• 60 prompts
  • Checked October 2026

Writing Prompts About Maps

A map with a mistake, directions to a secret place, the edge of the paper, and your own street.

Writing Prompts About Maps

Show all 60
  1. The map of a school shows a room that is not there. Write what the new kid does when the schedule says to go to it.First line: Room 12 was between Room 11 and Room 13 on the map, and nowhere else.
  2. Write directions to a secret place for someone who is three feet tall.Angle: what they can see from down there: knees, a dog's face, the underside of a table.
  3. A map stops at the edge of the paper, and the road keeps going. Write what is one inch past the edge.First line: The mapmaker ran out of paper, not out of road.

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All 60 prompts

A map with a mistake 15

  • A map has a missing island. Write the island's letter of complaint to the mapmaker. Angle: it has a beach, a hill and eleven goats, and it would like to be noticed.
  • A map shows a bridge that was never built. Write the afternoon two friends go looking for it. Angle: they find the river. Write what is there in place of the bridge.
  • A map with a mistake leads a hiker to a better view than the one she set out for. Write the view. Angle: describe it in the order her eyes take it in: far, middle, near.
  • A mapmaker draws a lake one inch too far to the left on the map. Write what goes wrong for the first family who trusts it. Angle: a picnic, a long walk, dry shoes when they wanted wet ones.
  • Draw a small map with one mistake on it and hand it to a friend. Write what they say when they find it. Angle: keep the mistake small. A stream that runs uphill is a good one.
  • The key of a trail map has the symbols for campsite and swamp mixed up. Write the camping trip. Angle: the tent goes up. Then somebody notices the ground.
  • The map of a school shows a room that is not there. Write what the new kid does when the schedule says to go to it. First line: Room 12 was between Room 11 and Room 13 on the map, and nowhere else.
  • The map on a phone and the map on paper disagree. Write the walk, with one person trusting each. Angle: one says left, one says straight on. Who gives in first?
  • The mapmaker spelled your town's name wrong on the map, and the wrong name is better. Write what the town does about it. Angle: a vote, a new sign, one person who refuses.
  • On the map of the zoo, the lions and the gift shop have been switched. Write one visitor's morning. First line: The sign said souvenirs, and something behind the fence yawned.
  • Write about a map with north pointing the wrong way, and the family that followed it anyway. First line: We were making excellent time in exactly the wrong direction.
  • Write about a wrong turn that was the map's fault, and what the people in the car said to the map. First line: The map was very sure of itself, and so were we, for six more miles.
  • Write an old map's side of the story: it was right when it was drawn, and then the town moved. Angle: the river shifted, the road closed, the bakery became a bank.
  • Write the correction note a mapmaker sends out after printing a map with one big mistake. Angle: what was wrong, what is right, and an apology to the people on the ferry.
  • You find a mistake on a map before anyone else does. Write what you do with the secret. Angle: tell the mapmaker, tell a friend, or go and see what is really there.

Directions to a secret place 15

  • A dog gives a new puppy directions to the secret place where the best stick is kept. Write them. Angle: a puppy is low to the ground. Under the hedge, around the sprinkler, behind the shed.
  • A treasure map has an X and no directions. Write the directions that should have come with it. Angle: begin at something that will still be there in a hundred years.
  • Hide the directions to a secret place inside a letter that looks boring. Write the letter. Angle: the first word of each sentence is the real message.
  • Write directions from the edge of a foggy field to a secret place in the middle of it. Angle: what can be heard and felt: gravel, then grass, then a wooden bridge.
  • Write directions to a secret place for someone who is three feet tall. Angle: what they can see from down there: knees, a dog's face, the underside of a table.
  • Write directions to a secret place in a library: which shelf, which book, which page. Angle: the place is one sentence in one book. Say why it is worth the trip.
  • Write directions to a secret place inside a house you know well, for a guest who has never visited. Angle: count steps, name sounds. The floorboard that creaks is a landmark.
  • Write directions to a secret place that is gone now, for someone who remembers it. Angle: the treehouse came down. The directions still lead to the tree.
  • Write directions to a secret place that only work at one time of day. Angle: follow the shadow of the flagpole at four o'clock.
  • Write directions to a secret place using only landmarks: no street names, no numbers, no left or right. Angle: toward the tall tree, past the thing that squeaks, stop where it smells of bread.
  • Write the directions back from a secret place, and explain why they are not the directions there in reverse. Angle: downhill is faster, the gate opens one way, and you are carrying something now.
  • Write the directions to a secret place as a rhyme, so they are easy to remember and hard to lose. Angle: four lines. Each one ends at a landmark.
  • Write the directions to one secret place three times: as a pirate, a robot and a grandmother would give them. Angle: the same way there, three voices. One of them stops for a snack.
  • You are giving directions to a secret place over the phone to someone who is already lost. Write both sides of the call. First line: Tell me what you can see. No, not the sky. Lower.
  • Your directions to a secret place have one unclear sentence. Write where the reader ends up because of it. Angle: turn at the big rock. There were two big rocks.

