The jelly inside a jellyfish does the job of a skeleton. Write an advertisement for a body with no bones.Fact: the jelly-like layer inside a jellyfish, the mesoglea, forms the animal's hydrostatic skeleton.
Write a reply to a classmate who insists that a jellyfish must be a fish, since it says so in the name.Fact: jellyfish are not fish: they are invertebrates, animals with no backbone.
A jellyfish trails its tentacles like fishing lines and waits. Write the patience.Fact: jellyfish hunt passively, tentacles trailing like drift lines.
A box jellyfish has twenty-four eyes. Write the argument among them about which way to look.Fact: each box jellyfish has 24 eyes, Wikipedia's jellyfish article says.
A jellyfish fills in a form at a new school: brain, heart, bones, lungs. Write the form and its answers.Fact: a jellyfish needs no lungs or gills, because enough oxygen passes in through its skin.
A jellyfish has no brain. Write how it gets through one day anyway.Fact: jellyfish lack brains, blood and even hearts, NOAA's National Ocean Service says.
A jellyfish has no front and no back. Write what it is like to notice the sea from every side at once.Fact: a jellyfish's parts radiate from a center, so it can sense food or danger from any direction.
A jellyfish is almost all water. Write the story of the small part that is not.Fact: only about five percent of a jellyfish's body is solid matter; the rest is water.
A net of nerves does a brain's work for a jellyfish. Write one message as it travels round the net.Fact: a simple nerve net lets a jellyfish smell, detect light and respond to what is around it.
Aquariums began calling jellyfish sea jellies to drop the word fish. Write the meeting where the new name is chosen.Fact: public aquariums introduced the name sea jellies to avoid using the word fish.
The jelly inside a jellyfish does the job of a skeleton. Write an advertisement for a body with no bones.Fact: the jelly-like layer inside a jellyfish, the mesoglea, forms the animal's hydrostatic skeleton.
Many jellyfish can tell light from dark and nothing more. Describe a day at sea in those two words' worth of seeing.Fact: in many kinds of jellyfish, simple light-sensitive organs can tell light from dark.
Out of the water a jellyfish loses its shape. Write a poem about a thing that is only itself where it lives.Angle: name two other things that need their place to be themselves. End on the jellyfish.
Write a jellyfish's reply to a fish that says nothing can be done without a brain.First line: "And yet here I am," said the jellyfish, "and my kind was here long before yours."
Write a reply to a classmate who insists that a jellyfish must be a fish, since it says so in the name.Fact: jellyfish are not fish: they are invertebrates, animals with no backbone.
Write a scene in which a jellyfish has every reason to be afraid and no heart to pound.Angle: show the fear some other way, or show that there is none.
Write an interview with a jellyfish in which every answer is shorter than the question.First line: "What are your plans for the future?" "Drift."
Write the family history of one jellyfish on a single page, though the family is 500 million years old.Fact: jellyfish have existed for at least 500 million years, Wikipedia's jellyfish article says.
Drifting 15
A jellyfish and a fish in a hurry cross paths. Write their talk about getting somewhere.First line: "Where are you going so fast?" "Away." "Ah. I am going there too, later."
A jellyfish goes wherever the current is going. Write a journey it did not choose and what it saw on the way.Fact: jellyfish pulse along on ocean currents, in cold water and warm, in deep water and along coasts.
A jellyfish sinks from the sunlit surface into the dark. Write the trip in five stops.Fact: jellyfish live worldwide, at the surface and down in the deep sea.
A jellyfish squirts water one way and goes the other. Write its swimming lesson for a young jellyfish.Fact: as a jellyfish squirts water from its mouth, it is propelled forward.
A jellyfish trails its tentacles like fishing lines and waits. Write the patience.Fact: jellyfish hunt passively, tentacles trailing like drift lines.
A message in a bottle and a jellyfish drift side by side for a week. Write what each thinks the other is.Angle: one carries words and one carries nothing. Which is surer of where it is going?
