• 60 prompts
  • Checked October 2026

Experimental Writing Prompts

Methods, not subjects: scissors and tape, a story as a receipt, a crossed-out page, a die, a shelf of labels.

Experimental Writing Prompts

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  1. Use every word of a short paragraph you wrote, and no other word, to write a new paragraph that says the opposite.Cut-up: all the words of one text, rearranged. Tick each word off as it is used, so none is left over.
  2. Cut up the rules of a game you invented and rearrange them into the rules for getting through a Monday.Cut-up: change no words, only their order. Rule four now comes before breakfast.
  3. Cross out words in a recipe you copied out until it gives the method for something that cannot be cooked: a rainy afternoon.Erasure: stir, leave to stand, serve warm. Keep the title line and change what it is a recipe for.

Next step Turn the page into a drawingWrite under a strict rule

All 60 prompts

Cut and rearrange 12

  • Cut a page of dialogue you wrote into single lines and shuffle them. Hand the lines back to the two speakers in the new order. Cut-up: the speakers keep their turns and the lines do not. Write one sentence on what they are arguing about now.
  • Cut a page of your own old writing into single lines, shuffle them, and copy out the new page without fixing anything. Cut-up: underline the one join that surprised you, and begin a new piece from that join.
  • Cut a page of your writing into four quarters, swap the top right with the bottom left, tape it up, and read across the seams. Cut-up: four quarters, rearranged. Copy out the lines that cross a seam and make sense by accident.
  • Cut a set of directions to your front door at every comma and rearrange the pieces into the route through a dream. Cut-up: every piece is used once. Turn left can now follow anything.
  • Cut the first sentence and the last sentence off five paragraphs of your own. Line up the five firsts, then the five lasts. Cut-up: ten sentences that never met. Which two belong side by side, and what is missing between them?
  • Cut the steps of a recipe you wrote out and the sentences of a tale you know into strips. Deal them in turn and write what gets cooked. Cut-up: a step, then a sentence, then a step. Somebody has to stir the wolf.
  • Cut up the rules of a game you invented and rearrange them into the rules for getting through a Monday. Cut-up: change no words, only their order. Rule four now comes before breakfast.
  • Take two pages you wrote on different subjects, fold each in half down its length, lay two halves side by side and read straight across. Fold-in: two sheets folded and joined, then read across. Write down the three best lines the seam makes.
  • Use every word of a short paragraph you wrote, and no other word, to write a new paragraph that says the opposite. Cut-up: all the words of one text, rearranged. Tick each word off as it is used, so none is left over.
  • Write a paragraph about a storm and a paragraph about a kitchen. Cut both into phrases and build one paragraph from the mix. Cut-up: two texts become one. Take the phrases in turn, storm then kitchen, and see what the weather does to dinner.
  • Write eight sentences about your street, one to a strip of paper. Shuffle the strips and write the story the new order tells. Cut-up: a text is cut in pieces and rearranged into a new one. Keep every strip, even the one that fits nowhere.
  • Write one short scene twice from memory, a day apart. Cut both versions into sentences and build a third from alternate pieces. Cut-up: one sentence from Monday, one from Tuesday. The third version remembers things neither of the others did.

A borrowed form 12

  • Draw no map. Write only the legend of one, so that a reader can picture the whole island. Borrowed form: a map legend. A symbol in words, then what it stands for. One symbol is explained as: do not ask.
  • Tell a family getting out of the house on a school morning as live sports commentary. Borrowed form: commentary for two voices. One calls the action; the other is an expert on lost shoes.
  • Tell a friendship from start to finish as the index at the back of a book. Borrowed form: an index. Alphabetical entries with page numbers. Apologies: see also Tuesday.
  • Tell a long car journey as the table of contents of the book somebody could write about it. Borrowed form: chapter titles and page numbers, nothing else. Chapter four is very long.
  • Tell the history of a house as the museum labels beside six objects found in it. Borrowed form: object labels. Name, date, what it is made of, and one sentence more than a museum would allow.
  • Tell the story of a birthday party as the receipt from the shop where everything for it was bought. Borrowed form: a receipt. Items, prices, one refund. The story is in what went back to the shop.
  • Write a bus timetable for a route through one person's ordinary day, with footnotes. Borrowed form: a timetable. Stops, times and small print: does not run when it rains.
  • Write a glossary of ten words that only your family uses, and let the definitions tell what happened last summer. Borrowed form: a glossary. Each entry gives the word, its meaning and an example sentence that gives something away.
  • Write a quiz with four answers to each question that slowly tells the reader what happened to the class hamster. Borrowed form: a multiple-choice quiz. The truth is always answer C, and the hamster is fine.
  • Write only the clues of a crossword, across and down, so that the answers tell the story of one holiday. Borrowed form: crossword clues, each with its number of letters. Seven down: what the dog did (9).
  • Write the instruction manual for a grandparent, with a troubleshooting section at the end. Borrowed form: a manual. If the unit begins a story you have heard before, do not interrupt.
  • Write the terms and conditions a cat would ask a new owner to accept. Borrowed form: numbered clauses. Clause seven covers the sofa, and clause twelve cancels clause seven.

