At a school concert the page turner turns two pages at once. Write what the pianist does next.Angle: the audience never knows, or the audience loves it.
Someone in your home hums while they cook. Write what the tune tells you about them.Angle: say whether they know they are doing it.
An accordion in a secondhand shop window waits for its next player. Write what it hopes for.Angle: small hands or large, a kitchen or a stage.
A song comes on in a grocery store and a character stops walking. Write where it has taken them.First line: Aisle six, and suddenly I was nine.
A song is stuck in a character's head for a week. Write the diary.Angle: by Thursday it has spread to the whole house.
An old tape has no label. Write what music is on it, and whose voice comes in at the end.Angle: the voice says only one sentence.
Argue it: does a song hold on to a time better than a photograph does?Angle: test it on one day you remember both ways.
Far from home, a character hears a stranger whistle the tune their mother sang. Write the conversation.First line: Excuse me. Where did you learn that?
The music a character loved at twelve turns up on an old phone. Write what it is like to press play.First line: The first track, and I knew exactly what I had been wearing.
Put on a piece of music with no words, close your eyes and write the place it sounds like.Angle: indoors or out, crowded or empty, morning or night.
Someone in your home hums while they cook. Write what the tune tells you about them.Angle: say whether they know they are doing it.
What music played in the car when you were small? Write one ride.Angle: who chose it, who complained and who sang anyway.
Write a memory with a song in it and never say which song.Angle: give its speed, its mood and one instrument, and let the reader guess.
Write about a song that takes you straight back to one room. Describe the room and leave the song unnamed.Angle: who is there, what is on the table, what season it is.
Write about a song you used to love and cannot stand now.Angle: say which of you changed.
Write about a tune that belongs to one person in your life.First line: Nobody else is allowed to whistle it.
Write about the day you heard a kind of music you had never heard before.Angle: where you were, what you took it for, and whether you went looking for more.
Write the music of one summer: what played, where it came from and what it was the soundtrack to.Angle: a radio on a porch, a speaker at a pool, a neighbor learning the drums.
The instrument I would play 15
A beginner plays a whole tune without stopping for the first time. Write that minute.First line: I got to the end and nobody had winced.
A family has one piano and four people who want to play it. Write the schedule taped to the lid.First line: 4:00 to 4:30, scales. No exceptions, Dad.
A music teacher's very first student comes back thirty years later for one more lesson. Write it.Angle: the teacher still taps the same pencil.
An accordion in a secondhand shop window waits for its next player. Write what it hopes for.Angle: small hands or large, a kitchen or a stage.
Argue it: is the drum kit or the flute harder to learn, and who gets to decide?Angle: let a drummer and a flute player each have one paragraph.
Build a musical instrument out of things in a kitchen and write its first performance.Angle: what it is made of, what you named it, who covered their ears.
Choose the instrument you would play if you could learn any, and write your first lesson.Angle: the sound you want, and the sound that comes out.
Describe a musical instrument you know by its weight, its smell and its worn places.Angle: say whose hands wore them.
Describe two instruments as two guests at a party.Angle: the trumpet arrives loudly; say what the oboe is doing in the corner.
If your voice were a musical instrument, which one would it be? Say why.Angle: think of how you sound when you laugh, not when you sing.
Listen to one instrument all the way through a piece of music and follow nothing else. Write where it went.Angle: when it led, when it hid, when it stopped and waited.
Two neighbors learn two different instruments on either side of one wall. Write the month it takes them to play together.Angle: it begins as a complaint.
Write a letter from a violin to the kid who has stopped practicing.First line: The case is dark and I have been counting the days.
Write about practicing an instrument on a day when it is going badly.Angle: the same four bars, eleven times; say what the twelfth is like.
Write the concert of the triangle player, who has one note in the whole piece.First line: One note, and I had better not miss it.
A concert 15
A concert is held in a living room for nine people on folding chairs. Write it.Angle: the dog is the tenth listener and has views.
A concert poster stays on a bedroom wall for ten years. Write what it has watched.Angle: the corners curl, the tape is replaced twice, the room changes around it.
A kid in seat 14C conducts along with the whole concert. Write what the real conductor notices.Angle: the kid is half a beat ahead, and right.
An orchestra tunes up before the concert. Describe that sound as a place you could walk into.Angle: a forest, a harbor, a market before it opens.
Argue it: is music better at a concert or alone through headphones?Angle: say what each one gives you that the other cannot.
