One Scene, One Prompt

A picture of an empty park bench in the rain. A short clip of a door opening onto a dark hallway. A single sentence: "She found a letter that wasn't meant for her." One image. One moment. One prompt — and thirty different stories.

The power of a single focus

When children are asked to "write a story," the blank page can feel infinite and paralyzing. A single, carefully chosen prompt gives the imagination something to push against. Constraints, paradoxically, generate creativity. The limitations of the scene become the engine of the story.

Choosing good prompts

A good prompt is specific enough to be visualized but open enough to be interpreted many ways. It should raise questions rather than answer them. What happened before? Who is there? What happens next? The best prompts contain a small mystery or tension — something unresolved that invites a story.

Images work well

A single photograph — a crumpled map, an old key, a table set for one — can launch ten minutes of quiet, focused writing. Children who struggle with blank-page anxiety find it easier to write from an image. There is always something to describe, even if the story doesn't come immediately.

From prompt to draft

Give children time to look, then time to write without interruption. Five minutes of observation, then fifteen minutes of writing. No stopping to correct spelling — the goal at this stage is to follow the story wherever it goes. Revision comes later.

Sharing and responding

Reading aloud from the same prompt reveals how differently the same starting point can be interpreted. Children are often surprised and delighted by the range of responses. This builds a sense of creative community and shows that there is no single "right" way to write from a prompt.