Erase to find 12

  • Cross out every word on a page of your own writing except the verbs. Arrange the verbs that are left as a poem of what happened. Erasure: only the doing is left. Nobody knows who ran, but somebody ran.
  • Cross out words in a recipe you copied out until it gives the method for something that cannot be cooked: a rainy afternoon. Erasure: stir, leave to stand, serve warm. Keep the title line and change what it is a recipe for.
  • Erase a page of your own old schoolwork down to a secret message from the person you were then. Erasure: you add nothing. The message was in there the whole time, under the spelling test.
  • Erase a page so that the words you keep stay where they are, then copy them out again with the gaps turned into line breaks. Erasure: the result can stand in its place on the page or be arranged into lines. Try both and keep the better.
  • Erase a paragraph you wrote in three passes: keep half the words, then half of those, then half again. Keep all three versions. Erasure: three poems from one paragraph. Which pass says the most, and what was lost by the third?
  • Erase a printed weather forecast until it is about a person. Erasure: bright at first, unsettled by evening. Give the poem that person's name as its title.
  • Take a page from the middle of a story you wrote and erase it until it reads as the ending. Erasure: an ending needs fewer words than a middle. Stop crossing out when the last word feels like a door closing.
  • Take a page of a newspaper you may mark and cross out words until a short poem is left. Copy the poem onto a clean page. Erasure: words are taken out of an existing text and what stays is set down as a poem. Keep the words in their order.
  • Take the dullest text in the room, a bus notice or a set of rules, and erase it until it becomes funny. Erasure: the words keep their order and only what stood between them goes. Keep off the grass can lose a word.
  • Take the instruction leaflet of an appliance and cross out words until what is left tells someone how to get up in the morning. Erasure: a toaster knows more about mornings than it lets on. Circle what stays before you cross out the rest.
  • Two writers erase copies of the same page without looking at each other's. Read both poems aloud, then write how they differ. Erasure: the same page, two finds. Did you both keep one word? Start your piece with it.
  • Write out a fairy tale from memory, then erase it until only the villain's side of the story is left. Erasure: cross out the hero wherever the hero appears and see who is still standing in the forest.

Chance decides 12

  • Draw a map with six numbered places. Roll a die to move your character and write one paragraph at each stop, in the order rolled. Chance: the route is not yours to plan. If a place comes up twice, something there has changed.
  • Flip a coin at the end of every sentence of a story: heads, the next sentence brings good news; tails, bad news. Chance: a coin after each full stop. The story ends at the bottom of the page, whichever way the last flip went.
  • Let a dictionary fall open three times and take the top word of each left-hand page. The three words begin, turn and end your piece. Chance: first word, middle word, last word. Look each one up properly before you start.
  • Let the weather decide: if it is raining when you sit down, write in the past tense; if it is dry, the present; if you cannot tell, the future. Chance: look out of the window before the first word, and do not argue with what you see.
  • Number six characters, six places and six problems. Roll a die three times and write the story you are handed, with no rerolls. Chance: the die chooses and the writer obeys. Make the lists before you know what you will need.
  • Put thirty words on slips in a hat. Pull out seven and write a poem that uses them in the order they came. Chance: words pulled at random from a hat. Fill the gaps between them with as little as you can.
  • Roll a die before each paragraph: one or two, stay in the room; three or four, go outdoors; five or six, jump a year ahead. Chance: the die moves the story, not you. Three sixes in a row is three years, and that is the story now.
  • Roll two dice for the hour your scene takes place, then one die for how many people are in it. Chance: eleven at night with one person is another scene from four in the afternoon with six.
  • Shuffle a deck of cards and turn one before each line: red, the line is a question; black, a statement; a face card, someone new walks in. Chance: the deck sets the shape of every line. Stop when an ace turns up.
  • Write a story in which a character makes every choice by flipping a coin, and flip a real coin for each one. Chance: you find out when the character does. Write the coin in the air at least once.
  • Write six endings before you write the story. Roll a die to choose one, then write the story that earns that ending. Chance: the ending is settled first and by luck. Leave the other five endings in a drawer for another day.
  • Write ten plot turns on ten slips and put them in a cup. Each time your story slows down, draw one and do what it says. Chance: a draw from the cup, unseen. A stranger arrives is in there, and so is It starts to snow indoors.

