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30 Prompts to Start Writing Your Memoir

May 05, 2023 | 2 min read

Everyone has a story to tell. Here at Freewrite, our passion is helping people overcome the obstacles to writing and get words on the page.

Many #FreewriteFam community members use their Freewrite for journaling or to write memoir. But sometimes your own story is the hardest to tell. Where do you start? What’s interesting enough to include?

Our advice: Stop thinking; start writing.

And if you need a little help with the “start” part, here are 30 prompts to get you going. Pick a prompt, set a timer for 15 minutes, and WRITE ON!

Describe yourself as a child.
How did you get your name?
Describe your childhood home. How did it smell? What was the temperature?
Pick a number from 1-20. Write about your life at that age.
What was your favorite book or movie as a child? Why? Do you still like it?
When you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up? How close did you come to pursuing that?
Describe someone you admired when you were young. Did your impression of that person change when you grew up?
Tell the story of the best meal you’ve ever had.
What do you remember (if anything) about your parents’ relationship? Either with each other, or with others?
Do you have any siblings? If so, did you get along?
Describe a hobby you used to have that you no longer do. Why did you stop?
Describe the best day of your life.
What was your worst fear at age 5? Age 15? Age 25? Now?
Describe the very first trip you took away from your hometown.
Write about a historical event that you lived through.
Do you believe in the afterlife? Why or why not?
What was your first job? Did you like it? How long did it last?
How do you define loss? Tell about a time you experienced loss, in any form.
Do you remember your first love? Describe them.
Have you experienced a life-or-death situation? How did you feel?
Tell the story of a moment when you were scared to do something but did it anyway.
What’s more important to you: honesty or loyalty?
At what moment in your life did you feel most loved?
What has been the biggest challenge of your life thus far?
Do you prefer winter, spring, summer, or fall? Why?
Name one insecurity you have about yourself. Now tell a story about where that insecurity was born, or how it has affected your life.
Do you believe people are inherently “good”?
Name one thing you believed as a young person that you changed your mind about.
What are you good at? Be honest and don't sell yourself short.
What is your most prized possession?

The Set Up

The 2024 study recruited 293 writers to write an eight-sentence “micro” story. The participants were split into three groups:

Writing by human brainpower only
The opportunity to get one AI-generated idea to inspire their writing
The opportunity to get up to five AI-generated ideas to inspire their writing

Then, 600 evaluators judged how creative these short stories were. The results confirmed a widely accepted idea but also offered a few surprising findings.

Prompts from AI Can Jumpstart the Creative Process

Right off the bat, the reviewers rated the AI-guided stories as being more original, better written, and more enjoyable to read. (Interesting to note that they did not find them funnier than the fully human-inspired stories.)

This actually isn’t that surprising. Most writers know the “blank page dread” at the beginning of a project. Even as I write this, I can’t help but wonder, “If I had been tasked with writing an eight-sentence story, what the heck would I have written about?”

Many writers share this sense of needing to pick the “right” story to tell. And that uniquely human concept of perfectionism can end up actually inhibiting our creative process.

A prompt, then, can help us quickly clear this mental hurdle. To test this, I’ll give you one, courtesy of ChatGPT: “Write a story about a teenager who discovers a mysterious journal that reveals hidden secrets about their town, leading them on an unexpected adventure to uncover the truth.”

Can you feel your creative juices flowing already?

Since its release, AI has been celebrated for its ability to assist in idea generation; and this study confirms how effective using artificial intelligence in this way can be for writers — some, it seems, more than others.

AI-Generated Ideas Helped Less Creative Writers More

It doesn’t feel great to judge a writer’s creative prowess, but for this study, researchers needed to do just that. Prior to writing their short stories, the writers took a test to measure their creativity.

Researchers found that those considered less creative did substantially better when given AI-generated ideas — to the point where getting the full five ideas from AI “effectively equalizes the creativity scores across less and more creative writers.”

This isn’t the case just for writing. Another study by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship WZ also found that AI tools most benefit employees with weaker skills.

So is AI leveling the playing field between okay and great writers? It seems it may be. But before we lament, there’s one more finding that proves using AI isn’t all perks.

AI-Aided Stories Were More Similar — And Needed to Be Credited

The researchers took a step back to look at all the AI-supported stories collectively. And what did they find?

The AI-assisted stories were more similar as a whole, compared to the fully human-written stories.

Additionally, when reviewers were told that a story was enhanced by an AI idea, they “imposed an ownership penalty of at least 25%,” even indicating that “the content creators, on which the models were based, should be compensated.”

This leads us to that all-important question about AI-assisted work: who owns the content?

According to Originality.AI, an AI and plagiarism detector, “When there’s a combination of AI and human-generated elements, the human elements may receive copyright protection if they meet the requirements.”

So right now, if a writer uses AI to generate ideas — but writes the content themselves — they retain rights to the work.

However, Originality.AI even admits that “the legal system is having a hard time keeping up” with the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence. Time will only tell what AI regulations will look like in a few years.

What Does an AI-Assisted Literary Future Look Like?

The researchers from the University of Exeter Business School study raise an interesting point about what the future landscape for writers may look like. If droves of authors begin using AI to come up with ideas, we may end up with a lot of well-written yet dime-a-dozen stories.

So will human beings choose the easier, but less diverse, path? Or will we stick to fighting through writer’s block armed with nothing but our own brain?

Or, a third option: can we somehow learn to harness AI to supercharge our writing process without sacrificing the wholly unique creativity that infuses human creation?

That’s one question that even ChatGPT can’t answer.

Editor's Note: Artificial intelligence may have already transformed writing, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be in control of your own words. Read Astrohaus Founder Adam Leeb's statement on AI and privacy.

Learn more

August 22, 2024 • 8 min read

Reimagining the Future of Storytelling in a World with AI

While AI has capabilities that range from coding to image generation, the model that excites — and terrifies — writers is the LLM. It won’t be long before we see the world’s first blockbuster novel, written entirely by an LLM. What does this mean for art, and writers in particular? Is it all doom and gloom? The answer is, of course, more complicated than yes or no.