Write the story the people of the shore tell their grandchildren about the day the explorers' ship sailed away again.Angle: what the visitors left behind, and what they took without understanding it.
A small rover rolls down a ramp onto another planet, the first explorer on wheels; write its log for day one in short sentences.Fact: a rover reached Mars on July 4, 1997, the first wheeled vehicle to work on any world but Earth and the Moon.
Tell an explorer's arrival twice: once in the captain's journal, once by an elder of the shore telling it years later.Angle: the two disagree about who greeted whom.
A clerk on a great treasure fleet lists the animals taken aboard for the voyage home; write his entry for the giraffe.Fact: China's treasure fleet made seven ocean voyages from 1405 to 1433. Its ships brought back giraffes.
A ship's boy turns the sandglass while a sailor counts knots running out on a line; write his log entry for the watch.Fact: sailors measured speed with a board on a knotted line and a sandglass. The word knot comes from it.
A small rover rolls down a ramp onto another planet, the first explorer on wheels; write its log for day one in short sentences.Fact: a rover reached Mars on July 4, 1997, the first wheeled vehicle to work on any world but Earth and the Moon.
A voyaging canoe keeps no written log; write the chant its navigator makes to remember each day of the crossing.Fact: Polynesian navigators steered by stars, birds, swells and winds, and kept their knowledge by oral tradition.
An explorer's navigator works out the ship's position from speed, heading and time alone; write the log on a day he suspects he is wrong.Fact: dead reckoning fixes a position from speed, heading and elapsed time, and its errors can be large.
An explorer's ship is frozen into the ice on purpose, to drift with it; write the log entry for the hundredth day without moving.Fact: the Fram was built for an Arctic expedition of 1893 that planned to freeze the ship into the ice and drift.
The cook on an explorer's ship keeps his own private log of what the crew really thinks of the ship's biscuit; write a week of it.Fact: for long voyages ship's biscuit was baked four times and made six months before sailing.
Five ships set out to sail around the world and one comes home; write the last entry in that ship's log, the day it ties up.Fact: five ships left Spain on September 20, 1519. One, the Victoria, sailed around the world, home in 1522.
Keep the log of an explorer's ship trapped in pack ice, on the day the crew moves out onto the floe.Fact: the Endurance was trapped in pack ice and sank in the Weddell Sea on November 21, 1915.
Keep the ship's log for the day the navigator holds a brass ring up to the noon sun on a rolling deck.Fact: the mariner's astrolabe gave a ship's latitude from the height of the sun at noon.
The leadsman drops a weighted line over the side again and again as the ship feels its way toward an unknown coast; write the log for that hour.Fact: sailors sounded the depth with a lead and line, and charts showed it in fathoms.
Write the log entry for the day an explorer's ship leaves harbor on a voyage nobody aboard has made before.Angle: wind, heading, the last thing seen on shore, and one line the captain crosses out.
Write the log entry for the morning the lookout sees birds and the captain turns the ship to follow them.Fact: on the Atlantic crossing of 1492 the crew saw immense flocks of birds, and the fleet changed course to follow.
Write the log of a space probe that has flown outward since 1977, for the day it becomes the most distant thing people have made.Fact: Voyager 1, launched on September 5, 1977, is the farthest human-made object from Earth.
Write three log entries, a month apart, from an explorer's ship crossing an ocean nobody aboard knew was so wide.Fact: the first European fleet to cross the Pacific took 98 days over it.
First sight of land 15
A lookout on an Arctic expedition cannot tell if the white line ahead is land, ice or cloud; write her report to the captain.Angle: she gives three reasons for each, and one guess.
A Norse sailor steps onto a shore thick with forest a thousand years ago; write what he tells the others in the boat.Fact: Norse voyagers settled in Newfoundland about 1,000 years ago, in eight buildings of sod over wood frames.
A sailor on an explorer's ship draws the first rough map of a bay from the deck; write what he gets wrong and why.Angle: he draws what he hopes is there. Name the river that turns out to be an inlet.
A space probe turns its camera around for one last look at home; describe the picture as the person who first opens it.Fact: on February 14, 1990, Voyager 1 pictured the solar system from outside. In it the Earth is a pale blue dot.
