• 60 prompts
  • Checked October 2026

Rainbow Writing Prompts

The end of the rainbow, a color gone missing, the hour after a storm, the science of the bow.

Rainbow Writing Prompts

Show all 60
  1. Write the storm's side of the story: it did all the work, and the rainbow gets the applause.First line: Forty minutes of my best rain, and they clap for that.
  2. Write the sign that stands at the end of the rainbow, and the smaller sign under it.First line: YOU ARE HERE. (So is everyone else who looked.)
  3. Write the lost-and-found list from the office at the end of the rainbow.Angle: ten items, each one left by someone who made it all the way there.

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All 60 prompts

The end of the rainbow 15

  • A dog reaches the end of the rainbow before any person does. Write what the dog thinks the prize is. Angle: it is not gold. It might be a smell.
  • A grandparent tells the story of the day they nearly reached the end of a rainbow. Write it in their voice. First line: I was about your age, and I had the wrong shoes on.
  • A mapmaker is hired to mark where every rainbow ends. Write the mapmaker's worst week. Angle: the dots on the map will not stay where they are put.
  • A rainbow touches down in a field of cows. Write the cows' side of the afternoon. Angle: one of them has seen this before and is not impressed.
  • At the end of the rainbow there is no gold, only a door. Write what is behind it. Angle: who answers, and what they have been waiting to hand over.
  • From an airplane window a rainbow can be a full circle. Write the passenger who sees it and has no one to tell. Angle: the seat beside them is empty, or asleep.
  • If a rainbow is really a circle, where is its end? Write your answer as a letter to a younger kid. Fact: in theory a rainbow is a whole circle; from the ground you mostly see the top half.
  • Tell the saying about the pot of gold at the rainbow's end as the person in Ireland who first said it as a joke. Fact: in 17th-century Ireland people said you were as likely to find a pot of gold as a rainbow's end.
  • There are two rainbows, one above the other. Write a race between two friends, one to each rainbow's end. Fact: the fainter secondary rainbow appears outside the primary one, with its colors in inverse order.
  • Two kids on opposite sides of town each believe the rainbow ends in their own yard. Write the phone call. Angle: both are right, in a way. Let them work out why.
  • Write the lost-and-found list from the office at the end of the rainbow. Angle: ten items, each one left by someone who made it all the way there.
  • Write the sign that stands at the end of the rainbow, and the smaller sign under it. First line: YOU ARE HERE. (So is everyone else who looked.)
  • You dig at the spot where a rainbow touched the ground and find something that is not treasure but is better. Write the dig. Angle: say what it is in the last sentence only.
  • You set out to walk to the end of a rainbow. Write why it keeps moving. Fact: the Sun, your eye and the center of a rainbow's curve always lie on one line.
  • You stand at one end of a rainbow and shout to the other end. Write what comes back. Angle: an echo, an answer, or a question.

