75 Creative Writing Prompts and Exercises for Screenwriters
June 11, 2025
You don’t always need outright inspiration as a screenwriter. Sometimes you just need ignition — a spark that fires up your creative juices to get them flowing from your mind to your fingers, and through your fingers to the keys.
Whether you’re stuck on page 30, struggling to find a character’s voice — or just trying to write anything — these 75 creative writing prompts and exercises can help. Think of these prompts and exercises as a craft-driven toolbox that you can go to anytime.
- Part Character Development Lab
- Part Dialogue Gym to work those dialogue muscles
- Part Screenplay Structure Bootcamp to prepare for your story
These tools will help you move forward in your script with intention and focus, leading you to better tension and character-centered conflict within your script.
You can also utilize these prompts and exercises within Final Draft screenwriting software, exploring the Beat Board™, Dual Dialogue, and other features.
How, When, and Where to Use These Writing Prompts
Development Phase
When you’re developing a script, prompts can help you brainstorm different story and character paths. You can explore the many possible variations in plot, structure, characterization, and genre for your concept.
Writing Phase
As you write your script, you may come across some obstacles where you’ll need additional inspiration and creative spark. Prompts and exercises can help you problem-solve as you write.
Rewriting Phase
Maybe you’ve been given some feedback from peers, writers groups, or screenplay contest coverage. Maybe you’ve taken a recommended short break from your script after completing your first draft. When you’re in the rewriting phase, you may want or need to make changes. Prompts can help problem-solve scripts during this phase as well. They can also give you the necessary spark to make your script even better.
75 Creative Writing Prompts and Accompanying Exercises
We’ll offer you separate categories for prompts, each with their own exercises that you can use to best utilize these prompts.
15 Character Arc Prompts
These prompts can explore character arc elements like motive, fear, identity, emotion, and lessons learned.
1. A character lies — convincingly — for the first time in their life.
2. The protagonist meets someone from their past — but pretends not to recognize them.
3. A minor decision reveals a major character flaw.
4. A character confesses to the wrong person.
5. Someone gets exactly what they wanted — and immediately regrets it.
6. A character tries to stop someone from leaving, without explaining why.
7. A person finds an object they swore they destroyed.
8. A character flashes back to a moment they are trying to forget.
9. A character remembers a detail they forgot from the past.
10. Someone celebrates, only to ruin what they are celebrating shortly after.
11. Your protagonist’s worst trait is revealed during an otherwise kind act.
12. Someone is offered help but refuses for unknown reasons.
13. Write a character’s response to hearing, “It’s not your fault.”
14. A character’s fake mask slips, revealing a little hidden truth about them.
15. A character denies what we know they need most.
Character Arc Exercise: Use the Beat Board in Final Draft to map out three moments where the protagonist reveals, hides, or contradicts their internal truth that isn’t known to others. Play around with different options and see how their character arc can change throughout the script.
15 Dialogue-Centered Writing Prompts
You can use these to sharpen voice, rhythm, tension, and subtext within dialogue.
16. Two characters do their best to avoid the subject at hand (the elephant in the room) for an entire scene.
17. Write a one-page argument where no one raises their voice.
18. A character dodges five consecutive and direct questions.
19. One spoken word changes the tone of an entire dialogue scene.
20. Two characters argue about two different things.
21. A confession is mistaken as sarcasm or a joke.
22. A character repeats the others words back to them with spite and venom.
23. Someone tries to apologize — twice — but keeps failing.
24. A casual chat ends up revealing a betrayal.
25. A character lies without ever saying anything false.
26. Use silence as a weapon within a long dialogue scene.
27. One character speaks in metaphors while the other doesn’t get it.
28. A character uses humor to deflect something serious.
29. A heated exchange ends in unexpected laughs.
30. A character finishes the other’s sentence and instantly regrets it.
Dialogue Prompt Exercise: try out some different lines of dialogue using the Alternate Dialogue tool in Final Draft to see how phrasing shifts tone.
10 Structure-Based Writing Exercises
Here are some basic drills to work on story acts, reversals, and reveals. You can use the Beat Board in Final Draft to outline your story using these drills, you can use them as exercises in sequences within your scripts, or you can use them as you write the script itself.