A sea turtle follows a drifting jellyfish. Write the slowest chase in the ocean, and let the jellyfish get away.Fact: sea turtles, tunas, sharks, swordfish and penguins all eat jellyfish.
An aquarium keeps its jellyfish in a round tank. Write the keeper's reason, as told to a visitor.Fact: aquariums show jellyfish in circular tanks so that none are trapped in corners.
Describe a jellyfish drifting past a diver's mask, in three sentences that get slower.Angle: make each sentence longer than the one before, so the reader slows down with it.
In one lake, millions of golden jellyfish cross from side to side every day. Write the crossing from inside the crowd.Fact: in Jellyfish Lake in Palau, millions of golden jellyfish migrate across the lake daily.
The moon jellyfish is among the most energy-efficient swimmers there are. Write the pulse of its bell as a slow drumbeat in words.Fact: studies of the moon jelly show that no animal swims on less energy than a jellyfish.
Some jellyfish swim hard and some only drift. Write the two kinds meeting and trying to be polite.Fact: some kinds of jellyfish swim actively much of the time, and others mostly drift.
The tide goes out, and a jellyfish rides it. Write where the water sets it down.Angle: a harbor, a kelp bed, the shadow of a pier. What is new about the water there?
Write a day in which you drift like a jellyfish: no plan, no steering, only what the day brings.Angle: where are you by supper, and who is surprised to see you there?
Write a poem with no punctuation that drifts the way a jellyfish does and stops only when the page does.Angle: let each line spill into the next. No capital letters after the first.
A glow in the dark 15
A child is given a jellyfish night-light and lies awake wondering about the real ones. Write her questions.Angle: ten questions and no answers. Put the best one last.
A clear jellyfish is close to invisible. Describe one by what you can see through it.Angle: a fish behind it, the light bending, the rim of the bell. Never say see-through.
A jellyfish glows in black water where nothing else gives light. Write what comes to look.Fact: some jellyfish are clear, others brightly colored, and they are often luminescent.
A jellyfish that glows meets one that does not. Write their talk.First line: "Does it keep you awake?" "I do not know. What is awake?"
A Roman writer reported that jellyfish slime made a walking stick give light. Write the walk home that night.Fact: an ancient Roman natural history says jellyfish slime gave light when rubbed on a walking stick.
A small submarine's lamp goes out, and the only light left is a jellyfish. Write the next minute.Angle: what can be read by it: a dial, a map, a face?
An aquarium lights its jellyfish from the side against a blue wall. Write what a visitor sees in the first ten seconds.Fact: aquariums often show jellyfish against a blue background, lit from the side.
Deep down where sunlight never reaches, a jellyfish flashes. Write who the flash is for.Angle: a neighbor, a meal, something larger passing by. Does the jellyfish know which?
Describe a glowing jellyfish for someone who will never see one: shape first, then light, then motion.Angle: an umbrella, a lantern, a slow breath. One comparison for each, and no more.
The green glow of one jellyfish became a tool in laboratories. Write the story as the jellyfish might tell it.Fact: a green fluorescent protein that some jellyfish use to glow is now a tool in biology research.
Jellyfish come in pink, yellow, blue and purple. Write a parade of jellyfish, one color at a time.Fact: some jellyfish are brightly colored: pink, blue, yellow or purple.
Moonlight lies on the water, and a glowing jellyfish hangs just under it. Write the surface as the line between two lights.Angle: which light moves? Which one does a passing boat break?
Work on a jellyfish's glowing protein won a Nobel Prize. Write the jellyfish's acceptance speech.Fact: the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to work with green fluorescent protein, first taken from a jellyfish.
Write a field guide entry for a glowing jellyfish you have invented: its color, its depth and when it lights up.Angle: say plainly that it is made up, then make it sound real.
Write the lullaby that a glowing jellyfish would be, if a light could be a song.Angle: slow, repeated, fading. Four lines, and the last is the first again.
A bloom 15
A bloom of jellyfish blocks the water pipes of a seaside power station. Write the engineer's calm report.Fact: jellyfish swarms sometimes clog the cooling systems of power plants that draw water from the sea.