A color goes missing 15

  • A color leaves the rainbow to see the world. Write the postcards it sends home from things that are its color. Angle: pick the color first. Then list where it would go: a fire truck, a lime, a mailbox.
  • A fogbow is a rainbow that is almost white. Write a tale of how it lost its colors, then the true reason. Fact: fogbows come from far smaller droplets of cloud and fog and look almost white.
  • A painter runs out of one color halfway through painting a rainbow. Write how the painting gets finished. Angle: borrow, mix, or change the plan.
  • An eighth color applies to join the rainbow. Write the interview. Angle: what does it say it can do that the other seven cannot?
  • At sunset a rainbow can be all red. Write what the other six colors were doing that evening. Fact: at sunrise or sunset blue and green can be scattered away, leaving a rare red rainbow.
  • The colors of the rainbow have to line up in order, and yellow is late. Write the scene. First line: Orange looked left. Green looked right. Nobody was standing between them.
  • Describe a rainbow to someone using no color words at all. Angle: use temperature, taste or sound for each stripe.
  • Each color in the rainbow thinks it is the most important. Write the vote, and the result. Angle: nobody may vote for themselves.
  • In the second bow of a double rainbow the colors run backward. Write the argument between the two bows over who has it right. Fact: the secondary rainbow's colors are reversed from the primary rainbow's.
  • On a rainbow seen by moonlight, the colors seem to be missing. Write a night walker's account of it. Fact: a moonbow is often perceived as white, because human eyes see color poorly in low light.
  • One morning the rainbow has no green. Write the search party the other six colors send out. Fact: the best-known list has seven colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.
  • Pick the rainbow color you would remove from the world for one day, and write that day. Angle: what looks wrong first, and what you miss by lunchtime.
  • Red is always on the outside of the rainbow. Write the day red asks to swap places with violet. Fact: a primary rainbow's arc is red along its outer edge and violet along its inner one.
  • Some modern lists of rainbow colors leave indigo out. Write indigo's speech at the rainbow's yearly meeting. Fact: a more modern list divides the rainbow into red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue and violet.
  • Write the missing poster for a color that has disappeared from the rainbow. Angle: last seen, how to recognize it, the reward.

After the storm 15

  • A baby sees a rainbow for the first time. Write it from the baby's point of view, with no word for it. Angle: shapes and brightness only. Someone is pointing.
  • A rainbow appears over a game that was called off for rain. Write who is still there to see it. Angle: a groundskeeper, a kid waiting for a ride, a seagull.
  • A rainbow comes out on moving day, over the old house. Write the last look back. Angle: is it a goodbye or a good sign? Let two people disagree.
  • A rainbow shows in the mist of a waterfall on sunny afternoons. Write the guide whose job is to tell visitors when. Fact: the rainbow effect is commonly seen near waterfalls and fountains.
  • A sunset rainbow is a full half circle. Write a wide scene with a whole town under the arch. Fact: at sunset the bow is a full semicircle, with the top of the arch 42 degrees above the horizon.
  • After the storm a small rainbow appears in the spray of a garden hose. Write the kid who thinks they made it. Fact: a rainbow can be made by dispersing water droplets into the air on a sunny day.
  • An evening rainbow stands in the east. Write the weather saying your town would invent about it. Fact: a morning rainbow usually stands in the west and an early evening one in the east.
  • Everyone on the street comes outside to look at the rainbow. Write what two neighbors say to each other for the first time in months. Angle: neither of them looks away from the sky while they talk.
  • Make a poem of seven lines, one for each color of the rainbow, about the hour after a storm. Angle: red for something on the street, violet for something in the sky.
  • The rain stops, the sun comes out behind you and there it is. Write the first ten seconds of seeing a rainbow. Fact: to see a rainbow you need to stand with the sun to your back and the rain in front of you.
  • The rainbow is already fading. Write its last minute as a countdown from sixty. Angle: what is still bright at thirty, and what is left at one.
  • The storm is leaving; half the sky stays dark. Write the rainbow against the dark half. Fact: the most spectacular rainbows come with rain clouds still darkening half the sky.
  • Why is there no rainbow when the sun is high overhead? Write the answer as a talk between a kid and a weather forecaster. Fact: if the sun is more than 42 degrees above the horizon, no rainbow is visible.
  • Write the note a teacher leaves on the board the day the whole class ran to the window to see a rainbow. First line: Lesson moved outdoors. Back when it fades.
  • Write the storm's side of the story: it did all the work, and the rainbow gets the applause. First line: Forty minutes of my best rain, and they clap for that.

