Creative Writing
Best for:
Short fictionScene draftingPoetryStory developmentVoice experiments
Fiction, poetry, and narrative voice — prompts that treat the model as a collaborator with a brief, not a vending machine. The strongest results come from constraining voice, point of view, and what not to do.
Prompt Variations
Section titled “Prompt Variations”Write a [LENGTH — e.g., 800-word] short story.
Premise: [ONE-SENTENCE PREMISE — e.g., a lighthouse keeper receives a letter addressed to someone who died forty years ago].
Craft constraints:
- Point of view: [POV — e.g., first person, unreliable]
- Voice: [VOICE — e.g., spare and matter-of-fact, like Raymond Carver — short declarative sentences, emotion shown through action, not named]
- Setting: [TIME/PLACE]
- The story must turn on [TURN — e.g., a small physical object], not exposition.
Avoid: adverbs, dream sequences, characters describing their own feelings, and a neatly resolved ending. Let the final image do the work.Below is an excerpt from a work in progress. Continue the scene for [LENGTH — e.g., 400 words], matching the voice, tense, and pacing exactly.
What happens next: [BEAT — e.g., the knock at the door turns out to be her brother, which is worse than the police].
Keep: [ELEMENTS TO PRESERVE — e.g., the rain motif, the clipped dialogue style].
Do not: introduce new characters, change POV, or summarize — stay in the moment, beat by beat.
[PASTE YOUR TEXT]
Write a poem about [SUBJECT — approached obliquely, never naming it directly].
Form: [FORM — e.g., free verse, 14-20 lines, no rhyme]
Anchor the poem in [CONCRETE IMAGE SYSTEM — e.g., kitchen objects and morning light].
Register: [REGISTER — e.g., plainspoken, contemporary — no archaic diction, no "o'er" or "thee"].
The last line should [ENDING MOVE — e.g., land on a physical image that reframes everything before it].
Avoid: abstractions ("love", "loss", "time") as standalone nouns; clichés (shattered hearts, weight of the world); explaining the metaphor.You are [CHARACTER NAME], [ONE-LINE DESCRIPTION — e.g., a 60-year-old retired detective who never solved the case that mattered].
Stay fully in character. I will interview you. Answer with this character's speech patterns, evasions, and blind spots — including refusing to answer things this character would deflect. Reveal backstory only through implication and specifics, never as summary.
First question: [OPENING QUESTION]Develop a beat sheet for a [GENRE] [FORMAT — e.g., short story / novella / feature].
Premise: [PREMISE]
Protagonist: [WHO + WHAT THEY WANT + WHAT'S IN THE WAY]
Tone comps: [2-3 COMPS — e.g., "Station Eleven" meets "The Road"]
Produce 10-14 beats. For each: one sentence of action, plus a note on what shifts (stakes, knowledge, or relationships). Flag the midpoint reversal and the low point explicitly. End with two alternative endings — one earned-hopeful, one devastating.Tips & Best Practices
Section titled “Tips & Best Practices”- Constraints create quality: an unconstrained “write a story” prompt yields generic prose; voice + POV + banned-moves constraints yield something with a pulse.
- Name comps, not adjectives: “like Carver” or “Station Eleven meets The Road” transmits more style information than three paragraphs of description.
- Ban the failure modes: models default to adverbs, neat endings, and named emotions — explicitly prohibiting them is the fastest quality lift.
- Iterate at the beat level: regenerate one scene or stanza with adjusted constraints instead of rerolling the whole piece.