10 Creative Writing Prompts for Year 7-8 Students

Creative writing is one of the most powerful ways to exercise your imagination. It can be used as both expressive and productive.

• As an expressive mode, creative writing helps you share your ideas, feelings, and experiences of yourself and the world.
• As a productive mode, it allows you to use your knowledge of writing techniques (like story structure, sentence style, and word choice) to create interesting and well-written stories.

In this article, you’ll find creative writing prompts designed to help you improve your writing skills. We explain each type of prompt and how it helps develop your creativity and storytelling. Then, we provide an example prompt to help you get started. 

These prompts are based on the Australian Curriculum for Year 7 and 8 English and include texts that students at this level commonly read.

Table of contents:

• Creative writing prompts
  • Setting, mood, or atmosphere
  • Narrative points of view
  • Narrative structures
  • Symbolism, imagery, and connotations
  • Themes
  • Context
  • Genre
  • Unique voice
  • Purpose
  • Adapt a literary text

Get the full list of creative writing prompts here!

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Creative writing prompts

These prompts encourage you to think creatively and improve key skills aligned with the English syllabus. Even if you haven’t read the suggested texts, you can still find value in these prompts! 

1. Experiment with setting, mood, or atmosphere

Practise making descriptions of different settings to understand how writers create a certain feeling or mood in a story. When you write about a setting, you show how a narrator or character experiences it. 

Writers use words in special ways to make readers feel different atmospheres and emotions. By experimenting with setting, mood and atmosphere in your own writing using narrative techniques of telling and showing, you will learn how to make places feel real and bring out emotions in your stories.

Sample question:

• Imagine a scene in a deserted amusement park at dusk, inspired by the setting in Skellig by David Almond. Describe how the atmosphere shifts as night approaches.

2. Experiment with different narrative points of view

Take a narrative text and then change the narrator; rewrite it from a different character’s point of view. You can change the narrator of your story to another character in the story or perhaps a new character. 

This type of creative writing explores how different points of view and focalisation (focusing on a character’s thoughts and feelings) shape the way readers experience a story. By shifting perspectives, you can learn more about why characters act the way they do. It also affects how the reader sees the events in the story—sometimes making them more emotional, surprising, or even confusing, depending on the perspective used.

Sample question:

• Retell a pivotal scene from The Giver by Lois Lowry from the perspective of The Giver himself. How does this viewpoint alter the reader’s understanding?

3. Experiment with different narrative structures

Practise restructuring a narrative and see how these changes affect the reader. This type of response applies your knowledge of narrative structure. Instead of telling a story from beginning to end (linear narratives), experiment with mixing up the order or using flashbacks (non-linear narratives). This helps build suspense and makes readers cursious about what will happen next. 

Sample Question:

• Compose a story inspired by The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, where Death narrates events out of chronological order, weaving past and present.

4. Use symbolism, imagery, and connotations

Experiment using different symbolism to add deeper meanings to your story and evoke emotional responses in your readers. A symbol is something that stands for a bigger idea, like a storm representing anger.

Use imagery to help the reader feel what the narrator feels–explore different types of images to create rich and textured writing that casts a spell! This type of creative writing allows you to explore how different language features, especially figurative ones, shape meaning.

Sample question:

• Recreate a scene where a single red balloon floats away, symbolising a character’s deep-seated loss or longing, reminiscent of the rich symbolism found in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne. Explore the emotional weight attached to this image.

5. Write texts based on a theme

Start with a big idea and build your story around it. For example, imagine your character is looking back on their life and realises they had the wrong values all along (this is your theme). Then, work “backwards” to create the setting, characters, and action to show this idea. 

This approach helps you understand how stories explore important ideas and emotions. It also gives you a chance to express universal themes—things that everyone can relate to—while adding your own unique perspective and experiences.

Sample question:

• Develop a story centred on friendship overcoming adversity, drawing inspiration from Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson.

6. Show understanding of context

Explore how different historical and social contexts shape stories and use them to add depth to your own writing. Writers are often influenced by different time periods and places, which affects the values, beliefs, and perspectives in their stories. By setting your story in a specific context, you can create more complex characters whose actions reflect their world. This also helps you understand how stories are shaped by their time and why context is important in storytelling.

Sample question:

• Write a journal entry from the perspective of a young soldier during World War I, inspired by Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo.

7. Change the genre

Try transforming your favourite stories into new genres, such as turning a mystery into a romance or a fantasy into a thriller. By doing so, you’ll see how stories use specific styles, structures, and techniques to create different effects depending on their genre. 

For example, you could rewrite Harry Potter as a detective story, where Harry investigates mysterious happenings at Hogwarts instead of battling Voldemort. This exercise allows you to explore how genre influences storytelling and shapes a reader’s experience.

Sample question:

• Rewrite a scene from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis as a psychological thriller.

8. Find your unique writing voice

Your writing voice is the way you express yourself in stories. Create a text that best represents you and your ways of speaking, thinking, and experiencing the world. This type of writing will encourage you to experiment with tone, perspective, and structure to write stories that are engaging and personal.

Sample question:

• Write a personal memoir about a time you faced a challenge, employing a unique and engaging narrative voice, similar to the introspective tone in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie.

9. Write for a specific purpose

Every piece of writing has a goal—it might entertain, inform, persuade, or analyse something. Practise writing different texts with different purposes. This helps you make your ideas stronger and more engaging for your audience.

Sample question:

• Create a monologue for a character from Trash by Andy Mulligan, encouraging others to stand against corruption.

10. Reimagine a classic literary text

Take a classic text and reimagine it for a new modern audience. This helps you think creatively about how stories change over time and how different perspectives can add new meaning.

Sample question:

• Reimagine a scene from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Create a short story from Mercutio’s perspective, exploring his hidden emotions and thoughts. Try to use language that reflects the style and register of the play.

Want more prompts? Get the full list of creative writing prompts here

Practise with these creative writing prompts!

Get inspired with free creative writing prompts for Year 7-8 English

Download now

Practise with these creative writing prompts!

Fill out your details below to get this resource emailed to you.

"*" indicates required fields

First Name*

Last Name*

Email*

Postcode*

Grade in 2025*

Grade in 2025123456789101112

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Resource (DO NOT DELETE OR CHANGE)

By submitting this form, you agree to receive promotional messages from Matrix about its products and services. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the link at the bottom of our emails.