A creative writing prompt is a simple technique or a few words or phrases that you can use as a starting point for your creative writing.

Once you’ve started writing and used the message as inspiration, you’re on your own.

Where your writing goes after this is completely up to you and your imagination.

Many creative writers are uncomfortable using creative writing prompts.

They think it’s cheating or taking a shortcut and that all their ideas should be 100% new, original and their own.

On the surface that sounds like an honorable point of view. Of course, we all want to be able to compose a work that is exclusively ours and the fruit of our creativity only.

We know how bad we would feel if we simply copied someone else’s writing and claimed it as our own.

But the fact is that nothing is completely new.

Everything creative is based on the works of those who have gone before us.

For example, think about when a major car company begins designing a new model.

They can introduce many new features, some of which are truly revolutionary in car design and innovation. Most likely, they will use state-of-the-art technology to design each new element of the new model.

But that new car, even after all the millions spent and thousands of man-hours of design and labor invested, will still have four wheels and an engine.

It’s the same with creative writing.

At the extreme limits of creative writing, you can make up new words, you can even make up new letters. But they will have meaning somehow.

Creative writing is about the expression of ideas and emotions. Yes, it can be as experimental as you want, but it will always come back to that human expression.

Creative writing prompts help us explore that creative expression.

If you are a dressmaker, do you make the material from scratch? Do you have your own factory that processes raw fibers into larger pieces of material? Unlikely. You probably buy material that has already been woven and then make your dress out of it.

If you’re a musician who composes using computer software, do you write a whole new software program from scratch every time you want to start a new composition? Not very likely. Find the software that works for you and use it to help you explore your creative musical ideas from there.

If you’re a photographer who specializes in photographing buildings and architecture, do you go and build a new building every time you want to take some photos? Do you build a new camera, piece by piece? No. You have cameras that you feel comfortable with and then you find buildings that inspire your photography.

Would you consider any of the 3 artists described above as “cheaters” or “not being original”?

So if you have any concerns about whether the use of creative writing prompts is cheating or disallowed in some way, think again.

You will no doubt realize that, in fact, creative writing is already, in many ways, one of the simplest and purest ways to create, because we need very little equipment, tools, or technology to get started.

So using a few words or techniques as a starting point is even less of a concern.