r/WritingPrompts

About r/WritingPrompts

In its own words:

Writing Prompts. You're a writer and you just want to flex those muscles? You've come to the right place! If you see a prompt you like, simply write a short story based on it. Get comments from others, and leave commentary for other people's works. Let's help each other.

The community was created on Sep 7, 2010, which makes it 16 years old. Since Oct 19, 2026, it has gained 957 subscribers (+0.01%). Among the 14 communities on our writing list it is the largest. It sits just behind r/tifu (#43) and ahead of r/history (#45) in our ranking.

What sets r/WritingPrompts apart

Compared with other large communities, r/WritingPrompts leans heavily on text posts (100% of recent posts; the typical Top 100 subreddit sits at 17%). People mostly look and upvote here rather than comment — about 4.4 comments per post, against 16.2 for a typical large subreddit. Growth has more or less levelled off (0.02% since Sep 19, 2026), which is common for very mature communities. Its rhythm is strongly tied to time zones: the busiest hour (12:00 UTC) sees about 4.4× as many posts as the quietest (06:00 UTC).

Subscriber growth

Between Sep 19, 2026 and Oct 29, 2026, r/WritingPrompts went up from 18,874,265 to 18,878,010 subscribers (+3.7K, +0.02%). That is about 94 new members per day. The chart uses our weekly snapshots (8 so far), so it gets longer every week.

Top posts on r/WritingPrompts this week

What the community upvoted most over the last seven days, as ranked by Reddit (collected Oct 29, 2026).

1. [WP] “Why aren’t the human ships using shields?” “They don’t have them.” “What? But it’s a simple tech-“ “They. Don’t. Have. Them.”u/MagicTech547 · Oct 25 · text post
2. [WP] Young immortals tend to be reckless and brash, knowing that nothing can hurt them. The older they get, the more cautious they become, because they learn that, because *nothing* can hurt them, th…u/Kitty_Fuchs · Oct 24 · text post
3. [WP] "So what's your superpower?" "I am average at everything that I do." "How is that a superpower?" "I am average at EVERYTHING that I do."u/Time-Weekend-8611 · Oct 24 · text post
4. [WP]You didn't make a deal with the fae. The fae made a deal with *you*. The inquisitor looks at you with absolute terror in their eyes upon realising the distinction.u/bbtta12 · Oct 23 · text post
5. [WP] "I am not becoming your undead knight." "Are you sure? It comes with immortality, pretty much invulnerability, and you get to chose exactly how you want the body to contain your soul to look. I …u/Clear_Ad4106 · Oct 26 · text post
6. [WP]Everyone said that a Faster-Than-Light drive was impossible, so you made a Faster-Than-Dark drive and everyone is really upset that it works.u/somethinggoeshere2 · Oct 28 · text post
7. [WP] You hold up a microchip to the mage council "This here is the heart of my golem: sigils made so complex and small, we carved sentience into a single grain of sand."u/Genevieve_Griselda · Oct 25 · text post
8. [WP] The fae glares at the rogue. "It's not fair. I spent centuries honing the subtle arts of allusion and half truths, weaving my spells of glamor and misdirection, and you can just stand there sayi…u/Time-Weekend-8611 · Oct 28 · text post
9. [WP] "Let me get this straight. You know where I live, where I work, and are actively hunting me but confused why my fear response is triggered?!" "I've done research on your planet! I read these boo…u/xLittleValkyriex · Oct 25 · text post
10. [WP] A dragon starts to wonder why its prized hoard of incredibly rare and precious aluminum doesn't seem to attract much attention anymore.u/Kaleon · Oct 27 · text post

All-time top posts

The highest-ranked posts in the history of r/WritingPrompts, from 2016 to 2020, ranked by Reddit.

