Getting stuck in a creative rut is one of the most frustrating obstacles to overcome, whether you’re a blogger, poet, essayist, fiction-writer, or a creator still in your experimental stages. To ease some of that frustration, I’ve listed fifteen of a few of my favorite prompts to help get your gears moving again. (They are listed in no particular order.) I hope you enjoy, and don’t forget to comment on your favorite!

1. Write a list of questions to which you urgently need answers.
2. Make a list of your favorite songs and recall the best lyrics from each. Use a line from one of your favorite songs as the first line of an emotional scene.
3. Write a brief obituary for an inanimate object near you right now. 
4. You are sitting at a Chinese restaurant and you’ve opened up a fortune cookie. What does it say? Will your fortune come true?
5. There are only 50 people left on this Earth. Each of you are designated a specific role. What is your role, and what are theirs? 
6. Open a scene or poem with the following words: “I steal.”
7. Imagine a drawer. Open it. What do you see? 
8. The neighbors have discovered your secret. Continue the story.
9. Write three things you’re grateful for. Then, write three things you wish you had in your life. Write about why you chose these things. 
10. A librarian is charged for arson after the city library suddenly burned to the ground. What happens next?
11. Describe what life is like through the perspective of a blind man. Then, write in the perspective of a deaf man. 
12. You are walking along the sea shore when a woman dressed in red emerges from the waters. How do you react?
13. Write a scene of dialogue in which you are placed in a room with your past self. What do you say to each other?
14. Describe an irrational fear you harbor, and the situation in which you developed it. Write the scientific name for this unique phobia.
15. You live in a world where hatred does not exist. What is life like? Now, write as if you were transported to a world where love does not exist. What changes?