Art as a Writing Prompt

If you’re ever in need of inspiration, try using art as a writing prompt. The best pieces of art inspire stories – in fact, they can inspire many different stories.

How to Use Art as Inspiration for Your Writing

1. Find a Piece of Art

Any type of art can work, but some may take more creativity than others. If you’re feeling less creative, a painting or statue that has identifiable beings and/or scenes will be easier (Realism and Impressionism, for example). If you really want to challenge yourself, try something that’s more abstract and is less identifiable as figures or objects.

2. Brainstorm Story Options

There are many different angles of attack for finding the inspiration. Some will work better for different styles of art, and some can work with any.

For All Art

• What kind of story fits the feeling the art inspires in you?
• What if part of the artwork were alive?
• Why did the artist really create it? (Extend motivation to the unlikely or magical)
• How could the art have been created? (If not painted, sculpted, etc.)

For More Realistic Art

The process for art with identifiable characters can be very straight-forward. In fact, you could consider it a variation on the people-watching writing prompt (if the art has figures)

• What are the people doing or thinking or feeling?
• How did the moment frozen in time come to be?
• What could be happening behind the scenes?
• What is about to happen that the people do not expect?
• Who is the main character? (Stretch yourself by choosing the unexpected.)
• What do the people looking out of the painting see or hear?

For More Abstract Art

As I mentioned before, this type of art can be more of a challenge because you’ll need to be more creative about the questions you ask yourself and the way you think about the art. Here are some examples to get you started pushing some of those thought boundaries.

• What can you build out of pieces of the art? What else could it be? (like transforming a cloud into a picture)
• What if that was how the world looked? / What if that was how the artist actually, literally saw the world?
• What if the art captures factual evidence of an abstract concept? (like time, freedom, or sanity)
• What if the art was how an alien race communicates?

3. Pick From Your Options & Start Writing

You can pick one or combine several. Like all writing prompts, you’ll get the most and best practice by trying more than one of the options. If all you’re looking for is writing inspiration, however, pick whichever idea interests you most and go for it.

Do yourself a favor, though, and keep the others for later. Because you never know what idea will interest you most tomorrow.

4. Tell Us About It

Comment to let us know how you used art as a writing prompt – what piece of art, some of the ideas you tried, or even the story that came out of it. Discussing your writing efforts is another way to grow and develop, especially with writing prompts that push your creativity.