Write the gingerbread man's escape from the oven as he would tell it, out of breath.First line: The door opened a crack, and a crack was all I needed.
Write the invitation to a housewarming party at a gingerbread house.Angle: the day, what to bring, and a polite line about not leaning on the walls.
Give the last word of the gingerbread man story to the old woman and the old man, in their kitchen that evening.Angle: an empty tray, two cups of tea. Do they bake another?
A whole tray of gingerbread people runs at once. Write the escape as a team.Angle: who boosts whom off the counter, and who goes back for the one with no icing yet?
Describe the kitchen from the gingerbread man's height in the first three seconds of the chase.Angle: table legs like trees, a cat's tail, a doorway full of daylight.
The gingerbread man reaches the river. Write the minute before anyone offers to help.Angle: water he cannot cross, feet coming up behind. What does he think about first?
The gingerbread man runs through your town and not past a farm. Write who chases him and where he gets away.Angle: a crossing guard, a dog walker, a bus. Name three places he passes.
The gingerbread man stops running for one minute to catch his breath. Write what he notices for the first time.Angle: the sky, the smell of grass, his own shadow. He has only been alive since breakfast.
It starts to rain while the gingerbread man is on the run. Write what rain means to a cookie.Angle: soft feet, a smudged icing smile, a dry spot under a wide leaf.
Put the gingerbread man's run into directions someone could follow: every turn, every chaser, every near miss.Angle: start at the oven. Use landmarks a cookie would notice.
Report the gingerbread man's escape for the village newspaper.Angle: a headline, two witnesses who disagree, and a baker with no comment.
Retell the gingerbread man's run as an announcer calling a race.First line: And he is past the old man, folks, the old man is not even close.
See the gingerbread chase through the eyes of the old woman who baked him.First line: I gave him raisin eyes so he could see, and he used them to find the door.
Tell the gingerbread chase as the last one in line, who never had a chance of catching him.Angle: a snail, a toddler, a very old dog. Why did they join in at all?
Tell the gingerbread man's run backward, starting at the river and ending at the oven door.Angle: each sentence undoes the one before. What does the story mean in reverse?
This gingerbread man is slow and has to get away by being clever. Write his run.Angle: a shortcut, a disguise, a ride in a wheelbarrow. No outrunning anyone.
Write the gingerbread man's boast as he runs, in your own words, and make it rhyme.Angle: two lines to shout over his shoulder. Then write what the chasers shout back.
Write the gingerbread man's escape from the oven as he would tell it, out of breath.First line: The door opened a crack, and a crack was all I needed.
A gingerbread house 15
A gingerbread house stands on the table until January. Write what it sees from where it sits.Angle: the dinners, the homework, the cat. Who breaks off the first piece, and when?
Compare a gingerbread house on its first day and on its last.Angle: crisp edges and bright candy, then one wall gone and the door eaten. Which is better?
Describe a gingerbread house using smell and touch before you say what it looks like.Angle: warm spice, sticky fingers, a wall that bends a little before it snaps.
Describe the gingerbread house that came last in the contest, as the builder who loves it anyway.First line: It leans. I meant it to lean.
Design a gingerbread house with one room nobody else would think of. Describe the room.Angle: a library of wafer books, a pool of blue icing, a garage for a candy sled.
Explain making a gingerbread house to a friend who thinks one comes out of the oven in a single piece.Angle: walls, roof, icing, candy. Say which step always goes wrong and how to save it.
Lay down the building rules for a gingerbread village, as its very strict mayor.First line: Rule one. No resident may eat a neighbor's fence.
Powdered sugar is snowing on a gingerbread house. Write how the people inside talk about the weather.Angle: is it a good snow or a sticky one? Who has to shovel the icing path?
The roof of the gingerbread house slides off just before the judges arrive. Write the next five minutes.First line: We had icing, four hands and no time at all.
Should a gingerbread house be eaten or kept? Write your opinion.Angle: think of the hours it took, and of how it smells. Which wins?
Tell about making a gingerbread house with someone much younger or much older than you.Angle: who holds the walls, who eats the gumdrops, and whose idea is the chimney?
Two builders want different things for the same gingerbread house. Write the argument and the house they end up with.Angle: one wants it tidy. One wants every candy in the bag on the roof.
Who would live in a gingerbread house? Write a day in the life of its owner.Angle: what is breakfast, who knocks, and what is the trouble with a candy doorknob?
Write the invitation to a housewarming party at a gingerbread house.Angle: the day, what to bring, and a polite line about not leaning on the walls.
You shrink to the size of a gumdrop and walk into the gingerbread house you made. Write what you find.Angle: the mistakes look bigger from inside. So does the candy.
A new ending 15
Change one thing at the start of the gingerbread man story so that the old ending cannot happen. Write the new story.Angle: no river, a locked oven, a baker who asks him to stay. One change only.
End the gingerbread man story with a trick: this time the cookie outsmarts the fox.Angle: plan the trick in three steps. The fox should not see step three coming.
The fox tells the ending of the gingerbread man story his way. Write his side.First line: I offered him a ride. That part is true.
The gingerbread man makes it across the river, and a new chase starts on the other side. Write who joins in.Angle: keep the pattern of the old story, with animals from a different place.
The gingerbread man meets a fox who has already had dinner and only wants to talk. Write their talk at the river.Angle: what does a fox ask a cookie, and what does a cookie ask a fox?
