Journal prompts to fire up your imagination.
What if you won the lottery? What if you woke up in someone else’s body? What if you could fly?
What if you could open your imagination to a whole new world of writing ideas?
Today’s journal prompts encourage you to wonder. Some of them are based on reality. Others ask you to step outside the realm of possibility (or likelihood) and leave the world as we know it behind.
Journal Writing
Journal writing is excellent for birthing new ideas and fleshing them out. Journal prompts help by giving you a launching pad — a place to start your writing session.
Most writers keep a journal close at all times. Through journal writing, we can discover the unexplored corners of our imaginations. We can use our journals to jot down simple ideas and then see where they take us. We can find out if a story idea has potential or if a poem wants to grow out of an image or a few key words.
While it’s not mandatory for all writers to keep a journal, it sure is helpful. Journal writing will keep you writing on a regular schedule, help you hone your writing ideas, and provide a sacred writing space. Take the journal prompts below into your journal and see what happens.
Journal Prompts
You can focus on one of these journal prompts or give all of them a try. Let your mind wander as you work through these prompts. Avoid single-sentence responses. Provide detailed answers and descriptions.
- What if you suddenly came into possession of five million dollars cash?
- What if you could choose a superpower? What would you choose and why? How would you use it?
- What if there was world peace? What would the world look like?
- What if you could go back to school and study anything you wanted?
- What if you had an opportunity to travel to outer space?
- What if you could change careers? You get to choose any profession and will be highly successful. What would you choose?
- What if you could talk to animals?
- What if you had a chance to travel anywhere in the world, but you had to visit one location for a whole year? Where would you go and why?
- What if you woke up one day as a world (or local) leader? City mayor? State governor? President? Queen? What would you do for your community?
- What if you wrote a wildly successful best-selling novel? What would it be about?
Have fun with these journal prompts, and then come back and tell us how they worked for you.
Do you have any ideas for journal prompts? Questions? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment.
Ooh, great prompts! I can’t wait to give these some thought in my journal!
Have fun!
But I’m already the Queen; hence my name. lol
Queen Deb!
I meant the meaning of the name; at least my mother always said it meant “queen bee”. I guess it was a bad attempt at humor.
OH! Does Deborah mean “queen bee?” I didn’t know that. Melissa means “honey bee!”
Nice prompts. It got me thinking: in a way, isn’t literature always a huge “what if”? 🙂
Yep, it sure is! You make a good point, Nacho.
I love journal prompts! I have a whole book of them and of course, right now I can remember nothing. Sorry.
I love them too. In fact, I was thinking about writing a whole book of them, but it sounds like there’s already one out there!
#6 gets my imagination going … every now and then I wonder what it would be like to be a dolphin trainer or a teacher or an actor or really just about anything … I’m a seeker and I like to explore.
Me too, J.D. There are so many fascinating careers out there!
Awww, I wanna be queen but since Deb already called it ummm maybe I can be queen of some other place? O.o
Maybe you could be princess!
What if I lived in Ukraine? What would I do now? It sends shivers down my spine to think about it.
I think this is a question that many of us are asking ourselves. I would hope to be brave and strong for myself and others, and to fight for freedom and what is right.