The edge of the map 15

  • A kid tapes a new sheet of paper to the edge of a map and keeps drawing. Write what goes on the new page. Angle: start with what is true, then let the made-up places creep in.
  • A map stops at the edge of the paper, and the road keeps going. Write what is one inch past the edge. First line: The mapmaker ran out of paper, not out of road.
  • A mapmaker reaches the edge of what she knows and has to decide what to draw there. Write her choice. Angle: leave it blank, draw a guess, or write I do not know.
  • A ship sails off the edge of the map. Write the sailors' talk as the last drawn coast slides behind them. First line: Well, said the cook, from here on the map is as lost as we are.
  • An arrow at the edge of the map says To the city. Write the part of the trip the arrow left out, as someone who walked it. Angle: the arrow made it look like nothing. It was two days and a river.
  • At the edge of the map someone has drawn a sea monster. Write the monster's side: it was only waving. Angle: it has waited a very long time for a ship to wave back.
  • The box with the map's title covers a piece of the sea. Write what is hidden under the box. Angle: an island, a wreck, a town that would like its name printed.
  • The compass rose sits in the corner of the map and sees everything. Write its complaint about being asked only for north. Angle: it points eight ways. Everybody asks about one.
  • Pick a board game, a made-up game world or a dream, and write what happens when you walk into the edge of its map. Angle: a wall you cannot see, a sea that repeats, or you wake up.
  • Two maps meet at their edges and do not match. Write about the person who lives where they join. Angle: on one map her house is in a field. On the other it is in a river.
  • Write a poem about the edge of the map in which every line begins with Beyond. Angle: each Beyond goes farther out. Let the final line turn around.
  • Write a walk to the edge of the map you carry in your head: the place past which you have never gone. Angle: what you know up to there, and what you guess comes after.
  • Write about the blank part of a map as someone who lives in it. Angle: it is not blank to them. Name three things the mapmaker never came to see.
  • Write the first page of a story that begins where the map ends. First line: Past the last printed road there was a gate, and the gate was on no map at all.
  • Your town sits right on the fold of the map, half on one side and half on the other. Write life in the crease. Angle: the crease is wearing thin. The post office is nearly gone.

A map of my street 15

  • A mapmaker has one hour to draw a map of my street and gets three things wrong. Write how I would set her straight. Angle: that is not a path, it is where the dog goes. That tree is two trees.
  • A new kid moves in. Write the map of my street I would draw for them: only the things a kid needs to know. Angle: the best curb to sit on, the friendly dog, where the ice cream truck stops.
  • Draw a map of my street as it might look in fifty years, then write a tour of it. Angle: keep one thing exactly as it is today. Say why that one.
  • Draw a map of my street from memory, then go and look. Write the list of what I got wrong. Angle: the order of the houses, the number of trees, which side the hydrant is on.
  • Fold a map of my street into a pocket and carry it for a day. Write what got added in pencil by evening. Angle: a new crack, a chalk drawing, a lost glove on a fence post.
  • Give the places on a map of my street the names I would use, not the real ones. Angle: Scraped Knee Hill, the Dragon Hedge, Lost Mitten Corner.
  • Make a map of my street after a snowfall, using only the tracks. Write what each track tells you. Angle: boots, paws, a sled, one bicycle that should have stayed home.
  • Measure a map of my street in my own steps, and write it with distances nobody else can use. Angle: forty steps to the corner, nine to the tree. Whose legs would get it wrong?
  • On a map of my street, mark the best place to stand in each season, and write why. Angle: where the first snow sticks, where the shade is in July.
  • Pick one spot on the map of my street and write the legend kids tell about it. First line: Nobody steps on the third square of sidewalk, and nobody remembers who started that.
  • Write a map of my street as the cat who walks it every night would draw it. Angle: fences are roads. Roads are rivers. One porch is marked with a star.
  • Write a map of my street at night: what is lit, what is dark, and what only shows after the lamps come on. Angle: one window is always the last to go dark.
  • Write a map of the smells on my street, from one end to the other. Angle: cut grass, wet dog, a warm dryer vent, somebody's dinner at six.
  • Write the key for a map of my street: ten symbols and what each one stands for. Angle: a barking dog, a good climbing tree, the puddle that never dries. No names needed.
  • Write what a map of my street leaves out. Angle: who waves, which door is always open, where the sidewalk hums when a truck goes by.

How it works

These map writing prompts start from the paper itself: a missing island, north pointing the wrong way, a town that sits on the fold.

Read the full guide

Map making writing prompts: draw first, then write

Some prompts need a pencil before a sentence. Draw your street from memory, go and look, then list what you got wrong. Tape a new sheet to the edge of a map and keep going. Draw a small map with one mistake and write what a friend says on finding it.

Directions to a secret place

Fifteen prompts are sets of directions, a kind of writing with rules of its own. One allows only landmarks: no street names, no numbers, no left or right. One works at a single time of day. One is the way back, which is not the way there in reverse.

  • Directions are tested by someone else. Hand yours over and watch where the reader hesitates.

Questions and answers

What is a good writing prompt about maps?

One where the map is wrong or runs out. A map has a missing island, and you write the island's letter of complaint to the mapmaker. A map stops at the edge of the paper, and the road keeps going.

Are these writing prompts about maps for kids?

Yes. The lions and the gift shop get switched on a zoo map, a dog gives a puppy directions to the best stick, and a sea monster at the edge of the map turns out to be waving.

How do you write good directions?

Use things that stay put, name them in the order the walker meets them, and say when to stop. One prompt shows the usual slip: turn at the big rock, when there were two big rocks.

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