Know Yourself Writing Prompts
A Progressive List — 80 available (updated January 26, 2021)
You don’t have to do these in any order. You can pick and choose. There are no requirements at all.
If you don’t want to submit your story as part of this publication, feel free to just take these prompts and use them to spur something inside of you to write.
Know Yourself Writing Prompts
1. What are, or would be, my faults as a parent?
2. What do you most regret so far?
3. What sort of things have made you envious recently?
4. Name three works of art (music, literature and visual art/architecture) that mean a lot to you.
5. If someone likes me a lot, I start to feel…
6. If I were to explain a bit more to people about how I felt about things, they would…
7. List the (now guilt-inducing) occasions when you were especially mean to certain people.
8. If all jobs paid the same, what would you choose to do?
9. Are you feeling broadly optimistic about humanity and the future of the planet?
10. Describe an occasion when a friend let you down.
11. Write down the bad things about your relationship with your parents. Now write down the bad things about your adult relationships.
12. What do you appreciate most about your life right now?
13. What are you currently lying to certain people around you about?
14. Describe the last time you cried.
15. What negative character flaws do you fear — in your worst nightmares — that other people have spotted about you?
16. What is the dominant emotion in your life right now? How can you use this emotion to improve your life?
17. When do you cry or want to cry (as an adult)?
18. If you found out you would die in a year, describe what you would do for the next 365 days.
19. What event do you think impacted the world the most?
20. What happened to you in your childhood?
21. Describe what your life would be like if you were born 100 years earlier?
22. Who are you?
23. Describe your first experience dealing with death.
24. In love, what’s your type?
25. Write about an embarrassing high school experience.
26. What slightly unhealthy things feel attractive in a partner? How might this relate to your opposite sex parent?
27. What would you ideally like someone to feel compassionate towards you for? What would it be beautiful if they could forgive?
28. If someone has hurt you in the past, write a forgiving letter to them.
29. What’s something you disagree with about the way you were raised?
30. List five ways in which you are, after all, quite difficult to live with?
31. If you had to evacuate your home because of a natural disaster, what three things would you take with you? Why?
32. What historic moment do you wish you could have attended and why?
33. What did you learn about relationships from your parents?
34. What career advice would you give to your 16-year-old self?
35. What personality trait do you find attractive in others that you don’t have yourself?
36. What are you most scared of losing, and what would you truly lose if you lost it?
37. Write down 10 things for your bucket list.
38. What kind of drama do you sometimes get caught up in? What can you do to rise above it?
39. What would selling out look like in your life?
40. Where are you currently saying yes in your life when you really should say no?
41. What’s one conversation that transformed your life?
42. Write about the last time you were pleasantly surprised.
43. Write about a time you felt left out.
44. Write about the friend that moved away.
45. In what ways do you procrastinate and how do you justify it to yourself?
46. Where would you most like to live? (And why aren’t you living there already?)
47. Which of your talents can you trace back to growing up?
48. What do you get in the most arguments about?
49. When do you feel happiest?
50. Assuming your life is a story and you’re the author, what does your happy ending look like?
Added on April 19, 2020
51. Describe a time you felt lonely.
52. When are you most unhappy in relationships?
53. What conversation do you need to have today, and with whom?
54. What is one family tradition you’d like to carry on in the future?
55. Where have you been getting distracted in life?
56. What’s one skill you’ve always wanted to pick up? Why haven’t you?
57. Describe your earliest memory.
58. What do you need to do by the end of the year to make this year meaningful?
59. What’s the one thing you’d never do and why?
60. Who in your life are you trying to prove something to?
Added on June 20, 2020
61. What talent would you most like to have? What would you do with it?
62. What is something not many people understand about you?
63. What have you learned about yourself from previous relationships?
64. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be and why?
65. What’s your happiest memory from your childhood?
66. What was the hardest decision you’ve ever had to make?
67. Describe a typical day from your high school experience.
68. If you could go back, what would you like to change about your education?
69. Describe a time when you sabotaged your own success.
70. What were you afraid of most as a child?
Added on January 26, 2021
71. If you could consider yourself dispassionately, what might you warn a friend about if they were thinking of starting a relationship with you?
72. What did you most enjoy doing as a child? Do you get those feelings now?
73. Do you ever tell yourself you can’t do something? What is it and why?
74. What are the three most important things children should be taught in school?
75.Write about the place you call home.
76. What makes you feel guilty?
77. Describe the biggest lie you ever told.
78. Where are you still carrying old pain? How can you let it go?
79. If you could, what is the one thing you would change about your past?
80. When you feel bored, where does your brain wander to?