Give the gingerbread man story an ending where he turns around and goes home on his own.First line: Halfway across the field he thought of the kitchen, and how warm it had been.
Give the last word of the gingerbread man story to the old woman and the old man, in their kitchen that evening.Angle: an empty tray, two cups of tea. Do they bake another?
In this ending the gingerbread man reaches a place where everyone is a cookie. Write his first hour there.Angle: what are the houses made of, and what does nobody there ever say?
In your ending, the ones chasing the gingerbread man only wanted to tell him something. Write what it was.Angle: it has to be worth running that far for. Does he believe them?
Some tellings of the gingerbread man story end at a river with a fox. Write an ending where the fox keeps his word.Angle: the far bank, dry feet, and what the two of them do next.
Start a sequel on the day after the gingerbread man gets away: where does a cookie go to live?Angle: a bakery window, a doll's house, a ship's kitchen. Who are the neighbors?
Write a new ending in which the gingerbread man learns to swim.Angle: a cookie in water is a problem. Solve it: a leaf boat, a coat of icing, a helpful duck.
Write a new ending in which the gingerbread man stops running because he is tired of running alone.Angle: who does he let catch up, and why that one?
Write two endings for the gingerbread man, one happy and one funny, and say which fits the story better.Angle: three sentences each. Then one sentence of your own opinion.
Years later the gingerbread man tells the ending himself, to a tray of new cookies. Write what he says.First line: Sit still, all of you, and I will tell you why we do not trust rivers.
A recipe as a story 15
A gingerbread recipe has come down through a family, with notes in three different handwritings. Write the notes.Angle: one cook adds, one crosses out, one writes only: more ginger.
A grown-up reads the gingerbread recipe aloud and a small child does every step slightly wrong. Write the baking.Angle: tell it in turns: the instruction, then what really happened.
A recipe card for gingerbread gets wet and half the words are gone. Write the story of the cook who fills the gaps.Angle: what does she guess right, what wrong, and how does the batch taste?
Add the last step of a gingerbread recipe, the one that is never printed: who gets the first cookie.Angle: the baker, the helper, the neighbor, or the one who did the dishes?
Decorate a gingerbread person in words: write each line of icing as a sentence about who this cookie is.Angle: a bow tie means one thing, a zigzag another. Give the cookie a name last.
Imagine what happens to gingerbread inside the oven as a story with no people in it, only heat, dough and time.Angle: an adult opens and shuts the door. Everything in between is yours.
Let the ginger tell the story of the gingerbread, as the spice with the loudest voice in the bowl.Angle: what does ginger think of the sugar, and of quiet nutmeg at the back?
Set out the recipe for gingerbread as stage directions for a play.First line: Enter GINGER, loudly. MOLASSES follows, in no hurry.
Slow down at the moment the gingerbread dough is cut into people, and write only that.Angle: the dough is one thing, and then it is twelve. Who is cut from the last scrap?
Tell the making of gingerbread as a mystery: one spice is missing, and the cook must work out which.Angle: the clues are taste, color and smell. The suspect is at the back of a shelf.
Tell the story of gingerbread dough from the bowl to the cooling rack, as the dough.First line: I started the day as a jar of molasses and a tin of ginger, with no plans.
Write a gingerbread recipe as a story, with the ingredients as characters who meet in a bowl.Angle: who arrives first, who does not get along, and who brings everyone together?
Write a recipe for gingerbread cookies in which every step begins with a feeling.Angle: Patiently, stir. Bravely, roll. Find a feeling for each step.
Write a recipe for the perfect gingerbread afternoon, not for the cookies.Angle: one kitchen, two helpers, a song on repeat. List it as ingredients and steps.
Write the gingerbread recipe as the rolling pin would tell it.First line: They always need me in the middle, when things are lumpy.
How it works
The gingerbread man first ran in print in May 1875, and in that tale a fox ends the chase. Half of these gingerbread writing prompts retell his run or hand the last page to the writer.
Read the full guide
A writing prompt about a gingerbread man needs the old story first
In the 1875 tale an old woman bakes him and he leaps from her oven. He outruns her, her husband, farm workers and farm animals. Fifteen prompts retell that run: called by a race announcer, moved to your own town, told by the last chaser in line.
Gingerbread house writing prompts
Fifteen prompts build one: a roof that slides off before the judges arrive, a strict mayor's rules for a whole village, a walk through your own house at the size of a gumdrop. Making a gingerbread house? A writing prompt goes best straight after the real thing.
Retelling the run? Change who is chasing before you change anything else.
In a recipe story, give every ingredient one line to say.
Questions and answers
What is a good gingerbread writing prompt?
One that gives the cookie a problem. It starts to rain while the gingerbread man is on the run: write what rain means to a cookie. Or tell his run backward, from the river to the oven door.
How does the gingerbread man story end?
In the tale as first printed, a fox catches him and eats him. Retellings often leave out his last words, and in some he stops at a riverbank and accepts the fox's offer of a ride across.
Are there gingerbread man writing prompts with a new ending?
Fifteen. The fox keeps his word, the cookie learns to swim, the chasers only wanted to tell him something, or one change at the start of the story means the old ending cannot happen.
What can you write about making a gingerbread house?
The steps in order, the step that always goes wrong, and who did what. In most houses royal icing holds the walls and roof together, so the wait while it sets is a good place to slow the writing down.