A city closes its widest street to cars for one Sunday. Write what the street looks like by noon.Angle: who turns up first: skaters, a brass band, a dog, a table and four chairs?
A delivery truck has one box left and no address on it. Write how the driver works out where it goes.Angle: three clues on the box, one wrong porch, one right door.
A road sign is tired of saying the same thing to every car. Write what it would rather say.Angle: pick the sign first: Stop, Yield, Slow, or Bridge May Be Icy.
A taxi passenger will not say where she is going, only left, right and keep going. Write the ride.First line: I will know it when I see it, she said.
A tractor has to cross the highway twice a day. Write its opinion of the cars.First line: They honk as if I had somewhere slower to be.
Compare one mile by bike with the same mile by car. Which shows you more?Angle: list what you see, hear and smell each way, then choose.
Describe a bicycle ride down a hill you know, from the top to the bottom.Angle: the wind, the speed and the one bump you always forget.
Everyone in a traffic jam is going somewhere different. Write three cars and where each is headed.Angle: one is late, one is early and one hopes the jam never ends.
Explain a traffic light to a visitor from a time before cars.Angle: three colors, three meanings, and what people really do at the yellow one.
The family car can talk for one trip only. Write what it says about its passengers.Angle: it has opinions on the crumbs, the singing and who slams the door.
Invent a vehicle with an odd number of wheels and write an ad for it.Angle: say what the extra wheel is for, and one thing the vehicle cannot do.
The seat at the very back of the school bus has heard everything. Write what it would tell.First line: Nobody whispers as quietly as they think.
Tell the story of a skateboard handed down through three kids.Angle: each one adds a sticker and a scratch; say which is whose.
Write a garbage truck's Monday route as if it were a parade.Angle: the crowd at the windows, the music of the bins, the grand finale.
Write about the day the training wheels came off the bike.First line: Somebody was holding the seat, and then somebody was not.
By rail 15
A freight train takes five minutes to pass. Write what is in five of its cars and where each is bound.Angle: make the list odd: oranges, pianos, snow shovels, sand, one zebra.
A model railroad in a basement runs through a town of tiny painted people. Write the news in that town.First line: The 4:15 was late again, on account of the cat.
A railroad reaches a town that never had one. Write the day the first train pulls in.Angle: who stands on the new platform, and who refuses to come.
A town tore out its streetcar tracks long ago. Write a letter asking for the streetcar back.Angle: three reasons, and one of them is only that it was beautiful.
A train conductor knows every regular by their stop. Write the day one of them gets off somewhere new.First line: Mr. Okafor stood up at Linden Street, eleven stops early.
Argue it: is the window seat or the aisle seat the better seat on a train?Angle: defend your seat to the person sitting in the other one.
Describe a train station at rush hour using only its sounds.Angle: start with the loudest and end with one that only you would notice.
Follow a train ticket from the machine to the bottom of a coat pocket.Angle: the punch, the fold, the months in the dark, the day it is found.
The last train of the night carries two passengers, one at each end of the car. Write what each decides about the other.Angle: both are wrong, and kindly.
The subway stops between two stations for four minutes. Write what the passengers do.Angle: nobody speaks for the first three.
Two kids wave to each other from opposite train platforms every morning and have never met. Write the day one crosses over.Angle: what each had guessed about the other, and what was true.
Write a poem with the beat of train wheels: the same four knocks in every line.Angle: read it aloud; if it does not rattle, change a word.
Write the view from the front of a train as it comes out of a long tunnel.First line: First a coin of light, then the whole valley.
You may add one car to a train. Decide what is in it and write a passenger's first visit.Angle: a library car, a garden car, or a pool car that slops on the curves.
You stay awake all night on a train and watch the window. Write what goes by.Angle: towns as strings of lights, a station at three in the morning, the first gray of day.
By water 15
A container ship is stacked with metal boxes the size of trucks. Pick one box and write what is in it and who is waiting.Angle: follow it from the crane to a door.
A family lives on a houseboat and moves it every week. Write the kid's answer to Where do you live?First line: It depends what day you ask.
A submarine crew has not seen the sky for a month. Write the moment the hatch opens.Angle: the first breath, the brightness, the one who looks up longest.
A water bus runs through a city of canals. Write its announcements for one whole route.First line: Next stop, the Fish Market; please mind the gap and the ducks.
An old rowboat lies upside down on the beach all winter. Write what it thinks about until spring.First line: I have counted the same nine planks since October.
Argue it: would you cross the lake by ferry or drive the long way around?Angle: count what each way gives you besides arriving.
