Things to Write About: 180 Creative Ideas for Essays, Poems, Speeches and More

It’s Sunday night, your deadline is approaching, you’re staring at a blank page, and your brain is empty. It’s not that you don’t have ideas; it’s the pressure to find the perfect idea that’s keeping you frozen. This is common for thousands of students, and a quick reframe usually fixes the issue: your idea isn’t the finish line, it’s the starting sprint.

Even with this reframe, it’s important that different writing situations match the prompts. For example, a poem needs to focus more on sensory concepts, while persuasive speech topics should focus on a solid argument, and informative speech topics need to keep the audience in mind. So, even if you’re more comfortable choosing an idea, it’s important that you choose an idea that fits the goal. That’s why we’ve laid out 180 ideas organized by mood, format and assignment type, and a guide to picking the right one.

How to Choose the Right Thing to Write About

Start with Your Format

As stated in the introduction, the idea you choose must match the format of the writing assignment. A topic that’s great for a poem will collapse in an argumentative essay. Choose a concept that matches what the assignment is actually asking you to do.

Pick Something You Have an Actual Opinion About

The idea you pick should be a topic that you’d actually want to discuss with someone. If you can’t talk about the topic, you’re going to have an even harder time writing about it. When you aren’t passionate about the thing you’re writing about, it shows in your writing, and the lack of inspiration will likely show through to your professor.

Use the 10 Minute Test

Set a timer and freewrite or research your idea. If you lose momentum within those 10 minutes, the topic is too thin, or you don’t actually care enough about the topic to write about it. If, after 10 minutes, you’re still going and are finding plenty to work with, that’s a sign to use it.

Use these guidelines to help you pick from our list of 180 topics to help you get started, so you make a strong first step in writing your paper.

Good Things to Write About

1. A unique family tradition that your family has kept
2. A time you challenged someone with authority over you, and how it went
3. A new skill you learned, and what you discovered while doing it
4. The evolution of your neighborhood as you’ve grown up
5. A time you read something and disagreed with it
6. A job or responsibility that taught you the most
7. A friendship that ended, and the miscommunications that led to it
8. An urban myth that you believed for longer than you should have
9. A time you regret not taking someone’s advice
10. A place you can navigate with a blindfold, and how you would navigate it

Interesting Things to Write About

1. An invention that failed, compared to a later, similar invention that succeeded
2. The economic explanation for free products/services
3. Dead languages, and the efforts being made to revive them
4. The social psychology of rumors and how they spread
5. Inventions that have outlived their inventors
6. The history and conception of a dish that you eat frequently
7. A dying job, and the explanation for its downfall
8. A belief that is provably false, and why people believe it
9. Functional design aspects of everyday objects
10. Hidden trends in search history

Fun Things to Write About

1. A superpower that would be unhelpful
2. A day narrated from the perspective of a domestic pet
3. The social indicators of restaurant orders
4. The steps for deciding rules for a new sport
5. What two inanimate objects might disagree about
6. Group chat dynamics compared to in-person settings
7. The items you’d put into a time capsule
8. The dynamics of conspiracy theories
9. The rules for playing your life as a video game
10. A game or tradition that’s important to your family

Random Things to Write About

1. Something you’ve lost but never found
2. The social aspects of elevator interactions
3. A casual interaction you still think about
4. The contents of a junk drawer, and what they say about you
5. Your experience of a scary weather event
6. A music artist you’re biased toward, and why
7. The history of your favorite genre of music
8. A description of your favorite spot
9. What makes someone have a green thumb
10. Track where a piece of clothing goes after you donate it

Cool Things to Write About

1. The history of abandoned buildings
2. The process of breaking a code or cypher
3. The dynamics of underground music scenes
4. Comparing failed and successful heists
5. The characteristics of deep-sea creatures
6. How are daily-use objects engineered to last
7. The social dynamics of an online subculture
8. The story of an accidental discovery
9. A city or project that was designed but never executed
10. Common skills that are now rare

Easy Things to Write About

1. The details of your morning routine and how it prepares you for the day
2. How to make your favorite dish, and why it’s your favorite
3. Reviewing your bedroom like an Airbnb review
4. Comparing your best and worst class experiences
5. A description of three things that you always keep with you
6. The advice you’d give to yourself on your first day of high school
7. The details of your ideal rest day
8. A letter to your younger sibling (real or imagined) and the advice you’d give them
9. Argue for or against a certain habit
10. Your dream house and what it would contain

Creative Things to Write About

1. A town or state that has a different law than your own, and whether it’s helpful or not
2. Why libraries are dying
3. Useless appliances and why they’re used
4. How animals communicate nonverbally in movies
5. The origin of a commonly held holiday
6. Your view of the afterlife, real or imagined
7. A color that’s meaningful, or stands out to you
8. What would happen if you removed an essential chore from your life
9. The final entry in a prisoner’s journal
10. An apology written by someone without remorse

Deep Things to Write About

1. A regret you have, and what you’d do differently
2. What you’d want to know about the future, if anything
3. The difference between being alone and loneliness
4. The requirements of true forgiveness
5. Whether behaviors can truly change permanently
6. Untold stories about your family
7. What you will inherit one day that isn’t money
8. Whether comfort and happiness are the same
9. Nonverbal cues that would tell you you’re wrong about something
10. What you want to be remembered for, and why

