Do you have a writing goal this year? While the whole “New Year, New Me” vibe is overplayed (to the point that we made January’s theme a counterpoint to it), there is something appealing about starting a new habit at the beginning of the year, when the slate is clean. If you have a goal to maintain a regular writing practice in 2026, here are two things to keep in mind:
- You can start to develop a creative habit—or restart one—at any time, whether it’s the beginning of the year, the very end, or somewhere in between, and
- Like all habits, maintaining a writing practice means doing it regularly. That might mean daily, every other day, only on weekends, or whatever works for you.
In my quest to develop a creative routine, I started using writing prompts as warm-up exercises to get my brain going, or as ways to explore my characters, settings, and scenes in unexpected ways. Here are a few prompts from the Glossy Planet team—take whatever resonates with you!
Writing prompts for when you don’t know what to write
- Write a list of objects that are important to you, your character, or a place your character occupies. In case of fire, what are the first things your protagonist would grab?
- Pick one to five songs in the public domain (at present, that would be anything from the year 1930 and before, in any language from around the world, as long as it’s translated to English). Use the lyrics as inspiration, or draw your own lines from those lyrics. – Erick Mancilla
- Set a timer for 10 minutes, describe the last time you experienced a sense of awe.
- For 10 minutes, write about the last time you collapsed into a chair, couch, or bed, too exhausted to move—but don’t use the words “exhausted” or “tired.”
- Spend 20 minutes writing a scene that involves an open window, a star-splattered sky, and a person who hears something they shouldn’t.
Writing prompts for structure and tone
- On a set of index cards, write the key scenes or plot points from a well-known fairy tale, like Little Red Riding Hood or Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Shuffle the cards or deliberately place them in a new order. Then, write the story, following the new structure. How does the tone change? What narrative leaps do you have to make in order to fit the new events? – Alicia Caples
- Write a piece that uses the phrase “the first time” somewhere in the narrative, whether it’s the opening line or falls somewhere in the middle. The piece should have a beginning, middle, and end, and it should capture a change or shift in a situation or in a relationship with another person.
Writing prompts for character
- Interview your protagonist with 20 personal questions. Ask them about their name (do they like it? Who gave them their nickname?), what their home looks like, what they desire, what they believe, who they’d vote for in a major election, how often they talk to their parents, what their friend group looks like…basically, everything you’d want to know about someone you know deeply. Repeat this exercise with your antagonist, side characters, or any other characters you want to understand.
- Write a scene in which your character instructs someone else how to do something they think they know how to do well. How does your character describe the steps? Are they patient, or are they easily frustrated? Is this lesson important to your character, or are they just going through the motions?
- Describe the view from a window, as seen by a character who has just received some very great or very bad news. Don’t mention the news in the exercise. Your goal is to give the reader a sense of the character’s internal life, solely by relying on the way they describe their view. What do they notice, and what is the tone of their descriptions?
Writing prompts for language and dialogue
- Think of a phrase that someone important to your life and/or your story is constantly saying—a habitual line. It should be a line of dialogue that means more than it appears to mean, like “We’ll see” or “I’m doing just fine.” Then, write a piece in which this line is repeated multiple times and establishes the relationship between your character and the other person. How does the meaning of the line change over the course of the piece?
- Find a photograph of a group of people, whether it’s from a magazine, a website, or your social media. Pick one person in the photo and describe what they see from their perspective, using language that feels particular to them. Then, pick someone else in the photo. How would they describe that same scene or moment from their perspective? What words would they use, and what would they see that someone else would not?
- Place two characters in a scene. These characters should know each other well. Give one character a secret that they never tell the other person—but by the end of the scene, your reader should be able to intuitively understand the secret from their dialogue.