The captain of a riverboat lets you steer for one minute. Write that minute.Angle: how big the wheel is, how slowly the boat answers, what the captain does with his hands.
Describe a harbor at dawn from the deck of a fishing boat coming home.Angle: what the crew is too tired to say, and what is waiting on the dock.
Describe rowing a boat for the first time, when it goes every way but straight.First line: The oars had their own opinions.
The morning ferry sails into fog so thick that the far shore is gone. Write the crossing.First line: The captain said we would know we had arrived when we bumped.
Pedal boat or motorboat: write which one has the better afternoon on the lake.Angle: one is faster, and one hears the frogs.
Take a canoe down a slow river and write the trip one bend at a time.Angle: something new around each of five bends, and the best one last.
Three friends launch a raft they built on a pond. Write the first minute afloat, then the second.Angle: it floats. Then somebody moves.
Write a sailboat's afternoon with no wind at all.Angle: what the crew does for six still hours, and who sees the first ripple.
You are the smallest tugboat in a harbor of giant ships. Write your proudest job.Angle: say how big the ship was, and what the captain shouted down.
By air 15
A flight attendant tells the story of the most polite passenger she ever had, who was six.First line: He thanked me for the seat belt.
A friend's plane shrinks to a dot in the sky. Write it from the ground.First line: I waved long after there was anything to wave at.
A glider has no engine. Write a flight with nothing to hear but the air.Angle: the tow, the release and the long quiet circle down.
A helicopter pilot carries something unusual up to a mountain hut. Write the delivery.Angle: a piano, a birthday cake or a goat, and somebody waiting at the top.
A hot air balloon drifts wherever the wind sends it. Write a trip with no say in where it ends.First line: We were aiming for the fairground and came down among some very surprised cows.
A kid is allowed to see the cockpit of an airplane and has exactly three questions for the pilot. Write them and the answers.Angle: the third question is the best one.
A suitcase is put on the wrong plane. Write the suitcase's three days away.Angle: where it went, what it saw from the carousel, how it got home.
An airport at five in the morning: write three travelers and what each one is carrying.Angle: a cello, a cactus, a sleeping child; say where each is going.
Argue it: is the flight part of the vacation, or only the way to get there?Angle: make your case from a middle seat.
Dream up the aircraft people will ride a hundred years from now, and write its first ticket.Angle: the price, the seat, where it goes and the small print.
Flying cars arrive at last, and by Friday there is a traffic jam in the sky. Write the news report.Angle: a reporter on a rooftop, one stuck commuter, one pigeon with a complaint.
From an airplane window at night, a city passes underneath. Write what it looks like from up there.First line: Somebody had spilled a jar of lights and not picked them up.
Invent an airline for birds and write its announcement before takeoff.Angle: where the exits are, when to fold your wings, what to do if you are a penguin.
Write a paper airplane's flight across a classroom as a pilot's log.First line: 10:42, cleared for takeoff from desk nine.
Write your first airplane takeoff, or imagine it, second by second.Angle: the rumble, the tilt and the moment the ground lets go.
How it works
Most of these transportation writing prompts need no trip: a child who has ridden a bus or watched a train go by has enough. Some vehicles do the talking, among them a tractor, a tugboat and an upturned rowboat.
Read the full guide
A story, a description and an opinion each way
Every way of travel gets all three. By rail there is a story (two kids on opposite platforms who have never met), a description (a station at rush hour, by its sounds alone) and an argument (window seat or aisle).
Vehicles to invent
Five prompts ask for something that does not exist: a vehicle with an odd number of wheels, one extra car to add to a train, an airline for birds, a sky jammed with flying cars, the aircraft people will ride a hundred years from now.
Pick a ride you have really taken. The smell of a bus is easier to write than the idea of one.
Give the vehicle a sound before you give it a color.
Questions and answers
What is a good transportation writing prompt?
One that puts the writer in a seat. Write your first airplane takeoff second by second, or the four minutes a subway train stops between two stations and what the passengers do.
What kinds of transportation are on the list?
Wheels: bus, bike, taxi, truck, tractor, skateboard. Rails: train, subway, streetcar. Water: ferry, canoe, tugboat, sailboat, houseboat, submarine. Air: airplane, hot air balloon, helicopter, glider.
Are these transportation writing prompts for kids?
Yes. Nobody is hurt or lost, and no prompt asks for a home address or the way a child gets to school.
Is there a writing prompt about trains?
Most of the fifteen by rail. Stay awake all night on a train and write what goes by the window. Follow a ticket from the machine to a coat pocket. Write the day the first train pulls into a town that never had one.