31. Start at the midpoint and then work your way backwards or forwards from there.
32. Build a scene that ends on a shocking cliffhanger, and then shift to a completely different scene within the story, leaving the audience on, well, a cliffhanger.
33. Create an opening to your script that misleads the viewer’s expectations.
34. Have the protagonist fail three times before they finally succeed, learning something key from each failure.
35. Have a scene build to great tension, only to add even more conflict.
36. Introduce your protagonist, give them a dilemma, and then force them to make a decision within five pages.
37. Design an act break without action — just emotional weight.
38. Create a “lowest point” moment using only silence and visuals.
39. Write a teaser scene that only makes sense in retrospect after the story is done.
40. Build a three-act scene or sequence within one location.
Structure Exercise: Use the Outline Editor tool in Final Draft to map each story beat visually. Assign color labels to track pacing and escalation.
10 Conflict and Reversal Prompts and Exercises
The best screenplays push their characters into more conflict and friction, and then pivot away from the expected outcome.
41. Have a character start a scene with power, and then end with them having none.
42. Have an ally become an enemy — mid-conversation.
43. Have a favor revealed to actually be a threat.
44. Have a well-intentioned gesture backfire badly.
45. Have a misunderstanding escalate quickly.
46. Have a confrontation flip when a secret is revealed.
47. Have someone agree to a deal that they regret instantly.
48. Have two characters on the same side realize they want something different.
49. Have someone walk in at exactly the wrong moment.
50. Write a moment of betrayal with no spoken words.
10 Visually-Driven Writing Prompts
Visually-driven writing prompts and exercises help you to craft a story through what we see, as opposed to what we hear in dialogue.
51. A character prepares for something, then, at the last minute, doesn’t go.
52. A locked drawer is open for the first time in years.
53. A house (and what’s in it) tells us everything about its owner.
54. A room reveals a dark secret.
55. A character tries to erase something, but can’t.
56. Someone leaves something behind on purpose.
57. A flashback is triggered by a location.
58. The sight of a photograph changes the character’s next move.
59. A character has an emotional response to seeing someone.
60. The aftermath of an argument, shown without any dialogue.
Screenwriting Exercise: With focusing on what we see as an exercise, when you’re writing your script, limit scene description to no more than two sentences per block of scene description — this will help you maximize visual impact with minimal prose.
5 Moral Dilemma Prompts
Hard decisions create great drama and melodrama. Here are some prompts to help you create these types of moments in your scripts.
61. A character must choose between betraying a friend or losing everything.
62. Reveal that a character telling the truth will hurt someone they love.
63. A lie will save the life of someone — but at what cost?
64. Mercy or Justice for another?
65. A protagonist must protect someone that is evil or dangerous.
Screenwriting Exercise: Give multiple characters within your script — not just your protagonist — moral dilemmas that they must deal with during the story.
5 Nonlinear Storytelling Prompts
Sometimes when you’re trying to stand out — or get your screenplays to stand out — you have to think out of the box to make an impression. Nonlinear storytelling offers a great exercise in story structure.
66. Start your story with the ending, and then flashback to the beginning and build to that ending.
67. A character sees their past from someone else’s perspective.
68. Flash sideways (instead of using flashbacks and flash forwards) to show multiple possibilities for any given scenario the protagonist is in.
69. Past and present scenes mirror each other.
70. A recurring dream ends up being the actual reality.
5 Emotional Layering Prompts for Characterization
Great characterization comes from giving characters multiple layers, either internally, or within scenes themselves.
71. A phrase or word is repeated throughout a conversation — or even a whole script — but means something different each time.
72. One character says what they feel while the other masks their feelings.
73. Explore what a character wants versus what they need.
74. An emotional truth is buried beneath otherwise mundane conversation.
75. A moment that should represent clarity is ignored.
Screenwriting Exercise: Try writing the same scene twice — once with honest dialogue from a character, and then once with the same character hiding everything.
Use all 75 of these creative writing prompts and accompanying screenwriting exercises as warm-ups, when your creative well runs dry during the writing process, and most of all, just use them however and whenever you need to ignite those creative fires.