A bloom of jellyfish passes under a pier at night. Write what the people leaning on the rail say to each other.First line: "It looks as if the moon fell in and broke."
A fishing boat pulls up a net full of jellyfish and no fish. Write the captain's log for the day.Fact: swarms of jellyfish may damage fishing gear by filling the nets.
A jellyfish with a bell over six feet across drifts into a bay of small ones. Write the welcome.Fact: jellyfish range from about one millimeter to nearly 2 meters, about 6 and a half feet, across the bell.
A scientist has counted jellyfish from the same boat for thirty years. Write what her notebook shows.Fact: jellyfish blooms are getting more frequent, Wikipedia's jellyfish article says.
Before it drifts, a jellyfish starts out on a polyp fixed to the seabed. Write the day it breaks away.Fact: young jellyfish, only a millimeter or two across, swim away from the polyp and grow.
The bloom of jellyfish is gone by the next morning. Write the empty bay and the one jellyfish that missed the tide.Angle: the water is suddenly wide. Is that a relief or a worry?
The lion's mane jellyfish may be the longest animal in the world. Write the measuring of one.Fact: the fine tentacles of a lion's mane jellyfish may extend up to 119 feet 9 inches.
Many jellyfish do well in warmer water. Write a report on what that could mean for one bay.Fact: rising sea temperatures may add to jellyfish blooms, since many kinds survive in warmer waters.
One jellyfish in a bloom of thousands wants to be alone. Write its afternoon.Angle: every way out is full of jellyfish. Where does it find room in the end?
One kind of jellyfish can turn back into its younger form and start again. Write its second childhood.Fact: one jellyfish can change from adult back to polyp, so it might be effectively immortal.
One morning the bay is full of jellyfish from shore to shore. Write the harbor's morning news.Fact: when conditions are favorable, jellyfish can form vast swarms.
What gathers jellyfish into a bloom? Write the answer as the current's own boast.Fact: currents herd jellyfish together, above all in years when there are unusually many.
Write the invitation one jellyfish sends out to start a smack, which is the word for a group of them.Fact: jellyfish in a group are a smack, Wikipedia's jellyfish article says.
Write the same bloom of jellyfish twice: once as a swimmer on the beach sees it, once as a hungry sea turtle does.Angle: one sees a reason to stay out, the other a feast. Use the same three details in both.
How it works
These jellyfish writing prompts follow an animal that gets where it is going without a plan: a box jellyfish's twenty-four arguing eyes, the slowest chase in the ocean, a glow used in laboratories, one jellyfish wanting out of a bloom.
Read the full guide
No brain, no bones, and still a character
The first fifteen prompts make a narrator of an animal with almost nothing to narrate with. They ask for a school form with every box marked none, an interview in one-word answers and a message traveling round a net of nerves.
The facts under the bell
Thirty-seven prompts carry a fact from Wikipedia's jellyfish article, National Geographic Kids or NOAA's National Ocean Service. A jellyfish is about 95 percent water, takes in oxygen through its skin and belongs to a group at least 500 million years old.
Write a Drifting prompt with no verb of deciding in it. See how far the piece gets without one.
Questions and answers
What is a good jellyfish writing prompt?
One that takes away the plan. A message in a bottle and a jellyfish drift side by side for a week: write what each thinks the other is. Neither can steer, and only one carries words.
Do jellyfish have brains?
No. NOAA's National Ocean Service says jellyfish lack brains, blood and even hearts. A simple nerve net lets them smell, detect light and respond to what is around them.
Is a jellyfish a fish?
No. National Geographic Kids says jellyfish are invertebrates, animals with no backbone. Wikipedia's jellyfish article adds that public aquariums introduced the name sea jellies to avoid the word fish.
What is a jellyfish bloom?
A vast swarm. Wikipedia's jellyfish article says that when conditions are favorable jellyfish gather in numbers that can fill fishing nets and clog the cooling systems of seaside power plants, and that blooms are increasing in frequency. Fifteen prompts start there.