• 62 prompts
  • Checked October 2026

Dream Writing Prompts

The dream from last night, the one at the window, and the one you are working toward.

Dream Writing Prompts

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  1. Tell a dream as a numbered list of ten things, with no joining words.Angle: a list keeps the dream's own logic. Item 4 need not follow from item 3.
  2. Describe what you were looking at when a daydream began, and what it turned into.First line: It was only a crack in the ceiling until it was a river.
  3. Write the daydream you had most often when you were younger.Write down: who was in it, what you were good at in it and when it stopped coming.

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All 62 prompts

A dream I had 16

  • Describe a dream using only what you heard in it. Write down: voices, weather, a tune, a sound with no source. No pictures at all.
  • Describe a place from a dream that was two places at once. Write down: what belonged to each place. Do not say why they were joined.
  • Describe the light and the weather in a dream. Write down: the time of day, the color of the sky, where the shadows fell.
  • Pick an object that mattered a great deal in a dream, for no reason you can give, and describe it. Write down: its size, its weight, its color and who else wanted it.
  • Recall a dream in which you could do something that is impossible by day. Write down: how it felt in the arms, the stomach, the feet. Then stop.
  • Set down a dream you only half remember, and mark the gaps. Angle: put a dash where a piece is missing. Do not fill the gaps in.
  • Tell a dream as a numbered list of ten things, with no joining words. Angle: a list keeps the dream's own logic. Item 4 need not follow from item 3.
  • Tell one dream twice: once in three sentences, once in thirty. Angle: see what the long version adds. Usually it is the furniture.
  • Turn a dream into a letter to the person who was in it. First line: You will not remember this, because you were not really there.
  • Who turned up in a dream doing something they would never do awake? Set the scene down. Write down: what they did and what they said. Leave out what it might mean.
  • Write a dream in the present tense, as if it is happening while you write. First line: I am in a kitchen that is almost ours.
  • Write down a dream from when you were small that you still remember. Write down: the three things that have not faded. Say plainly which parts you are guessing.
  • Write down a dream somebody told you, as exactly as you can. Angle: keep their words for the strange parts. Do not tidy it into a story.
  • Write down the last dream you remember, in the order it happened. Write down: only what you saw, heard and did, start to finish. No explaining yet.
  • Write the last ten seconds of a dream and the first ten seconds of being awake. Angle: set the two side by side. What was still true for a moment after you woke?
  • Write the moment in a dream when you noticed something was not right. Write down: the detail that gave it away: a wrong door, a wrong voice, a wrong season.

A daydream 16

  • Daydream a whole day with nobody expecting anything of you, and write it down. Angle: hour by hour. Be honest about how much of it is spent doing nothing.
  • Daydream about a door you pass every day and have never seen open. Angle: three guesses at what is behind it, each less likely than the last.
  • Daydream on paper about a talent you do not have. First line: In this one I can sing, and everybody in the room has gone quiet.
  • Describe what you were looking at when a daydream began, and what it turned into. First line: It was only a crack in the ceiling until it was a river.
  • Follow a daydream that starts with a shape in the clouds. Write down: the shape, what it became and where it was heading when it broke up.
  • Let a smell start a daydream, and write where it goes. Angle: bread, rain on a hot road, a pencil being sharpened. Name the smell in line one.
  • Put two people at one table, each in a different daydream. Angle: give each a paragraph. End on the moment they both come back.
  • Start with a real memory and let it drift into a daydream. Angle: underline the first thing that did not happen.
  • Tell about the moment of being called back from a daydream. First line: Somebody had said my name twice already.
  • Write a day dream as a short film: say what the camera sees, shot by shot. Angle: six shots. No thoughts, only pictures and sounds.
  • Write a daydream about a week spent in a place you have only seen in a picture. Write down: the picture first, exactly. Then step in and say what is behind you.
  • Write a daydream that begins with the view from a bus, train or car window. Angle: pick one thing going past, a house or a field, and move in for five lines.
  • Write the daydream in which you say the perfect thing, an hour too late. Write down: what was really said, then the line you wish you had found.
  • Write the daydream of someone whose hands are busy with a dull job. Angle: washing dishes, folding laundry, stacking chairs. The hands never stop.
  • Write the daydream you fall into when a class, a meeting or a line goes on too long. Write down: where it starts every time. Then where it went today.
  • Write the daydream you had most often when you were younger. Write down: who was in it, what you were good at in it and when it stopped coming.

