• 60 prompts
  • Checked October 2026

Electricity Writing Prompts

A day with the power out, a town's first electric light, a lightning storm, the trip to the outlet.

Electricity Writing Prompts

Show all 60
  1. Write the first Christmas tree with electric lights, as the child who was told not to touch it.Fact: electric lights were first put on a Christmas tree in 1882.
  2. Imagine there is no electricity anywhere for a week. Write Monday and Sunday.Angle: what was hard on Monday that was normal by Sunday?
  3. List ten things in your home that need electricity, then write about the one you would miss most.Angle: and the one you would not miss at all.

Next step Write from American historyDraw a light bulb

All 60 prompts

A day without power 15

  • A phone is at 4 percent and the power is out. Write how its owner spends the last of the battery. Angle: one call, one photo, one message. To whom?
  • Describe your street at night when the power is out and every light is dark. Angle: what can you see that you never noticed? What can you hear?
  • The electricity goes out at dinner time. Write the next three hours in your home. Angle: what is the first thing each person reaches for that does not work?
  • Imagine there is no electricity anywhere for a week. Write Monday and Sunday. Angle: what was hard on Monday that was normal by Sunday?
  • List ten things in your home that need electricity, then write about the one you would miss most. Angle: and the one you would not miss at all.
  • The school loses power in the middle of the day. Write what the teacher does with the afternoon. Angle: the windows become the lights. What lesson works with no screen and no bell?
  • Tell the story of a blackout from the point of view of a flashlight that has waited years in a drawer. First line: At last.
  • Write a day in a kitchen before electricity: keeping food cold, cooking dinner, lighting the table. Fact: before electricity, iceboxes kept food cold and wood or coal stoves provided heat.
  • Write a letter to a kid from 150 years ago explaining what an electrical outlet is. Fact: before electricity was widely available, candles and oil lamps provided light.
  • Write a whole day with no electricity, from the alarm that does not ring to bedtime. Fact: people use electricity all day, from lighting, heating and cooling to TVs and computers.
  • Write about a family's best evening, which happened only because the power was out. First line: We found the board game under the couch, and it still had all its pieces.
  • Write about a place you have stayed that has no electricity: a tent, a cabin, a tree house. Angle: what did you do when it got dark?
  • Write an opinion: would one evening a month without electricity be a good idea for your town? Angle: who would love it, who would hate it, and who could not manage without power?
  • Write the moment the power comes back on, in the order things wake up. Angle: the hum, the beeps, the lights nobody remembered leaving on.
  • Write the thoughts of a refrigerator during a power outage. First line: Nobody open the door. I mean it.

The first light bulb in town 15

  • A family gets its first light bulb. Write the evening everyone sits and stares at it. Fact: a light bulb of 1879 burned for about 40 hours; by 1880, bulbs lasted 1,200 hours.
  • A farm family lists the first five things to run on electricity. Write the argument about the order. Fact: by 1950, almost all American farms had electricity.
  • A great fair is lit by electricity. Write a child's first look at it after dark. Fact: the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 was lit by an alternating current system.
  • A town votes on whether to pay for electric lights. Write a speech for and a speech against. Angle: one speaker fears the cost, the other fears the dark.
  • Electricity arrives from a waterfall twenty miles away. Write the evening the first lights come on. Fact: in the 1890s, power from Niagara Falls was sent to customers over 20 miles away in Buffalo.
  • Electricity reaches a farm in the 1930s. Write the day the wires arrive, as the youngest child. Fact: in 1932, 11 percent of American farms had electricity; by 1942, almost half did.
  • The first electric refrigerator on the street arrives. Write what the neighbors bring over to see kept cold. Fact: the electric refrigerator was invented in 1913.
  • It is 1879 and a city switches on its first electric streetlights. Write the crowd. Fact: electric arc lamps were first used to light public streets in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1879.
  • It is 1882 and a power station opens in the city. Write a report by someone who lives next door to it. Fact: a power station that opened in New York City in 1882 could power 5,000 lights.
  • Write a grandmother's opinion of the new electric light, which she does not trust. First line: A lamp you cannot blow out is a lamp you cannot argue with.
  • Write a lamplighter's diary entry on the night the electric lights arrive. Fact: in 1879 the first company to sell electricity to customers ran 21 arc lamps in San Francisco.
  • Write an interview with the last person in town to get electricity. Angle: why last? Stubborn, far away, or happy as things were?
  • Write one evening at a candle shop in the year electric light comes to town. Angle: does the candle maker worry, shrug, or start selling something new?
  • Write the first Christmas tree with electric lights, as the child who was told not to touch it. Fact: electric lights were first put on a Christmas tree in 1882.
  • Write the letter a child sends to a cousin in the country about riding the new electric streetcar. Fact: the electric streetcar was invented in 1881.

