• 60 prompts
  • Checked October 2026

Enlightenment Writing Prompts

The eighteenth century of ideas, from the rooms where they were argued, printed, mailed, tested and voted on.

Enlightenment Writing Prompts

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  1. A boy of the 1700s buys a ticket to an electrical show with money meant for something else; write what he tells his mother he learned.Angle: he saw a spark jump. Make him try to say why it mattered.
  2. A regular notices that the talk in his coffee house is sharper than in the tavern next door; write his theory.Fact: English coffeehouses served no alcohol, which allowed more serious conversation than an alehouse.
  3. A letter between two thinkers is opened by an official on its way; write the letter so that it says two things at once.Angle: one meaning for the friend, one for the reader who was not invited.

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All 60 prompts

In the coffee house 12

  • A boy takes the pennies at the door of a London coffee house in the 1700s; write who he lets in before noon. Fact: in an English coffeehouse a penny bought admission and a cup of coffee.
  • A coffee house of the 1700s holds a mathematics lesson at one table and a fencing lesson by the door; write the hour both run at once. Fact: some coffeehouses hosted lessons in languages, dancing, fencing, poetry, mathematics and astronomy.
  • A coffee-house keeper of the 1700s lays out the morning's newspapers and pamphlets; write which one is fought over. Fact: most coffeehouses provided pamphlets and newspapers, and the price of admission covered them.
  • A girl who sells newspapers steps into a coffee house full of men in the 1700s; write the two minutes she is inside. Fact: historians have studied the women news hawkers who went into the otherwise male coffeehouses.
  • A newcomer starts a quarrel at a coffee-house table and learns what it will cost him; write the scene. Fact: a joking broadside of 1674 ruled that whoever began a quarrel bought each offended man a dish of coffee.
  • A news runner bursts into a coffee house with word from the docks; write the room in the minute before and the minute after. Fact: reporters called runners went round the English coffeehouses announcing the latest news.
  • A regular notices that the talk in his coffee house is sharper than in the tavern next door; write his theory. Fact: English coffeehouses served no alcohol, which allowed more serious conversation than an alehouse.
  • A sea captain reads a single printed sheet of ship movements at his coffee house; write what he is hoping to find. Fact: from 1692 a London coffeehouse of merchants and sailors issued a one-page list of shipping movements.
  • A stockbroker barred from the exchange does his deals at a coffee-house table; write the morning's trading as the waiter. Fact: London stockbrokers traded in coffeehouses because they were not allowed in the Royal Exchange.
  • A student spends the afternoon in a coffee house when he should be at a lecture; write his defense to his tutor. Fact: Oxford students frequented the coffeehouses; one critic said they wasted study time there.
  • A wig maker and a lord end up at the same coffee-house table arguing about a comet; write the argument. Fact: coffeehouse patrons came from all levels of society; anyone who had a penny could come inside.
  • A woman who keeps a coffee house in the 1700s hears every argument in London and joins none; write her evening after closing. Fact: historians point to the women who kept coffeehouses, though women had little place there as customers.

The encyclopedia 12

  • A bookseller's clerk in the 1750s copies the price of the whole encyclopedia into his ledger beside his own wages; write his thoughts. Fact: the first edition of the French encyclopedia cost 980 livres, too much for most of the middle class.
  • A compositor in Paris sets the first page of a new encyclopedia in 1751, the entry for the letter A; write his morning. Fact: the great French encyclopedia of the Enlightenment was published between 1751 and 1772.
  • A horse expert is asked to write the encyclopedia's entries on shoeing horses; write his first draft meeting the editor's pen. Fact: the encyclopedia recruited contributors for what they knew; an author on horses wrote on farriery.
  • A reader of the encyclopedia finds a small letter printed after her brother's article and asks what it means; write his answer. Fact: the French encyclopedia credited regular contributors with a symbol at the end of each article.
  • A shelf maker of the 1770s is asked to build a case for all twenty-eight volumes of the encyclopedia; write the measuring. Fact: the French encyclopedia ran to 28 volumes: 17 of text and 11 of engraved plates.
  • A subscriber of the 1760s waits years for the next volume of the encyclopedia; write the day ten arrive at once. Fact: volumes 8 through 17 of the French encyclopedia were published together in 1765.
  • A title page of the banned encyclopedia names a town across the border as its place of printing; write the talk in which that is decided. Fact: volumes 8 to 17 of the French encyclopedia gave Neuchatel, outside France, as their place of publication.
  • A writer for the encyclopedia of the 1760s turns in eight articles a day for six years; write one of his evenings. Fact: the encyclopedia's busiest contributor wrote 17,266 articles from 1759 to 1765, about eight a day.
  • An engraver is sent to a craftsman's workshop to draw every tool for the encyclopedia; write the craftsman's opinion of being drawn. Fact: the French encyclopedia was the first general one to describe the mechanical arts in much detail.
  • The encyclopedia is banned in 1759 and the print shop keeps working behind closed shutters; write a night shift. Fact: in 1759 France suspended the encyclopedia's license to publish, and the work went on in secret.
  • Is an encyclopedia a dangerous book? Argue it as a reader of the 1750s. Fact: a royal edict of 1752 briefly suspended the French encyclopedia after its second volume.
  • Subscribers in Edinburgh in 1768 receive a new encyclopedia in weekly parts; write the week a part goes missing. Fact: an encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh from 1768 to 1771 came out in weekly installments.

