Sad Writing Prompts

Sad writing prompts are a great way to stimulate your creativity and get you in a reflective mood. Whether you’re writing down your feelings, telling a story, or working on song lyrics, sad writing prompts can help you get started with inspiration and feel confident!

Write about the last time you cried in public.
Your first romance breakup.
The moment you knew it was over for you and your partner.
The worst thing that ever happened to you.
The worst day of your life
The worst year of your life
The most depressing person you’ve ever met
A time when you felt completely alone in the world and felt like no one understood you or even cared about you (or vice versa).
What makes you feel the loneliest in this world?
How much do you miss a close friend or family member or a place that no longer belongs to you?
The time you were most afraid of losing someone you cared about, or the time they left forever without saying goodbye (or both).
How much it hurts to be misunderstood by someone you care so much about, and how long it takes for him/her to realize what he/she’s lost through ignorance; write about how that person asks for forgiveness and how long it takes to forgive him/her (and you).
How hard it’s to be on this Earth, with so much pain and suffering around us – how can we go on? How can we stay positive? Why do we even bother trying anymore? What keeps us going when everything seems so difficult?
What’s the saddest thing that’s ever happened to you?
What do you think happens after death? Do you believe in life after death?
Do you think it’s possible to feel too much happiness? What about too much sadness?
What is the favorite thing from your happiest childhood memory that you miss?
Is there anything that makes you long for your teenage years? If you were to go back to high school, would you do anything differently?
What would it be and why if you had the power to change one thing in the world and make it better?
You’re too tired to get up, but you know if you don’t get up now, it’ll be another day before you do anything productive again.
You wake up in the morning, and all your plants are dead.
It’s a memory you’ll never forget because it was so tragic.
Write a letter to someone who made you sad.
The saddest place you’ve ever been and how you felt when you were there.
That time someone was mean to you for no reason, and how you felt for weeks afterward (if ever).
A story about someone who’s sick
A time when you were going through mental health challenges like anxiety or depression
Write a letter to yourself describing your life as you’d like it to be.
Why the rain makes you sad
Where do you go when everything gets too much for you?
Write about a time when someone left without saying goodbye
A story about someone who wants to die because they miss their deceased loved one so much.
A story about someone who had an abortion and feels guilty about it
Imagine the story of a homeless man. What did he go through to become homeless?
The story of a child growing up in a landfill
A soldier who’s afraid to go to war
A forced marriage
Write a list of the things you’ll miss most when they’re gone and why you miss them
A natural disaster and how people are affected by it
The Apocalypse
A dystopian future
A wounded animal
Write about why you think life is much harder today than when our parents were alive (although they’d it rough too). If you can’t remember, you may find a journal prompt in an old diary entry if you’ve always been journaling.
Write about a situation where a close friend or family member betrayed your trust and took advantage of your kindness. What strong emotion did you feel? Did it end your friendship?
You wake up one morning to find that all your memories have been wiped out. What are your first feelings? Anxiety? Sadness?
What was the hardest thing you ever had to do? Why was it so hard? Do you think you’ll ever have to do something like that again? If so, what’ll happen?
What’s one thing about you that sometimes makes you sad but also makes other people happy (or vice versa)?
The worst advice someone has given you, and you wish you’d listened to your gut
Make a list of your failures
Write down what you regret and why
Write a letter to your younger self

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How to Write a Unique Story

To write a unique story, you need to know what makes your story unique.

What’s the one thing you can’t find anywhere else? What’s the one thing that no one else has written about the way you want to write it? What’s the one thing that no one else has thought of?

Once You Figure That Out, Make Sure It’s the Focus of Your Story. Make Sure Everything in the Story Points Back to It

If your characters want something unique, you need to make sure they want that thing (your uniqueness). If someone says something, it must somehow relate to that uniqueness. If there’s conflict in the story, it’s related to your uniqueness – and if there’s no conflict, figure out how to create one!

If you’re having trouble making your uniqueness clear or linking everything to it, go over your notes repeatedly until they’re clear and seem obvious. Then you set the notes aside for a few days – or even weeks – and come back when you’ve completely forgotten about them! That way, they’ll feel fresh again when you return to them later.

12 Creative Writing Assignment Ideas

Writing prompts are the perfect way to start your creative writing project. They can inspire you, help you find your voice, and often give you a writing idea of the kind of story you want to tell.
Here’s how to choose the right creative writing prompts for you
Think about your mood. If you’re feeling happy, choose a happy writing prompt. If you’re sad, choose a sad writing prompt.
Think about the mood you want to convey with your writing. If you want to write something funny, choose a funny prompt. If you want to write something depressing, choose a prompt with a depressing mood.
Think about what kind of story you want to tell with your writing prompt. Do you want it to be realistic? A little realistic, but mostly magical? Or completely magical? Choose accordingly!
Write about something that happened during your day.
Think of a time when something went wrong and how it made you feel.
Think about your experience last year, this year, or ten years ago.
Choose something that made you feel uncomfortable.
Choose an idea or topic that’s completely foreign to you.
Choose an idea or topic that triggers a strong emotional response in you – whether positive or negative!
Choose something you need to research to learn more about it as you write.

Don’t Overdo It

Writing the story starter can be the biggest challenge.

It’s probably one of the hardest things to do. But if you want to connect with people and impress them, it’s worth it!

So don’t overdo it. Be authentic. The most important thing to remember about writing is that you don’t have to be perfect. It’s better if you’re not. It’s okay to make mistakes, and it’s okay not to know the answer to everything.

And if you want to connect with your readers, you must write as you are. The best way to do that’s to use your voice – the best way to connect with other people is through their words!

Length of the Story You Want to Write

When you’re looking for a writing prompt, there are two important things to keep in mind:

The length of the sad story you want to write and the mood you want your prompt to create.

If you want to write a short text, you should use a writing prompt that’s only one sentence long. This way, you’ll be forced to be brief and write a compelling story in just a few words.

For example, if we want to write about “sadness,” our writing prompt could be, “It’s raining on my birthday.” This simple statement might inspire us to write an essay about how much we wish our family would remember our birthdays and send us cards or how sad we feel when they forget.

If you want to write something longer than a short story, such as a long compelling story in an essay or a book chapter, you should select writing ideas with three to five sentences. That way, you’ve more space to explore the story or argument in the prompt. For example, if we want to write about the theme of “love” in Romeo and Juliet (a well-known Shakespeare play), our writing prompt might be, “What does love mean?” On the other hand… maybe not!

How to Write a Tragic Ending

It’s not easy to write a tragic ending, but if you want to write a compelling story, you may need one. It’s especially important that your audience can relate to the tragedy – that it’s real and not just something that happened in a distant land or time. So how do you ensure your audience feels the emotional impact of what’s happening?

First, Think About What Constitutes a Tragedy: Loss, Failure, Grief, and Sorrow

All of these factors must be present for your audience to feel the emotional weight of what’s happening. And then you’ve to portray it authentically. That means you don’t beat around the bush – you want to hit them immediately with the full force of what’s happened and leave them emotionally devastated by what they’ve experienced.

You can also use dialog to get at these feelings. For example, “I’m sorry,” she said as she took his hand in hers and squeezed it gently before letting it go. This shows us what she’s feeling without having to say it explicitly – we know she’s sad because we see it in her eyes and hear it in her voice when she says those words.

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