94 Your Story Writing Prompts

For as long as I can remember, one of our guiding principles on the Writer's Digest team has been that we're writers helping other writers. As such, we love features that allow us to interact with other writers in their element. That's what inspired one of our most popular features: Your Story.

The idea behind Your Story is simple. We provide a prompt; several writers write a short story based off the prompt; and then, a winner is chosen (and published in Writer's Digest magazine) from among the entries.

(100 Creative Writing Prompts for Writers.)

"I'm guessing the first one would have appeared sometime between 2004-2006," recalls former online editor Brian A. Klems. "We decided to revamp a section of the magazine by using a prompt, making it a contest, and calling it Your Story. We, as a staff, would spend a lunch and narrow it down to the top five. Then, I'd post them on our forum and have forum users vote for the winner that would appear in a future issue of the magazine."

While we don't have a forum anymore, the formula is still fairly similar with a few finalists selected, posted to the site, and a winner chosen by WD readers. And recently, more and more readers have been asking for previous prompts.

So we've collected them in this post (with a few exceptions that we still need to track down). Just click the link to find our previous prompts, winners, and more. And be sure to participate in our currently open Your Story posts for entering stories and/or voting for winners.