Found text 12

  • Collect ten sentences from the instruction leaflets around your home and arrange them as the instructions for a perfect Saturday. Found text: the wording stays as found and the order is yours. Allow to cool before handling.
  • Collect the last sentence of ten printed things within reach, a leaflet, a label, a page, and arrange them as a piece that keeps ending. Found text: ten endings in a row. Which is the true last line? Put it second.
  • Copy down every word printed on the things on one kitchen shelf. Make a poem using only those words. Found text: labels. Nothing is added, though any word may be used twice.
  • Copy every word printed on the outside of one cardboard box and write the poem of where the box has been. Found text: this way up, fragile, a row of numbers. The box has traveled further than the poem says.
  • Copy the titles along one shelf of books in the order they stand. Add line breaks and nothing else, and read what the shelf says. Found text: spines. Move two books, read it again, and keep the better version.
  • Find a paragraph in a manual that already sounds like a poem. Copy it out, break it into lines, and change nothing else. Found text, untreated: the order and the wording stay exactly as found. Only the line endings are yours.
  • Join the care label inside a coat to the printing on the side of a ladder and offer the result as advice to a new student. Found text: two sources that never met. Wash separately. Do not stand on the top step.
  • Take the place names and times from one printed timetable as the only words of a poem about waiting. Found text: names and numbers alone. Repeat one of them until it sounds like a platform announcement.
  • Take the questions from an old worksheet or quiz, leave out the answers, and arrange the questions as a poem. Found text: questions only. Which of them sounds biggest once it is out of its place?
  • Walk one street and write down the words on its signs in the order you pass them. Break the list into lines and give it a title. Found text: the signs are the poem. Your part is the title and where each line ends.
  • Write a story in which every line of talk comes from the packaging in one cupboard. The telling in between is yours. Found text: Shake well, said the first. Best before the end, said the other. Who are these two?
  • Write twelve lines turn about: one line copied from a sign or a label, one line of your own, until the page is full. Found text, treated: your lines answer the found ones. Mind the gap gets a reply at last.

How it works

These experimental writing prompts each hand over a method and leave the subject to you: cut a page and reorder it, tell a story as a receipt, cross words out until a poem is left, or let a die decide.

Read the full guide

Use a page you are free to mark

Start with your own writing, or with print nobody will miss: a leaflet, a label, yesterday's newspaper. The borrowed forms need no source at all, only a shape to pour a story into: an index, a timetable, the legend of a map.

  • Obey the method first and judge the result afterward.
  • Keep the scraps. A strip that fits nowhere today may open tomorrow's piece.

Questions and answers

What are experimental writing prompts?

Prompts that set the way of writing and not the topic. On this list that means five methods: cutting and rearranging, borrowing a form such as a receipt or a manual, erasing, letting chance decide, and building from found text.

What is the cut-up technique?

A written text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text. In the related fold-in, two sheets are folded in half down their length, placed together and read across.

What is the difference between erasure and found poetry?

Erasure is one kind of found poetry. Found poetry reframes words from other sources by changing spacing and lines, or by adding or deleting text; erasure works by taking words out of one existing text.

What is aleatory writing?

Writing in which chance makes some of the decisions. The word comes from alea, the Latin for a die. Twelve prompts here hand a choice to a die, a coin, a shuffled deck, a slip pulled from a hat or the weather.

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