The owner has gone to sleep and the body has not. Write the night as its night crew sees it.Angle: who is on duty, and who finally gets a rest?
The right side of the heart sends blood next door to the lungs, the left side to the whole body. Write them as teammates.Fact: the left ventricle makes the high pressure needed to pump blood to the whole body.
Goose bumps rise on your arm in a cold room. Write the tiny muscles that did it, reporting for duty.Fact: goose bumps form when a tiny muscle at the base of each hair contracts and pulls the hair upright.
A baby has more bones than its grandmother. Write the grandmother's skeleton explaining where the extra ones went.Fact: a skeleton has around 270 bones at birth and around 206 by adulthood, after some fuse together.
A living bone is nothing like the dry one in a museum case. Write its letter to the plastic skeleton in the science room.Fact: bone is built and remodeled throughout life by specialized bone cells.
A skull has one job it takes very seriously. Write the skull as a bodyguard on an ordinary school day.Fact: the skull encases the brain. Its purpose is to protect it and to anchor the muscles of the face.
An X-ray shows you a picture of yourself you have never seen. Write the first look.Angle: nothing is broken. You are only looking, and something surprises you.
Describe your own hand as a machine to someone who has never seen one: the hinges, the rods, how it folds.Angle: count the places it bends before you start.
Give the smallest bone in the body, deep in the ear, one page to say why it matters.Fact: the stapes, or stirrup, in the middle ear is the smallest and lightest bone in the human body.
Inside certain bones is a factory that never closes. Write a night shift in the marrow.Fact: most blood cell formation takes place within the marrow of certain bones.
The knee is where the thigh bone meets the lower leg. Write the knee's diary of one flight of stairs.Fact: the lower leg has two bones, the tibia and the smaller fibula. The thigh bone joins the lower leg at the knee.
Muscles pull and bones move. Write one wave of the hand as the bones of the arm describe it.Fact: most muscles are attached to bones, which act as levers to move parts of the body.
The spine is a stack of small bones, not one long one. Write the bones of the neck passing a message down to the tailbone.Fact: the spine runs from the vertebrae of the neck down to the coccyx, a vestigial tail.
The two lowest pairs of ribs are called floating ribs. Write what they think of the name.Fact: the eleventh and twelfth pairs of ribs attach only to the backbone, not to the breastbone.
Write a skeleton's job description with every duty listed. Holding you up is only the first.Fact: bones support soft tissue, store minerals such as calcium and make blood cells in their marrow.
Write an argument between a tooth and a bone over which of them is tougher.Fact: tooth enamel is the hardest substance in the human body.
Write the thigh bone's speech on being named the longest bone in the body.Fact: the femur is the only bone in the upper leg and the longest bone in the human body.
Your ribs make a cage, and nothing in it is a prisoner. Write the cage's side of the story.Fact: the rib cage protects the heart and the lungs.
A sandwich's journey 15
A bite of sandwich rides down the esophagus, squeezed along like toothpaste in a tube. Write the ride.Fact: muscle behind the food squeezes it forward while muscle ahead of it relaxes. This is peristalsis.
A ring of muscle opens to let the sandwich into the stomach and shuts behind it. Write the doorkeeper's shift.Fact: a ringlike muscle at the end of the esophagus relaxes to let food pass into the stomach.
At the swallow, a small flap folds over the windpipe so the sandwich goes the right way. Write the flap's proudest second.Fact: when you swallow, a flap called the epiglottis folds over the windpipe and food passes into the esophagus.
Bacteria in the intestine help finish the sandwich. Write lunch from the table of the smallest guests.Fact: bacteria in the digestive tract help with digestion.
By the time it leaves the stomach, the sandwich has a new name. Write its goodbye to being a sandwich.Fact: the stomach slowly empties its contents, called chyme, into the small intestine.
Follow one crumb of the sandwich's bread as it crosses the wall of the intestine and joins the blood. Where does it go first?Fact: the small intestine absorbs most of the nutrients in food, and blood carries many of them to the liver.
Later, part of the sandwich is a jump, part is a thought and part is a new bit of you. Write where it all went.Fact: the body uses what it absorbs from food for energy, growth and cell repair.
Once you swallow, you are no longer in charge. Write the sandwich noticing that its eater has stopped steering.Fact: once you begin swallowing, the process becomes automatic.
Saliva gets no thanks. Write its speech as the bread of the sandwich starts to change.Fact: saliva has an enzyme that begins to break down the starches in food.
The small intestine is far longer than you are tall, and folded to fit. Write the sandwich's long walk through it.Fact: the small intestine is about 21 feet long and folds many times to fit in the abdomen.
Three helpers send their juices to meet the sandwich in the small intestine. Write the meeting.Fact: the small intestine mixes food with digestive juices from the pancreas, the liver and the intestine.
Write the first bite of a sandwich as the teeth and the tongue tell it, each sure it does the real work.Fact: the digestive process starts in your mouth when you chew.
Write the large intestine as the last worker on the line, taking the water back out of what is left of the sandwich.Fact: the large intestine absorbs water.
Write the stomach as a washing machine with a sandwich inside, from the machine's point of view.Fact: the muscles of the stomach mix food with digestive juices, stomach acid and enzymes.
You see the sandwich and your mouth waters before the first bite. Write that moment as the mouth.Fact: when you see or smell food, your brain signals the salivary glands to make your mouth water.
A heartbeat 15
A drop of blood leaves the heart, visits a toe and comes back. Write the round trip.Fact: arteries take blood away from the heart, and veins bring it back.
A tiny spark starts every heartbeat. Write the spark's trip from the top of the heart to the bottom.Fact: with each heartbeat, an electrical signal travels from the top of the heart to the bottom.
