | Work | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| AreaWork | WorkHerman Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (1853) | What happensA copyist answers every request with “I would prefer not to,” and his employer can neither make him work nor make him leave. |
| AreaWork and money | WorkNikolai Gogol, “The Overcoat” (1842) | What happensA poor government clerk saves for months for a new coat, and its theft undoes him. |
| AreaAmbition | WorkLeo Tolstoy, “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” (1886) | What happensA peasant is offered all the land he can walk around in a day, and his race for more kills him. |
| AreaAmbition | WorkAnton Chekhov, “Gooseberries” (1898) | What happensA man spends his life saving for a small estate with gooseberry bushes, and his brother sees what the dream has cost. |
| AreaRegret | WorkHenry James, “The Beast in the Jungle” (1903) | What happensA man spends his life waiting for some great event, and learns too late that it was the love he passed over. |
| AreaMarriage | WorkJames Joyce, “The Dead,” in Dubliners (1914) | What happensAfter a party, a husband learns that his wife once loved a boy who died young, and sees his marriage anew. |
| AreaAging | WorkWashington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle” (1819) | What happensA man sleeps for twenty years and wakes to a village that has moved on without him. |
| AreaMoney, essay | WorkCharles Lamb, “Old China” (1823) | What happensOver tea from a newly bought set of old blue china, the narrator and his cousin Bridget remember being poorer, and wonder whether they were happier. |
How to write from experience
- Pick a pressure you can see clearly
Choose something far enough behind you that you can see its shape. Writing about this week's wound tends to come out as venting. Writing about the same wound five years on tends to come out as a story.
- Choose fiction or essay
Ask whether you need to change the facts to tell the truth. Fiction gives you cover, invented people and the freedom to change the ending. An essay gives you authority, and asks for accuracy in return.
When an essay leans on a fact you remember but can't vouch for, such as what a gallon of gas cost in 1979, ask the Strokes Assistant to look it up. It browses the web and answers beside your draft. Check anything you'll publish against a second source.
- Start with a scene
One day, one room, the words someone actually said. Summary can come later. An opening scene tells the reader this is about something that happened, not about an opinion.
- Find the turn
In fiction the turn is a choice the character makes. In an essay it is a change in understanding: what you see now that you couldn't then. Write toward it, and stop soon after it arrives.
- Be fair to the real people
Give everyone in the piece, especially the ones who hurt you, a reason that makes sense to them. In fiction, change more than the names. The guide to how to write a memoir covers memory, truth and writing about family.
- Read it to someone
A writing group, a friend, or just yourself out loud. You'll often hear the sentence that's trying too hard before anyone points it out.
Common mistakes with life writing
- Summarizing a decade. “Those were hard years” covers too much ground to feel like anything. Tell one day of them.
- The essay that only vents. Anger without understanding can push readers to the other side. Give them the anger and what you made of it.
- Fiction that's a thin disguise. If your sister would recognize herself by page two, the story isn't protecting anyone. Change her job, her city and something she wants. The guide to writing a book about your life goes further into fictionalizing.
- Abstractions. Words like “journey,” “toxic” and “work-life balance” stand in for scenes you haven't written yet. Replace each with a number, a place or a line of dialogue.
- Ending on the lesson. “I learned that money isn't everything” can undo the work of the essay. End on the image that made you learn it.
- Writing to the person it's about. A piece addressed in secret to one reader turns into a letter. Write for a stranger who has never met any of you.
Frequently asked questions
What should I write about as an adult beginner?
Start with something you know from the inside, such as a job, a place you've lived or a family habit, and write one scene of it. Beginners do best with prompts that name a specific day or object. Write for fifteen or twenty minutes, then read it back and mark the sentence you like most. That sentence is where the second draft starts.
What is a personal essay?
A personal essay is a short piece of nonfiction, told in the first person, about something that happened to the writer and what they make of it now. It mixes scene, the story of what happened, with reflection, the writer's thinking about it. The reflection is what usually separates it from an anecdote, and it often turns on one question the writer works out on the page.
Can I write fiction about real people in my life?
Writers do it all the time, but change more than the name. Alter the person's job, city, appearance and what they want, so the character becomes someone new. A thin disguise protects nobody, and readers who know the original will see through it. If you plan to publish something that could identify a living person, take advice first.
Are these prompts suitable for a writing group or class?
Yes. They were written with adult groups in mind and are free to use and share. A simple format: everyone writes on the same prompt for twenty minutes, then volunteers read aloud. Using a fiction and an essay prompt from the same group gives people a choice of how close to their own lives they want to go.
