Make a poem in which every line is a different thing the same cloud looked like.Angle: end on the moment it stopped looking like anything.
A tall cumulus is brilliant white on top and dark underneath. Write it as two characters who share one cloud.Fact: the sunlit parts of a cumulus are brilliant white, and its base is relatively dark.
A cloud crosses a whole country. Write its diary, one entry for each thing it passes over.Angle: a city, a farm, a mountain, a lake. What does each look like from above?
A child insists a cloud is a dragon, and a grown-up cannot see it. Write the scene until one of them gives in.Angle: let the cloud change shape halfway through.
A cloud shaped exactly like your own house floats over your house. Write the next ten minutes.Angle: who else notices, and what the cloud does when it reaches the chimney.
A cumulus cloud looks like a cauliflower to a weather scientist. Write what it looks like to you, and to a dog.Fact: the bulging upper parts of a cumulus cloud often resemble a cauliflower.
A ring of light appears around the Moon behind a thin veil of cloud. Write what the town decides it means.Fact: a halo around the Sun or Moon nearly always shows through a veil of cirrostratus.
A sky of small cloud ripples looks like a beach after the tide has gone out. Write who walks on it.Fact: cirrocumulus is a thin white sheet of cloud arranged in grains or ripples.
At sunset the highest clouds are still lit after the rest go gray. Write the last cloud's five minutes of fame.Fact: around sunrise and sunset, cirrus are lit up long before other clouds and fade out much later.
Describe a sky of gray cloud rolls with gaps between them as the roof of something. Say what is underneath.Fact: stratocumulus comes in rounded masses or rolls, often with a honeycomb look.
Describe cirrus clouds to someone who has never looked up, without using the word white.Fact: cirrus are delicate, hair-like filaments, mostly in patches or narrow bands.
From the ground the cloud was a flat gray lid. Write what it looks like from an airplane window above it.Angle: a field of snow, a sea, a quilt. Say what the plane's shadow does on it.
Hold your little finger at arm's length and measure a rippled cloud. Write the report of your sky survey.Fact: the ripples of cirrocumulus look narrower than a little finger held at arm's length.
Invent a cloud shape and write its field guide page: its name, where to spot it and what it means.Angle: cirrus, stratus and nimbus are Latin words. Give your cloud a grand name too.
Lie on your back, pick one cumulus cloud and write what it turns into over five minutes.Fact: cumulus clouds have sharp outlines and rise in mounds, domes or towers.
Make a poem in which every line is a different thing the same cloud looked like.Angle: end on the moment it stopped looking like anything.
Two friends look at the same cumulus cloud and see different animals. Write the argument.First line: "That is clearly a rabbit." "That is clearly a boot."
The word cirrus comes from the Latin for a curl of hair. Write about the giant whose hair it is.Angle: say what the wind does to it, and who has to comb it.
A cloud with a job 15
A cloud's job is to color the sunset, and tonight it is late. Write the evening sky without it.Fact: near sunrise and sunset, clouds can appear in brilliant yellows, oranges and reds.
A fair-weather cumulus clocks in each morning and is gone by evening. Write its timesheet.Fact: over land, cumulus appears in the morning, grows, and more or less dissolves toward evening.
A nimbostratus cloud has one job: steady rain all day. Write its Monday.Fact: nimbostratus is a dark gray cloud layer, thick enough to blot out the sun.
A stratus cloud works as a blanket over a town. Write the morning it would rather not get up.Fact: stratus clouds are broad and widespread, appearing like a blanket.
A young cloud gets its first job and is sent to the wrong level of the sky. Write its first day.Fact: the ten basic clouds are divided by height into high, mid-level and low clouds.
An altocumulus cloud is the most common cloud of the middle sky and is tired of being ordinary. Write its plan.Fact: altocumulus is the most common mid-level cloud.
An altostratus cloud works as a pane of frosted glass in front of the sun. Write its complaint about never being noticed.Fact: altostratus is thin enough to show the sun as if seen through ground glass.
Cirrus clouds arrive first, ahead of a storm. Write the message they are carrying.Angle: who it is addressed to, and who below is the first to read it.
Cumulonimbus is the thunderstorm cloud. Write its job interview.Fact: cumulonimbus, the thunderstorm cloud, also produces hail.
Every cloud droplet forms around a speck of dust or salt. Tell the story as the speck.Fact: the specks include smoke from fires or volcanoes, ocean spray and wind-blown soil.
Two clouds apply for the same job over the same town. Write both letters to the wind.Angle: one promises shade, the other promises a show.
Virga is rain that hangs from a cloud in streaks and only at times reaches the ground. Write about a cloud whose deliveries rarely arrive.Fact: virga, streaks of rain, is sometimes seen hanging from altostratus.
Write a help-wanted ad for a cloud to shade one playground on the hottest day of the year.Angle: the hours, the pay, and what happens if it rains by mistake.
Write chapter one of the training manual for new rain clouds: where the rain goes.Fact: nimbus is the Latin word for rain.
Write the speech of the cloud that wins Cloud of the Year, and say what it did to earn the prize.Angle: it ended a dry spell, shaded a wedding or stayed away from a parade.
Under a storm cloud 15
A flock of birds goes quiet as a storm cloud's shadow crosses the field. Write the silence.Angle: what stops first, what stops last, and what does not stop at all.
A pilot's map shows one thunderstorm cloud standing alone. Write the detour as the pilot's announcement to the cabin.Fact: cumulonimbus, with its strong updraft, extends well into the high level of clouds.
A storm cloud arrives at a ball game in the last inning. Tell the game from the cloud's side.Angle: it has been trying to get here all afternoon.
