Not everything needs to be a matter of life and death, but death is such an enormous part of life that we can’t long avoid it in our writing. You might want to use this worksheet as part of your shadow work, for worldbuilding, or for personal reflection.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THIS WORKSHEET (PDF)

Prompts for Writing About Death

1. What do you think happens after you die?
2. How does the thought of death affect you? Why?
3. Whose death has affected you the most?
4. What is the biggest lesson that death has taught you?
5. How do the deaths of people you didn’t know personally, affect you?
6. Recount your favourite death myth.
7. What would you like to happen to your body after you die?
8. What would you like to be written on your tombstone, in your obituary, or in a posthumous biography of your life?
9. If you were a ghost, what would be your favourite haunt?
10. What do you fear most about death?
11. How is death not what you feared?
12. Describe death as a person, creature, or symbol.
13. What are your thoughts on euthanasia?
14. Which fictional character’s death affected you the most?
15. Is your own mortality different to that of others?
16. How has your perception of death evolved over time?
17. Research a death ritual.
18. How does death create life?
19. Choose three very different characters and explore their relationships with death.
20. How would you solve the trolley problem?
21. Write a fictional will.

P.S. You might also consider killing characters, the death of the author, the death card, and the death of the seasons.

More Writing Worksheets…