Emotions can be an emotional subject. Asking us to describe and quantify our emotions can seem like an impossible task for some.
These writing prompts are meant to ease the pain of pulling out our emotional scorecard and presenting it to others to be scrutinized.
The more practice you get, the easier it should be to describe emotions accurately. At least that is the theory.
How to Use the Prompts
These emotion-based prompts ask a lot of some people, so it might be pertinent to let your students choose the prompts they want to write on.
There are also quite a few less challenging prompts, to allow selection of a writing topic that best suits each writer.
You could pick and choose the prompts you like and then let students select randomly, or you could randomly assign them by rolling dice.
It’s up to you, and the sky’s the limit.
Emotional Prompts
- Start a story: “Sometimes I worry that…”
- Describe something that made you upset.
- Write a short story about a friend who needed emotional support from you.
- Do you feel like you’re a confident person? Why or why not?
- Write a story that starts with: “Sometimes when I am scared, I feel like…”
- Describe what feeling secure means to you. Why?
- Describe the feeling of success. What emotion do you feel?
- Please write a short story with the main character needing some self-confidence and describe how they find it.
- Do you ever feel like it is hard to be happy? When does that happen to you?
- Write a story about a time or a place you felt sad about something.
- Write a story about how being bullied feels.
- Why do you think it is important to tell people they have done something well?
- Describe a moment when you were pleased about something. How shoes that kind of happiness feel?
- Write a story that starts: “I am the happiest when…”
- Describe an event that made you angry. Talk about how the anger felt inside of you.
- Describe how helping someone else makes you feel.
- Start a story with: “When I do something helpful, it makes me feel…”
- Describe how being brave feels.
- Can you describe something that worries you and how being worried feels?
- What makes you proudest? Why? How does pride feel?
- What does being a good friend look like to you?
- Write a story with the main character who is too enthusiastic and how that character makes those around them feel.
- What makes you nervous? Can you describe how nervous feels?
- Describe the way you’re feeling right now/
- Is it better to live in the moment or to think things through? Why or why not?
- What does it feel like when you’re happy?
- Start a story with: “When someone hurts my feelings, I feel like…”
- Do you feel bad when you hurt your friend’s feelings?
- How do you feel if you accidentally hurt a friend’s feelings?
- Describe the feeling you get when listening to a favorite song.
- Write a story personifying an emotion as an animal.
- Can you describe what self-esteem is?
- What does self-esteem feel like?
- Write an acrostic poem using a feeling as the word.
- Do you ever get overwhelmed by your feelings? How does it feel?
- Describe the way that someone else can affect how you feel emotionally.
- Should you let others have a say over how you feel? Why or why not?
- Do you believe that emotions drive you to make choices? Why?
- Can you describe how failing at something feels? Why is that okay to feel?
- Do you understand why emotions are essential? Can you explain why?
- How do you know the way someone is feeling? Describe the reason for your answer.
- Discuss why we need emotions and what we would do without them.
- Write a story about a character who doesn’t understand emotions and describe how they learn them.
- Describe how you listen to your emotions.
- What do you do to deal with big emotions that want to get out of control?
Before You Go
There are plenty more writing prompts on our website that you could use for your students and other great educational resources.
Come check some more out, or if you have a resource or idea we overlooked, please feel free to drop us a line with your suggestions! We would love to help.