A storm cloud has been building all day and nobody has looked up. Write the moment the first person does.Angle: where they are, what they drop, who they call.
A storm cloud is afraid of its own thunder. Write the night it has to cross a whole city.Angle: who or what helps it, and where it finally lets go.
A storm cloud stops over the one farm that has had no rain all summer. Write the farmer's five minutes at the kitchen door.Angle: what the farmer says out loud, and to whom.
A tall cumulus is brilliant white on top and dark underneath. Write it as two characters who share one cloud.Fact: the sunlit parts of a cumulus are brilliant white, and its base is relatively dark.
After the storm cloud passes, list everything it left behind in one backyard.Angle: twelve things, from the obvious to the one nobody finds until Thursday.
Describe the minute a storm cloud's shadow reaches your street, starting with what goes dark first.Fact: the base of a cumulonimbus is often very dark.
Give tomorrow's weather report as the storm cloud itself would give it.First line: Expect me around three. I will not be staying long.
Hail from a storm cloud starts to bounce on the porch roof. Write the scene using only what the family says.Angle: nobody says the word hail until the last line.
The top of a storm cloud spreads flat like a blacksmith's anvil. Write about who is hammering up there.Fact: the top of a cumulonimbus is nearly always flattened in the shape of an anvil.
Watch a cumulonimbus build on a summer afternoon and write it as a tower going up floor by floor.Fact: cumulonimbus is a heavy, dense cloud in the form of a mountain or huge tower.
Write a storm cloud's apology letter to the school whose field day it ended.First line: I want to begin by saying I was aiming for the lake.
You are the smallest ragged cloud hanging under the big storm cloud. Write what you can see from there.Fact: low ragged clouds are common under the base of a cumulonimbus.
A cloud diary 15
A cloud changes shape all day and is called a different thing by every person below. Write its diary entry that night.Fact: cloud droplets are constantly forming and dissipating, which is why clouds change shape.
A cloud crosses a whole country. Write its diary, one entry for each thing it passes over.Angle: a city, a farm, a mountain, a lake. What does each look like from above?
A cloud keeps a diary of the people it sees looking up. Write three entries.Angle: a kid on a trampoline, a painter on a ladder, someone who waves.
A gray cloud writes in its diary that it wishes it were white. Its friend writes back with the science.Fact: as clouds thicken, less sunlight passes through them, giving the cloud a gray color.
A layer of stratus finally breaks up. Write the cloud's last diary entry and the first thing people see.Fact: often, when a layer of stratus breaks up and dissipates, blue sky is seen.
A weather watcher has logged the clouds every day for forty years. Write today's entry, the last one.Angle: the one sky in forty years they never forgot.
Compare the clouds at breakfast and the clouds at dinner in two short diary entries.Angle: what moved in, what moved out, what changed color.
Dear diary, today I was a cirrus cloud made entirely of ice. Finish the entry.Fact: cirrus clouds are always composed of ice crystals.
Keep a cloud diary for one week: each day, one line on what the sky held at the same hour.Angle: name the cloud if you can. If you cannot, say what it looked like.
Start a diary entry with The clouds outside my window today look like, and keep going until the page is full.Angle: their color, their height, their speed and which way they are heading.
Why are clouds white? Write the diary entry for the day you found out.Fact: cloud droplets scatter all the colors of sunlight equally, and we see that light as white.
Write a cloud's diary entry for the day it formed.Fact: a cloud droplet forms when rising air cools and its water condenses onto a tiny speck.
Write an altocumulus cloud's diary entry for the night a colored ring appeared around the Moon through it.Fact: when thin altocumulus passes in front of the sun or moon, a colored ring called a corona appears.
Write five diary entries by a stratus cloud on a gray week at the seaside: what it covered each day.Fact: stratus is a generally gray cloud layer that can produce drizzle.
Write the diary entry of a cloud on the day it disappeared.Fact: when more water evaporates than condenses, a cloud dissipates.
How it works
Most of these cloud writing prompts start from a real kind of cloud: wispy cirrus, towering cumulus, a gray blanket of stratus. Under each is a fact from the National Weather Service's cloud pages, an angle or a first line.
Read the full guide
Clouds creative writing prompts, type by type
The ten basic clouds each get a part. Cirrus, named from the Latin for a curl of hair, arrives first with news of a storm. Nimbostratus rains all Monday. Altostratus works as a pane of frosted glass in front of the sun, and cumulonimbus, the thunderstorm cloud, has a job interview.
A cloud diary for a week
Fifteen prompts are diary entries. Some are the writer's own: one line a day on what the sky held at the same hour. Others are the cloud's, written on the day it formed, the day it wished it were white and the day it disappeared.
Look up first. One minute at a window gives you a color, a speed and a direction.
A cloud changes while you write. Let the piece change with it.
Questions and answers
What is a good clouds writing prompt?
One that names its cloud. Write five diary entries by a stratus cloud on a gray week at the seaside. Or measure a rippled cloud against your little finger at arm's length and write the report of your sky survey.
What are the ten basic types of cloud?
Cirrus, cirrocumulus and cirrostratus are high clouds. Altocumulus, altostratus and nimbostratus are mid-level. Cumulus, stratocumulus, stratus and cumulonimbus are low, though cumulonimbus extends well into the high level. The National Weather Service lists them this way, by height.
Why do clouds change shape?
Cloud droplets are constantly forming and evaporating. When more water condenses than evaporates, a cloud grows; when more evaporates, it dissipates. One prompt is the diary of a cloud that is called a different thing by every person below.
Are these cloud writing prompts for kids?
Yes. A child insists a cloud is a dragon, a storm cloud apologizes to a school for ending field day, and nobody is hurt in any storm. The storm prompts are for writing and are not weather safety advice.