Write about someone who establishes his/her independence for the first time.

Write about three...

Write a short story or poem with a color in every line.

Write something that centers around the memory of something or someone lost.

Write from nature's point of view. Be a tree, a storm, the earth, etc.

Create a family even crazier and less socially adept than your own and put them in a strange predicament to overcome together.

Give your character a "big" problem; an elephant, a hippo, a a whale, a tornado.

Give yourself or a character an unusual super power and see what happens.

Write a poem. Use obscurity, metaphor, and analogy to write something with a hidden meaning.

Open a dictionary to any page and pick a random word or visit dictionary.com and use the word of the day in your story.

Tell a lie and build your story around it.

Set your scene before, during, or after a huge catastrophe.

"I learned a lot from..."

Describe a place--any place. Now go back and change all of your adjectives to change the mood and write a new scene that takes place there.

What would your character discuss if he/she went to a therapist?

Turn the tables in a cliche scene. Let the child yell at the parents for coming home late or the student complain about the teacher not finishing homework. Switch the dynamic, but keep it realistic.

Write a dialogue between two or three people in first person. Now switch the perspective to third person and write it again. Then go back to first person, but from the perspective of a character who was not the original narrator and write it again.

Remember the strangest customer, coworker, or manager you ever encountered on the job and turn that person into a character.

"We have to go now! We have to get out before..."

Write about a holiday celebration besides Christmas or Easter.

If you didn't write, what would you do? Write about someone who does that for a living.

"I know you were lying when you said..."

Choose two or more of these people and entangle their lives: tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beautiful daughter, wives.

"The breath of the dog was horrendous..."

Write about a person/family who attends the reading of a will and discovers they've inherited something very unusual.

What things do you or your character hide from the world? Do they need to stay hidden? What would happen if they were uncovered? Write about it.

Which rules of society do you think we take for granted? Change one and write about the society that grows from it. (i.e. People are no longer expected to wear clothes, cannibalism becomes acceptable, etc.)

What three things would you want to have with you on a deserted island? Give someone those three things. Now put him on an island...