Writing Prompt | The objects that speak to you
"The things we notice often tell the deepest stories."
Welcome to this week’s Writing Prompt!
Every other week, we bring you a prompt to keep your creativity flowing, sharpen your focus, and spark new ideas. This week, it’s all about the objects around you - the small, ordinary things that carry meaning or memory.
This week’s prompt: The objects that speak to you
Look around your space. Identify three objects that feel significant to you right now. They could be ordinary or unusual-a mug, a book, a photograph, a keychain, a pair of old shoes.
Pick one object from your list.
Write a short piece inspired by it. Let the object guide your story, poem, or reflection.
Explore genre freely: fiction, memoir, creative non-fiction, poetry, even a letter or diary entry.
Tips from our editors
Ask yourself: Why does this object matter to me?
Notice sensory details: texture, smell, colour, sound. Small details bring scenes alive.
Don’t worry about plot-follow the object wherever it leads you.
Here’s a few examples to get started:
The worn leather cover of your favourite notebook could spark a memory of someone who inspired you.
A chipped coffee cup might tell the story of a morning ritual that grounds you.
An old ticket stub could become the entry point to a story about a first adventure.
Share Your Work!
While this week’s prompt isn’t part of a contest, we encourage you to write and share with our community. Leave your work in the comments below!
I wrote about my mother's vintage Brownie camera:
http://bit.ly/3Ye40QT
The Little Brass Plaque.
Just to the right of the door, leading from the living room to the stairs and the upper levels, is one of a pair of comfortable chairs, one where I sometimes doze on the odd occasion when I feel the need for taking an afternoon’s siesta.
I would stress that taking an afternoon’s nap is not the normal run of the day, there being too many leaking taps, doggy walks, curtain poles to re-hang, and on, and on, and on. But from my – shall we call it my napping chair - I have a clear view out of one of the front windows of my house, so can easily spot changes in the weather, passers-by and anyone feeling the need to approach my front door.
Just in front of the chair, between me and the small upright piano which sits below the window, is an old wooden chest.
The chest is about eighteen inches high, eighteen inches wide and two feet long. It more probably should be described ‘lidded wooden box on castors’, and takes up the central space between the chairs, a sofa and our small black cast iron wood burner.
Inset into the lid of the of the chest - and yes - I will continue to accredit it with the honorary title of being a chest - is a small brass plaque which reads ‘L.Lloyd O.A - MX96369’. Len Lloyd being his name, Ordinance Artificer meaning he held certain engineering skills in his role in the Royal Navy.
This was my father’s toolbox and returned with him following the War. Throughout my childhood years it sat in a corner of our leaky wooden garage, serving to store a few rusty tools, screws, nails and a few other bits and pieces right up until the time my father finally passed away in the late nineties.
There was something about the history of that old box, its shape, its size, its solidness – I don’t know – an attachment that made me want to hold onto the oil stained toolbox after both of my parents had finally passed away. So I spent some time, one spare afternoon cleaning the wood of its years of accumulated dirt and grime, rubbing linseed oil into the wood and repolishing the brass plaque to get it into a state where it would work as a small, if quirky, coffee table for practical use in our front living room.
Fortunately my wife also likes the chest, and we use it to store a small wooden trainset our kids had played with during their early childhood years. The kids have moved on now, but the train set still sits there in its box. No doubt the box will play its part again one day, to be opened this time for the delight of our grandchildren when they finally come along.
There is no more to say really, the chest sits there as it has done throughout the years and hopefully as it will do until it finally passes on to one of our children, the small brass plaque acting as a reminder of the history of a small wooden box.