Literary 1984

Prompts

Overview

This document contains two types of prompts to help inspire your writing:

  • Thematic Prompts – These explore broad ideas, motifs, and philosophical questions drawn from Paradise Lost, Crime and Punishment, and The Metamorphosis. You can use these themes as a foundation for your piece, weaving them into any setting, genre, or narrative style you choose.
  • Specific Prompts – These are structured scenarios, alternate perspectives, “what if?” experiments, and narrative challenges designed to push your creativity in new directions. Some are tied directly to the books, while others are inspired by their themes but open to broader interpretation.

Feel free to use these prompts however you like—combine them, modify them, or simply use them as a spark for something completely new. There are no wrong answers—only possibilities waiting to be explored.

Thematic

Write a piece that explores one or more of these themes: 

  • Paradise Lost:
    • Disobedience
    • Free will
    • The tyranny or kindness of God(s)
    • The tragic yet enduring nature of revolution
    • Sin and death and innocence 
    • Love and marriage – what can love make one do? 
    • Predestination
    • Satan’s relatability
    • Misunderstood dark anti-hero vigilante 
    • Obedience 
    • Revenge
    • The hierarchical nature of the universe
    • The fall of man
    • Knowledge as corruption vs the thing that sets one free
    • Pride
    • Surveillance
    • Biblical fanfic
    • Greek mythology 
    • Christianity
  • The Metamorphosis:
    • Alienation
    • Absurdity of existence
    • Identity and consciousness
    • Loneliness
    • Transformation
    • Dehumanization
    • Guilt and responsibility
    • The inherent value of man vs the value of man rooted in utility/capital
    • The alienation of self through capital
    • Dysfunctional family
    • Dependence
    • Despair
    • Freedom and escapism
    • Intentions vs outcomes
    • Sacrifice
    • Disconnect vs mind and body
    • Greed 
    • Existentialism
    • Vulnerability 
    • Insects
    • The hive mind
    • The crushing weight of expectations 
    • victims of a condition society refuses to acknowledge
  • Crime and Punishment:
    • Morality
    • Utilitarianism
    • Suffering
    • Poverty
    • Dehumanization of man through capital
    • Women as beholden to man’s violence
    • Madness
    • Alienation from society
    • Criminality 
    • Coincidence and free will
    • Nihilism 
    • Repercussions
    • Helplessness
    • The value of life 
    • Exploitation
    • Corporate greed
    • The evils of late-stage capitalism
    • Power and taking back power
    • Authority on what lives or dies
    • Psychology of crime and punishment
    • Redemption (is it possible)
    • Ego
    • Faith
    • God as the anchor
    • Loneliness/isolation 
    • Depravity
    • The duality of man and human nature

Specific

Paradise Lost 

  1. Write your own telling of the fall of man.
  2. Your piece must include the theme of alienation and despair.
  3. Write a story with the setting of Heaven and Hell.
  4. Write a story that takes place within the realm of chaos.
  5. Write Paradise Lost in God’s perspective. What if man didn’t do what you intended? How do you respond/react?
  6. What if Satan won? Write a world where the fall never ended, and explore what kind of existence that creates.
  7. God decides to reboot the universe—but before he does, he holds a Q&A session for humanity.
  8. A demon prays. What could they possibly ask for?
  9. Write a detective story set in Heaven or Hell, where angels and demons operate in the shadows.
  10. The gods have abandoned Olympus and now live in the slums of a neon-lit dystopia, selling wisdom for scraps.
  11. Corporate Hell: Hell isn’t fire and brimstone—it’s an endless, inescapable bureaucratic nightmare. What does a promotion mean?
  12. A man wakes up to find that he has already been judged. The problem? He’s not sure whether this is Heaven or Hell.
  13. You are given one rule: Never open the door. One day, the door knocks back.
  14. A man becomes aware of the cosmic hierarchy of the universe and sees his place in it—but refuses to accept it.
  15. A revolution is won, but the revolutionaries become the new tyrants. 
  16. A mortal stumbles upon a fallen god, still chained to the ruins of their former kingdom.
  17. The rebellion against Heaven succeeds—but the rebels soon realize they have no idea how to rule.
  18. Heaven and Hell are overcrowded. A bureaucratic system is created to assign souls elsewhere—but no one knows where they are being sent.
  19. A society where sins are physically transferred—the rich are spotless, the poor are monstrous.
  20. A man wakes up to find that he has lived this exact life before—thousands of times. Each time, he makes the same mistakes.
  21. A man’s sins take on a physical form, following him everywhere.
  22. God gives man one last chance to redeem themselves, but the conditions are cruel, arbitrary, or outright impossible.
  23. Combine Paradise Lost with modern surveillance capitalism—what if the Tree of Knowledge was a social media platform?