Blood carries deliveries out and brings the leftovers back. Write a delivery driver's route through the body.Fact: blood carries oxygen and nutrients to the organs, and carries carbon dioxide to the lungs.
Blood goes to the lungs for one thing and comes straight back. Write the errand.Fact: the right side of the heart pumps blood to the lungs, and the lungs add oxygen to it.
Find the pulse at your wrist and write what it is saying, in its own rhythm.Fact: a pulse can be felt with two fingers on the inner wrist, below the thumb.
The heart has four doors that open one way only. Write a valve's working day.Fact: the heart has four valves, and they prevent blood from flowing backward.
The heart is a muscle that feeds itself first. Write the heart explaining why that is not selfish.Fact: the coronary arteries branch off the aorta and supply the heart's own muscle with blood.
The heart sets its own beat. Write its pacemaker cells as the drummer of a band that never takes a break.Fact: the signal for each beat begins in a group of pacemaker cells in the heart's right atrium.
Make a fist. Your heart is about that size. Write the fist and the heart comparing jobs.Fact: the heart is an organ about the size of your fist that pumps blood through your body.
Put an ear to the chest of someone in your family and listen. Write what you heard.Fact: you can hear a heartbeat with a stethoscope or with your ear on someone's chest.
The right side of the heart sends blood next door to the lungs, the left side to the whole body. Write them as teammates.Fact: the left ventricle makes the high pressure needed to pump blood to the whole body.
Write sixty seconds of sitting still as your heart counts them.Fact: an adult heart at rest beats close to 72 times a minute.
Write the lub and the dub as two characters who speak one word each, in turn, all your life.Fact: a beating heart makes a lub-DUB sound. Each half is the sound of heart valves closing.
Your heart has not taken a day off for as long as you can remember. Write it a thank-you note, honest about how seldom you think of it.Angle: thank it for one particular day.
Your heart speeds up when you run for the bus. Write the run as the heart, from the first step to the seat.Fact: when you exercise, your heart beats faster to get more oxygen to your muscles.
A body at rest 15
A heart never stops, so when does it rest? Write the pause between two beats.Fact: between beats the ventricles relax and the heart fills with blood.
A hiccup has no idea why it happens either. Write its attempt to explain itself to the diaphragm.Fact: a hiccup is an involuntary contraction of the diaphragm. The hic is the vocal cords closing.
The air you breathe in is warmed on its way down. Write your nose's winter job.Fact: the nose warms and moistens the air you breathe in, and mucus traps particles on the way.
The diaphragm is a dome of muscle under your lungs. Write one slow breath as the dome.Fact: as the diaphragm contracts, the space in the chest grows and air is drawn into the lungs.
Goose bumps rise on your arm in a cold room. Write the tiny muscles that did it, reporting for duty.Fact: goose bumps form when a tiny muscle at the base of each hair contracts and pulls the hair upright.
Lie on the floor and feel what moves. Write the map of a body at rest: where it rises, where it thumps, where it gurgles.Angle: label the map the way an explorer would.
One person yawns and the whole row catches it. Write the yawn's trip across a classroom.Fact: yawning is contagious, and has even been seen to pass between different species.
The owner has gone to sleep and the body has not. Write the night as its night crew sees it.Angle: who is on duty, and who finally gets a rest?
Sit perfectly still for one minute and write everything in you that did not stop.Angle: a breath, a blink, a beat, and whatever lunch is doing.
While you read, your stomach is still busy with breakfast. Write the two of you at work in one body on different things.Angle: which of you finishes first?
Write a list poem: ten things my body did today without asking me.Angle: end with the one you wish it had asked about.
Write the chair's view of the skeleton it holds up, and the skeleton's view of the chair.Fact: the bones of the skeleton provide support for the body's soft tissues.
You blink without noticing and miss a sliver of the world each time. Write what happened during your blinks today.Fact: a blink spreads tears across the eye and lasts a fraction of a second.
You breathe all night without deciding to. Write the part of you that stays up to do it.Fact: breathing is mostly automatic. Its rate and depth are controlled without your thinking about it.
Your fingernails grow while you do nothing at all. Write the slowest race in the body, nails against hair.Fact: fingernails are made of a tough protein, keratin, also found in claws, hooves and horns.
How it works
These human body writing prompts follow one part at work: a bone, a bite of sandwich, a single heartbeat. Most start from a fact of anatomy read at MedlinePlus, two US health institutes or Wikipedia. Nothing here is about illness.
Read the full guide
Skeletal system writing prompts
The Bones group is a list of writing prompts about the skeletal system. The smallest bone gets a page to say why it matters, the floating ribs give their view of the name, and a tooth and a bone argue over which of them is tougher.
A digestive system writing prompt in fifteen parts
A sandwich's journey keeps to one sandwich, from the mouth that waters at the sight of it to the large intestine taking the water back. Write one stop, or put all fifteen in the order of the journey and write one long story.
Pick one part and stay with it. A page about the flap that guards the windpipe beats a page about the whole body.
Try the fact on yourself first. Find your pulse or count your blinks, then write.
Questions and answers
What is a good human body writing prompt?
One small enough to picture. Write the lub and the dub as two characters who speak one word each, in turn, all your life. Or ask when a heart that never stops gets its rest, and write the pause between two beats.
How many bones are in the human body?
Around 206 in an adult. A skeleton has around 270 bones at birth, and some of them fuse together as a child grows. One prompt hands that fact to a grandmother's skeleton to explain.
What does the stomach do to food?
Its muscles mix the food with digestive juices, stomach acid and enzymes. Then it slowly empties the mixture, called chyme, into the small intestine. That is the account of the US National Institutes of Health, and one prompt tells it as a washing machine.