6 Writing Prompts for Any Teenager from a YA Novel
1. Life often interferes with our long-term goals. It can most likely be an illness that consumes our life and takes us down a path of unrequited love. Describe a time you become fatally ill and met the love of your life who ultimately fell victim to another horrible, debilitating disease.
2. Sometimes important news comes at the wrong time. Tell a story about when you were eavesdropping on your friend and found out they were pregnant and offered to take them to the abortion clinic but your car broke down on the way there and the two of you were left to discuss all your past mistakes and regrets in the short seventeen years you’ve been alive and in the end your friend got an abortion from a sketchy doctor and died of complications and left you to reflect on what friendship and love really is.
3. As much as we try to avoid them, accidents happen. Talk about the time when you caught your mother having an affair with her boss and she told you that if you tattled on her she would lose everything so you keep your mouth shut but the anxiety makes your grades slip so your cute history teacher pulls you aside after class and you confess to him that your mom is a slut and he tells you to follow your heart so you tell your dad and he doesn’t say a word for four days before blowing up at during a tense family dinner and storms out leaving you, your younger brother who is addicted to heroin, and your whore of a mother in the thickest silence that has ever existed and that’s where the story ends because it leaves the story unresolved and therefore mysterious.
4. Describe an experience that you considered a disaster like the time when you got in a car accident after a party at your rich friend’s lake house where you caught your boyfriend kissing a cheer leader so you cry by the side of the road before you’re kidnapped by a madman and that’s it that’s your life now sorry.
5. We all need advice from time to time. Reflect on that time Evan discovered he was gay and couldn’t tell his homophobic parents but you told him to because even though you’re straight you somehow think it’s your place to tell him what to do so he gets kicked out of his house and lives with your family for a few months but falls into a deep depression but ultimately accepts himself and you finally discover how to not be a piece of shit and insert yourself where you shouldn’t but here’s the twist: you’re still a piece of shit.
6. Some of our best memories can be associated with color. Reflect on a past experience in which you saw a certain color and triggered a flashback to summer camp when you were fifteen and you met a boy named Charlie with olive eyes who wore the same grey sweatshirt and smoked behind the lunch room and made you feel like no other girl in the world and when he took your virginity by the lake after the bonfire you snuck back to your bunk smiling before being caught by your counselor who noticed your shirt a little undone and somehow connected the dots that you popped your cherry and told you that sex doesn’t mean real love and then walked into the darkness and that boy with olive eyes went back to Seattle and you never ever saw him again but you think about him every single day, dreaming of his smoke scented sweatshirt and dark curly hair.