A dream that goes on 15

  • Follow a dream that goes on leaking into the day after it. Angle: a word, a tune or a face stays until lunch. Keep to that one morning.
  • Give a dream the last scene it never had. Angle: the ending need not make sense. It only has to feel finished.
  • Go back into a dream on purpose and open the one door you did not open. Write down: the dream as far as the door. Then make up the rest, and say that you did.
  • Someone has to stay asleep to finish a dream. Write the race against the morning. Angle: a phone rings, a dog barks, the sun comes up. What are five more minutes needed for?
  • Take a dream that ended when you woke up and write what happens next. Write down: the last thing you remember first. Then go on in the same odd logic.
  • Trace a dream as a route: where it began, each place it went, where it stopped. Write down: the places in order, one line each. The words are the map.
  • Two people find out they are having the same dream. Write the conversation. First line: You were on the roof as well. I saw you.
  • Which dream have you had more than once? Write it as it usually goes. Write down: what is the same every time, then the one thing that changes.
  • Write a dream in three nights, like episodes of a serial. Angle: each night starts where the last stopped and ends on something unfinished.
  • Write a dream inside a dream: you wake up, and you are still asleep. Angle: give each layer one detail that is wrong, and make the wrong details different.
  • Write a dream that changes its setting three times without anyone remarking on it. Angle: no because and no suddenly. Each new place simply is.
  • Write a dream that keeps going after an alarm clock rings inside it. First line: The alarm went off, and in the dream it was a kettle.
  • Write a dream that picks up years later in the same place, with everything older. Write down: what has worn out, what has grown and who is no longer there.
  • Write the dream a character has every night for a week, and what is different on the seventh night. Angle: one line a night for six nights, then a full page.
  • Write the next page of a dream as the person you were talking to in it. Angle: they saw you arrive. What did you look like to them?

A hope for later 15

  • Describe something you hope to make with your own hands one day. Write down: what it is made of, how big it is and who sees it first.
  • Describe the home you hope to live in, starting at the front door. Write down: what you hear when the door opens. Then one room a sentence.
  • Give a made-up person a hope they have never told anyone. Angle: say when it began, why it is kept quiet and who nearly found out.
  • My dream is to stand in one place before I am old. Write about that place. Write down: what you would see first, and what you would do in the first hour.
  • Plan on paper a journey you dream of making by the slowest way possible. Angle: on foot, by boat or by night train. Write one day from the middle of it.
  • Think of something you hoped for when you were small and now have, and write both ends of it. Write down: the wanting first, in detail. Then the day you noticed you had it.
  • Trace a hope of yours that changed as you got older. Write down: the first version, the version now and what was kept.
  • What do you hope for someone else? Write the day it comes true. Angle: one person, one hope. Say only what you would see and hear that day.
  • What do you hope to learn from an older person while there is time? Write the lesson. Write down: who, what, and where the lesson would happen: a kitchen, a shed, a porch.
  • Which animal do you hope to share your home with one day? Write its first night. Angle: where does it sleep, and where had you planned for it to sleep?
  • Write a letter from yourself ten years on, describing an ordinary Tuesday. Write down: where you wake up, who is in the kitchen and what is outside the window.
  • Write a page that begins My dream is and never uses the words want or wish. Angle: describe it as if it has happened. Use the present tense.
  • Write about a dream that will take years, and only its first small step. Angle: the day you take the step, from breakfast on. Nothing after it.
  • Write about a skill you dream of having, on the day it finally works. First line: The first time I got all the way through without stopping, nobody was there.
  • Write about the day a small dream comes true, and what you do the next morning. Angle: small on purpose: a garden bed, a finished quilt, a song played right through.

How it works

These dream writing prompts ask for the dream itself, set down as it came, before anyone says what it was about. No dream is interpreted here.

Read the full guide

A day dream writing prompt

Sixteen prompts are for the waking kind. Most start from something in front of the writer, a window, a smell, a dull job for the hands, and follow where the mind went. One starts from a real memory and asks for a line under the first thing that never happened.

Write it down first

Many lines under a prompt begin Write down and name what to catch: the light, the order of events, the detail that gave the dream away. Explaining can wait. A hope gets the same treatment: the place, the front door, an ordinary Tuesday ten years on.

  • Keep paper by the bed, and write a night dream before you tell it to anyone.
  • A hope reads better as a scene. Put yourself in it on a plain weekday.

Questions and answers

What is a good writing prompt about dreams?

One that narrows a dream to something a writer can catch. Describe a dream using only what you heard in it. Write the moment in a dream when you noticed something was not right.

What is a My Dream writing prompt?

A prompt about a hope and not a night's sleep. Fifteen are here: something you hope to make with your own hands, a skill on the day it finally works, the home you hope to live in. Jobs are on the careers list.

How do you write about a dream you only half remember?

Mark the gaps. One prompt asks for exactly that: put a dash where a piece is missing and do not fill it in. Another asks for the three things that have not faded, and for a plain word on which parts are guesses.

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