Crime and Punishment

  1. Write a story exploring whether redemption is truly possible for the irredeemable.
  2. Write a story set in 19th-century Russia.
  3. A man does something. When society applauds his actions, he begins to question whether morality was ever real—or if it’s just another tool of control.
  4. A man commits a crime so heinous, so unspeakable, that when he confesses, no one believes him.
  5. A man finds a list of crimes he will commit in the future. None of them have happened yet—but he can feel the desire growing.
  6. In a future where criminals are subjected to mind-erasing punishment, one man fights to keep his guilt alive.
  7. A man obsessed with morality attempts to live a completely blameless life—but his actions cause more suffering than good.
  8. Write a story where free will is an illusion, and the protagonist slowly realizes that every “choice” they’ve made was preordained.
  9. A character has committed an unspeakable crime, but is convinced they did it for the greater good—explore their unraveling.
  10. A detective discovers that the killer they are hunting is themselves—just years in the future.
  11. A man on trial realizes that everyone in the courtroom is a version of himself.
  12. A train station exists that only appears to those who have nowhere left to go.
  13. Write a piece where love and marriage are a transaction, and the cost of love is far greater than expected.
  14. Create a story where poverty and wealth are literally infectious conditions that can spread through contact.
  15. Write about a society where redemption is quantified and traded like cryptocurrency.
  16. A village where no one dies. A man has been trying to kill himself for 500 years.
  17. The Devil offers a deal—but instead of asking for a soul, he asks for something far stranger.
  18. The king is unkillable. Every attempt at assassination only makes him stronger.
  19. A worker spends years in the same office, doing the same job. One day, he walks outside and finds that there is no city—only an endless horizon.
  20. Surveillance is absolute—not even your own thoughts belong to you. How do you fight back?
  21. A man is haunted by a perfect, idealized version of himself—the person he could have been if he made better choices.

The Metamorphosis

  1. Write a story set in Gregor’s house.
  2. What if Gregor had been turned into a cute dog?
  3. What if Gregor’s family was roaches and he became human?
  4. A corporate worker transforms into an insect-like creature—but instead of rejection, their bosses celebrate the change, pushing other employees to follow suit. Is this progress, or a loss of humanity?
  5. Gregor’s family sues the company responsible for his transformation, claiming workplace negligence.
  6. A man turns into an insect, but the real tragedy is that his life actually improves.
  7. Explore a world where transformation is a coming-of-age ritual, but one person refuses to change.
  8. Create a story where knowledge literally has weight, and people must decide what they’re willing to burden themselves with.
  9. Tell a story where the protagonist is missing from their own narrative—they are never described, never named, yet their influence is undeniable.
  10. A young artist’s work is celebrated as the voice of a generation, but they feel utterly disconnected from their own creations.
  11. A woman wakes up in a house filled with letters she wrote to herself, but has no memory of writing them.
  12. A woman wakes up in a different body every day. None of them belong to her.
  13. A woman wakes up and finds that her body is no longer hers—but whoever inhabits it seems to be living her life better than she ever did.
  14. A story is told entirely through confessions, each contradicting the last.

Bonus (Multi-Book Crossover Themes)

(Some prompts fit multiple books and can be used interchangeably.)

  1. Explore a world where obedience is rewarded but comes at the cost of one’s soul, and disobedience is punished—but offers a glimpse of true freedom. (Paradise Lost & Crime and Punishment)
  2. A man wakes up in a society where knowledge is forbidden. One person discovers something they were never meant to know. Does it free them, or destroy them? (Paradise Lost & Crime and Punishment & The Metamorphosis)

*insert prompts here*

Write a story that takes place in the same universe that everyone else’s story is taking place. 🙂