I usually mostly enjoy being a freelancer—more than I've enjoyed any past jobs, if nothing else. Even so, there are those days that it just feels like a personal affront that it's 2025 and we still have to work for a living. No matter what you do for money, there are times that it's just a grind.

And I get why a lot of writers neglect work in their stories. If you're the kind of person who writes (or reads) as an escape, then your job is probably one of the primary things you want to escape from. It already sucks up 40+ of your hours every week. Does it really need to take up real estate in your creative writing, too?

There's a long and strong tradition of writing poems and stories based on works of visual arts. Such a strong tradition there's a whole genre devoted to it, ekphrastic writing, which is a term that can mean either a vivid, dramatic description of a work of art or a piece inspired by a work of visual art, depending on the context and who you're talking to. 

I've experimented with ekphrasis in the past and find it to be a fun exercise. I also find that music can be an excellent source of creative inspiration, either as a direct prompt for story ideas or as a way to set the right atmosphere for a setting or home in on the personality of a character. Then there are other forms of art that have a very direct and obvious way of potentially inspiring stories. Things like drama and movies, for instance, which can be directly adapted into a story or poem, or can serve as the jumping-off point to extend the story beyond what's shown in the original. Many songs fit into this category too, I think, especially ones with lyrics that already tell a story or introduce characters, and visual art that depicts an action-in-progress can function in the same way. I'll group these things together as “narrative art” because they have some kind of built-in plot progression. 

What I wanted to focus on in this post are a few prompts for getting story ideas from non-narrative works of art—things like instrumental music, music with abstract lyrics, or visual works like statues, abstracts, still lifes, and landscapes. Here are some ways I've gotten ideas from other works of art that I thought might be helpful for other writers, too. 

I love playing with cryptids, fae folk, and other creatures from myths and folklore in my fiction. For one thing, it’s just a ton of fun to research and write about these otherworldly beings or unconfirmed beasties. They’re also versatile in terms of what they can add to a story, as useful as a source of tension, terror, or danger as they are for whimsy and humor.

I recently went to the Albatwitch Day festival in Columbia, PA for the first time, which gave me a whole slew of new ideas for cryptid-adjacent stories (and at a very good time, too, considering I’m about to delve into writing a cryptid-heavy novel that’s been bouncing around my head for the past few months). 

In that spirit—and since we’re now officially in Spooky Season—I thought some cryptid-themed writing prompts might be a fun source of inspiration.

I have a habit of writing a lot of eating and cooking scenes into my stories. This wasn’t something I realized on my own—my writing group pointed it out, and after that I started to see just how often I use food in my fiction.

There are a few different reasons for this, I think. One is that I came of age reading fantasy series like Wheel of Time, Lord of the Rings, and Redwall, all of which feature frequent, detailed descriptions of meals. There’s also the fact that I spent most of my twenties working in food service and in the spirit of “write what you know”, I end up writing a lot of characters who prepare food for a living.

But, most of all, I think food can be a very useful device for fiction writers in both literary and genre camps. One of the presenters at the In Your Write Mind conference last weekend was Tim Waggoner, who gave a talk on writing with an immersive point of view. One point he made was that the strongest senses—sight and hearing—aren’t the most effective for immersing a reader because they’re powerful enough people can use them from a distance, or even through a screen. To activate our weaker senses—scent, taste, and touch—we need to be right in that environment, and this makes the reader feel right there too when you call on these senses.

TV, like the internet, is simultaneously among the best and the worst things for a writer. It can absolutely be a distraction that can prevent you from writing if you allow it to be. But it’s also a potentially valuable source of inspiration and ideas, and one that I think gets overlooked because it’s viewed as an unproductive time sink.

What’s great about TV for a writer is that everything on-screen is edited and packaged for maximum viewer retention. It’s a case study in creating emotional hooks, setting up cliffhangers, establishing tension and intrigue, and building characters through dialogue and actions—all things that are very useful for both prose writers and poets. 

You can also get more direct story inspiration from watching TV, and not always in the ways you might expect. Here are three prompts that can encourage you to see TV in a more creative way:

I’m definitely a cat person; there’s no denying it when you own four of them. For the most part, I try not to be one of those annoying pet parents that always finds a reason to show off pictures of the furbabies or work them into conversations.

That said, pets can be a very useful tool for a writer. The animals a character owns—and how they view and treat them—can do a lot to characterize them for the reader. Pets can be characters in their own right, too, or can serve nicely as symbols to reinforce the themes or imagery you’re playing with. They can also be a great way to introduce movement and sensory details like touch, smell, and sound, not to mention emotions—depending on the situation, they can be a catalyst for grief, frustration, and fear, or a source of comic relief from them.

In that spirit, here are three pet-based prompts that can help you play with ways to utilize pets in your writing.

Christmas-themed things can be a bit of a landmine for storytellers. It’s pretty easy for them to veer into cliché or maudlin territory, and a lot of the familiar themes and plots have been written to death.

That doesn’t mean you can’t get inspiration from the holiday season, though. Here are some prompts that can get your brain going on some stories in the Christmas spirit.

I recently got back from my cross-country adventure to Yosemite and back to Pittsburgh by train. Trains and buses are my preferred method of traveling when I have the time. Planes are efficient, sure, but there’s something special about seeing the landscape go by while you’re passing through it that’s inspiring for me. The constant stream of inspiration and potential new ideas going by outside the window makes it easy for me to get my head into a creative space.

In that spirit, I thought it might be fun to write prompts based on the things that gave me ideas or piqued my interest during the trip. Here are 3 writing prompts based around travel.

Stories can come from the most unexpected places. Training yourself to pay attention to these small moments of inspiration can help you to find the stories that are floating around you in everyday life.

Case in point: even just your regular trip to the grocery store can be a goldmine of potential stories. Here are three prompts to help you develop that paying-attention-to-the-mundane muscle.

There are always stories all around us, waiting to be told. Finding those stories is often just a matter of looking at things in new ways, taking the time to uncover the narrative within them.

That’s the goal of the exercises below: unlocking the stories that are inside objects you see and use every day. You can use them to start a new story from things in your environment, or picture the objects in your characters’ environment in a work-in-progress when you’re stuck in a story and not sure where to take it.