How a rainbow forms 15

  • A rainbow is light, not a thing. Write a talk in which one friend explains that to another who wants to climb it. Fact: a rainbow is an optical phenomenon: light refracted, reflected and dispersed in water droplets.
  • A third and a fourth rainbow are possible but almost never seen. Write about the person who claims to have seen one. Fact: light can be reflected more than twice in a raindrop, but those rainbows are typically never seen.
  • Explain a double rainbow as two shifts of workers inside the raindrops. Fact: the primary rainbow comes from one reflection inside the raindrop, the secondary from two.
  • Explain how a rainbow forms to a five-year-old in exactly five sentences. Fact: sunlight bends as it enters a raindrop, reflects inside it, and bends again on the way out.
  • Mist, spray and dew can all make a rainbow. Write about the smallest rainbow you can imagine and where it is. Fact: rainbows can be caused by rain, mist, spray and airborne dew.
  • Sunlight leaves a raindrop at an angle of 42 degrees to make a rainbow. Write the directions for finding one as a treasure map. Fact: the rainbow ray leaves the raindrop at an angle of 42 degrees.
  • Sunlight looks white but holds every color of the rainbow. Write the moment a raindrop lets the secret out. Fact: a rainbow is sunlight spread out into its spectrum of colors by water droplets.
  • Why does the ground cut a rainbow in half? Write the Earth's apology. Fact: we do not see a full circular rainbow because the earth gets in the way.
  • Why is a rainbow curved? Write a made-up answer first, then the real one. Fact: since the raindrop is circular, the reflection it creates is also circular.
  • Write a how-it-works page on rainbows for a visitor from a planet with no rain. Angle: start with what rain is. Then the sun. Then where to stand.
  • Write a science fair speech by a student whose whole project is one sentence: why red is on the outside of a rainbow. Fact: the color bands form with blue along the inner part of the bow and red on the outside edge.
  • Write the instructions a sunbeam is given before it enters a raindrop to make a rainbow. First line: Bend at the door. Bounce once off the back wall. Bend again on your way out.
  • Write the journey of one ray of sunlight through one raindrop of a rainbow, as the ray tells it. Fact: light is refracted entering the raindrop, reflected by its inside surface, and refracted leaving.
  • Write the recipe for a rainbow: ingredients, method, serves everyone. Fact: you need the sun at your back and under 42 degrees high, rain in front, and its rays hitting the raindrops.
  • You are a raindrop with a job in today's rainbow. Write your thirty seconds of work. Fact: the colors of white light have slightly different wavelengths, so each separates from the others.

How it works

These rainbow writing prompts treat the rainbow as weather and as story: a color goes missing, a door stands at the rainbow's end, a sunbeam gets its instructions. About half carry a checked fact, such as why the bow curves.

Read the full guide

A color goes missing

Fifteen prompts start from the seven colors in their usual order. Green vanishes and the other six send a search party. Yellow is late for the line-up. Three use real rainbows that lose their colors: a white moonbow, a fogbow, an all-red bow at sunset.

How a rainbow forms, as a piece of writing

The explaining prompts hand over the science and ask for a voice: the journey of one ray through one raindrop, a recipe for a rainbow, the Earth's apology for cutting the circle in half.

  • Decide where the sun is before you write the scene. A rainbow always stands in the part of the sky opposite it.

Questions and answers

What can I write about a rainbow?

A search: the rainbow's end keeps moving as you walk toward it. A complaint: the storm did all the work and the rainbow gets the applause. Or an explanation for a visitor from a planet with no rain.

How does a rainbow form?

Sunlight bends as it enters a raindrop, reflects off the inside of the drop and bends again as it leaves. The colors of white light have slightly different wavelengths, so each one separates from the others on the way.

What are the seven colors of the rainbow in order?

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, with red on the outer part of the bow and violet on the inner side. A more modern list reads red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue and violet.

Why can nobody reach the end of a rainbow?

The bow's center always lines up with the Sun and your own eye, so it moves when you do. In theory every rainbow is a full circle, and from the ground usually only the upper half shows.

Are these rainbow writing prompts for kids?

Yes. A dog reaches the rainbow's end first, cows watch one touch down in their field, and a baby sees one with no word for it yet.

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