60 prompts
Checked October 2026

Hot Chocolate Writing Prompt

The steps in order, the cup by all five senses, the best one you ever had, a stand to run.

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Describe the smell of cocoa reaching you in another room, and what you were doing when it found you.By smell: say what it made you stop doing.
Write the steps for making a cup of hot chocolate, in order, for someone who has never made one.Angle: first, next, then, last. Leave nothing to guessing, not even the spoon.
Write about the steam from a cup of cocoa on a cold window, and what you drew in it.By sight: say how long the drawing lasted.

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All 60 prompts

How to make it, step by step 15

A robot will make your cocoa but does exactly what the words say; write instructions that cannot go wrong. Angle: add milk is not enough for a robot. Into what, and when does it stop?
Compare two ways of making hot chocolate that you know, and say which one you would teach a friend. Angle: yours and a grandparent's, or the quick way and the slow way.
Explain how to make cocoa to a snowman who has never seen a kitchen and must not come too close. Angle: he will ask what warm means. Answer him.
List everything you need before you start making cocoa, with one reason beside each thing. Angle: a mug, a spoon, something to stir. Do not forget the person you ask for help.
Teach a younger child how to make hot chocolate, in a letter to keep until they are old enough. First line: When you can reach the top shelf, here is what to do.
Write how to make cocoa as a row of signs that could hang, one after another, along a kitchen wall. Angle: a few words a sign, and each one starts with a doing word.

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How to make it, step by step, continued

Write how to make cocoa as the script of a comic strip: six panels, with what is drawn and what is said in each. Angle: the last panel has no words. Decide what it shows.
Write how to make cocoa for a friend who has had a bad day, with one step that is about the friend and not the cup. Angle: decide where that step goes: first, last or in the middle.
Write how to make hot chocolate for a crowd on a cold day: what changes when one cup becomes twenty. Angle: a bigger pot, a ladle, a line. Say who is served first.
Write how to make hot chocolate in five steps, then say which step is the hardest to wait through. Angle: number them. Waiting for it to cool counts as a step.
Write how to make hot chocolate the way it is made in your home, and say which steps belong to a grown-up. Angle: the hot part is theirs. The stirring and the marshmallows may be yours.
Write the steps for making a cup of hot chocolate, in order, for someone who has never made one. Angle: first, next, then, last. Leave nothing to guessing, not even the spoon.
Write the steps for making hot chocolate in an order that could never work, then put them right. Angle: drink it first, warm it last. A reader should laugh, then learn.
Write the steps for the toppings alone: how to finish a cup of hot chocolate so that it looks like a picture. Angle: cream, marshmallows, a sprinkle. The order matters more than you think.
Write what to do after the hot chocolate is finished: the how-to that nobody writes. Angle: the mug, the pan, the ring on the table. Number the steps.

With all five senses 15

Compare hot chocolate that is too hot, just right and gone cold, in three short paragraphs. By touch and by taste: the middle one is the shortest, because it does not last.
Describe a cup of cocoa to someone who has never tasted chocolate. By taste: you may not use the words sweet or chocolate.
Describe a cup of hot chocolate using all five senses, one sentence for each. By sight first and by taste last, so the reader has to wait the way you did.
Describe drinking cocoa outdoors in the cold: the same cup, with everything around it different. By touch: a cold nose, warm hands, breath and steam mixing.
Describe hot chocolate by sight alone: the color, the steam, the marshmallows going soft on top. By sight: say what the steam does when you breathe across it.
Describe the first sip of hot chocolate and the last one, and what changed in between. By taste: the first is careful. The last is mostly marshmallow.
Describe the mug you like best for hot chocolate, and why the drink tastes better in it. By touch: the handle, the chip in the rim, the weight when it is full.
Describe the smell of cocoa reaching you in another room, and what you were doing when it found you. By smell: say what it made you stop doing.
Describe what happens to one marshmallow in a cup of hot chocolate, from the drop to the disappearance. By sight and by touch: give it a beginning, a middle and an end.
List ten words for hot chocolate that are not hot or chocolate, then put five of them in a sentence each. Angle: velvety, steaming, cloudy. Borrow from all five senses.
When I drink hot chocolate, I think of... Finish the sentence and keep writing to the bottom of the page. Angle: a place, a person or a kind of weather. Follow whichever comes first.
When I drink hot chocolate, I... Finish the sentence five ways, one for each sense. First line: When I drink hot chocolate, I hear the spoon before anything else.
Write about carrying a full mug of hot chocolate from the kitchen to your chair, by what your hands feel on the way. By touch: which finger warms first, where the mug is too hot to hold, and how slowly you walk.
Write about the steam from a cup of cocoa on a cold window, and what you drew in it. By sight: say how long the drawing lasted.
Write what hot chocolate sounds like, from the pour to the last scrape of the spoon. By sound: most people think it has none. List five.

