Description | Exposition | Narration | Persuasion | All
Want to inspire your teens to write? Could you use some engaging writing prompts that won’t put your teens to sleep? You’ve come to the right place!
You’ll find prompts for opinions, descriptions, story writing, current events, prompts that are really tutorials in disguise, and much more. Complete instructions are included with each prompt.
Looking for tutorials on essay writing, proofreading, and so on? Interested in writing prompt bundles that span many grades? Click here.
Find prompts for your middle school students here.
Thanks for visiting the High School Prompts page. If you have a writing prompt you would like to submit, please contact Sharon Watson.
“You can’t wait for inspiration.
You have to go after it with a club.”
— JACK LONDON
What’s Your Story?
Have you lived through an illness? Been in an accident? Are you stuck in the middle in your family? Do you have a tendency to lie? Are you afraid of what others think about you?
Can you imagine putting your trouble, weakness, or sin on a piece of paper for all to see?
Cardboard story
That’s just what teens in one group did. They wrote the negative or troubling thing about themselves on one side of a large piece of cardboard and showed it to viewers. Then they flipped the cardboard around to show how God helped them or to reveal a truth about themselves that God showed them. You can view their “cardboard testimonies” here. (more…)
Change Nouns to Verbs for Clear Writing
Ever wonder why some writing is so confusing? You read it once. It makes no sense. You read it again and hope for the best.
Most business, legal, and government writing rely on lengthy and unclear sentences and plenty of nouns.
Nouns stop the forward motion of the sentence and often make the sentence longer, like this:
The addition of a 10-minute warm-up routine made the winning of the gold medal possible for him.
Why not punch up the sentence with specific, active verbs? This generally makes sentences shorter, and it definitely makes them easier to understand, like this: (more…)
How a Tiny Tick Almost Stopped Her
Angeli Vanlaanen has had it rough. When she was ten years old, she fell ill and continued to experience symptoms until she was twenty-four: headaches, sore muscles and joints, fatigue, fainting, blurry vision, and so forth.
The diagnosis
Still, she pushed herself to learn how to ice skate and snow ski. Her sport of choice is women’s halfpipe skiing, which she competed in despite the severe pain in her joints and her other physical ailments.
Doctors had long ago given up trying to diagnose her illness. Maybe she was making up the symptoms. Maybe it was all in her head—that is, until her aunt (more…)
The Enumerative Essay: Parking Spaces and Baseball
My husband Terry gave me the idea for this writing prompt though he didn’t know it at the time.
A love of lists
Last summer we drove to our local grocery store, and as Terry pulled into a spot, he said, “I like to park here because . . . ,” and he listed four reasons why he likes to park in that particular place. Now that you know how exciting our lives are, you’ll be happy to know that his love of lists surfaced yet again—at the ball park.
We were watching the Indianapolis Indians play the Rochester Redwings when one of the Indians smacked a ball and headed toward first. Terry leaned over to me and said, “There are nine ways to get to first safely.” Or was it seven?
Terry was halfway to writing an enumerative essay because he began with a number (four or nine) and had a secure idea of a list. (more…)
A Moving Description?
Aren’t descriptions those portions of books that you skip? Aren’t they boring? Don’t they stop the forward movement of the plot?
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Sometimes they do. But when you are the writer, you don’t have to stop the movement even if you are describing something.
Make something move.
An effective writer makes a description move. Wind blows the curtains. The sea surges on the shore in frothy waves. The train plows through fields of ripe winter wheat. You get the idea.
Read the following description of an abandoned cabin from Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire and figure out what is moving: (more…)
Maya Angelou and the Smile
When Maya Angelou, author of the moving autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, was eleven years old, she was reunited with her birth mother, whom she hadn’t seen in eight years. Young Maya was unhappy.
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After two weeks, her mother still had not seen her smile. Here’s the exchange between Maya and her mother, recorded in Mom & Me & Mom (Random House, 2013): (more…)