After months at sea an explorer smells land before anyone sees it; write the letter home about that morning.First line: The wind came around in the night and it smelled of something green.
After weeks on the ice, explorers on skis reach the spot they have been walking toward; describe a place with nothing in it.Fact: the first party to reach the South Pole arrived on December 14, 1911, on skis and with sled dogs.
An island appears where the explorers' chart shows open water; write the argument on deck over what to call it.Angle: three names are proposed. Remember that someone may live there and have a name for it already.
The crew of a voyaging canoe, weeks from home, sees a bird that sleeps on land; write what the navigator says.Fact: Polynesian sailors reached nearly every island of the Polynesian Triangle in outrigger or double-hulled canoes.
Describe a coastline seen for the first time through fog, as the explorer who must decide where to anchor.Angle: start with sound and smell. The shape of the land comes last.
The explorers' first sight of land comes at night, as a single light; write the hours until dawn.Angle: nobody sleeps. Say what each person on deck hopes the light is.
The explorers' first sight of land turns out to be a cloud; write the hour after.Angle: who saw it first, who believed it, and what the captain writes in the log.
Write a letter home from the mouth of a strait that might lead to another ocean, the night before the explorers' ships go in.Fact: a fleet entered the strait at the tip of South America on November 1, 1520, and came out into the Pacific.
Write the diary entry of an explorer so long at sea that the ground seems to sway when he steps ashore.Angle: he holds on to a tree. Say what he notices first once the swaying stops.
Write the first report from space explorers landing where no person has stood: what the ground looks like from the window.Angle: color first, then distance, then the one thing that looks familiar and is not.
Write the moment the lookout shouts land, as the sailor who had just bet there was none.Fact: on the Atlantic crossing of 1492 the ships left Spain on August 3 and landed on October 12.
The people on the shore 15
A fisherman watches strangers row in from an explorer's ship and try to ask for fresh water; write the scene from his side.Angle: he understands at once and decides to make them work for it a little.
A girl on the shore is the first to learn a few of the explorers' words; write the day both sides start asking her to explain.Angle: she learns the word for water first, then no, then the word they use for home.
A harbor master watches a foreign fleet of enormous ships arrive with gifts; write his report to the ruler.Fact: China's treasure fleet sailed coasts and islands of the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.
A hunter of the far north meets explorers from a ship stuck in the ice and sees at once what they are doing wrong; write his advice.Angle: clothes, food, dogs. He is polite about it.
A sailor from an explorer's ship is handed a food he has never seen and must eat it politely; write the meal.Angle: the hosts watch his face. Write what he says and what he thinks.
A space probe carries a message for anyone it meets; write the reply.Fact: the golden records on the two Voyager probes carry spoken greetings in 55 languages.
An explorer's crew is invited to a feast on shore and does not know the manners; write the mistake and how it is forgiven.Angle: someone laughs first. Decide which side.
Explorers and the people of the shore trade without a word: one side leaves goods on the beach and backs away. Write it from the trees.Fact: in silent trade, traders who cannot speak each other's language exchange goods without talking.
The explorers ask what lies beyond the mountains; write the answer of someone on the shore who decides not to tell them everything.Angle: she tells the truth about the river and leaves out the pass.
The people on the shore already have a name for the bay; write the conversation in which an explorer learns it.Fact: before the Norse came to Newfoundland, five Indigenous groups had lived at the site, the first 6,000 years ago.
Tell an explorer's arrival twice: once in the captain's journal, once by an elder of the shore telling it years later.Angle: the two disagree about who greeted whom.
Turn it around: space explorers from somewhere else land near your town; write the meeting as the person they ask for directions.Angle: you are the one on the shore this time. What do you show them first?
Write the first meeting of an explorer and a person on the shore who share no words, using only what they do with their hands.Angle: an open palm, a pointed finger, a thing set down on the sand and stepped back from.
Write the story the people of the shore tell their grandchildren about the day the explorers' ship sailed away again.Angle: what the visitors left behind, and what they took without understanding it.
You are a child on a beach and the biggest boat you have ever seen comes around the headland; write what you run home to say.Angle: describe the explorers' ship in words for things you already know.
What to pack 15
A sailor on a voyage of exploration may bring one small chest aboard; write what is in it and the one thing he hides at the bottom.Angle: everything else is useful. The hidden thing is not.