The best cup I ever had 15

Compare the hot chocolate you loved when you were little with the one you would choose now. Angle: what changed: the cup, the toppings, or you.
Imagine the best cup of hot chocolate you have not had yet; write where it will be and who will be across the table. Angle: write it in the future tense, as a promise.
Marshmallows, whipped cream, both or neither on hot chocolate? Give your opinion and convince a reader who disagrees. Angle: three reasons, and an answer to the other side's best one.
Tell about a cup of cocoa you waited a long time for, and whether it was worth the wait. Angle: make the reader wait too. Put the cup in the last paragraph.
Tell the story of a cup of cocoa after sledding, skating or a long walk home in the cold. First line: My fingers could not undo my own zipper, and then there was the mug.
What tells you it is time for the first cup of cocoa of the year? Write about the day it happens. Angle: a first frost, a first dark afternoon. Something decides it for you.
Who makes the best hot chocolate you know? Write a portrait of that person at work. Angle: watch their hands. What do they do that nobody else does?
Write a memory of a cup of cocoa in which the weather outside matters as much as the drink. Angle: begin at the window. End at the bottom of the mug.
Write a newspaper review of the best cup of hot chocolate you ever had, and say what the second-best one lacked. Angle: a headline, three short paragraphs, one sentence of advice for the next visitor.
Write a thank-you note to someone who once handed you a cup of hot chocolate at just the right moment. First line: You did not ask any questions. You just got the mugs down.
Write about a cup of hot chocolate that went wrong: too hot, too thin, or all over the table. Angle: say what you did next. That is the story.
Write about a time you shared a cup of cocoa with someone, and what was said over it. Angle: the talk matters more than the drink. Keep two lines of it exactly.
Write about hot chocolate on a day that was not cold at all, and why you had it anyway. Angle: there was a reason. It was not the weather.
Write about the best cup of hot chocolate you ever had: where you were, who made it and why it beat the others. Angle: start with where your feet were. Get to the cup in the third sentence.
Write the story of one mug in your home, as the mug remembers every cup of hot chocolate it has held. Angle: mugs remember hands. Start with the smallest pair.

A cocoa stand of my own 15

A customer asks your hot chocolate stand for a drink you have never heard of; write how you make it up on the spot. Angle: you say of course. Then you look at what you have.
At the end of the day at your hot chocolate stand, one cup is left; write who gets it. Angle: not you. Or yes, you, but say why you earned it.
Decide what to charge for a cup at your hot chocolate stand, and explain how you worked it out. Angle: cups, cocoa, milk, your time. Say what the first earnings are for.
Design a card for regulars at your cocoa stand and write the small print on the back. First line: The tenth cup is free. The eleventh must be shared.
It starts to snow hard and nobody comes to your cocoa stand; write what you do with a full pot. Angle: the plow driver, the mail carrier, the neighbor shoveling. Someone is still out.
Name your hot chocolate stand and write its sign, its slogan and its one rule for customers. Angle: the rule should be kind, and a little strange.
Two cocoa stands open on the same corner on the same morning; write how the two owners end the day. Angle: rivals at noon. Decide what they are by dark.
Write a how-to for running a cocoa stand: five things to do before you open and one to do when you close. Angle: the closing one is the one new owners forget.
Write a letter asking permission to set up a hot chocolate stand at a school event or a winter fair. Angle: say where, when, who will help and what happens to the money.
Write about the first customer at your hot chocolate stand, and what they said after the first sip. Angle: describe their coat before their face.
Write an advertisement that would make someone cross a snowy street to reach your cocoa stand. Angle: promise one thing only, and make it warm.
Write the menu board for a cocoa stand of your own, with three drinks and a name for each. Angle: one plain, one fancy, one that nobody has dared to order yet.
You open a hot chocolate stand on the coldest Saturday of the year; write the first hour. First line: By nine there were six people in line and I had four cups.
Your cocoa stand has a topping nobody else offers; describe it without giving the secret away. Angle: say what it looks like, what people guess it is, and how wrong they are.
Your hot chocolate stand wins a ribbon at the winter fair; write the thank-you speech. Angle: thank three people, and one thing that is not a person.

How this list was compiled: Original list written for Draw This Next on 2026-10-15: 60 hot chocolate writing prompts in four groups of 15 (How to make it, step by step; With all five senses; The best cup I ever had; A cocoa stand of my own). Each prompt is one thing to write; the line under it gives an angle or a first line, and in the senses group it names the sense to write by. The prompts and first lines are our own, though a prompt this simple may have been used somewhere. The list states no outside fact and gives no recipe: the steps are for the writer to set down as they are done at home. No real shop, maker or product is named. Written for children: nothing here is advice on food or on what to drink, the prompts are for writing and not for cooking, and where a prompt speaks of the hot steps it gives them to a grown-up. The rows and the lines under them were compared with every other list on the site on 2026-10-15. Licence: own work

How it works

A hot chocolate writing prompt works because every writer already knows the subject by heart: the wait, the steam, the first careful sip. These sixty turn that one cup into instructions, descriptions, memories and a small business.

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The how to make cocoa writing prompt

Fifteen prompts ask for the steps in order, and many change the reader: someone who has never made a cup, a robot that does exactly what the words say, a snowman who must not come too close. One asks which steps belong to a grown-up.

A cup of cocoa writing prompt for each sense

Fifteen more describe the cup and tell no story. The line under most names the sense to write by: by sight the steam, by sound the spoon, by touch the heat of a full mug.

Read your steps to someone and have them mime each one. Where they stop, a step is missing.
In a description, save the taste for the final sentence. Make the reader wait for the first sip.

Questions and answers

What is a good hot chocolate writing prompt?

One with a reader in mind. Explain how to make cocoa to a snowman who has never seen a kitchen. Or write the first hour of your own hot chocolate stand on the coldest Saturday of the year.

What is the When I drink hot chocolate writing prompt?

A sentence to finish. Two prompts here open with the words When I drink hot chocolate, I: one asks for five endings, one for each sense, and the other asks the writer to keep going to the bottom of the page.

Are there cocoa writing prompts that are not how-tos?

Yes, forty-five. Fifteen describe the cup by the senses. Fifteen are memories and opinions, such as marshmallows, whipped cream, both or neither. Fifteen run a cocoa stand, from the menu board to the last cup of the day.

How do you write the steps for making hot chocolate?

Number them, open each with a doing word and write for someone who has never seen it done. First, next, then and last keep the order clear. Say which steps a grown-up does, and count waiting for it to cool as a step.