Ideas Bank
Help YWP create inspiring writing and visual art challenges for the next school year!
What makes an interesting prompt? What would you respond to? Bring your ideas to us! Challenges must be original, not borrowed from the internet or elsewhere. We'll add the best challenges to our Weekly Challenges list for 2025-26, with credit to you.
[Illustration: "Stained Glass Box'" by laurenm, YWP]
2025-2026 challenge submission!
Favorite foods! What is it, and/or: how do you make it, where did you first taste it (if you can remember lol), and who/what/where does it remind you of?
Prompt for 2025-26 challenges:
Character connections: In poetry or prose, write about a connection - whether positive, negative, or neutral - between two characters or yourself and a character.
After dusk, we become paranoid. Our brains, primed for hyperactive pattern seeking by millennia of evolution, can't help but tell us that that noise downstairs was an intruder, or maybe even something worse...
Choose a piece of art, and write about it. Maybe its a story as to what happened, or how it makes you feel. What exactly was the artist communicating through the art, and do you agree?
Write about your favorite song or piece. How does it make you feel? What do you see in your head when you listen to it? What exactly makes that song or piece your favorite?
Write about two words(or more!) that aren’t synonyms but are interchangeable to you. Use the words in place of each other in phrases/ sentences to help show the way they connect in your mind.
What is a true friend? What qualities make a true friend? What makes your friends so special? Are you a good friend?
Nostalgia- poetry or prose, write what makes you feel Nostalgia, and describe what that feeling is to you. Whether its an old childhood toy, a scrap book picture, or a million other things that bring you Nostalgia.
submission for next year's prompts:
Use the NY Times Connections as a writing prompt! Take all 16 or one line of the words generated in there (before it's been solved) and use them in a poem or short story.
Here are some of my ideas for challenges for next year!
1.) Write about life on another planet in poetry or prose.
2.) In poetical or lyrical format, write about climate change/rising problems such as that.
(Challenge for next year’s prompts)
Describe your school year in a short or long poem. What went wrong, your most memorable moments, what will stick with you. If your graduating, how does that feel?