1. [WP] The year is 1910. Adolf Hitler, a struggling artist, has fought off dozens of assasination attemps by well meaning time travelers, but this one is different. This traveller doesn't want to kill …Feb 16, 2017 · 42,050 points · 734 comments · text post
2. [WP] You lost your sight - along with everyone else on Earth - in The Great Blinding. Two years later, without warning, your sight returns. As you look around, you realize that every available wall, …u/xaviira · Aug 26, 2019 · 27,732 points · 698 comments · text post
3. [WP] The year is 2038 and net neutrality has been dead for almost two decades. But a rebellious group managed to travel back to 2017...u/highdwarf · Nov 22, 2017 · 38,006 points · 407 comments · text post
4. [WP] “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do Mr Bond. I’m going to stick you in a spacesuit with a radio, and strap you into one of my cars. Then, while mankind watches, I’ll launch you into space. The l…u/Blackdragonking13 · Feb 7, 2018 · 34,141 points · 383 comments · text post
5. [WP] It's 3 AM. An official phone alert wakes you up. It says "DO NOT LOOK AT THE MOON". You have hundreds of notifications. Hundreds of random numbers are sending "It's a beautiful night tonight. Lo…u/REDDIT_JUDGE_REFEREE · Apr 7, 2018 · 29,173 points · 1,149 comments · text post
6. [WP] When you die, you appear in a cinema with a number of other people who look like you. You find out that they are your previous reincarnations, and soon you all begin watching your next life on t…u/marsh-da-pro · Nov 23, 2017 · 29,158 points · 530 comments · text post
7. [WP] You hire a female prostitute, tell her to meet you at a fancy restaurant, and ask her to pretend to be your colleague from the bank. Hire a male prostitute, and tell him the same thing. You sit …Jun 18, 2017 · 29,108 points · 599 comments · text post
8. [WP] Every country has ninjas but the world only knows about Japan's because theirs suck.u/Enlightened_Lettuce · Nov 16, 2017 · 28,252 points · 327 comments · text post
9. [WP] Humans once wielded formidable magical power but with over 7 billion of us on the planet now Mana has spread far to thinly to have any effect. When hostile aliens reduces humanity to a mere frac…u/Lorix_In_Oz · Dec 7, 2017 · 27,366 points · 548 comments · text post
10. [WP] a woman has been dating guy after guy, but it never seems to work out. She’s unaware that she’s actually been dating the same guy over and over; a shapeshifter who’s fallen for her, and is certa…u/NotThatJaredBlack · Feb 14, 2018 · 25,616 points · 461 comments · text post

What r/WritingPrompts talks about

We read the titles of 379 recent posts (Oct 21–Oct 28), the words that come up most are “world”, “life”, “humans”, “found” and “finally”. Other frequent themes are human, dead, tell, death, town and problem. Recurring phrases include “mad scientist”, “town square”, “hunger games” and “ancient skinwalker”. By format, 100% are text posts.

• world 24
• life 17
• humans 17
• found 15
• finally 15
• human 14
• dead 12
• tell 11
• death 11
• town 10
• problem 10
• come 10
• live 10
• exactly 10
• god 10
• comes 9
• trying 9
• ask 9

Popular post flairs: Writing Prompt (281), Simple Prompt (49), Established Universe (26), Prompt Inspired (6), Off Topic (4), Image Prompt (3).

Activity and best time to post

r/WritingPrompts gets about 54 new posts a day. The public archive holds 1,153,395 posts and 5,026,362 comments in total, about 4.4 comments per post. Last week the busiest day was Saturday (65 posts) and the quietest was Sunday (41). Posting peaks around 12:00 UTC and is lowest around 06:00 UTC.

Rules of r/WritingPrompts

The moderators of r/WritingPrompts list 8 rules. In short:

1. Prompt responses must be good-faith attempts at new stories/poems (No AI)
2. No explicitly sexual themes; other harmful content
3. Be civil in discussion, feedback, and critiques
4. All submissions must be tagged
5. No recent reposts, even if changing small details
6. Prompt in title, avoid commissions/games
7. No posts likely to end in rule-breaking comments
8. Keep it about writing, not competing/making money

How to join

Open reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts and press “Join”. Read the community rules in the sidebar before you post: every subreddit is run by its own volunteer moderators.

Frequently asked questions

Stats from public data (data updated Oct 29, 2026; activity, rules and archive totals via the Arctic Shift archive, Oct 29, 2026; top posts from Reddit’s public feeds). Point and comment counts are archive snapshots and can be lower than on Reddit today. SubMouse is an independent directory and is not affiliated with Reddit or the moderators of r/WritingPrompts.