A lightning storm 15

  • A line crew drives out after a storm to get the power back on. Write their night. Angle: rain, a bucket truck, a street of dark windows waiting.
  • A storm knocks the electricity out. Write the first minute of the dark. Angle: where is everyone standing when it happens, and who speaks first?
  • A thunderstorm passes over a town at night. Write it one house at a time, down one street. Angle: who sleeps through it, who watches, who makes cocoa?
  • Describe a lightning storm from a window, from the first flicker to the last rumble. Fact: lightning is a form of electricity.
  • Describe the color of the sky in the ten minutes before a lightning storm breaks. Angle: no color word may be used twice.
  • Explain what lightning is to a little brother or sister who is watching the storm with you. Fact: like a static shock, lightning is electrons jumping from one place to another.
  • Make a storm poem in which thunder gets the last line. Angle: short lines for the lightning, one long line for the thunder.
  • Rub a balloon on your hair and write up what happens as a science report with one joke in it. Fact: the rubbing moves electrons, and hairs with the same charge push apart and stand on end.
  • Write a lightning storm as a weather reporter who has to stay calm on camera. First line: As you can see behind me, it has started.
  • Write a lightning storm from the point of view of a dog under the bed. First line: The sky is angry again and I have done nothing.
  • Write a story in which one flash of lightning shows a character something for one second. Angle: what was it, and were they meant to see it?
  • Write a thunderstorm as a conversation between two clouds. Fact: lightning is electrons moving from one cloud to another, or jumping from a cloud to the ground.
  • Write about the best lightning storm you ever watched, and where you were standing. Angle: who was with you, and who jumped at the thunder?
  • Write the thunderstorm that came on the day of an outdoor birthday party. Angle: the cake, the tablecloth, the guests. What gets saved first?
  • You cross a carpet, touch a doorknob and get a shock. Write it as a very small lightning storm. Fact: a static shock is a stream of electrons jumping between you and the thing you touch.

How it reaches the outlet 15

  • A solar panel keeps a diary. Write one cloudy day and one clear day. Fact: solar cells turn sunlight directly into electricity.
  • A tall metal tower holds up the power lines. Write what it sees across the fields. Fact: high-voltage lines hung between tall metal towers carry electricity over long distances.
  • A transformer sits on a pole at the end of a street. Write a day in its life. Fact: transformers raise or lower the voltage of electricity on its way from a power plant to homes.
  • Explain an electrical circuit to a friend using a racetrack, a train set or a loop of string. Fact: for electricity to flow, it needs a complete path, called a circuit.
  • Explain why the power lines on your street are not the same as the ones on the tall towers. Fact: high voltage is cheaper for long distances; lower voltage is safer to use in homes.
  • Flip a light switch and write what happens in the wire, in slow motion. Fact: turning on a light closes the circuit, so electricity can flow through the bulb and back.
  • Follow one electron around a loop of wire and write its complaint about the job. Fact: electricity is electrons on the move, pushed from one atom to another.
  • Write a how-it-works page about an electricity generator for a kids' science magazine. Fact: moving a magnet around a coil of wire makes an electric current flow in the wire.
  • Write a thank-you note to the electricity grid from one small night-light. Fact: the grid is the substations, transformers and power lines that link power plants and users.
  • Write a tour of a power plant for a visiting class, as the worker who runs the turbine. Fact: in a turbine generator, moving water, steam, gas or air pushes blades that spin a generator.
  • Write from inside a battery on the day it is put into a flashlight. Fact: a battery makes electricity with two different metals in a chemical solution.
  • Write the journey of a river that is asked to make electricity on its way to the sea. Fact: hydroelectric turbines use the force of moving water to spin blades that power a generator.
  • Write the story of a wind turbine on the windiest day of the year. Fact: a wind turbine uses the wind to move the blades of a rotor, which powers a generator.
  • Write the trip electricity makes from a power plant to the lamp beside your bed. Fact: power plants send electricity to customers through transmission and distribution lines.
  • Write what the electricity meter on a home would say if it could talk. Fact: electric companies use meters to measure how much electricity each customer uses.

How it works

These electricity writing prompts begin where a writer notices it: the evening it goes off. From there they go back to the first lit streets, up into a storm and along the wires.

Read the full guide

A day with no electricity

Fifteen prompts switch the power off. Write the next three hours at home, the street with every light dark, the order in which things wake up when it comes back. One asks whether an evening a month without electricity would be a good idea for a town.

The first light bulb in town

The history prompts take a year from the Energy Information Administration's electricity timeline: streets lit by arc lamps in 1879, lights on a Christmas tree in 1882, wires reaching a farm in the 1930s. The year decides what your witness has seen before and what is new.

  • Write the dark with your ears first. A house with no power is quiet in a new way.
  • For a how-it-works prompt, pick one traveler (an electron, a river, a gust of wind) and follow it.

Questions and answers

Is there a writing prompt about a day with no electricity?

Write a whole day with no electricity, from the alarm that does not ring to bedtime. Or write a letter to a kid from 150 years ago explaining what an electrical outlet is. Both are in the group A day without power.

What did people use before electricity?

Candles, whale oil lamps and kerosene lamps for light, iceboxes to keep food cold, and wood or coal stoves for heat, says the US Energy Information Administration. One prompt is set in that kitchen, and another is a letter to a kid of that time.

Is lightning electricity?

Yes. Lightning is electrons moving from one cloud to another or jumping from a cloud to the ground. A shock from a doorknob is the same kind of jump, and one prompt asks for it as a very small storm.

How does electricity get to a house?

A power plant sends it along high-voltage lines hung between tall towers, transformers lower the voltage, and distribution lines carry it to homes. One prompt asks for the whole trip, ending at the lamp beside your bed.

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