At a school concert the page turner turns two pages at once. Write what the pianist does next.Angle: the audience never knows, or the audience loves it.
The concert is over and the hall has emptied. Write the ten minutes when only the cleaner and the echo are left.First line: The last chord was still up in the ceiling somewhere.
The crowd will not go home, and the band comes back for an encore. Write what the band has left to give.Angle: tired hands, one more piece, the quietest one of the night.
Describe a concert from the very last row.Angle: the band is the size of your thumb, and the sound still reaches you.
The person who sells programs at the door never gets to see the concert. Write what she hears through the wall.First line: I know every piece by its applause.
Rain falls on an outdoor concert and nobody leaves. Write the last piece of the night.Angle: wet strings, a drummer under an umbrella, the crowd singing the part the rain drowns.
Review a concert given by a washing machine, a kettle and a dripping tap.Angle: name the piece, praise the soloist and complain about the ending.
Write about the first concert you ever went to, or the one you wish it had been.Angle: who took you, how loud it was, what you talked about on the way home.
Write the thirty seconds before a concert begins, as the lights go down.Angle: a cough, a program dropped, the first foot on the stage.
You are backstage with a friend who is about to play for the first time. Write the two minutes before she walks on.Angle: what you say, and the thing you nearly said.
Silence 15
A band walks on stage, lifts its instruments and plays nothing. Write what the audience hears.Angle: a chair, rain on the roof, somebody's stomach.
A librarian and a drummer trade jobs for a day. Write the afternoon.Angle: one of them is surprisingly good at it.
A music box winds down. Write its last three notes and the quiet after them.Angle: each note comes later than the one before.
A town loses its music for one day: no radios, no humming, no bells. Write that day.Angle: say who notices first and what people do with their hands.
A whole choir takes one breath together before the first note. Write that breath.Angle: forty people, one second, and the conductor's raised hand.
Argue it: is silence a kind of music?Angle: before you answer, sit still for one minute and write down what you hear.
Describe the quietest place you know, and what you can hear there after one minute.Angle: silence is never empty; list what fills it.
Make a list poem of the small sounds you hear only when the music stops.Angle: the refrigerator, a clock, your own breathing; ten lines.
On a long drive somebody switches the music off, and nobody turns it back on. Write the next few miles.First line: Nobody reached for the dial, and that was how I knew.
Pause a piece of music halfway through and write what you think happens next. Then press play.Angle: say whether the music agreed with you.
The power fails in the middle of a loud party and the music cuts out. Write the first ten seconds.First line: Somebody was halfway through a sentence they had been shouting.
Someone takes their headphones off for the first time all day. Write what the world sounds like without the music.Angle: three sounds they had forgotten were there.
Two people say nothing, and the radio playing in the next room says it for them. Write the scene.Angle: the music changes once, and so does the silence.
Write about a rest in a piece of music, from the rest's side.First line: I am the part where nothing happens, and everything depends on me.
Write the silence right after a piece of music ends, before anyone claps.Angle: how long it lasts, and who breaks it.
How it works
These music writing prompts are for people who listen and people who play. None asks for a lyric or a tune, and no song is named, so the music in each piece of writing is the writer's own.
Read the full guide
Writing prompts using music
Three are written with music on. Put on a piece with no words and write the place it sounds like. Follow one instrument all the way through and write where it went. Pause a piece halfway, write what happens next, then press play.
Fifteen prompts about silence
They start where the sound stops: the second before the applause, a music box winding down, a long drive after somebody switches the music off. One is told by a rest, the silence written into a piece, as long as the note it matches.
Leave the song unnamed. A reader who knows it will guess, and one who does not loses nothing.
Write the sound before the feeling: loud, thin, late, a little out of tune.
Questions and answers
What is a creative writing prompt about music?
One that turns music into a scene. Describe two instruments as two guests at a party. Review a concert given by a washing machine, a kettle and a dripping tap.
What are some story ideas for music lovers?
Far from home, a stranger whistles the tune a character's mother sang. A family of four shares one piano. An accordion waits in a secondhand shop window for its next player.
Are these songwriting prompts?
No. Nothing here asks for a lyric, a chorus or a melody. They are prompts for writing about music: hearing it, playing it, sitting through a concert, noticing the quiet when it ends.
Do I need to play an instrument?
No. The instrument prompts are about one you would play: a first lesson imagined, a letter from a violin to the kid who stopped practicing, the schedule taped to the lid of a shared piano.