Sad Things to Write About

1. The last conversation you had with a person you don’t speak with anymore
2. A time you said a temporary goodbye, and when you learned it was permanent
3. Your experience moving out of a childhood home
4. Watching someone important in your life struggle
5. A promise that you broke and the consequences of it
6. Why an important relationship ended, and whether it could have been repaired
7. The influence that a pet left after it passed away
8. Outgrowing a thing or place that once fit
9. Something you regret not apologizing for
10. An old version of you that has passed away

Scary Things to Write About

1. A paranormal experience in an empty house
2. Revisiting a childhood fear
3. What being lost feels like
4. The feeling of taking a photograph and seeing someone extra in it
5. Waking up somewhere completely unfamiliar
6. A town where everyone knows something you don’t
7. What the last person awake at a sleepover might experience
8. A set of instructions that must be followed exactly, and why
9. A door that appeared out of nowhere, and where it leads
10. A mirrored universe

Things to Write About Yourself

1. A habit you have, and where it came from
2. A compliment you always receive, but never believe
3. A special talent you have, and how you might use it in an urgent situation
4. How you handle conflict, and what you could improve
5. A rule you have for yourself that no one else follows
6. One thing you don’t regret giving up on
7. An analysis of how you cope with stress, and whether it helps
8. A belief you hold that the people around you don’t share
9. Your abbreviated story that you might say to a stranger
10. Something you’re currently improving about yourself

Things to Write About When Bored

1. Rank the tastiness of everything in your refrigerator
2. Pick a movie title you haven’t seen and write the plot for it
3. What a one-star review of something you love might say
4. Write your autobiography in one sentence, as many different times as you can
5. Instructions for a task you don’t need instructions for
6. Write a stranger’s life story based on everything you observe about them
7. Rewrite a news story as a work of poetry
8. Write a boring day as a dramatic story
9. All the places you’ve ever slept, and a review of them
10. An argument you never had, but wish you did

Things to Write Poems About

1. The experience of an activity that requires a mind-body connection
2. How the light in a room changes throughout the day
3. An outdoor spot you love to be
4. Something you’re currently grieving
5. Discuss a smell that makes you nostalgic
6. How it feels to eat a meal alone
7. The experience of answering a vulnerable question
8. How a weed might experience growing through concrete
9. An object that someone who has passed left behind
10. The transition between seasons

Things to Write About for School

1. A new law that changed your community
2. The difference between a law and how it’s enforced
3. A scientific finding that initially was rejected
4. How technology transformed a profession
5. The role of a ‘sidekick’ in a major historical event
6. Two translations of the same text and how they change meaning
7. The unaccounted-for consequences of an economic decision
8. Public reaction to a piece of art 50 years ago compared to now
9. Explore a public health debate
10. Origins of common slang words

Things to Write Your College Essay About

1. A chore only you know how to do well
2. A responsibility you took on that you didn’t expect
3. When a hobby turned into a passion
4. A conversation that changed your outlook on something
5. A value that seems unique to you
6. A mundane problem you’ve solved repeatedly
7. A role you fill that is not leadership
8. A question you’ve wondered the answer to since childhood
9. What you learned from a job you didn’t want
10. A community you belong to that isn’t on your application

Things to Write an Argumentative Essay About

1. Whether standardized testing should be considered by admissions
2. Whether schools should start later in the day
3. Whether the school week should be shortened
4. Whether college athletes should be paid
5. Whether social media should verify user age
6. Whether homework is truly beneficial
7. Whether college tuition should be free
8. Whether AI should be permitted in college writing
9. Whether a nationwide minimum wage is helpful
10. Whether voting should be mandatory

Things to Write a Persuasive Speech About

1. Something that people don’t like, and why it’s worth keeping
2. A tradition every family should have
3. Something a generation of your choice is blamed for, and why they shouldn’t be
4. A skill schools teach, but they shouldn’t
5. Why students should learn financial skills before graduation
6. Rethinking school phone policy
7. A mental health policy schools should adopt
8. Why people should spend more time in public parks
9. Why students should be required to vote
10. Why supporting local businesses is better than online ones

Things to Write an Informative Speech About

1. The lessons you learn from doing a new skill badly
2. Someone in your circle who deserves recognition
3. Bad advice to high school graduates, and what you’d advise instead
4. Something you initially believed, but changed your mind about
5. What you’d say to yourself, or anyone, five years from now
6. A problem many families have, and your solution
7. Describe how a medical technology works
8. How voting actually works in the United States, from the ballot to the election
9. A cultural practice you hold
10. An under-discussed historical event

Every Great Piece of Writing Starts with One Idea

If you still have a blank page, having a list to choose from is much easier than formulating an idea from nothing. Your idea doesn’t have to be something that no one’s thought of before, but specific to you and your unique perspective. Even if you find a prompt that you think will work, and you struggle with it, it’s okay to abandon it and choose a new one. The best paper writers don’t stick to the first idea they choose.

From here, choose a topic, test whether you can successfully write about it, and set a timer. Start writing, even if it’s bad, and revisit later to improve. Writing is a series of baby steps, and as long as you take each step mindfully, you will end up with a solid product.