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Example prompt 1: Would you rather always know when someone is lying or never be able to lie yourself? Explain the tradeoff.
8 Would You Rather Writing Prompts Examples
Use these examples to study structure, specificity, tone, and variation. They are demonstrations—not claims about a real person or organization unless the example itself makes that explicit.
Before you copy
What to notice in the examples
Strong would you rather writing prompts vary the mental task instead of repeating one formula, include enough specificity to trigger concrete writing, and remain open enough that different writers can produce genuinely different responses.
- A clear writing action rather than a vague topic.
- A concrete constraint, question, image, audience, or situation.
- Enough openness for original content and voice.
- Variation across observation, invention, reflection, argument, description, or scene work when appropriate.
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Example prompt 2: Would you rather live in a city where everything is open 24 hours or one where nothing opens before noon?
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Example prompt 3: Would you rather be able to pause time for ten minutes a day or rewind one minute once a day?
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Example prompt 4: Would you rather lose access to maps or search engines for a year? Defend your choice with real situations.
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Example prompt 5: Would you rather remember every conversation perfectly or be able to forget any conversation you choose?
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Example prompt 6: Would you rather have a job you love with unpredictable hours or a neutral job with complete schedule control?
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Example prompt 7: Would you rather read one book that answers your biggest question or ten books that each make the question more interesting?
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Example prompt 8: Would you rather always arrive thirty minutes early or exactly five minutes late?
Keep the underlying decision or pattern, then replace the subject, evidence, relationship, constraints, and tone with details that belong to your situation. If your final line still works after swapping only one noun, it may be too close to the example.