A sailor packs one thing that reminds him of home for a voyage of exploration; write the night he takes it out.Angle: it is small and worth nothing. Say who gave it to him.
A ship is fitted out to spend years frozen in polar ice; write the list of what will keep the explorers cheerful in the dark.Fact: the polar ship Fram carried a windmill that ran a generator for electric lights.
A small ship is chosen for a voyage of exploration because it is small; write the shipwright's letter explaining why small is better.Fact: the caravel was a small sailing ship noted for sailing into the wind and for its speed.
An explorer's crew may bring one animal aboard; write the vote.Angle: a cat for the rats, a goat for milk, a dog for company, hens for eggs.
An explorer's ship comes home and unpacks; write the list of what it carries that it did not leave with.Angle: plants, drawings, a word nobody at home has heard. One thing is not on the official list.
Explorers choose gifts to carry for people they have never met and know nothing about; write the list and the reasons.Angle: one gift to eat, one to wear, one to use. Guess which is refused.
Pack a sledge for explorers walking to the bottom of the world; every item must be worth its weight. Write what is left behind.Angle: count in days of food. The diary stays. The second pair of boots is argued over.
Pack for an explorer's navigator: list every tool on his table and what he would do if each went overboard.Angle: a compass, a sandglass, a lead line, a chart with blank edges. Pick the one he cannot replace.
Pack for space explorers on the first trip to a world where nothing can be bought, borrowed or picked; one person, one small locker.Angle: after air, water and food you get three things of your own. Defend each.
People chose sounds and pictures to send out of the solar system on a record; write your own list of ten for the next probe.Fact: the Voyager records hold sounds and images chosen to show how varied Earth's life and cultures are.
The quartermaster counts barrels of ship's biscuit before a long voyage; write his note to the captain about how long they will last.Fact: ship's biscuit is a dense cracker of flour and water that keeps for years if kept dry.
The ship's doctor wants barrels of lemons for the long voyage and the purser says no; write the argument.Fact: scurvy comes from a lack of vitamin C, and its signs take at least a month without it to appear.
Write the list of what a voyaging canoe carries to start life on an island nobody has lived on.Angle: things to plant, things to raise, tools, and the people who know how to use them.
Write the packing list for an explorer's voyage of two years, then cross out five things when the captain says there is no room.Fact: the fleet that first sailed around the world carried supplies for about two years.
How it works
These early explorers writing prompts put the writer aboard as crew, not as a famous captain: the ship's boy with the sandglass, the leadsman. Fifteen are about the meeting on the shore, many told by the people already living there.
Read the full guide
Age of exploration writing prompts with a fact to stand on
Thirty prompts carry a Fact line. Speed was measured with a board on a knotted line and a sandglass. Ship's biscuit for a long voyage was baked four times. The first fleet around the world left Spain with five ships on September 20, 1519, and one came home.
After the age of sail
Seven prompts go to the ice: a ship frozen in on purpose, a sledge packed for the South Pole, first reached on December 14, 1911. Eight go to space, where the explorer is a probe launched in 1977 or a small rover that reached Mars in 1997.
A log is short. Give the weather, the heading and one thing that should not be in a log.
On the shore, let your narrator be puzzled by the visitors, not amazed by them.
Questions and answers
What are good writing prompts about exploration?
Ones that give the writer a job on the voyage. Keep the log on the day the navigator holds a brass ring up to the noon sun, or write the cook's private notes on what the crew thinks of the ship's biscuit.
Are these explorer writing prompts about real voyages?
Many rest on one: the Atlantic crossing of 1492, the first voyage around the world, China's treasure fleet of 1405 to 1433, Polynesian canoe voyages, the Norse in Newfoundland about 1,000 years ago. The crews are made up.
Are there space explorers writing prompts?
Eight. Write the log of a probe on the day it becomes the most distant thing people have made, a reply to the greetings in 55 languages that the Voyager records carry, or a packing list for one small locker.
Why are some prompts written from the shore?
Because every landfall had two sides. Before the Norse came to Newfoundland, five Indigenous groups had lived at the same site, the first 6,000 years ago. In several prompts the writer is the child on the beach or the fisherman watching strangers row in.