A letter between thinkers 12

  • A journal that prints letters from thinkers in six countries reaches a small-town reading society; write the evening it is read aloud. Fact: Enlightenment ideas traveled through a growing print culture of books, journals and pamphlets.
  • A letter between two thinkers is opened by an official on its way; write the letter so that it says two things at once. Angle: one meaning for the friend, one for the reader who was not invited.
  • A letter between two thinkers of the 1700s takes weeks to cross a border; write the reply to an argument its sender has since given up. Fact: the thinkers of the Republic of Letters relied heavily on handwritten letters.
  • A thinker in a colonial port writes to a learned society in London describing an animal nobody there has seen; write the description. Fact: London's Royal Society acted as a clearinghouse for letters among experimenters.
  • A thinker in Paris writes to one in Edinburgh he has never met; write the first letter, which opens with a disagreement. Fact: the Republic of Letters was a long-distance community of thinkers in Europe and the Americas.
  • A thinker of the 1750s writes to his printer asking that his name be left off; write his reasons. Fact: some articles of the French encyclopedia were anonymous because no one dared claim them.
  • A thinker's secretary copies every outgoing letter into a book before it is sealed; write the letter he is tempted to improve. Angle: one sentence is unkind. Does he copy it as written?
  • A woman who hosts a weekly gathering of thinkers in Paris writes to invite a shy mathematician; write the invitation. Fact: in the salons of Paris, the women who hosted governed the talk of the Enlightenment's writers.
  • A young woman of the 1700s writes to a famous thinker under her brother's name; write the letter and the postscript she almost adds. Fact: because of the limits placed on women, the Republic of Letters consisted mostly of men.
  • An old thinker writes to a young one who has just proved him wrong; write the letter of thanks. Angle: gracious in the first paragraph, honest in the second.
  • Two thinkers of the 1700s who agree on everything exchange letters, and it is very dull; write the letter that starts their first quarrel. Angle: the quarrel is over something small: a comma, a comet, how long to boil an egg.
  • Write the letter in which one thinker asks another to say, in plain words, what enlightenment means. Fact: a German essay of 1784 on that very question holds the phrase dare to know.

An experiment shown in public 12

  • A boy of the 1700s buys a ticket to an electrical show with money meant for something else; write what he tells his mother he learned. Angle: he saw a spark jump. Make him try to say why it mattered.
  • A clockwork model of the planets is wound up in a lecture room of the 1700s, and a child asks where she is on it; write the answer. Fact: the orrery, a mechanical model of the Solar System, is named after a device made about 1712.
  • A glass jar that stores electricity is passed around a parlor in 1746; write the party as the guest who goes first. Fact: the Leyden jar, which stores an electric charge, was invented in 1745 and 1746.
  • A hundred and eighty royal guards are lined up to feel one electric spark pass through them all; write it as the guard in the middle. Fact: in a show for the king of France, a Leyden jar was discharged through 180 royal guardsmen.
  • A lecturer in natural philosophy reaches a town that has never seen a public experiment; write the handbill he nails to the inn door. Fact: public lecture courses spread in the 18th century as interest in natural philosophy grew.
  • A scientific society of the 1780s offers a prize for the best answer to a question; write the question, and the entry that comes a day late. Fact: by 1789 Europe had over 70 official scientific societies.
  • A sheep, a duck and a rooster are loaded into a basket under a balloon in September 1783; write the launch as the shepherd who lent the sheep. Fact: on September 19, 1783, a balloon carried its first living passengers: a sheep, a duck and a rooster.
  • A town of the 1760s has no hall big enough, so the public experiment is shown in a barn; write the audience arriving. Angle: the squire in front, children in the hayloft, a skeptic by the door.
  • A traveling lecturer sets up an air pump in a town hall and sells tickets at the door; write the evening as the boy who carries his boxes. Fact: by the 1760s traveling lecturers showed air-pump experiments in town halls to ticket buyers.
  • A woman of the 1700s attends a public lecture on natural philosophy and takes notes nobody expects her to take; write her notebook page. Fact: one very popular book of the time explained the new physics for a growing audience of women.
  • In the 1700s an experiment counts only if others see it; write the meeting where six witnesses sign under a result they dislike. Fact: for London's Royal Society an experiment had to be witnessed, and witnessing was a collective act.
  • Should experiments be shown to anyone who buys a ticket? Argue one side as a lecturer of the 1760s. Fact: one Enlightenment ideal was to make information available to the greatest number of people.

An idea that reaches a law 12

  • A bill for religious freedom waits nine years in Virginia before it becomes law; write the clerk who keeps the copy. Fact: Virginia's statute for religious freedom was drafted in 1777 and enacted on January 16, 1786.
  • A delegate in 1789 argues that the law must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes; write the reply of the delegate who rises next. Fact: Article 6 of France's declaration of rights, 1789, says the law must be the same for all.
  • A farmer in the Habsburg lands hears in November 1781 that he may now marry and move without his lord's leave; write his walk home. Fact: the Serfdom Patent of November 1, 1781, let serfs choose marriage partners and move between estates.
  • A judge in France in 1789 must apply a new rule that an accused person is presumed innocent; write his first case under it, a stolen goose. Fact: Article 9 of France's declaration of rights, 1789, presumes a person innocent until declared guilty.
  • A law student of the 1750s reads a new book that divides power among those who make laws, carry them out and judge; write his note to his father, a magistrate. Fact: a French book of 1748 described power shared among a legislature, an executive and a judiciary.
  • A Lutheran family in Vienna hears in October 1781 that its worship is now permitted by law; write the first Sunday. Fact: the Patent of Toleration of October 13, 1781, gave non-Catholic Christians in Habsburg lands leave to worship.
  • A pamphlet seller in Paris hears in 1789 that any citizen may now speak, write and print freely; write her next morning at the stall. Fact: Article 11 of France's declaration of rights, 1789, says any citizen may speak, write and print freely.
  • A village schoolmaster in Prussia reads a decree of 1763 that every child must be taught; write the first morning the girls come too. Fact: a Prussian decree of 1763 required that all young citizens, girls and boys, be educated.
  • An idea argued over in a coffee house for thirty years is voted into law in the 1780s; write the old man in the gallery who argued it first. Angle: he does not cheer. Say what he does with his hands.
  • In 1795 a market woman in France is told her old measures give way to ones based on the size of the Earth; write her first day under the law. Fact: France defined the metric system in law on April 7, 1795.
  • Two surveyors of the 1790s measure a line down France so that a new unit of length can be fixed; write the village that wonders what they are doing. Fact: the meter was defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator.
  • Which idea of the Enlightenment should become a law first: free speech, equal law or schooling for all? Argue for one. Angle: say who gains on the first morning the law is in force.

How it works

These Enlightenment writing prompts are about the Age of Reason, the 1700s. Each puts a made-up person beside a real idea: a boy taking pennies at a coffee-house door, a shepherd whose sheep goes up under a balloon.

Read the full guide

An Enlightenment writing prompt with a fact under it

Fifty-two of the sixty lines are a Fact from Wikipedia: an encyclopedia of 28 volumes that was printed in secret after 1759, a jar of 1745 that stored electricity, the law of April 7, 1795, that defined the metric system. No thinker is named, so the writer supplies the people.

From an argument to a law

The five groups run in the order an idea traveled. It is argued over in a coffee house, printed in an encyclopedia, sent by letter across a border, tested before a paying crowd, and at last written into a law that a market woman or a schoolmaster has to live by.

  • Give your thinker a trade as well as an opinion. Coffee houses held merchants and sailors too.
  • For a letter, decide what the writer is afraid to say, then let one line say it.

Questions and answers

What are good Enlightenment writing prompts for a history class?

Ones that turn an idea into a scene. A news runner bursts into a coffee house with word from the docks. A judge applies, for the first time, the rule that an accused person is presumed innocent, in a case about a stolen goose.

What was the Enlightenment?

Wikipedia's article calls it a period of intellectual and cultural flourishing that emerged in Western Europe in the late 17th century and peaked in the 18th. It stressed reason, evidence and the scientific method, and promoted liberty, religious tolerance and natural rights.

Why were coffee houses important to the Enlightenment?

They put people of different ranks at one table with the day's newspapers and no alcohol. In England a penny bought admission and a cup of coffee, and runners carried the news from one house to the next.

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