JOURNAL PROMPTS
A journal prompt is a statement or question designed to get you writing in your journal. When you don’t know where to start, if you’re facing a blank page, prompts can help you get over the hurdle and into the flow. They come in many forms, including words, phrases, sentences, questions, quotes, images or descriptions. Most often, a journal prompt is in the form of a question. Sometimes, those questions are concrete, like “what are your current career goals?” or “what are your favorite places to meditate?” They can also be more abstract, like: “what if…?”
But prompts don’t have to be questions: any thought, feeling, idea or observation can serve as a prompt. Taking an idea, expressed in a phrase, sentence, idea or description, and running with it, can be very effective. Think of the starter we all know from childhood fairy tales: “Once upon a time…” The idea is to provoke thought. In a journal, it can be very helpful to choose a topic to explore and use prompts to set you on a new or different path of discovery.
10 Reasons prompts work:
- They provide a starting point
- They inspire thought
- They help get past resistance to a blank page
- They can suggest a new or different approach
- They remove the stress of starting a page
- They’re fun and easy to use
- They help you get unstuck
- They encourage self-expression
- They focus attention
- They make it easier to maintain a consistent journaling practice
Journal prompts can be long or short and they can be simple or more complex: you can use sentence completion or add directions to set the stage for writing and you can use prompts to guide you deeper and deeper into your explorations. For example: Shakespeare said, “to thine own self be true.” Describe a time in your life when you did not follow this advice. What did you learn? Why is this lesson important to you? Or, when someone gives me a compliment, I feel … Because …
Any image, idea, thought, observation or question can become a journal prompt. Find a few prompts to try or create your own. Answer them and move on to the next, or use them as starting points and keep asking yourself, “why” or “because” to move push your writing further.
Choose a form that works for you or try them all!
Here are a few prompts to start with:
