describing snow falling creative writing

How to Describe Snow in Writing (100+ Examples & Words)

Snow is a popular setting in many stories, essays, poems, and all kinds of writing.

Here is how to describe snow in writing:

Describe snow in writing by choosing specific words and phrases that evoke its unique characteristics: fluffy, sparkling, silent, cold, and transformative. Consider the type of snow, the time of day, the weather conditions, and the overall atmosphere you want to create.

In this article, you’ll learn everything you need to know about how to describe snow in writing.

11 Best Tips to Describe Snow in Writing (+ Examples)

Table of Contents

As we step out into the winter wonderland of words, let’s start with the best ways to describe snow in your stories.

1. Define Different Types of Snow

There are many different types of snow, each with its own unique characteristics. Here are a few examples:

• Powder: Dry and fluffy snow, perfect for skiing and snowboarding.
• Corn: Snow that has been melted and refrozen, creating a granular texture.
• Crust: A hard layer of snow on top of a softer layer.
• Drift: A large pile of snow that has been blown by the wind.
• Sleet: A mix of snow and rain.
• Graupel: Small, white pellets of snow that are formed when supercooled water droplets collide and freeze.

2. Describe the Texture of the Snow

The texture of snow can vary greatly depending on the type of snow, the temperature, and the wind conditions. Here are some examples of words to describe the texture of snow:

• Fluffy: Light and airy, like a cloud.
• Powdery: Fine and dry, like dust.
• Crunchy: Hard and brittle, like ice.
• Slushy: Wet and mushy, like melted ice cream.
• Slick: Smooth and slippery, like a sheet of ice.

3. Describe the Color of the Snow

Snow is often described as white, but it can also take on other colors depending on the light and the environment. Here are some examples of words to describe the color of snow:

• White: Bright and pure, like a blank canvas.
• Gray: Dark and dirty, like a city sidewalk.
• Blue: Cold and icy, like a glacier.
• Yellow: Warm and sunny, like a winter sunrise.
• Pink: Soft and delicate, like a rose petal.

4. Describe the Sound of the Snow

Snow can make a variety of sounds, depending on the conditions.

Here are some examples of words to describe the sound of snow:

• Crunching: The sound of footsteps on fresh snow.
• Hissing: The sound of wind blowing through the snow.
• Rustling: The sound of leaves being blown by the wind.
• Silence: The absence of sound, creating a peaceful atmosphere.
• Muffled: The sound of voices being muffled by the snow.

5. Describe the Smell of the Snow

Snow can have a faint, clean smell, especially when it is fresh. Here are some examples of words to describe the smell of snow:

• Clean: Fresh and pure, like a mountain stream.
• Cold: Sharp and refreshing, like the air in a winter forest.
• Earthy: Musky and rich, like the smell of soil.
• Dry: Dusty and powdery, like the smell of a desert.
• Metallic: Sharp and metallic, like the smell of ice.

6. Describe the Movement of the Snow

Snow can move in a variety of ways, depending on the wind conditions.

Here are some examples of words to describe the movement of snow:

• Falling: Descending gently from the sky.
• Drifting: Blowing across the ground by the wind.
• Whirling: Spinning in circles in the wind.
• Swirling: Moving in a circular motion, like a blizzard.
• Settling: Coming to rest on the ground.

7. Describe the Light on the Snow

The light on the snow can create a variety of visual effects. Here are some examples of words to describe the light on the snow:

• Glistening: Sparkling and reflecting light, like diamonds.
• Dazzling: Bright and blinding, like the sun on a winter day.
• Soft: Gentle and diffused, like moonlight.
• Shadowy: Dark and mysterious, like the woods on a winter night.
• Eerie: Strange and otherworldly, like a snowy landscape in a horror movie.

8. Describe the Temperature of the Snow

Snow can range in temperature from very cold to slightly warmer.

Here are some examples of words to describe the temperature of snow:

• Freezing: Cold enough to cause frostbite.
• Chilling: Cold and uncomfortable.
• Crisp: Cool and refreshing.
• Invigorating: Exhilarating and stimulating.
• Biting: Cold and sharp, like a winter wind.

9. Describe the Emotions Associated with Snow

Snow can evoke a variety of emotions, depending on the context.

Here are some examples of words to describe the emotions associated with snow:

• Peacefulness:  Calm and serene, like a winter wonderland.
• Joy:  Playful and happy, like children building snowmen.
• Loneliness:  Isolated and desolate, like a deserted snow-covered landscape.
• Melancholy:  Sad and introspective, like a lone figure walking through the snow.
• Fear:  Anxious and apprehensive, like being trapped in a blizzard.

10. Describe the Sensory Impact of Snow

Snow has a unique sensory impact that can be described using a variety of words and phrases.

Here are some examples:

• The cold sting of snowflakes on your cheeks.
• The soft crunch of your boots on fresh snow.
• The muffled silence of a snow-covered landscape.
• The blinding glare of the sun reflecting off the snow.
• The sweet scent of pine trees in the winter air.

11. Describe the Transformative Power of Snow

Snow can transform a familiar landscape into a magical wonderland. Here are some examples of words and phrases to describe the transformative power of snow:

• The world was blanketed in a pristine layer of white.
• The trees were adorned with sparkling diamonds of ice.
• The normally bustling city was eerily silent and serene.
• The snow created a sense of peace and tranquility.
• The world felt new and clean, as if it had been reborn.

Here is a video about how to describe a snowy day in writing:

50 Best Words for Describing Snow

Consider these words for describing snow in your writing:

• Invigorating
• Peacefulness
• Tranquility

50 Best Phrases for Describing Snow

Read through these phrases and choose your favorites to describe snow:

• A blanket of white
• A winter wonderland
• A crystalline carpet
• A world transformed
• A hush fell over the land
• The air was crisp and clean
• The sun glinted off the snow
• The world was a silent symphony in white
• The snow fell like a thousand tiny feathers
• The snowdrifts piled high
• The snowflakes danced in the wind
• The snow-covered landscape sparkled like diamonds
• The snow crunched underfoot
• The snow was a canvas waiting for footprints
• The snow muffled all sound
• The snow was a reminder of the fleeting beauty of winter
• The snow fell in gentle whispers
• The snow was a cleansing force
• The snow covered the world in a peaceful shroud
• The snow was a testament to the power of nature
• The snow was a blank slate waiting for stories to be written
• The snow was a symbol of hope and renewal
• The snow was a reminder to slow down and appreciate the simple things in life
• The snow was a magical world waiting to be explored
• The snow was a reminder that even the coldest winter eventually gives way to spring

3 Full Examples of How to Describe Snow in Different Genres

Now, let’s look at three full examples of how to describe snow in different kinds of stories.

Outside, the snow fell in thick, swirling flakes, muffling all sound and creating a world of hushed intimacy.

The soft glow of the streetlights cast long shadows on the snow-covered ground, and the only sound was the gentle crunch of our boots as we walked hand-in-hand. The air was crisp and clean, and the scent of pine trees filled the air. In this winter wonderland, surrounded by the beauty of the falling snow, I felt closer to her than ever before.

The first snowflake drifted down from the leaden sky, an icy harbinger of the blizzard to come. The air was thick with anticipation, and the silence was broken only by the occasional creak of the old house settling.

The snow began to fall in earnest, blanketing the world in a cold, white shroud. Visibility dropped to near zero, and the house was plunged into darkness. I huddled closer to the fire, the flames casting flickering shadows on the walls. The old house seemed to hold its breath, waiting for what the storm might bring.

The snow swirled around the ancient castle, obscuring its towers and ramparts in a swirling mist.

The wind howled like a banshee, tearing at the windows and doors. Inside the castle, the fire crackled in the hearth, casting long shadows on the stone walls. The king sat on his throne, his face grim and determined. He knew that the blizzard was not just weather; it was a portent of the dark forces that were gathering at the borders of his kingdom.

The snow continued to fall, a silent promise of the battles to come.

How to Write a Scene with Falling Snow

Setting a scene with falling snow can add a touch of magic and atmosphere to your writing.

Here are a few tips:

• Use vivid verbs and sensory details to bring the scene to life. Describe the way the snow falls, the crunch of boots on fresh snow, the way the wind whips around.
• Use the snow to create a mood. Is it a peaceful and serene snowfall, or a violent blizzard? The way you describe the snow can set the tone for the entire scene.
• Use the snow to reveal something about the characters. How do they react to the snowfall? Are they excited and playful, or are they cold and miserable?
• Don’t forget the contrast. The white snow can create a beautiful contrast against dark backgrounds, such as trees or buildings.

How to Describe a Blizzard

A blizzard is a powerful and dangerous storm, and it can be difficult to capture its full force in writing.

• Use strong verbs and adjectives to describe the wind and the snow. The wind should howl and roar, the snow should swirl and whip.
• Focus on the sensory details. Describe the way the wind sounds, the way the snow feels against your skin, the way the world looks completely white and obscured.
• Use figurative language to create a sense of danger and chaos. Similes and metaphors can help to convey the power of the blizzard.
• Show, don’t tell. Instead of simply saying that the blizzard was a powerful storm, describe the effects of the storm on the characters and their surroundings.

How to Write a Winter Wonderland

A winter wonderland is a magical place where the snow covers everything in white and creates a world of its own.

Here are a few tips for writing about a winter wonderland:

• Focus on the beauty of the snow. Describe the way it glistens in the sunlight, the way it covers the trees in a white shroud, the way it creates a peaceful silence.
• Use metaphors and similes to compare the snow to other things. Describe the snow as pure, as clean, as a blank canvas.
• Don’t forget the other elements of winter. Include details about the cold air, the frost on the trees, the icicles hanging from the eaves.
• Use the winter wonderland to set the mood for your story. Is it a peaceful and idyllic place, or is it a cold and lonely place? The way you describe the winter wonderland can affect how your readers feel about the story.

Final Thoughts: How to Describe Snow in Writing

So next time you see snow falling, take a moment to appreciate its beauty and transformative power.

It might just inspire you to write your own snow-bound story.

Related Posts:

• 200+ Winter Words To Grow Your Vocabulary
• 200 Nature Words To Build Your English Vocabulary
• 75 Other Words For Moon (Best Synonyms and Antonyms)
• How To Describe a Nose In Writing (100+ Examples & Words)

KathySteinemann.com: Free Resources for Writers

Word lists, cheat sheets, and sometimes irreverent reviews of writing rules. kathy steinemann is the author of the writer's lexicon series..

1000+ Ways to Describe Snow Part 2: A Word List for Writers

Savior or Jailer?

“How the snow falls in the north! Flake on flake falling incessantly, until the small dingles are almost on a level with the uplands. It throws itself on the leaves of autumn, and holds them down in security from the strongest winds. It piles great banks against people’s doors, and mothers and daughters are made prisoners to their own hearths …” ~ W. H. Davies

In The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp , William Henry Davies refers to snow as a savior rescuing leaves from the winds of autumn. But he goes on to describe it as imprisoning people in their homes.

Snow, like people, has a nature that will vary depending on point of view.

This is the second of two articles providing ways for wordsmiths to include snow in their writing.

The Versatility of Verbs and Phrasal Verbs

Snow moves, causes sensations in people, and evokes emotions. Some verbs could appear in all three of the following sections, but to maintain brevity, I chose a single section for most verbs.

For example, let’s consider melt :

The snow melted my hesitation to go skiing. Fresh powder. Lots of it. Why not?

A chinook swept across the valley. The heavy snow melted , creating ideal conditions for mudslides.

The boss grabbed a hairdryer and melted the snow on his windshield.

Verbs (1): Transitive

Transitive verb: a verb that takes one or more direct objects.

The following verbs and phrases, which take direct objects, reveal how snow interacts with people and the environment.

For example:

Snow billowed into scarfs and sleeves , chilling the stranded motorists.

Driving snow whirled through the pass and covered every trace of the escaped prisoners.

A and B absorb, accentuate, adhere to, advance (across, over, toward), alight on, approach, bedevil, billow (across, over, into, through), blanket, blast (into, through), blind, block, blossom (after, in, into), blow (around, into, over), blur, bluster (across, over, through), bridge, buffet, bury

C cake (into, on), camouflage, carpet, cascade (into, over), chill, choke, churn (in, into, up, with), cling to, cloak, clog, collect (atop, below, in, on top of), conceal, cool, cover, creep (across, into, through), crisscross, crown, cushion

D and E dance (across, atop, over), dapple with, dazzle, deaden, drape (across, over), drench, drift (into, over, through), drive (into, through), drizzle into, drop (into, onto), dust, eddy (about, around), encircle, encumber, endanger, engulf, envelop, extinguish

F and G fan (across, over), feather (across, over), fill, filter (into, through), float (across, into, over, through), flutter (across, into, over, through), fly (into, through), forebode, form [clumps, dunes, ripples, waves], freeze, gather in, ghost, gum up, gust (into, over, through)

H to O hamper, hide, hinder, hiss (into, over, through), impede, imprison, insulate, lash (at), layer (into, over), lie (atop, on), line, litter, lodge (against, in), loom (before, in), mantle, migrate (into, over, through), mingle with, mold, mound, muddy, muffle, near, numb, obliterate, obscure, overhang

P to R patter (against, down on, on), pelt (against, down on, on), penetrate, pepper, percolate (into, toward), pillow, plume (around, into), portend, pound (against, on), pour into, protect, rage (across, into, over, through), rain (about, across, down on, into, past), rattle against, reflect, remain (in, on), resemble

S scud (along, between, into, over, through), seep (into, through), settle on, sheet, shelter, shower (down on, from, over), shroud, sift (into, through), skid (from, off), slide (down, from, off), smother, soar (across, over), spew (into, onto), spill into, spin (about, around), spiral (about, around), splash, splatter (in, on), sprinkle, stick to, stifle, storm (across, over, through), stream (across, over, through), surround, sweep (across, over, through), swirl (around, over, through), swish (about, around)

T to Y tinge with [antifreeze, a color, dust, fresh blood, rust], tower (above, over), transform into, trap, trickle (into, through), tumble (against, over, through), waft (across, around, over, through), whip (against, at, through), whirl (about, around, over, through), whisper (in, to), wing (across, over), withstand, wreath, yield (before, to)

Verbs (2): Intransitive

Intransitive verb: a verb that doesn’t take a direct object.

After an hour of light rain, the snow hardened . However, our boots still crunched through the crust. We’d need snowshoes to get out of the valley.

Radioactive ash drifted over the countryside. Within minutes, the snow greyed .

A to L abate, accumulate, arrive, brighten, cave in, cease, come down, congeal, continue, crackle, crunch, crust, crystalize, deepen, descend, diminish, disappear, dissolve, drift, drop, dwindle, ease, evaporate, fall, fly, glare, glaze, gleam, glint, glisten, glister, glitter, glow, granulate, grey, harden, last, let up, lighten, linger, liquefy

M to Y melt, persist, peter out, puddle, recede, recommence, reign, remain, resume, retreat, ridge, ripple, rise, rustle, scrunch, settle, shift, shine, sigh, slow, soften, solidify, sparkle, start, stay, stop, taper off, thaw, thicken, thin, threaten, twinkle, vanish, weaken, whisper, yellow

Verbs (3): Verbs That Could Take Snow as an Object

The UPS driver detested snow . Only three more days to retirement! He couldn’t wait.

The beagle tunneled through the snow until it reached the hole in the fence.

A to D bank, battle, blacken, blot (from, on), blow off, brave, brush, burrow into, burrow through, camp in, cause, clean up, clear, color (with), compact, compress, deposit (in, on), detest, dig through, discolor, dislodge, dome, dot, dread, drive (through), dump (into)

E to P eat, encounter, enjoy, fear, fight, fleck (with), fling, forecast, furrow, groom, gust, hate , haul away, heap, heave, honeycomb, hurl, intercept, kick, leave, lick, load, loosen, measure, miss, muddy, pack, paw at, peck at, photograph, pile, plaster, plow, pollute, powder, predict, presage, prevent, prolong, push

R to W rake, redistribute, remove, ripple, rub, saturate, scatter, scoop, scrape, scuff, sculpt, shadow, shake (off), shed, shovel, smooth, soak, soften, soil, spit on, stamp on, stomp on, survey, sweep, throw, tint, toss, tramp through, traverse, tread through, treasure, trigger, tunnel through, welcome, wipe (from, on)

Ensure clear context. Snow could refer to powdered or crystalline narcotics such as cocaine.

A to W acid snow, blizzard, corn snow, crust, eiderdown flakes, flurries, flurry, graupel, precipitation, sleet, snowburst, snowflakes, snowmageddon, snowshower, snowstorm, whiteout

An alligator crosses the road in the middle of a snowstorm. Wait, what? Huh? Where did it come from?

A man discovers an electronic bugging device in his ear muffs. Is he a fugitive from justice? A spy? An innocent whose identity has been confused with someone else’s? How will the snow affect his next actions?

A cross country skier accidentally wakes a hibernating grizzly. Does the skier flee? Remain motionless while she mentally reviews all the advice she’s ever heard about bears?

Props like the following lead to rich subplots and story twists.

A to E ablation, alligator, animal spoor, animal tracks, antifreeze, aurora borealis, avalanche, bald tires, black ice, boots, bridge, brine slush, campfire, canyon, car pileup, caribou, cave, Christmas tree hunt, climatic snow line, clouds, coat, coyote, crack in window, crevasse, crocuses, deer, delayed flight, dragon, ear muffs

F to L fence, feral cat, feral dog, flat tire, frozen creek, frozen lake, frozen waterfall, full moon, gale, glacier, gloves, gully, hail, hand warmers, hang glider, hibernating animal, highway median strip, highway shoulder, hot chocolate, hot tub, ice cliffs, ice patches, icicles, igloo, lean-to

M to R mittens, mountain climber, muffler, nor’easter, outdoor hockey, owl, parka, permafrost, piece of cardboard, polar bear, polar vortex, potholes, powder snow, rabbit burrow, rain, reindeer, roof, runway accident, ruts

S salt, sastrugi, scarf, scooter, sculpture, ski goggles, ski hill, ski resort, skis, sled, sled dog, sledge, sleet, slush, snake, snow angel, snow brush, snow cleats, snow crystals, snow fort, snow saucer, snow scraper, snow shovel, snowball fight, snowbank, snowblower, snowboard, snow-covered vehicle, snowdrift, snowflake, snowman, snowplow, snowshoes, spider, squall, squirrel, studded tires, Styrofoam, sunglasses

T to W tempest, tent, tinsel, tire tracks, tires, toboggan, toque, tow truck, tractor, trail in the woods, train derailment, tunnel, walker, well, wind, window blinds, wolf, wolf pack, woodpile, woodshed

Clichés and Idioms

If you run a word-frequency check and discover too many repetitions of snow in your WIP, you may realize you’ve overused clichés and idioms. Maybe you can replace them.

like baking snow in the oven: impossible, impractical, ridiculous

pure as the driven snow: chaste, guiltless, incorrupt, irreproachable

snow job (a): con, deception, duplicity, scam

snowed under: flooded, inundated, swamped, overwhelmed

to do a snow job on someone: blandish, con, flatter, sweet-talk

to have snow on the roof: have grey, silver, or white hair

to snowball: burgeon, escalate, intensify, mushroom, proliferate

white as snow (1): honest, moral, trustworthy, upright

white as snow (2): anemic, pale, pasty, wan, washed-out

See also 1000+ Ways to Describe Snow Part 1 .

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2 thoughts on “ 1000+ Ways to Describe Snow Part 2: A Word List for Writers ”

Timely, Kathy. My characters are crossing the Pyrenees in winter!

Thanks, Jacqui! It is that time of year, right?

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19,903 quotes, descriptions and writing prompts, 4,965 themes

Snow - quotes and descriptions to inspire creative writing

• an avalanche
• first day of winter
• melting snow
• shovelling snow
• snow clouds
• snow forest
• snow squall
• Snow Tubing
• snowball fight
• snowman's scarf
• winter months
• winter wonderland
• winters day

To the land comes the snow, water in its most artistic form.

Snow has a way of settling the erratic fires within and yet leaves my hearth flames so healthy and bright.

Snow from strong blue-grey cloud became the happiest of flash-mob scenes.

Snow came as heaven's sunlit glitter to bring our world to a new shine.

Snow danced in the light, a choreographed ballet conducted by the gentle wind. As Ava watched her eyes grew that tiny bit wider, as open as her kid sister when she saw the street had become as a fresh new page awaiting her playful feet and mittened hands.

The newly clothed trees rose as white fairytale beings in that wintry landscape, for the grey clouds had bequeathed a bounty of snow.

They say we live in the moment, that the past is always gone, and each day is something new, a stepping stone into a future we dream of even in the cold. For me, that is snow, that is those wintry days of bluster and ice. I see the earth of yesterday covered as white as any new page and the toddler in me rises as if armed with a rainbow of crayons, eager to set that right. Yet today, I'm happy to simply walk in it, create a few footprints of my own. I watch them tumble, those feathered crystals, their chaotic flight to form a blanket that could not be more uniform, more orderly. Yet for some their destination is to come to my hand, to alight upon these ungloved fingers and let my warmth be their spring melt.

In the sleek midwinter, the sunlight brings a brightness to the snow that reflects upon the pure-child soul.

Snow rests upon the park bench as if it were a feather cushion, soft and warm. It covers the rich, deep wood in perfect white. The snow is a gift-wrap only spring will open, revealing the engrained beauty that lives safely below, protected these long winter months. As the sun rises each morning, bestowing brilliance, igniting colours to vibrant hues - man dreams below of planting seeds, of the bounty of the gardens to come.

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Snow Adjectives: Describing Words & Examples

When it comes to describing the beauty and wonder of snow, words can hardly do justice. But as a writer, I’ll do my best to capture the essence of this magical phenomenon. In this article, I’ll be sharing with you a collection of adjectives that can help paint a vivid picture of snow. From its texture to its appearance, these descriptive words will help you convey the awe-inspiring nature of snow in all its forms.

Table of Contents

How to Describe snow? – Different Scenarios

When it comes to describing snow, the possibilities are endless. Each scenario presents a unique opportunity to capture the essence of this magical phenomenon. Let’s dive into different scenarios and explore the various adjectives we can use to vividly describe snow.

Describing Words for snow in English

When it comes to describing snow, there are a plethora of words that can be used to capture its beauty and unique characteristics. In this section, I will provide you with a list of descriptive words that can help you paint a vivid picture of snow in English. Whether you’re a kindergarten or preschool teacher looking to teach your young students about winter, or simply someone who wants to expand their vocabulary, these words will help you do just that.

Adjectives for snow

When it comes to describing snow, there’s a whole array of adjectives that can bring its unique qualities to life. Whether it’s the texture, appearance, or the experience of being surrounded by snow, these adjectives can help paint a vivid picture. Let’s explore some positive and negative adjectives for snow with examples:

Positive Adjectives for Snow with Example Sentences

Synonyms and antonyms with example sentences, synonyms for snow.

When it comes to describing snow, there are many synonyms that can add depth and variety to your vocabulary. Here are a few alternatives to the word “snow,” along with example sentences to help you understand their usage:

Antonyms for snow

By exploring a variety of adjectives for snow, we have expanded our vocabulary and enhanced our ability to describe this beautiful natural phenomenon. Throughout this article, we have discovered synonyms such as frost, powder, flurries, blizzard, and snowfall, each offering a unique perspective on the characteristics of snow. On the other hand, we have also explored antonyms like melting, thawing, spring, melted, and green, which help us contrast the presence and absence of snow.

Incorporating these descriptive words into our writing allows us to paint a vivid picture and engage our readers’ senses. Whether we are crafting a winter-themed story, describing a snow-covered landscape, or simply expressing our fascination with the snow, these adjectives provide us with the tools to create a more captivating and diverse narrative.

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Let it snow: 6 of the best descriptions of winter weather in literature.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful! But the reading is so delightful… Weather (sorry) or not you love the snow—blanketing your driveway, stalling your subway lines—it’s hard to deny that there have been some pretty darn good descriptions of it in literature, the kind that make you want to curl up by the fire (or, in my case, the space heater). Personally, I think I like winter weather best when it’s on the page and not the thing standing between me and the closest bar or the corner bodega when I’m out of popcorn. In an attempt to reframe the cold months ahead for myself, I have assembled some of the most beautiful/relatable descriptions of snow I could find in fiction. Perhaps now I will think of it as one of these instead of being irrationally irritated by Mother Nature’s cruel attempts to curb my snacking and my social life. So, here we go: let it snow! Sit down with these delightfully icy passages, and keep the hot cocoa coming.

From Leo Tolstoy’s  Anna Karenina :

At first she was unable to read. To begin with she was bothered by the bustle and movement; then, when the train started moving, she could not help listening to the noises; then the snow that beat against the left-hand window and stuck to the glass, and the sight of the conductor passing by, all bundled up and covered with snow on one side, and the talk about the terrible blizzard outside, distracted her attention. Further on it was all the same; the same jolting and knocking, the same snow on the window, the same quick transitions from steaming heat to cold and back to heat, the same flashing of the same faces in the semi-darkness, and the same voices, and Anna began to read and understand what she was reading.

From Italo Calvino’s   If on a winter’s night a traveler :

So here I am walking along this empty surface that is the world. There is a wind grazing the ground, dragging with flurries of fine snow the last residue of the vanished world: a bunch of ripe grapes which seems just picked from the vine, an infant’s woolen bootee, a well-oiled hinge, a page that seems torn from a novel written in Spanish, with a woman’s name: Amaranta. Was it a few seconds ago that everything ceased to exist, or many centuries? I’ve already lost any sense of time.

From Ali Smith’s  Winter :

And here instead’s another version of what was happening that morning, as if from a novel in which Sophia is the kind of character she’d choose to be, prefer to be, a character in a much more classic sort of story, perfectly honed and comforting, about how sombre yet bright the major-symphony of winter is and how beautiful everything looks under a high frost, how every grassblade is enhanced and silvered into individual beauty by it, how even the dull tarmac of the roads, the paving under our feet, shines when the weather’s been cold enough and how something at the heart of us, at the heart of all our cold and frozen states, melts when we encounter a time of peace on earth, goodwill to all men; a story in which there is no room for severed heads; a work in which Sophia’s perfectly honed minor-symphony modesty and narrative decorum complement the story she’s in with the right kind of quiet wisdom-from-experience ageing-female status, making it a story that’s thoughtful, dignified, conventional in structure thank God, the kind of quality literary fiction where the slow drift of snow across the landscape is merciful, has a perfect muffling decorum of its own, snow falling to whiten, soften, blur and prettify even further a landscape where there are no heads divided from bodies hanging around in the air or anywhere, either new ones, from new atrocities or murders or terrorisms, or old ones, left over from old historic atrocities and murders and terrorisms and bequeathed to the future as if in old French Revolution baskets, their wickerwork brown with the old dried blood, placed on the doorsteps of the neat and central-heating-interactive houses of now with notes tied to the handles saying please look after this head thank you […]

From Donna Tartt’s  The Secret History : 

The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.

From Kelly Link’s  Stranger Things Happen :

The next day it was snowing and he went out for a pack of cigarettes and never came back. You sat on the patio drinking something warm and alcoholic, with nutmeg in it, and the snow fell on your shoulders. You were wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt; you were pretending that you weren’t cold, and that your lover would be back soon. You put your finger on the ground and then stuck it in your mouth. The snow looked like sugar, but it tasted like nothing at all.

From Charles Dickens’  A Christmas Carol :

Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings, fruit, and punch, all vanished instantly. So did the room, the fire, the ruddy glow, the hour of night, and they stood in the city streets on Christmas morning where (for the weather was severe) the people made a rough, but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow from the pavement in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of their houses, whence it was mad delight to the boys to see it come plumping down into the road below, and splitting into artificial little snow-storms.

The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs, and with the dirtier snow upon the ground; which last deposit had been ploughed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and wagons; furrows that crossed and re-crossed each other hundreds of times where the great streets branched off; and made intricate channels, hard to trace, in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy, and the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles descended in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great Britain had, by one consent, caught fire, and were blazing way to their dear hearts’ content. There was nothing very cheerful in the climate of the town, and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest summer sun might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain.

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Winter Creative Writing Prompts: Embrace Cold-Weather Creativity

My name is Debbie, and I am passionate about developing a love for the written word and planting a seed that will grow into a powerful voice that can inspire many.

Unleash Your Imagination​ with Captivating Winter Settings

Discover the magic of⁣ snow: evoking winter wonderland in your writing, unwrapping emotions: explore the intricacies​ of winter⁤ feelings, embrace⁤ the chill: crafting engaging ⁤characters in‌ frozen landscapes, ignite inspiration with cozy winter activities and traditions, journey through winter memories: nostalgic tales to warm the soul, winter adventures: engaging plot ideas to spark your creativity, masterful descriptions: painting vivid pictures of frosty winter scenes, frequently asked questions.

‌ As the snowflakes fall gently from the sky, winter presents a⁤ golden opportunity to ignite your imagination and ‌unleash your creativity. ‌Whether you’re⁤ a seasoned wordsmith or just starting your​ creative⁢ writing journey, winter serves as a magical muse, offering a myriad of captivating prompts to spark your next literary masterpiece. So, grab a cozy blanket, curl up by the ⁣fireplace, and let these winter-inspired writing prompts transport you to a world of ⁤chilly enchantment. ⁤

​ 1.‌ Skating on Thin Ice: Describe ⁣the exhilarating feeling ⁤of gliding effortlessly‍ across a frozen‌ pond, the crisp⁣ air⁣ nipping at‌ your cheeks. 2. The Snow Globe’s Secret: Explore‍ the mysterious adventures that unfold when​ a small child discovers a magical snow globe hidden in the attic. 3. The Forgotten Cabin: Uncover the stories‍ of a forgotten cabin deep in the snowy woods—its secrets, inhabitants, and the memories it holds. 4. A Winter’s Wish: Write about a⁢ heartwarming encounter ​between ⁤a young child and a ‌lonely ⁣elderly neighbor during a ⁣blizzard. 5. ‌The Ice‌ Queen’s Spell: Dive into a mythical tale where a ​courageous hero must break ⁤an ice queen’s spell to save their enchanted kingdom from eternal⁤ winter. 6. Winter Wanderlust: Describe⁢ the journey of an adventurous ⁢traveler as they explore a frost-covered mountain range,⁣ encountering breathtaking vistas and unexpected challenges along the way.

‌ Step into‍ a winter wonderland and let your imagination run ⁤wild amidst ⁣breathtaking snowy landscapes.‍ As the ‌frosty air ‍nips at your‌ cheeks, get ready to embark on a journey through stunning and captivating winter settings that are sure​ to awaken your senses.⁢ From snow-covered forests to sparkling frozen lakes, there’s ⁣an abundance of picturesque⁢ scenery waiting ‍to‌ be explored and inspire your creativity.

Picture yourself surrounded by towering snow-capped mountains, their peaks glistening‌ in the sunlight. Feel the soft crunch⁣ of fresh snow beneath your boots as you traverse vast meadows, every ‌step⁤ unveiling a new world of possibilities. Engulfed in serenity ⁢and peace, you’ll find yourself lost in the ⁢beauty of nature’s winter canvas, where each scene beckons you to weave your own story.

To ignite your imagination⁣ further, imagine stumbling upon a quaint log cabin ‌nestled in​ the woods, smoke lazily rising from its chimney. Hear the crackling of the fireplace as you step ‌inside, greeted by its ⁣warm embrace. The cozy interior decorated with flickering candles and plush blankets invites you to curl up with a book and ​lose yourself in another realm. Allow the winter setting to transport you to far-off lands, where adventure and magic await at every turn.

• Discover⁤ the ⁤hidden secrets of frost-covered castles that stand ‌frozen in time.
• Marvel at the intricate ice sculptures ⁢that seem to defy the laws of nature.
• Embark on thrilling‍ sleigh rides through snowy valleys, with the laughter of friends echoing in the crisp⁤ air.

Winter settings provide endless opportunities for your imagination to soar. Unleash your creativity as you engage with ​these captivating landscapes and let ‍them serve as a backdrop for your wildest dreams and stories. Whether you’re ⁤a writer seeking ‍inspiration, an artist yearning for new subjects, or simply a daydreamer with a longing for enchantment, the wonders ‍of winter are sure to set your ‌imagination ablaze. ​

When it comes to describing the enchanting‌ beauty of winter, nothing quite captures the imagination like the magic of snow. Snowflakes gently⁣ falling from the sky, transforming the world into a ⁤pristine⁤ winter wonderland, can truly transport readers to a land filled with ⁣beauty and‍ wonder. Incorporating vivid descriptions of snow in your writing can engage your readers’ senses, evoking the​ peacefulness and serenity associated with this season. Whether you are writing a descriptive passage or crafting a captivating ⁢snow-filled​ scene, ⁢here are some tips to help you evoke the magic of snow ‌in ⁤your writing.

1. Paint a picture: Begin by illustrating the ​scene⁣ with your words. Describe the delicate snowflakes, ​their intricacies and patterns, as they gracefully dance through the air. Bring the readers​ into the moment by‌ detailing the sparkling ⁣white blanket covering every surface, transforming the world into a shimmering wonderland.

2. Engage ​the senses: To make your writing truly come ​alive, engage the readers’ senses. Describe the crisp, clean scent of snow in the air, ⁤the⁣ comforting sound of snowflakes softly⁤ landing on the ground, and the gentle touch of cold snowflakes on⁣ the ⁤skin.⁤ By evoking these⁣ sensory experiences, you can transport your readers to a world vividly imagined.

Winter is a season that brings about a myriad of emotions, each as unique and intricate as the delicate snowflakes that fall gently from the sky. It’s a time when ‍feelings are amplified, and the crisp⁣ air carries a sense of both nostalgia and anticipation. Let’s delve into the captivating world ​of winter ⁤emotions and uncover the hidden layers that make this‌ season so enchanting.

1. Coziness: Winter is synonymous with cozy moments, whether it’s curling up by the ⁣fireplace with a warm cup of hot cocoa or snuggling‍ under a fuzzy blanket. The feeling of being tucked away from the harsh elements outside can evoke a sense​ of comfort and contentment like no⁤ other season.

2. Solitude: Winter has an uncanny ability to make⁢ us embrace solitude. As the world becomes quieter and ⁢enveloped in a serene white blanket, it’s the perfect time for self-reflection and introspection. The⁢ peacefulness that comes with​ winter solitude ‍can be both introspective and rejuvenating, allowing⁢ us to reconnect with ourselves on‍ a deeper level.

In the ‌mystical realms of frozen landscapes, where the icy winds whisper secrets and the snow-laden ground hides untold treasures, lurks a unique opportunity for character ⁢development like no other. These frosty backdrops offer a rich canvas for storytellers to weave tales ⁣of resilience, self-discovery, and raw beauty. To truly embrace the chill and create ​engaging characters within these ‍frozen vistas, consider the following:

• Let the ⁤landscape‍ shape their ⁤journey: ⁣Just as glaciers carve majestic valleys, let the frozen landscapes leave their mark on your characters. Utilize the⁣ harsh conditions to test their strengths and weaknesses, forcing them to⁢ adapt and evolve. The‍ frigid climate ​can serve as a‌ powerful ‌catalyst ⁣for personal growth, as characters endure the chill and emerge transformed.
• Unleash the power ​of ‌isolation: In the‍ midst of snow-covered plains and‌ icy mountain peaks, characters can find themselves truly alone. This isolation can ⁤plunge them into a deep introspection, unearthing hidden depths ‍of their personality. Allow the quiet solitude of these frozen landscapes to reveal their hidden ‍fears,‍ desires, and strengths, unveiling a captivating complexity that draws readers deeper into their world.

When you immerse your characters ⁣in frozen landscapes,⁢ you enrich their stories​ with an ethereal charm that awakens the imagination. The ‌stark beauty, the piercing cold, and⁢ the ever-present struggle against nature create an atmospheric setting that mirrors the ‍character’s journey. So, embrace the chill and⁢ let⁢ your characters dance‍ on the ice of ⁢frozen‍ landscapes, ‌capturing the hearts of readers with ‌their⁣ enchanting⁤ tales.

Winter is a magical‌ season that offers ⁤countless⁢ opportunities to create memories and embrace the coziness of the⁣ cold ⁤weather. Here are some delightful activities and traditions that will surely ignite inspiration and add a touch of warmth‌ to your winter days:

• Roasting Marshmallows by the Fireplace: Grab a cozy ‌blanket, gather around the crackling fire, and savor the joy of roasting marshmallows. Whether it’s indoors or outdoors,⁢ this ​simple activity never fails to ⁢bring‍ people together and create an atmosphere of warmth and laughter.
• Winter Nature Walks: Bundle up in your favorite winter gear and embark on ‍a serene ⁢nature walk. Feel the ⁣crisp ⁤air fill your lungs ⁤and marvel at the whimsical beauty of snow-laden ‍trees and sparkling landscapes. These walks⁢ not only allow you to appreciate nature’s wonders but also provide a peaceful escape ⁢from​ the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

Continue the winter magic with more ‌heartwarming traditions:

• Hot Cocoa and Movie Nights: Treat yourself to a mug of hot cocoa topped with fluffy marshmallows while snuggling up with ⁤your ⁤loved ones for a movie marathon. Whether it’s a classic holiday film or a feel-good comedy, these cozy‌ nights in will fill your heart ‍with joy ‌and create cherished memories.
• DIY Winter ⁤Crafts: Embrace your creativity and engage in a variety ⁤of winter-themed crafts. From making snowflake decorations to designing personalized greeting cards, these crafts⁤ not only ⁣unleash your artistic side but ⁣also serve ​as delightful decorations that⁢ will infuse your home with a festive spirit.

No season elicits more nostalgia than winter. As the snow blankets ‌the earth, memories of hot cocoa by the fireplace and cozy nights with ⁢loved ones come flooding⁣ back. Join us on a heartwarming journey through the frosty wonderland of winter as ‍we‌ dive into stories that will transport you to a magical time.

• Cozy Cabin Escapes: Discover the allure of rustic⁢ getaways, ‍where crackling fireplaces and snow-covered landscapes create an idyllic retreat from the hustle and bustle of city life. Feel the warmth of a hot cup of cocoa as you curl up with a favorite⁤ book, enveloped in the⁤ scent of pine and the soft glow of candlelight.
• Festive ⁢Traditions: Take a step back in time and relish in ‍the traditions that ⁣make ‌winter so special. From building snowmen in the front yard⁢ to baking cookies with loved ones, these timeless rituals bring families and communities closer together. Delve into heartwarming‌ tales of holiday ⁢cheer and the joy that ⁢only the ‌holiday season can⁢ bring.

Winter memories ‍hold a ‍special place ​in our hearts, reminding us of simpler times and the beauty ⁣that can be found in the‍ quiet solitude of nature. ⁣Whether you’re reminiscing about your own childhood adventures or discovering new​ tales, let these nostalgic stories warm your soul as you embark on a magical journey‌ through the many wonders of winter.

As the snowflakes fall softly from the sky ‍and the⁢ chilly wind ​whisks through the trees, winter becomes the ‌perfect backdrop for exciting ⁤and captivating adventures. Whether you’re a writer looking for inspiration or simply seeking some‍ winter-themed reading material, we’ve got you covered with an array⁤ of plot ideas that are bound to unleash⁢ your creativity. So grab a hot drink,⁤ cozy up by the fire, and let your imagination take flight in the ​wondrous world of winter!

1. The​ Enchanted Ice Palace: Dive into a fantastical tale where‍ a hidden ice palace mysteriously appears in the heart of a snowy forest.⁢ Within its walls lies‌ a mystical portal that‍ leads to a magical realm. Follow the⁢ journey of a curious adventurer who stumbles​ upon this ⁤palace and embarks on a quest ‌to uncover its secrets, encountering mythical creatures, solving riddles, and battling‌ treacherous challenges along the way.

2. The⁤ Winter Detective: Enter the thrilling realm ⁤of mystery as a seasoned ‍detective is summoned to a secluded mountain village, where strange occurrences are happening under the‍ cover of winter’s darkness. Investigate suspicious footprints in ⁣the snow, follow cryptic clues left behind, and unravel ⁤an intricate web of deceit. With ‍each new lead, piece​ together the enigmatic⁤ puzzle until the truth is ⁤finally revealed,⁢ exposing ⁣hidden secrets and ​unexpected twists that will leave readers on the edge‌ of their seats.

Winter, with its ethereal beauty, presents a ‍captivating canvas for imaginative minds to embark on a journey⁢ through words. In the hands of ⁤a skilled wordsmith, descriptions of frosty winter scenes can transport readers to a world ‌adorned with glistening ice ‌crystals and a soft blanket of snow. Mastering the art of painting vivid pictures with words allows one to capture the essence of these chilly ​landscapes, evoking a sense of wonder and enchantment in the reader’s mind.

When describing a frosty winter scene, it⁢ is essential to pay attention⁤ to details that bring the imagery to life. The crisp, biting air ⁢that leaves a faint wisp of vapor with‍ each breath, ⁤the crunching sound of fresh⁤ snowfall⁣ beneath one’s feet, and the delicate frost that adorns branches like⁣ nature’s intricate⁢ lacework – these are⁣ the elements that create the ⁣foundation‍ for a truly ‍mesmerizing description. By skillfully using sensory words and descriptive phrases, an ⁢adept ⁣writer can transport the reader to a⁤ world ​where they can feel the chill in the air, see the shimmering frost on every surface, and hear the hushed stillness ⁢that ⁤winter ‌bestows ⁤upon its ​surroundings.

• Utilize sensory adjectives: Words ‍like “sharp,” “frigid,” and‍ “numbing” bring the cold to⁤ life.
• Highlight contrasting textures: ‍Mention the juxtaposition of the smooth, icy surface against‍ the fluffy, untouched snow.
• Enliven ‍the description with figurative language: Similes and metaphors like “crystals glimmering​ like diamonds” or “whispering winter’s secrets” add a touch of poetic⁣ beauty.

Mastering the‍ art of painting vivid pictures of frosty winter scenes requires a​ careful⁤ balance between immersive sensory details and the reader’s imagination. By skillfully crafting​ descriptions that appeal to‍ the senses, ‍a writer can ignite the‍ reader’s curiosity, transporting them to a ‌world where they can witness the‌ magic‌ of winter firsthand.

Q&A: Winter Creative⁢ Writing Prompts: Embrace Cold-Weather Creativity

Q: What⁤ are creative writing prompts? A: Creative writing ⁢prompts are stimulating ideas,⁤ sentences, or images that inspire ⁤writers to​ ignite their imagination and artistic expression.

Q: Why should we embrace cold-weather creativity? A: ⁣Cold weather presents a unique backdrop to explore emotions,⁢ sensations,⁣ and scenarios that can‍ be incorporated into our ‍writing. It creates a cozy and introspective atmosphere that‌ can spark original ideas and enhance our creativity.

Q: Can​ you give some examples of winter creative writing prompts? A: Certainly! Here are a few examples: 1. Describe the feeling of standing alone in a snow-covered forest. 2. Write a poem about the beauty and serenity of winter mornings. 3. Tell a story‌ about a ‌person who discovers a magical snow globe that grants wishes. 4. Imagine yourself ‌as a snowflake.​ Write about your journey from the sky to the⁣ ground. 5. Create a‍ dialogue​ between two characters sitting by a ⁢cozy fireplace on a snowy evening.

Q:⁣ Who‍ can benefit from using winter creative writing prompts? A: Anyone with a passion for ⁣writing can⁣ benefit from using these ⁤prompts. It’s an excellent tool for professional writers seeking inspiration, as ​well as beginners⁤ looking‍ to develop their skills or explore new creative territories.

Q: How can these prompts help improve our writing skills? A: ⁣Winter creative writing prompts challenge us to think outside the box, develop new ideas, and experiment with different ​writing styles. Regularly engaging with prompts​ can​ improve our descriptive abilities, character development, and storytelling techniques.

Q: Where can one find these winter creative writing prompts? A:‌ There are various sources⁣ to find winter ‍creative writing prompts. You can search online ‌writing communities , follow writing blogs, join workshops, or even create your own prompts inspired by winter scenery, traditions, or seasonal activities.

Q: How can⁣ I make the most out⁣ of ⁤winter creative writing prompts? A: Here ⁣are a few tips: 1. Choose prompts ‌that⁣ resonate ​with you personally to create a stronger connection with your writing. 2.⁣ Set aside regular time for writing, ensuring you have a quiet and comfortable space to focus on your creative process. 3. Don’t be⁣ afraid ‌to diverge from the prompt if your imagination takes you in a different direction. The prompts ‌are ‍just a starting point. 4. Share your work with⁣ others, either in writing groups‌ or online platforms, to gain constructive feedback and encouragement.

Q: Can winter creative writing prompts be used for other artistic ⁣forms? A:⁤ Absolutely! While originally designed for creative writing, ⁢these prompts‌ can ⁤be adapted for various artistic forms. Artists, poets, photographers, and even ‍musicians can use them as a springboard‌ for their​ own artistic expressions related to winter themes.

Q: Are there any additional resources available ⁢to⁢ enhance ​my winter‌ writing ‍experience? A: Yes, apart from creative writing prompts, you can explore other winter-inspired activities like reading winter-themed literature, attending writing workshops or ‍retreats, or⁣ immersing yourself in nature to gather inspiration from winter scenery.

Q: Is there any final​ advice to embrace cold-weather⁤ creativity? A: Winter is a magical season that invites us to delve into‍ our imagination. Embrace the​ cozy ambiance, take ⁢advantage of unique sensory experiences, and let your creativity flow. Remember, there⁣ are no‌ limits when it comes to writing; allow ⁤yourself ‍to explore new ⁤ideas and embrace the joy of creating in ‌the wintertime.

Embrace the‌ chilly season by unlocking your creativity with these winter writing prompts. ​Explore the magic of winter ⁣through words!

OTP Writing Prompts: Explore Unique Character Pairs

Valentine’s Day Writing Prompt: Embrace Themes of Love

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1001 Writing Prompts About Snow

March 18, 2021

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If you are running low on ideas this winter, look out your window and watch the snow fall on the ground. This will surely inspire you to write stories for whatever genre you prefer.

The snow, after all, has plenty of potential. With the right plot, 

it can inspire you to create a children’s story about a snow day adventure, a fantasy novel with a snow-inspired magical creature as the main character, or a romance story about two people falling in love during a snowstorm. 

To help you come up with ideas for your short story or novel, here is a collection of writing prompts about snow: 

• Drink a hot cocoa while wearing a hat and gloves.
• Christmas morning you wake up to find your house under an inch of snow.
• It’s never a surprise to wake up and find a foot of fresh snow in your house– not yours.
• You always think there’s more time left to do that thing, but before you know it, it’s too late.
• You’re not alone in your house during a blizzard, but you can’t find the other person.
• You grow too close to a snowman and it comes to life. What happens then?
• The Snowman Cometh.
• You don’t lift a finger and all the snow melts away without a trace.
• Snowballs are illegal in your state. If you get caught throwing a snowball, you will face consequences.
• You found a book that gives instructions on how to make a snowman that becomes very real.
• Snow Day by David Lubar
• First and last time you saw snow.
• It’s not snowing and people around you start to feel depressed.
• The best sled hill in the world is inches away from you.
• You find a snowflake that has something special about it.
• If you got a perfect score on an important test at school and could choose whether to go skiing or sledding, which would you pick and why?
• Your town has one day of snowfall and you are the only person in your house murdered with a snow shovel.
• Everyone in your town is turning to snow…
• It’s May first and the days feel like winter.
• Snow angels are sprouting up all over the place.
• In another life, you are the sea captain who brought the blizzard to the New World.
• In the future, people on different worlds borrow your magical boots for their own.
• You wake up from a strange recurring dream.
• You’re a fairy and have been imprisoned inside a snow crystal.
• It begins snowing inside of your house.
• You’re terrified of what would happen if you got to school.
• A snow day means no chores and no school. However…
• Snow begins to fall and creates a world of white purity.
• There’s a blizzard going on. Stay home from school. One day. Two days. Continuously.
• You are snowed in with your crush. What happens?
• An ice diving contest is held at a local pool. See who rises first!
• You love to eat your way through a blizzard.
• You’re the king of ice-cream! You decide what it should taste like!
• You win a trip to a ski resort where everything is free.
• All of a sudden there is no more snow anywhere.
• Everybody is giving you advice about the best way to throw snowballs.
• In your town, a mutant snowman roams the streets in search of trouble.
• Your parents or guardians are replaced with snowmen.
• My computer is contaminated by snow left by nasty climate change deniers.
• You must tell your friend only one true thing about snow by tomorrow.
• The only way you can survive is if someone will give you a snowdrift.
• School is cancelled. Why is this such a big deal?
• You find a snow-covered elephant roaming around your house.
• The secret ingredient in the snow cones you love so much is real snow.
• The first flakes of snow fall down upon you.
• Remember to say something about who, or where, the prompt is coming from and/or for what purpose you might use it.
• You invent special snow goggles.
• The snow angel you just made turns out to be real…
• You are about to freeze to death when a stranger gives you his coat.
• You wake up from a snowy daydream to a snow day nightmare.
• An inventor creates a device that will make snow anywhere, anytime.
• You think you are about to win a thousand dollars. Then, you come across a tennis ball.
• A kid walks through a snowbank and disappears.
• Souls of the lost snowflakes are reincarnated as a group of icy fairies.
• You wake up to find that the season has changed into winter, and you have no warm clothes to wear.
• No one else knows how to use a shovel except for you…
• Your old foe is a summer demon, and you are a winter demon. You compete to see which season would come out on top.
• Snowglobes suddenly became popular and everyone has one.
• Winters are particularly cold and long in your kingdom.
• The space shuttle lands in your backyard during winter.
• A tiny snow garden expands into a summer resort with everything going your way.
• The ghost of Jack Frost takes you on a snow adventure.
• You played in the snow with your friends and got seriously injured.
• The president announces that tomorrow will be world snow day, and all businesses and schools will be closed. What will you do?
• After falling asleep a shovel-ful of snow encloses your room.
• Someone builds a snowman that looks just like you.
• You’ve been dreaming about making a snow angel, but you’ve never tried it before.
• The coolest snowball fight ever breaks out.
• World War III begins, but only in snowdrifts.
• You live in a world in which everyone knows the words to the song “Let it Snow”. Every time it starts snowing, you are expected to begin singing.
• The first time you remember snowfall is today.
• You learn that a person’s nose is the only part of his/her body to glow in the dark after being in the cold.
• It never snows where you live, but maybe it should.
• Can you make snow angels in the summer?
• You accidentally catch the Snow Queen in a snowstorm and hitch a ride home on her sleigh before remembering that you technically have to kill her in order to end the curse on the Northern nations.
• Your biggest enemy puts a spell on you that makes you start lactating snow.
• The January Weatherman continually looks like he’s about to die.
• A group on each side of the track argues that their side of the track deserves more snow.
• Five trucks full of snow somehow got lost and ended up in your house.
• You can laugh in the face of a blizzard.
• What happens when climate change begins to reverse and World War III is fought over the Arctic’s dwindling oil reserves?
• You can turn the world into a snow globe.
• Someone hands you a shovel for the winter.
• You’re falling into a well filled with snow and you can’t get out…
• A snowmobile becomes an airplane.
• You have control of the government’s snow removal budget for the region.
• You can see a snowflake that tells you exactly how you are going to die.
• A button appears on the end of your nose. Whenever you press the button, you turn into a snowman with the push of a button.
• It’s the 22nd of December – Christmas Eve. You’ve received no presents.
• The snow holds a secret message. Every hour it changes a letter.
• A meteor of snow explodes in your backyard one winter evening. The surface of the world freezes almost instantly. It’s the beginning of a never-ending ice age.
• You travel back in time and get stranded during the Ice Age.
• A unicorn is born on a snow covered hillside.
• The snow that falls on your town makes every house look like a gingerbread house.
• It’s snowing so hard that lightning has struck the tops of the snow-covered mountains… Now, write the weather forecast for that oddly fantastical weather.
• Snow of a different color
• A snowball is your best friend.
• An angry snowman begins to terrorize a small town.
• It’s your birthday.
• It’s a cold snap on Christmas Eve.
• You decide to rearrange the solar system. Pluto ends up as a moon of Earth.
• The Inklings are attacked by snow gnomes.
• It is one month after the Great Snowpocalypse and human civilization has begun to rebuild.
• Snow falls in the autumn.
• You’ve been kidnapped, but you can only be returned if you complete a sculpture of your captor.
• You are a snowflake. All you want is to hit the ground and melt.
• A very unusual snow storm arrives during the hottest part of summer, only there is no heat anywhere.
• Snow battles in space.
• Every snowflake is different with thoughts, feelings, and opinions.
• In another life, you were a snowman.
• Every time you drive over a snowy bridge you have it out with the designer who built it.
• You’ve discovered the Fountain of Youth and the only downside is that you’re cursed never to see snow fall again.
• A witch lives in your town. She hates snow and wants to destroy it at any cost.
• Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre discuss the paradox of…
• You awake to find yourself in the middle of a freezing winter, but you’re not wearing enough clothing.
• Your gym teacher transforms into a reindeer in front of you.
• In the future, dinosaurs live in an ice age and are hunted by cavemen.
• A huge blizzard strikes your school.
• The snow falls, day after day, for a hundred years.
• You take a four-month-long trip to Hawaii. When you return, you find an Alaskan exhibit at your local museum.
• A blizzard hits the day before your school vacation.
• Snowball does a tap dance on my head.
• Grab a pair of dice or a deck of cards. Roll the dice/draw a card. Then, put on your thinking cap, and write a one page story.
• You’re locked in a glowing ice cube.
• Your hot cocoa stains the snow around you.
• A meteorologist who can’t speak.
• Your cat is trying to eat snow for the first time.
• A snow monster comes to life and you’re going to get to ride on it.
• Your mission is to preserve a snowball for as long as possible to see how far into the summer you can get before it melts.
• The Queen offers you one wish in exchange for a lifetime of snow days.
• Warm weather means it’s time for your Olympic training to begin.
• A storm hits in the middle of summer and it turns everything you know into a winter wonderland.
• On a sunny day, a farmer’s runaway milking cow gets blinded by the sun and gets lost in a snowstorm.
• A snowflake melts onto the end of your nose and tickles.
• To keep them from freezing, you decide to eat the rest of the snowmen on Earth.
• You have magical snowmaking powers.
• Scientists are examining a mysterious, glowing substance that is dripping into an Arctic river from the melting ice. You decide to play a little prank on them.
• You discover the source of the snow.
• It’s snowing, and no one can get to school. You get everything closed for the day and you begin your plan to create something no one will equal. Begin snow angels, snow sculptures, anything…
• You’re a zombie and you have just been shot by a hunter. You wake up in a snowbank and turn to the body to see how it looks.
• You have one hour to find a magical shovel that will let you have snow any day you want.
• Snow falls and covers everything. The world goes silent and a cold blanket of white suddenly surrounds you. When you wake up, you find yourself in a dark cave filled with bones of creatures long dead. What modern day creature will you find and how will you survive?
• You encounter a snowman with a horrible secret. Don’t reveal his secret as you struggle to survive the winter.
• A group of friends are trapped at the bottom of a snow-filled mine.
• Frozen zombies pull the moon down on top of the earth… And you and your friends must plow through them to get home.
• You’re a snow fairy, and it’s your job to make sure the snow falls just right.
• Your husband has been cheating on you, but when you give him the cold shoulder, he gifts you with a single snowflake.
• You’re a snowflake but you’ve been doing almost nothing but falling for the past five years.
• The only storm named Jack is coming to visit.
• Snow ball fights aren’t fair. Write about how you can take it.
• That is when you notice that everything out the window is covered in grey powder.
• An old witch has given you three snowflakes. They look just like normal snowflakes, but their magic is more powerful than the common snowflake.
• The power goes out in your house while you’re on vacation. A snowstorm begins and you can’t leave your home.
• You melt a snowman and accidentally make him almost human. He hates you for it.
• A snowplow driver suddenly freezes in his tracks.
• You must have a very thick skin in order to survive on the snow planet.
• The snow in the snow globe is dirty and you need to clean it.
• Your snowman falls over and the only way to bring him to life…
• Write about a blizzard.
• Your imagination allows you to invent a brand new winter game.
• When you get home from school, the sun is shining, and it isn’t snowing. You’re very suspicious.
• Your house has an elevator, but there’s no snow.
• You can feel snowflakes landing on your cheek.
• Jenny is having a Snow Day party, but there is a surprise in the food.
• Snow angels become ribbiting reptiles.
• A snow wolf attacks you.
• You’re a snowflake and it’s cold out there.
• What does snow taste like?
• Build a house. Then, abandon your family and live in the snow fort instead!
• You were a part of the first snowflake…
• Snow falls for weeks and covers everything in the world except one small house.
• You are hit by a snow shower… but being struck by snow makes you feel really good.
• You want to find a way to make snowboard your full-time job.
• A group of kids have found a way to bring dead people back to life.
• Someone inspires you to jump into ten feet of snow.
• Your house is destroyed until the next snowfall.
• You are a fluffy snow cloud on a winter day.
• Write a nature poem about or inspired by snow.
• One conversation changes your perception about snow.
• It snowed inside and you have to eat it to survive.
• You play in the snow with your imaginary friend near a cabin with a clock on the wall that gains time whenever you touch it.
• Someone you know catches you writing your story and says, “Are you writing a story about me?” What do you say?
• You turn on the television, crawl into bed, and notice in the corner of the room, a snowman had been suddenly dropped.
• Will people from any decade in history ever talk to you about anything you have planned for the day?
• 1. In a few sentences, illustrate why your character is on the roof. Talk about a conflict in the present day for two other characters. Finally, talk about what the characters on the roof are engaged in and how they might be viewing the conflict.
• Someone kidnapped your mother, and put a ransom note out across her breasts. The amount of snowflakes on the note tells you what you must pay.
• It’s nothing like the movies.
• Sport – snow tennis
• A surprise awaits you when you stop at the snow hill.
• The dead start to rise and are all made of snow.
• The first day of spring arrives, but there’s no sign of spring. Then, a small flurry kicks off…
• Your mom won’t let you go sledding in the middle of the day.
• Your car breaks down in a snowstorm, miles away from any human habitation. In the morning, you find that it is completely covered by snow.
• Santa’s sleigh won’t fly in the middle of summer, so he sat in your nephew’s summer camp.
• Write about your feelings about a person/people who were mean to you yet you still loved anyway.
• You’re a champion curler and you and your team gets a chance to attend the Olympics.
• You accidentally make the whole world start snowing by singing a song.
• Taxi Cabs that can change to look like snowplows in winter.
• You make your writing skills snowflake-shaped.
• To get your out of the house on such a lovely day you make a few trick shots…
• You are transported to the first snows of winter.
• Snowball fight in Hawaii!
• The earth is hit by a white out blizzard that lasts for a year. The world is as white as snow.
• Police car windows are frosting over.
• You are left alone on this planet. No one, except you, knows what snow is.
• There’s only snow on one side of the mountain.
• A goose comes into your store to buy scarves for his/her family.
• An evil spirit wants to plunge the world into chaos by destroying the first snow flake.
• Everyone dances in the winter, darkly, like your heart is full of midnight.
• You’re a snowflake, but not just any snowflake…
• You could travel any place you want to but you decide to stay home.
• A snowball is your go-to tool for solving any sticky situation.
• Snowman meat is being sold in the supermarket as hamburgers… if you eat it, you get sick.
• You can see snow in summer, no matter where you are or what the season is.
• You’ve become trapped in a snowglobe…
• You see a genie in a bottle who gives you one wish… in the form of snow.
• For the whole day, it never snows in your school or outside.
• Write about a unique snow angel made by a special snowflake.
• After school, you arrive at the house of your best friends, who are brothers. They have a favorite spot for sledding. Somehow you destroy this spot and all the kids stop sledding with you. You arrive the next day to discover that this spot has “healed” itself.
• You travel through time and encounter a snow monster on the way.
• You’re driving in a snowstorm at night on a backcountry road. The only lights you see ahead of you are from animal eyes.
• A blizzard causes all communication to be lost for several years.
• As a snowball, you survive a vicious battle, but you are dismembered and frozen in place.
• Your best friend decides to get a summer job delivering the mail in the snow.
• A warm spring melts the season’s snow, revealing some really uncomfortable surprises…
• The fate of the United States rests in your hands.
• If you had a snowmobile, what would you do with it?
• Every night you dream of snow falling. One night you dream that it actually begins snowing while you’re asleep.
• You and a friend create a secret code language and play a game with it.
• Fresh snow crunches under your feet.
• You have the power to control the fluffy, white stuff day and night.
• You get a magic snowflake that will give you the power to make it snow on any day.
• Turning all snow red…
• You find a billion dollars in snow. You can only spend the money on snow and snow related things.
• An other-worldly being gives you three wishes. You obediently use them all to create more snow.
• If you could make a snow angel and have it stick around for a while, what would your dream snow angel do every day while it was still in existence?
• Parents are allowed to use any means necessary to get their children to bring them hot chocolate.
• Rocking Horse Hill is on top of a small mountain in the Andes.
• A snowman is convinced the world’s best weatherman can make it snow whenever he wants.
• It’s been snowing for a week and you’re a day late on your homework.
• The winter solstice is this weekend–on Sunday when the sun finally sets you realize that you’ve been kept awake by an irate neighbor who likes his quiet.
• You love snow so much, you decide to marry the first snowflake you see.
• Your sled runs out of control and lands in a patch of poison ivy.
• A snowman shudders, collapses, and disappears one snowfall.
• You dream of snow all night long.
• Soda can science projects tend to go awry due to the explosive nature of carbonated soda. Using this writing prompt, try and invent a fictional scientific problem that a kid or family could endure if all the soda cans in the house slowly leaked their carbonation until you can’t have soda-based drinks.
• A killer snowman is …
• On a sunny day without warning, it starts snowing.
• You are a famous snowflake expert. Create an experiment to prove/disprove your theory.
• Everyone around you becomes obsessed with finding the most likely snowflake, and that snowflake will bring everlasting happiness.
• You are crazy about snow. What story can you come up with that lets us know why?
• An abominable snowman is stalking you at the North Pole.
• How would a monster feel in the thick of winter?
• Camp Greylock shut down because of a snow day…and the monsters party inside the cabin for 24 hours.
• You could freeze time if you concentrated hard enough.
• Buffalo Bill is prepping for his next Wild West Show in Alaska.
• A gift box is delivered from the North Pole marked with your name but you discover that all the toys are for someone else.
• Describe your daily commute in the snow.
• A shape-shifter changes into a polar bear that threatens to eat a group of schoolchildren who were sledding in his preserve. Grouping scenarios in threes will dramatically increase the opportunities a group has to collaborate. Limiting the group size allows the teacher to focus on ensuring that everybody is participating…which is one of the secret weapons of group activities.
• An army of snowmen invades town.
• You discover the true purpose for snow and love this purpose.
• Write a scene using any of the ideas above or make up your own.
• A penguin escapes from a zoo and runs into you outside.
• Someone erased the snow days off the calendar.
• 3. Book-“The 13 Clocks” by James Thurber
• The school bus is stuck in a snow drift and all the kids have sleds.
• Every snowflake is white and absolutely identical to every other snowflake.
• You are caught in a mysterious snowstorm and wake up in a new, snowy land.
• You’re discovered buried in snow after you killed the snowman that lives next door.
• There’s a secret about snow that no one has ever discovered.
• On your birthday you discover that you share your name with a historical figure.
• Have you ever received a surprise present in the form of snow?
• You’re in a hot air balloon on a snowless plain.
• When you make a snow angel you experience a strange, but powerful sensation.
• You discover a snowman in your coat closet.
• The only thing that stands in your way is your little brother, who is living inside a snowball.
• It’s almost Christmas and the mall just cleared all their Christmas decorations, you decide to take home what you like best.
• Snow is falling and you hear the voices of angels among it.
• Late one winter evening you make a snow angel that stands up and speaks to you.
• Around the world, people have made an alliance, called the AEO, against snow.
• Snowball throws an epic party.
• Everyone is invited to throw snowballs at you on your birthday.
• The snow begins to fall thicker and thicker until it is up to your neck…
• Snow is falling. Turns out it’s sentient. What happens?
• Flights have stopped for six long months, but you are determined to get to the beach this summer.
• It’s the first day of spring and it starts to snow.
• It hasn’t snowed in years, and this winter must be an easy one.
• You create an adventure story about snow at school for the annual newspaper.
• You’re lost in the snow and the temperature is dropping…
• An old man and woman who hate each other realize that they are soulmates after all when they find they enjoy tossing snowballs together.
• Your friend thinks mom and dad are crazy for buying you toilet paper that looks like snowflakes.
• What’s the secret to your everlasting snowmen?
• Snowboarding on Mount Everest.
• Someone makes a snowman in your likeness and the next morning..
• You’ve traveled hundreds of miles to the snowiest place on earth, Mt. Everest, to make an important delivery…
• You are part snowman, but hate the way your body freezes.
• A snow storm invades your city for a day.
• You miss a day of school because of a snowstorm. What do you do that day?
• A million snowflakes fall over your school… forever.
• The groundhog doesn’t see his shadow and says it’s going to be a blue, lovely day.
• Snow cats multiply faster than cats.
• Every morning, you allow a hundred white doves to wander your yard. When you wake up, all you see is white feathers.
• You get a visit from Mole Man inside the snow globe under your bed.
• All your friends are preparing for summer vacation, but you are preparing for winter.
• What kind of top gets creamier the longer it’s whipped?
• Winter has arrived
• You’re, as in a snowballing fight gets out of hand.
• Girl volunteers to be the sacrifice in the battle between Winter and Spring.
• The other books that I’ve reviewed in the My Fiction, Not Yours series include two collections from horror author Glen Krisch , the short story collection Stories by Paul Fishler and “N,” which is a novel that the group worked on together.
• You are trapped at the North Pole for the next 6 months.
• A mob of angry people want to make a stand against snow…and if you don’t help them have a snow day, their plan is to get rid of you!
• Write about a back-to-school shopping trip during a blizzard.
• A warlock asks you to move him…in a snow globe.
• You build a time machine and it only has enough power to send you back exactly one hour. What do you do with it?
• Go back to  Winter Writing Prompts  or step outside of the cold realm of ice and snow and visit the Writing Prompts Archive .
• A snow fall of 100 years hits the town. How does this affect the people and the town?
• You understand penguins.
• Crash-landing in your front yard, you find Santa’s sleigh. What do you do?
• Every February 2nd a portal to Narnia opens and all the snow melts.
• You are caught in a snowstorm and your memories disappear.
• The whole world is buried under snow.
• A robot that looks like a snowman must decide whether to join you in the summer sun or retire to spend her days by the fireplace.
• A snowflake traveling among rain drops begins to sulk.
• On your birthday and 18 th birthday, it snows for 5 days straight. What would you do with your magic abilities on those days…
• You lie awake at night and hear the snow whisper a story to you. Listen closely and write down what it says.
• An elven emperor is overthrown by a mysterious power.
• Your town is the origin of the Yeti myth.
• It’s your first day of summer vacation, and a blizzard hits.
• While it’s open for not, your family goes on a ski vacation — every day.
• The only thing your sabre tooth tiger companion isn’t a fan of is snow.
• A sled rider is hurt and trapped beneath a mound of snow. You have a shovel but you are not the closest person to help. What do you do?
• You only have time to grab one thing before the whiteout gets you.
• You get stranded in the desert with anyone from history.
• During a winter storm, you lose the ability to feel warm.
• Snowballs don’t just happen… Someone must have a snowflake in their pocket!
• Snow falls softly on your favorite destination. It surrounds the area in pristine white.
• A blizzard can be found inside a snow globe.  What happens when you shake it?
• The snow has blown across your windows making it impossible to see out. You hear a knock on your door.
• An eclipse happens and darkness falls over the snow.
• First snow of winter.
• It’s a cold day and everyone is doing something warm and snuggly inside. You’re outside in the cold and the only thing that you have is a pirate hat.
• Where do snow angels come from? And what happens after people serve their purpose?
• The snowman from your back yard starts to move and steals the stuff people put on display during the holidays.
• The year is 2999 and you wake up to find the entire planet blanketed in snow. A series of unfortunate events has trapped you overnight at the world’s worst ski resort and all the lifts are closed.
• Go in the bathroom, close the door, and lock it. Stay in there for three days.
• A family living in a tropical climate is oblivious to a pending blizzard.
• A character uses “snow” in a pun.
• Snow globes are portals into snowy and mythical lands.
• You have magical powers that allow you to make any day a snow day.
• You need to make some money to buy new clothes, but all your friends and neighbors want snow for Christmas this year so they each pay you one cent per inch of snow measured.
• Snowflakes fall on your school playground.
• Your home is buried by snow. What do you do?
• It’s a sunny spring day. You decide to make it snow.
• A blizzard hits overnight and everything is covered in snow. It doesn’t stop snowing for days.
• It’s Christmas Eve, but snow hasn’t fallen yet.
• You’re on the bus and the conductor announces that you’ve run out of gas and there’s a 5-hour delay.
• You get a job clearing snow from the streets in winter.
• Snow angels! What better way to spend a day?
• There is a blizzard at Christmas and everyone has been snowed in for months. The blizzard finally ends. The trees are full of brightly coloured leaves and flowers, birds sing everywhere. Everyone is celebrating the return of the sun by promenading in the town centre. Like all the other new arrivals, your town is very different, in fact all over the country the wrecked towns and development sites are being reconstructed, hundreds of new cafes, bus shelters, and parks are being built and many of the old shops, museums and libraries are being brought back
• Thousands of snowballs are frozen in space, held there by an evil wizard. They are all waiting to smash the Earth. You…
• One morning everyone wakes up and the world is covered in a thick blanket of white, except for the tops of the tallest objects.
• Due to global warming, it never snows in your town anymore.
• You’re 6″ tall, made of snow, and you’re setting out on a quest to reach the tallest mountain in the world.
• You somehow get stuck in a blizzard.
• You hear a roar outside and see your yard is covered in snow. Trackers tell you the source is 70 feet away.
• You’re on a never-ending floating iceberg. You’re freezing.
• Snowball fight, go!
• It’s the first of the year and frosty appears and announces that it will be a white Christmas.
• Yesterday it was the hottest day of the year so far. Today it is a record-breaking, icy cold 50 below zero. Make up an explanation.
• You find a way to make a scene that looks like it took place in a snowstorm look perfect, even on a hot summer day.
• You have snow for dessert.
• Today is your birthday.
• You are lost in a blizzard.
• Snow, snow, snow, snow, snow, snow
• You wish your hands really felt warm to the touch.
• You live on the moon and are having trouble sleeping over all the astronauts’ snow boots slapping the moon’s surface…
• A storm swallows you up in the middle of summer.
• In celebration of Earth Day, it’s snowed that much more snow.
• It’s snowing, and it will keep snowing forever.
• You’ve just moved from a boring, crowded city to your new neighborhood, the perfect place to make some snow friends.
• Everyone in your school looks exactly the same. They all have blue hair and their faces are full of freckles. You wonder why they always put sunscreen on their noses and never on the rest of their faces. Did you forget yours today?
• An archaeologist uncovers a map showing where ancient humans might have hibernated in winter.
• You come across the Yeti while snowboarding on Mt. Everest.
• In a time machine, you visit the first snowfall.
• An extraterrestrial transmitted a message that the Earth would be hit by an asteroid. It needs a human volunteer to travel to the asteroid with a shuttle that knows the secret to save the planet from destruction.
• You save a snowman from the middle of traffic.
• It’s 7 A.M, but you’re already hunkering down in your fortress, waiting for winter to begin.
• It’s summer and you’re given the responsibility of bringing snow to winter for Christmas.
• You wake up and the world has become a snow globe.
• Before the horrors came, Christmas was cancelled. Now Christmas isn’t cancelled any more…
• Write a Christmas letter asking Santa to bring you whatever you want for Christmas.
• Your punishment for misbehaving is to spend a day with Mercury in the snow.
• Snowball fights, sledding and snowmen!
• This world is about to freeze but then you remember you’re a snowflake.
• Your mother or father is a snowflake, and they are lost in the blizzard and you have to find them.
• Your town holds an Olympic Snowman building competition…
• Snowman unite! Today we walk the streets and annoy humans… tonight we meet in the field behind my house.
• A lot of snow falls on your birthday, but your parents don’t let you play.
• You have a time machine that sends you to the best snow day of all time.
• Your dinner was rudely interrupted by snowflakes.
• The ground outside is made of snow.
• You have tons of snowballs that are all the same size. What do you do with them?
• The entire world freezes over, so no one can hug anyone else.
• There’s a blizzard in the world. Sleeping Beauty will never wake up.
• A snowman crawls out through the tundra and says, “…Snow Cones!”
• You tell me world leaders will have a conference that will decide the fate of snow.
• You love the idea of where snow comes from — “I wanna be a snowflake!”
• You are stranded in a snowstorm with your archrival.
• You find an enchanted top hat. Now every time you wear the hat, it snows just as you had predicted. But there’s a sinister side to this trick which you can’t quite figure out.
• After making a snowman that looks shockingly like your twin, you experience a soul-crushing disappointment when the snowman turns out to be you.
• Briefly use the first person to describe snow in a snowstorm before writing in third person.
• You build a snowman and he comes alive.
• Language can be extended in different ways, including using non-English word roots and making a language with replacement rules.
• You’re given a snow globe that can make it snow almost anywhere.
• You need to stay warm but your house has no heat.
• Write a poem that tells how difficult it is to ride an escalator when there is snow on the ground.
• You literally melt your way into the school books.
• You somehow save someone from death during a snowstorm but it’s a blizzard outside and you have nowhere to take the person.
• An aeroplane from Australia crashes in the middle of a snowstorm.
• A snowman is determined to destroy the world.
• Your home, where you’ve spent your life, is completely destroyed by a freak snowstorm.
• The snow day turns to night…
• It’s night time, and you and the other kids in the neighborhood decide to build a chain of candles to guide Santa to your house.
• A man challenges you to build your own snow angel but you’re not very good at it.
• You’ve fallen into a giant snow globe.
• The audience size of the Super Bowl halftime show grows exponentially with each snowflake.
• It snows at all times of the day.
• You play on a snow-covered playground that has strange creatures and figures frozen in ice.
• All the children in your town disappear. Do you know where they went?
• You find yourself magically transported to a knight’s castle in the middle of a blizzard.
• Your school is cancelled because of snow and you would rather stay inside and watch TV.
• Your family won’t let you have a snowman as a pet..
• All of a sudden, school is cancelled for three months and everyone is in a panic.
• A bowling ball rolls through town. It’s your job to make sure it doesn’t roll away.
• There is a blizzard in the desert.
• You are part of the first community to live on a snow-covered mountain in the distant future.
• Two kids become snow monsters during a snowstorm.
• A group of soldiers find an ominous cave during a snowstorm and decide to investigate.
• There’s a monster stuck inside a snow globe.
• Someone keeps feeding the snowman your socks and mittens, so he keeps asking for more!
• Christmas Eve is canceled due to a horrible storm.
• A misunderstood creature who is hated by everyone starts to fall in love.
• A blizzard is raging. Mankind’s crops will all die because of it.
• The power goes out and all you have left to get through the night is a box of matches, a candle, and a book of short stories.
• Your ancestor was the first pig to inhabit NABF Island.
• You write a letter to Santa asking for three wishes. Two of them are wishes involving snow.
• You decide to use your powers for evil, not good.
• Your city announces that it has found the magic key that brings snow.
• What happens when schools are closed by a foot of snow. Use setting
• Life as you know it has been frozen in time since the Big Snow of 1974.
• Your hat blows off your head into a fresh pile of snow. You recover it, but now your head is cold and wet.
• You have special powers that allow you to make any day a hot day.
• A family is trapped on an ice floe.
• While you were out running an errand, you were struck by lightning. Your whole body is covered in snow.
• You are shipwrecked on an uninhabited tropical island and can only take one thing from the wreckage.
• Your hot cocoa brings the dead back to life, but they only come back as snowmen.
• Get Caught Up in the Snow
• Your house is freezing and a flame has started to burn your carpet.
• Write about snow in another country.
• The Flocculo family’s house is at the bottom of Mount Everest.
• Your archenemy is a snowman.
• A monster made of snow kidnaps you and takes you to its lair in the mountains.
• It’s Groundhog Day… in summer… and even though most of the ground is green, snow falls all around you.
• Your backyard is filled with giant snowballs that were scooped off the mountains.
• Everyone in town laughs at you because you can eat snow like a normal person.
• I wish winters had never ended!
• You become obsessed with mint chocolate chip ice cream and you want to eat it all day.
• Meteors are raining from the sky, but they won’t burn anything when they hit the ground.
• You are the leader of the werewolves, but today you are wrestling a polar bear in the snow.
• A snowstorm causes the entire world’s population to forget what snow is.
• Someone in the neighbourhood begins selling snow cones.
• You arrive late to a snowy mountain top picnic.
• People begin to actually question whether or No. 2 is for going number 2.
• The earth has been transported to the center of the moon.
• Write a poem, story or song about snow.
• You can now freeze anyone you talk to, it’s not that great.
• The sky is falling. It’s popcorn, not flakes.
• You live in a snow globe, but one of the cutest magical creatures lives in you.
• Snow becomes edible when preserved in a jar. People become ill and die if they consume it.
• You can run fast on snow, but not on roads.
• The snowman you made last year is alive and wants to eat you.
• Storms in the Middle East are snowstorms…
• You get trapped on an iceberg surrounded by a thick fog/storm and are never heard from again.
• Your legs accidentally turn into snow… which means that you fall asleep every night.
• Strange lights are seen above the snowy mountains.
• You have to have someone else watch your kids while you go out Christmas shopping.
• Snow keeps falling as you try to scramble up the roof to get to your airship.
• Help! You’re in a snow globe!!
• When you are back to school you wake up the day before it’s supposed to snow…
• Describe what snow means to you.
• Your school project is to find a hundred different uses for snow.
• You are a snowflake looking for a home.
• You accidentally find yourself on the “other side” of the snow globe you found at the local thrift store. It’s the middle of summer.
• A snow angel flies through the air and lands next to you.
• The Easter Bunny just vaccinated your left arm against snow.
• The leaves on the trees are your subconscious thoughts about writing.
• The children revolt and ask to cancel Christmas and New Year and all other holidays connected with snow.
• For a penny, everybody can make your days a snow day, but for a quarter, they can make your days a sunny day.
• An abominable snowman reaches out to you and you feel sadness and pity for him.
• It’s Christmas. Your holiday shopping is all done but you forgot to get a snowpack…
• You ask Santa for a winter home, only to discover the house is not what you were expecting.
• What is the worst case scenario of a snow day and how do you resolve the problem?
• Write a letter to Santa about getting picked up the next day.
• All snow within one mile falls silent and waits to hear what you have to say today.
• A snowflake falls in love with a vapor trail.
• Because of global warming, there hasn’t been any snow for over ten years.
• Seahorses live in a snowstorm, behind the frosty windows.
• Instead of a green Christmas, you get a white one.
• A newspaper lady is predicting the weather… but is she telling the truth?
• The snow keeps falling. And falling. And falling.
• A snow flurry has frozen your home and you and your family must find a comfortable new living arrangement.
• It’s been 110 degrees in your town all summer… and then you wake up to find a blanket of white snow covering everything.
• The day before Christmas…
• Because she’s cold, a girl is put in the hospital.
• Snow is a comfort animal.
• A huge blizzard drives all civilization to their knees.
• Storm-proof shelter can be any kind
• Your zombie horde has caught the sniffles.
• A horrifying winter themed monster is wandering the streets at night.
• How can one food make it snow?
• You find the missing ingredient that can turn your snow into diamonds!
• You and your friends are in a snowball fight with a Rhek.
• Here’s a sentence. Add the next sentence to it and continue on until you have six sentences that tell a story.
• Two race cars are racing in different lanes, both are on a collision course on the same track. One is water, the other is snow. The snow car is made up of snowballs, each one representing a different crisis in your life. You’ll have to make a decision as to which crisis to sacrifice. Which do you choose?
• A ship full of refugees is trapped in the middle of a snowstorm.
• A blizzard traps everyone inside for the week.
• You meet somebody with the same powers and a throw down ensues.
• The town you live in must be relocated because of climate change.
• The Manic Monday Parade Magazine is throwing a contest for creative definitions of the word snow.
• The world is about to be destroyed by snow.
• Your birthday party gets shut down by the snow.
• A snowman with a frozen heart is on the loose and will wreak havoc upon the lawn.
• Your city was completely converted to an underground city due to global warming, UNTIL a month ago when a freak snow storm hit with hurricane force winds and you couldn’t even feel the wind because it was cold enough to instantly freeze anything not thick enough to stop the wind before it touched you.
• Your next door neighbor is an astrophysicist. One day he invented a way to turn you into a snowman.
• Your parents give you the week off from school with pay because it snows all week.
• A camera is invented that allows you to capture snowflakes and see them move.
• Your arch rival loves winter and spends every waking moment in a snow globe.
• You have special powers, but you can only make it snow if you make a lot of snowballs. Share a practice of revisiting this prompt with a different emphasis or starting point.
• Write an alternate story of “The Snow Queen.”
• You’re almost home when a snow tornado lands on you.
• Your biggest superpower, the only one that can save your school from certain doom, is the ability to generate snow.
• You want to make the best snowman in the world…
• An evil snowman is trying to destroy summer.
• It was a clear night when you went to sleep. When you wake up, there’s a foot of snow outside your bedroom window.
• You’ve done things no one else could… That’s why you’re the Ruler of the Snow!
• The wind blows a drift of snow onto you and you turn into a snow person.
• Snow is falling. Doughnuts, snowballs, and egg nog are falling too.
• It’s Christmas Eve and you REALLY want the presents the elf brought you…but they are buried under two feet of snow.
• Your backyard has snowed six times.
• Climate change is causing snow days repeatedly. You make a plan to enjoy each day.
• You hear Story City is having its first ever white Yule.
• You go to the North Pole to punish Santa Claus.
• All the presents are lost in the snow. It snowed for days and days after Christmas.
• All the Christmas presents for everyone are buried in snow.
• What’s the worst winter you’ve ever had?
• You ran away from home, and now you live in a snow globe.
• You are a snowflake that travels forever.
• The curious magic of snowball fights…
• A snowman promises to marry you if you build him a special bride.
• You’re inside a snow globe, and forced to write.
• The first snow of the season will snow for the first time.
• Write about a snowball fight over and over until it is a novel.
• Write a story about two people who fall in love when facing a snowstorm.
• During a blizzard, the last remaining pizza delivery guy has to get through but knows the only chance of getting through is stopping to eat a slice on your doorstep.
• You’ve discovered a closet that specifically allows you to visit any day in winter’s past.
• You can turn any color red by touching it.  This is fine when that color is black, but even one yellow sock turns red immediately.  How do you survive public school?
• Having just saved the world from a giant snowball, you need to decide on your next adventure.
• It’s a winter wonderland out there. Why don’t we go outside and play?
• Snoopy the Snow Dog takes pity on you and decides to melt the snow by taking you on a ride on his doghouse.
• The ground is covered with six inches of fresh powder.
• A closet full of snow suits allows you to become any superhero or any animal.
• You’ve been chosen to be a snow angel by divine intervention.
• In the middle of summer, another planet comes into contact and you and your friends need to conquer it and end up in a recurring life-ending snow storm.
• The air is getting colder by the moment. Will you and your loved ones survive the next hour?
• A secret society of snowmen plots to ice everyone and win world domination for frosty little snowmen. They seek you out, like a snowball looking for a place to roll, but a suave man like you isn’t easy to trap.
• A mythological creature roams the snow fields, inspiring fear.
• A snowman battles global warming.
• The only thing you can eat is snow.
• The end of the world includes global ecological changes that stop the weather from changing but keep snow cold.
• You’re the king of the snowflakes.
• Your best friend falls in love with a snowman — on purpose.
• Your enemies are weak to the chilly winter weather.
• A sleighbell rings and you see a flying sleigh at the full moon.
• Your best friend is a snowman.
• Dodgeballs are now snowballs.
• Snow gathers on objects in your neighborhood overnight. You wake to find the…
• Make this a story set on Mars.
• A killer storm has you trapped in your house, but you don’t want to pack a supply kit with this one.
• The Earth’s orbit is going out of control and you are the only one who can save the planet.
• Your mother runs a snowflake factory, but you’re sick of making snowflakes and would rather be a snowman.
• You, a snowman, and a penguin named Penny have fallen in a manhole.
• You’re in charge of making snow angels…
• You win the lottery…thirty years in a row.
• Your parents are forced to admit that your snowman can speak.
• You have unexpected visitors in the middle of winter in Minnesota, and they are in trouble.
• You spend two weeks snow camping alone in the woods, and return just as you left.
• A bright glowing ball of snow rolls up to you.
• You wake up to find that you have turned into a snowman.
• A circus act featuring hypnotized animals flips out and the hypnotist ends up on the wrong end of a lion’s paw.
• No matter how hot it is outside, it is always Christmas when you hear Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, or Burl Ives.
• There’s snow everywhere, except for your bedroom.
• If you could have a matching pair of costumes for winter, what would they be?
• The only thing that can melt a snow maple tree is…
• It’s summer vacation and you find yourself in a snow white forest.
• If you could have any animal power, it would be the power to create snow.
• Power snow shovels cause a blackout.
• You used to love snowball fights as a kid … until you got hit in the face with one.
• There is a snowman at your school who teaches lessons in life.
• You finally get to go skiing, but there’s a thump-thump-thumping coming from the mountains.
• You’ve found a magic orb that grants wishes. One wish. Will you use it?
• You have dibs on the last snowflake of the year.
• Time-traveling snowmen are concerned about the future of Earth in their time.
• Snow is falling outside and you snuggle up under a blanket, staring out the window into the white world.
• A unicorn gets lost in a terrible snow storm.
• Snow sculptures take life.
• Which historical personality would you travel back in time to see covered in snow?
• You are trapped in winter and must find a way to escape before it’s too late.
• The weekend before it snowed, your town held a snowman contest. But you don’t remember anything very clearly. Is the snowman contest really going to happen?
• You dream you are an Eskimo.
• You are a snow globe…
• As long as you are with a friend, you always have something to do when it snows.
• Although it’s summer, there is a lot of snow on the playground, and it’s yucky and sweaty. But nobody notices.
• You have to save the world from freezing by throwing snowballs.
• A snowman goes on a rampage and must be stopped.
• You are a snowflake…
• A snowman is built with a heart made of Redneck…
• A scarf you’re wearing acquired its powers from a snowflake it touched.
• At the grocery store you can only buy snow-related products.
• Most people who enjoy watching Christmas cartoons want to watch cartoons about snow, Christmas trees, and winter. Find a variety of Christmas cartoons for kids and adults to watch on Hulu or YouTube. Share your favorites in the comments section.
• Skiing down the street.
• You have a snowball fight with a child who is clinically dead.
• If you lived on the moon, you would have another perspective about the Earth.
• Your dog is about to go on trial for killing the postman in the snow.
• Your bedroom is a snow cave.
• The first snow of the season arrives. As you fall into its flurry, you think of what the next few days will be like at school.
• Winters cannot get cold enough for you.
• You find a snow goose that develops the power of flight.
• You’re an astrophysicist observing a faraway planet covered in an endless icy ocean, similar to Earth, but with no signs of intelligent life. The planet is entering a new ice age and is facing complete submersion in a matter of months. Will you send out an example of life from your world to see if it is harmful, or will you quarantine it in hopes that it can flourish and evolve and spread life to your barren planet?
• When you come downstairs in the morning, you see snowmen in every corner of the house.
• There is an evil snow imp. He wants to make sure that all the snow melts before winter is over.
• An ancient snowman falls in love with an Egyptian queen.
• The first thing you think of upon waking up and seeing snow outside
• You unlock a wardrobe set from the year you were born.
• You’re grounded – and it’s the snowplow’s fault!
• Write about the first snowfall.
• Weather Monitoring Units
• Someone could be buried alive under the snow.
• A child’s imaginary Snow Angel becomes a living, breathing being.
• Your back yard holds a surprise waiting for you to discover it.
• It’s the coldest winter ever and you’re stuck in the car with your family. How do you cope?
• You can turn into a snow person.
• The Department of Winter Mishaps is responsible for bringing snow days to America.
• You end up trapped in the house on yet another stormy winter day…
• It’s snowing sideways.
• The circumstances of the world reversed – snow days are enforced by law and forbidden “snow days” must be revealed.
• You find a set of “snowball arms” in your attic.
• Who says snow is white? It might be pink or blue. Think of another color.
• Sandy Claws, the denizen of Christmas Town, is a walking snow storm composed of snow.
• You have the power to trade the miserable winter for beautiful snow.
• You can only speak in questions on a snowy day.
• You’re at work and one of the employees’ snowmen comes to life and is menacing the other employees.
• Your birthday is interrupted by snow.
• A kid receives a sled as a gift on Christmas day then winds up using it to save Christmas Eve.
• Hosting the party of the year!
• You can return your gift of an umbrella by deliberately getting wet during a sunny day.
• You are a snowflake, destined to be melted and you wish to be rescued by a snowman before your death.
• From the day you were conceived, one of your biggest dreams was to go ice-skating.
• You’re an auditor at the Snow Council of Yellowstone who’s been covering up the truth about dwindling snow levels.
• Knock knock. It’s the last day of the snow day week.
• You believe that any snowflake has a little magic.
• Your house sits on top of a snowy hill.
• Everyone in your town knows that you are responsible but your town is close to falling off a small cliff and you must make a giant snowball and roll it at the town to keep it from falling off the cliff.
• You are the only person in the world who can see snowfall after everyone has moved on to spring.
• It’s Christmas Eve, but it’s snowing.
• Write a letter to the editor of a newspaper. Say why you shouldn’t have to shovel your driveway.
• You live in a snowglobe. Everything looks like it’s made of snow.
• It’s your birthday but your friends decided that instead of presents they would throw a surprise snow party for you.
• A mobster knows he’s going down for the murder, all he has to do is figure out who actually committed the crime.
• You visit a planet made entirely of snow and ice.
• Your nemesis has stolen your magic wand, and has banished you to England.
• A moon made of snow is pulled away from its planet and floats in the sky close to Earth.
• You’ve chosen a secret test subject who lives in California, but as soon as winter arrives you transform them into a member of your club.
• The life of a snowflake.
• It’s the future and they have officially declared it National Snow Day.
• Sledding is the only thing allowed to be learned for school.
• You are a piece of snow.
• It is a snowy, wintry night and a fugitive is sought by the police.
• Your first day of school begins in the snow no matter what.
• Your neighborhood is transformed by a snowstorm into a winter wonderland.
• You wake up to find that your town has been replaced by a winter…
• You’re walking in a beautiful winter forest and you come upon a witch’s hut.
• The lists above are primarily for young writers but there are no age limits when it comes to poetry. The list of writing prompts below is a good one for older writers.
• The Perfect Snowman
• In snowless January, you awaken in a snow globe.
• If words came to life, what would they do?
• You’re not who your parents said you were.
• There are secrets hidden in the snow.
• A snowman that came to life wishes for a family, and sets about making one.
• Goodbye, summer!
• You did something bad, but your sentence was to clean all the snow from the streets and sidewalks.
• A newly discovered comet has an orbit that will send it on a collision course with earth. If it hits the planet it will bring all snow and snow-related activities to an end. Should it survive, Earth will heat up so much that snow will no longer exist.
• Think of your character and then pretend you are a snowflake and describe how you feel that you are falling and that soon, you will land….
• All girls walk around with their hair knotted up on top of their heads.
• Your school is put on lockdown because a second grader vomited from eating cookies before recess and it looks like he’s been shot at the same time.
• For some reason, winter lasts all year.
• You discover a time machine. Manipulate the calendar so every day is a snow day.
• Snowmen are attacking. The world is your battlefield—prepare to fight off the snowmen hordes.
• Your country is the only one immune to snow.
• Snow falls on a day rarely, if ever, visited by snow.
• A snowflake starts to scream because it’s melting…
• What will you do with your special powers?
• Snow Joe is your nickname.
• A snow angel gets ambitious…
• It’s morning and a dark storm comes from over the horizon.
• The story of It’s a Wonderful Life, told in a snowy place.
• It’s a snowy day, and all the adults in your town went to bed and won’t get up until spring comes.
• During the first snowstorm of winter your town has flooded.
• You’re trapped in a long-haul blizzard. Make a jail sentence note to a loved one, a song lyric, or a poem in the form of a road sign.
• Snowmen are roaming the city and attacking people.
• The sun is shining, so you don’t want it to ever snow again.
• We’re right in the middle of summer and it’s snowing in your town.
• Snow angels, snow artists, snowmen and snow-related fun.
• A hailstorm prevents a celebrity from picking up an Academy Award that was delivered via drone.
• The King and Queen have been kidnapped and it’s up to you to save them.
• Your family dog loves to run around in the snow, catching snowflakes on its tongue and batting them away.
• The town is suddenly covered in snow, but it quickly melts.
• One of Mother Nature’s tricks causes it to snow in the summer.
• The storm begins to sound like music.
• Your neighbors have a strange love of snowmen…
• You get to live on a tropical island. You also get to make it snow.
• You and your sister are caught in an avalanche during a ski trip.
• You have a secret experiment that turns Earth into a giant snowball.
• New York City is covered in inches of snow, and you…
• A snowstorm is menacing your city.
• You find snow in a place where it doesn’t belong.
• Being cold wears you out more than it does others.
• Writing Prompts about Water
• It hasn’t snowed in your area in years. An unusual occurrence has triggered a string of strange events.
• You know what it’s like to find yourself in the center of a snowflake.
• You’re adrift at sea, and a snowman is drifting towards you.
• A new witch comes to town and she is an ice witch and freezes all the water in town.
• Write about something you’ve been putting off.
• You are the worst in the winter because of Snow’s special powers. Because of this, you hate Snow since she makes you who you are.
• You are trapped on a tropical island with a grizzly bear and it begins to snow.
• While on holiday, you wake up in a bed as puffy as a snow cloud.
• Five dwarves show up at your door with helmets and a toy shovel.
• You get stuck in a snowstorm. Complete story.
• Your best friend is getting married in the middle of the summer when it’s hot out. But everybody is wearing layers of sweaters and hats and scarves and boots and it’s just gorgeous.
• Your town is buried under snow, including the airport. How will you get home?
• What does a snow day really look like?
• It’s your first trip to the North Pole, but you’re not expected.
• Time travel is invented and you decide to choose a moment in the past when everyone is stomping around and destroying snowmen.
• Your sister is a snow queen and you have a crush on her…
• The day before you had to memorize the snow clouds.
• A snowflake lands on your nose and it causes you to age month.
• A deadly snowball fight erupts between snowmen and humans.
• Your town dumps every single piece of snow it receives into a gigantic mound.
• The Dead of Winter
• A sad polar bear on your street with a shovel in hand.
• As you drift off to sleep you dream up a beautiful place made entirely out of snow for you to explore.
• Everyone you know is transformed into amazing snow creatures.
• You open a restaurant specializing in winter food.
• You find out that your little brother is actually the Snow Monster from that famous summer 15 years ago.
• It’s summer, and you wake up to find fresh snow on your lawn.
• Make up an angsty theme song for that special someone who hates snow.
• You wake up to find a ‘snow carpet’ covering everything.
• Someone wipes the slate with snow.
• There’s a giant snow monster chasing you.
• Snowballs explode when thrown and decapitate anyone they hit.
• A magical Santa is flying across the world and accidentally splatters a building with…
• Everyone you love dies and you never feel any pain.
• You are an albino Eskimo…
• The world is ending and snow is flooding in from outer space.
• You are lost on an iceberg and can’t find spray paint anywhere.
• A blizzard is approaching.
• Starting today, any and all liquid spills are frozen into shapes resembling the original item.
• Your worst enemy tries to kidnap you on the first day of a storm…
• You must protect your town today from an icy, sleet invasion.
• You use your magical powers to bring winter wherever you go.
• You are a snowflake, coming from the snowman that you helped to create four years ago. Where do you come from?
• It is your job to see that snow comes once every day, no matter what the climate.
• You spend all year talking to an abominable snowman in a snow cavern, preparing for a snowball fight to end all snowball fights.
• If you have magical powers you can control snow, like a snow tornado.
• You’ve just inherited a mansion in the Alps.
• The year is two hundred years in the future and almost no snow falls.
• What is your secret talent and why isn’t anyone else aware of it?
• You have a great idea for a snow gumball machine.
• The heroes of your favorite book are lost in the snow.
• This snow shovel has eyes, eyebrows, a mustache, and a soul. What adventures does it share?
• You can walk on water or snow, but only if you first drink a sip of water.
• You’ve been invited to snow camp.
• You’re rooting your basketball team on, and your favorite player is having a big game until right before halftime when he slips on the court, runs himself through with his own sword, and bleeds to death right in front of his little sister. What do you do?
• You find a bottle with a genie inside who happens to be a snowman.
• You are the only person left in the world who can make snow fall. You can’t even move from your spot. What do you do?
• A blizzard has left you trapped in a cabin by yourself for three days.
• There’s a deer swimming in your pool on a hot summer day.
• Watch snowfall until you fall asleep.
• A meteorologist makes you a bet that you can’t make it snow in your current location.
• Tonight there will be a full lunar eclipse. It’s also the first snow of the season.
• The whole town has snowed in and you need to get to the hospital to deliver the baby of a dying woman.
• You have the power to create snowfall whenever you like.
• Snow goes back to being freezing after it melts.
• Two snow sculptures have a fight.
• A barrage of snowballs rained down on the city. Freshman year in college is like a blizzard.
• On a hot day, a thick blanket of snow covers your neighborhood.
• You had a terrifying snow dream last night.
• There is a magic portal to a snowy planet that you have to visit or die.
• Your friends are building the best snow fort ever, but you’re out of snow.
• It’s so hot the snow melts.
• Something is wrong with the snow…It’s snowing spiders!
• You’re the first person to travel to the North Pole to see the world covered in snow.
• During a blizzard meteorites fall from the sky, one of them happens to land in your backyard.
• The queen of the elves from The Snow Queen wants to set up her empire in your home.
• It is snowing outside, but everyone is wearing bathing suits.
• A holiday honoring snow should be released.
• Your neighbor dies. They leave their property to you in their will and you inherit a family of snowfolk.
• On top of a hill.
• A little child asks, “Mommy, why do snowmen have carrot noses?”
• Everyone everywhere gets a snow day.
• The water supply runs out and you have to live on snow for a week.
• You receive a single snowflake as a gift.
• A snowman has joined your family.
• The snow falls so violently and constantly that life inside is just like life in a house buried by an avalanche.
• A giant snowball knocks your house upside down.
• Every day this winter you dream about the snow days you missed as a kid.
• You’re not supposed to go into the woods, but you’re pretty sure there are skeletons in there…
• You have a million dollars worth of pennies, but you must shovel the snow for the rest of the winter in order to keep them.
• Snow carpaccio.
• If it snowed on your birthday, this snow would be ruined. Take a close look at what it says.
• You are standing on top of a snow covered mountain…
• Your whole family is trapped in the house without any food. The only thing you have outside is snow.
• There are two snow globes, and the rules are…
• The first snow of the year stays a perfect shape forever.
• The snow begins to fall when you are out on a picnic.
• It’s Christmas day and the snow to be the only thing that’s white and everybody you know has forgotten what Christmas is all about.
• Nelson is a snowman who wants chocolate cake.
• Terra, an old lady, wakes up one morning to find that the earth has stopped from turning.
• Snow, snowball fights, hot chocolate, sledding, and other snow words decorate the blank leaves of this book.
• You awaken to discover that all of your toys have come to life.
• Your mom won’t let you have a snow day because it isn’t snowing. How will you convince her otherwise?
• A snowball is picked for the starting lineup of a winter baseball team. What do the rest of the players look like?
• Write a short story about a snow day adventure.
• There has been a terrible accident and the world has stopped making snow.
• You’re the first person to climb the world’s tallest snow-covered mountain.
• The only thing people ever ask you about is the weather.
• You live in a snow bubble and whenever someone touches you they get frostbite.
• It’s a beautiful winter wonderland, but you’re allergic to snow.
• You are the best snowflake ever at snow snowsnow’s school.
• A snowball is thrown at you but your arms can’t move.
• A snow man’s wife shows up on a warm sunny day…
• When snowflakes hit you, your arm is covered in goosebumps.
• Santa is tired of making the long trip to your house. He wants a vacation. You decide he needs to retire and a new Clause moves into the North Pole. You know he doesn’t know everything about the job and decides to train him. Will you succeed?
• The month of August suddenly becomes December.
• The snow comes down in the middle of the summer.
• Sunday’s always seem to bring about snowfall. It snows on the day of your second grade spelling bee. You want to match the word “snowstorm” first in the finals of announced competitions.
• A homeless man on the street approaches you to ask for money to buy a coat, scarf, and gloves in order to survive the cold. What do you do?
• Reanimating Snowflakes
• You accidentally start a war between two outdoor armies.
• The world is draped in a layer of snow…
• You’re in charge of the weather for the day.
• There will be 1 stupid snowflake in the endless amounts of snowflakes.
• You have to make a wish while there’s snow on your eyelashes. Being gay or lesbian is not a boon or a curse
• Your dog leads you to the mouth of a cave.
• Thanks for reading and have fun with your writing!
• An entire mountain turns to snow.
• You sometimes have nightmares about snow.
• You can communicate with the snow by asking it rhetorical questions. Then the snow responds to you out loud with answers.
• You are stranded in the jungle and a snow storm begins to come your way.
• What would happen next?
• The only city in the world that still has snow and ice that never melts.
• You’re an iceberg and you decide who you drift near and when.
• A scientist invents a potion that makes snow, but then it gets stolen. What will he do to get it back?
• Your bed is covered with snow that won’t melt.
• You are alone, but not alone, in a blizzard with no heat…
• A snowcloud hides the sun.
• Write your own fairy tale about snow.
• It’s a freezing cold day and all you want to do is hide in your room and close your blinds, but you’re broke and need to get groceries. What do you do?
• A snowboarding accident leaves you in a coma. You call out to somebody but nobody hears you. This repeats for seven days and then you wake up.
• Some Christmas elves are imprisoning children in your refrigerator.
• On your birthday, you arrive at school to find that it has been transformed into a winter wonderland…
• A magical winter storm transforms your mood.
• You open your front door to collect the morning newspaper, and find a snow globe waiting for you.
• It’s Halloween and it’s snowing.
• A snowman comes to life and wants to read your mind.
• You’re hit by a snowball. Immediately you are transported back to shortly after your mother’s fatal car accident, in which you were the driver, only the block…
• Your thermostat is broken and your house is really cold.
• During the warm summer months, you open a theme park about snow.
• The night is warm, but little patches of snow are scattered throughout your room.
• The second freakiest thing that could happen in July is…
• Someone eats too much chocolate at the Christmas office party and turns green.
• No one will believe you saw it, but you saw Bigfoot playing in the snow.
• Children in your area never lose their snow hats because they always know where to find their next winter’s supply.
• One day a year, snow is made out of chocolate.
• Someday, while walking in the cloak of a new-fallen snow, you realize a snowman has magically grown a heart.
• The perfect snowy day. The sun’s out, the air’s crisp.
• Put your thinking hat on.
• You can use your snow shovel after it snows to open a new, secret doorway into another world.
• Your family is trapped in a snowstorm. They are lost and uninjured but they need you to find them food, safety and warmth.
• On a work day, it always snows on a specific person’s driveway.
• Time is frozen for a month, so you and your family/friends take a trip to your favorite place in the world.
• A big blizzard hits New York and people lose their way.
• Today you make it your lifelong mission to build the biggest snow mountain the world has ever seen.
• A snowstorm hinders a bank heist.
• These prompts can be used for a writing, art, dance, storytelling and performance piece. See the lesson page related to this course for material to get you started.
• It’s your birthday and it’s a surprise snow day.
• You’re a quiet child whose very thoughts turn into snowflakes.
• If snow were money, the way wars are fought would change.
• Your yard is so full of snow that you build a fort inside it.
• The entire world turns into one huge snowball.
• How much snow falls before you escape from the avalanche?
• A stranger offers to buy you a dolphin…
• The weakest link on the strongest sled team always gets made fun of.
• You have just invented a snow-based currency scheme.
• You’ve eaten too much sugar and now one of your body parts is snow.
• A famous sculptor becomes snowed-in in your town and befriends you. He asks you to model for his latest project—making you the most famous snow person ever.
• Let’s have a snow day right now!
• Your town is buried under snow and your father is about to cancel Halloween. How do you save the day?
• To make it snow, you have to make three wishes and
• Half of the world is dark. It’s up to you and your family to get warm again.
• Your strengths make you a monster in the snow, but you secretly wish you were somewhere without snow…
• A giant robot snowman attacks your town.
• Pick a character you like and write a story where they are snowed in with that character for the day.
• No one is there to save you, but you find a way anyways.
• Make up three lies about snow.
• The snowman from Snowball enters your town on Christmas Eve and the snowmen come alive.
• You enter the snow globe of your dreams…
• Snow on everything means snow on you. Make snowmen out of your coat sleeves and scarf.
• The technology is invented where you can create snow by just being cold.
• Spending a night in an igloo.
• You’ve discovered an ancient killer that hibernates in snow.
• Remember to keep it interesting, but also relatable. Don’t forget that you want your speech to be discoverable. Your listeners need to find a way to relate to the things you are writing about.
• Suddenly everything around you turns white and starts to disappear into piles of snow.
• A snowman wants to be friends with you but you keep refusing. Why?
• An only child plans to use his science fair project to make it snow nonstop for the rest of your winter break.
• Everyone has been turned into snowmen due to a freak scientific accident.
• You find out your single friend has been planning a three-day snowdate with you.
• You’ve been given an hour inside a snow globe.
• It’s summer and there’s no snow on the ground.
• You have to travel through the middle of winter but you forgot you packed a sun block. As you start burning you realize that the only solution is to create a fake snow to cool yourself.
• The snowman down the street comes to life and becomes a murderer.
• The mayor of your town makes an official order that you can’t throw snowballs one day a year.
• You are making a snow angel…
• The witches need to fly and alakazam! Fifty inches of snowfall in an instant.
• You have found a wishing well in the middle of nowhere that allows you to wish for any kind of snow you’d like…But watch out, your wishes may come back to haunt you.
• You awake from a dream to find snow everywhere…
• You’re going to die on the first day of summer, and you must open all notes and cards before you die. This includes everything.
• When Winter and Summer agree where they shall meet, it inevitably results in a snow day.
• You come across a baby bluebird. He is covered in snow.
• Everybody else in town is getting free pizza, only you are stuck shoveling the snow.
• The only place to watch your favorite movie is outside, in the snow.
• You know the secret to turning into a snowman.
• About Pinterest for Teachers
• Your life is snowed in and you suddenly develop a strange tickle in your nose, a little rototiller starts scratching…
• A deranged snowman prepares to abduct you…
• Werewolves are scared of snow.
• Someone crashes your dream winter vacation as a stunt double for snowboarding legend Stich Von Platte.
• An evil spell transforms every person and animal into snowmen and snowwomen.
• Everybody gets so sick of winter that they hold a vote to abolish it.
• The first king decides to use his magical crown to make it snow.
• If the groundhog doesn’t see his shadow, you don’t have to go to school tomorrow…but it’s the last one.
• You win a supply of snow that lasts for a year.
• The zombie apocalypse happens on the last day of January, and it’s a whiteout.
• A blizzard becomes sentient.
• A snowman goes to war.
• Day 17 in your winter survival guide.
• A snowstorm causes 5 days of school cancellations, but that changes your plans.
• These writing prompts are suited for new objects so students can branch out and write something that they have not written before.
• Find out how to capture snow in your backyard during a blizzard.
• “Let it snow!”
• Your best friend is ice and your worst enemy is heat. Which one is which?
• It’s a snowy day and your partner has gotten you out of the house, but it’s all a lie just to gut you on the ultimate slope.
• You are now sugar and sugar can’t melt.
• You’re the only human left after an apocalypse. Civilization has collapsed and the world is buried in ash, leaving you with nothing but snow.
• Snow is key to a great plot for any novel or story.
• You’re growing another pair of legs in the middle of winter and can’t figure out how this occurred.
• Snow angels come alive.
• Due to a freak snowstorm, you’re the only person left in your neighborhood.
• You’re supposed to visit the North Pole, but you get derailed in your travels.
• Ask a friend or family member what their favorite kind of snow is. Then on your next snow day, look outside and see if any of it has fallen. Are they happy with the snow that they wanted to see?
• On windy days when it’s raining, snow is falling.
• A snowflake grows arms…
• You are the first human on a planet where snowflakes are the size of igloos.
• There was an enormous snowfall last night. You woke up and discovered something…
• Snowmen conference day at school isn’t until the summer!
• Forrest Gump lives at your house.
• April showers bring May flowers–but if April is truly rainy, does it mean snowing?
• Everyone in the town you live in has amnesia and believes it’s the middle of winter
• Snow angels turn you into a demon… but a friendly one, right?
• It’s your birthday and your parents have decided to take you on a road trip to see the snowfall.
• While swimming in the pool, a snowman falls in, turning it into a snow pool.
• It’s Christmas Eve… however, if you look outside the whole world is covered in snow.
• Today is the last snow day of the year!
• The world begins as a snowball.
• It’s the graveyard shift at the Arctic Research Centre. You are crushing ice all alone one night, when all of a sudden the door slams shut and locks behind you.
• Everyone in town starts eating nothing but snow.

Recommended Posts:

• 1001 Writing Prompts About Snow Globes
• 1001 Writing Prompts About Summer Vacation
• 1001 Writing Prompts About Superheroes

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10 Words to Describe Snowy Mountains

By Isobel Coughlan

If you plan on setting your novel in a cold place, adding snow to the environment can help create a chilling effect, especially if your book is a thriller. If you need some words to describe snowy mountains, scroll down to learn more.

1. Staggering

Something that is  breathtaking  or surprising.

“The  staggering  snowy mountains towered above the village, obscuring the sun in the distance.”

“He tried to focus on his journey, but the  staggering  mountains were topped with thick snow.”

How it Adds Description

The word “staggering” emphasizes the size of the mountains, allowing you to show the reader how large your snowy mountains are.  This term  can also show your character’s shock or awe at the sight of the scenery, therefore informing the reader that they’ve never seen a setting this large or snowy before.

2. Bleached

An  object  that’s a light or white color.

“The  bleached  mountains up ahead reflected the sunlight, blinding her eyes as she traveled towards them.”

“They couldn’t ignore the snow  bleached  mountains, and they chose to take shelter in a nearby cave to avoid the freezing temperatures.”

The word “bleached” reveals the light color of an object, and can be used to draw attention to the white snow on the mountains. This is a great word if you want to create a stark contrast between the rock and the snow, as “bleach” evokes a powerful image for most readers.

3. Alabaster

A white stone used for  sculptures  and ornaments. Often used as an adjective noun to describe objects with light/white colors.

“He noticed the  alabaster  mountains in the distance and wondered when the snowfall would cease.”

“It was the  alabaster  mountains that worried her the most, she’d never seen so much snow in one place.”

As a noun “alabaster” refers to a type of stone. However, it’s frequently used as an adjective to highlight the white color of an object. When used to describe mountains, “alabaster” conveys how perfectly white the snow is. This can help to set the scene for your reader, and is especially helpful when world building.

4. Unblemished

To  describe  an object with no faults or imperfections on its surface.

“The mountains were  unblemished  — the top layer of snow was as pristine as the day it fell.”

“Since the snowfall the mountains have remained  unblemished , not one soul has passed across the trail”.

If you want to show the reader how perfect the snow-capped mountains are, the word “unblemish” can help. This adjective implies that the snow hasn’t been ruined by footprints or melting, allowing your reader to gain a clear insight into how they look.

5. Inclement

Weather that’s extremely  cold  or stormy.

“The  inclement  mountain conditions had led to extra snowfall on the rugged peaks.”

“They couldn’t ignore the  inclement  mountains, as soon they would be traversing snow and ice to reach their sky high destination.”

The word “inclement” refers to weather conditions, and you can use this adjective to create a sense of foreboding about your snowy mountains. “Inclement” can emphasize the harsh snowy conditions and you can even use this term to create a sense of fear amongst your characters.

6. Alluring

Something  or someone that’s very beautiful or attractive.

“The  alluring  snow-capped mountains seemed to watch her as she passed through the valley.”

“As he navigated the wilderness, the  alluring  mountains became clearer and clearer in his vision.”

The word “alluring” is all about beauty, so it’s a fitting description for any snowy mountain range. Whether you’re trying to make the reader fall in love with the setting or want to portray a character’s affection for the earth, this adjective will evoke positive emotions.

7. Formidable

To  describe  something or someone that’s impressive and slightly scary.

“He couldn’t ignore the  formidable  snowy mountains, no matter how hard he tried.”

“The snow-topped mountains are  formidable  — a human hasn’t scaled them and never will.”

The word “formidable” is an adjective that can emphasize the large size of the mountains and the fear a character might experience while near them. “Formidable” can be used to show your narrator is frightened, and this can deepen a character’s complexity in any novel. It can even be used to add foreshadowing, especially if the snowy mountains are crucial to the plot.

8. Picturesque

A place that’s  beautiful  to look at.

“She awoke from the  picturesque  snowy mountains again, wondering why this dream repeated every night.”

“Only snow could leave mountains so  picturesque  and serene.”

“Picturesque” suggests that the snowy mountains are immensely beautiful to look at. In a novel, “picturesque” mountains can help to create a perfect world or to create a strong setting in the reader’s mind. It can also suggest a calm atmosphere, setting the stage for some positive character interactions.

To describe  winter  weather or cold features.

“The  wintry  mountains looked down over the snow-laden village like a protector.”

“Though it was summer in the valley, the snow-capped  wintry  mountains never melted nor thawed.”

The word “wintry” suggests that the mountains are experiencing winter weather or snow, building a clear image of their characteristics in your reader’s mind. Creating a picture of the season can drive the novel’s plot forward and it can also make the setting clearer. While wintry is synonymous with winter, it can be used in the context of summer to show a clear contrast between the snowy mountains and warm weather.

To describe the  harsh  conditions of a place.

“The snowy mountains were  bitter , they feared no adventurers would last the night in sub-zero conditions.”

“He looked up at the  bitter  mountains, by morning there would be another fresh layer of snow to navigate.”

“Bitter” can imply the harsh conditions in the snowy mountains to your reader. This can be especially helpful if your characters must journey through them, as “bitter” foreshadows the tough journey that lies ahead. This can create a feeling of suspense, making the reader eager to continue reading.

Winter Describing Words: A Comprehensive List for Your Writing Needs

By: Author Paul Jenkins

Posted on September 27, 2023

Categories Writing , Creative Writing

Winter is a season that is often associated with cold temperatures, snow, and a variety of outdoor activities. It’s a time of year when people bundle up in warm clothing and indulge in hot cocoa, cozy blankets, and indoor activities.

One of the ways to describe winter is through its vocabulary and descriptive words.

Understanding winter vocabulary and descriptive words can help you better communicate your experiences and feelings during this season. Whether you love winter or hate it, there are many words that can help you describe it.

From chilly and frosty to blustery and bleak, winter has a unique set of characteristics that make it stand out from the other seasons. This article is an aide memoir for writers, when featuring this season in their writing.

Key Takeaways

• Winter has a unique set of characteristics that make it stand out from other seasons.
• Understanding winter vocabulary and descriptive words can help you better communicate your experiences and feelings during this season.
• From chilly and frosty to blustery and bleak, winter has a variety of descriptive words that can help you describe it.

Winter Vocabulary and Describing Words

Winter is a season that brings with it a unique set of experiences and emotions. It’s a time of year when the world around us transforms into a snowy wonderland, and the air becomes crisp and refreshing.

To help you better describe this season, we’ve compiled a list of winter vocabulary and describing words that you can use to bring your writing to life.

One of the most effective ways to describe winter is through the use of adjectives. Adjectives are words that describe or modify nouns, and they can help you paint a vivid picture of the winter landscape. Here are some adjectives that you can use to describe winter:

• Bone-chilling

In addition to adjectives, there are many winter-specific words that you can use to describe the season. These words can help you create a more immersive and detailed picture of the winter landscape. Here are some winter vocabulary words that you can use:

• Arctic animals
• Blowing snow
• Cabin fever
• Cross-country skiing
• Downhill skiing
• Ice fishing
• Ice skating
• Snowboarding
• Snowshoeing
• Winter sports

Understanding Winter

Winter is one of the four seasons, which typically lasts from December to February in the Northern Hemisphere. During this season, the weather becomes colder, and the days become shorter. The winter season is characterized by snow, ice, and freezing temperatures.

Winter is a time of rest and renewal for many plants and animals. Many trees lose their leaves, and many animals hibernate to conserve energy. Winter is also a time for outdoor activities such as skiing, snowboarding, and ice skating.

The winter season can be challenging for some people, especially those who live in areas with severe winter weather. Cold temperatures, snow, and ice can make it difficult to travel and perform everyday tasks. It’s important to take precautions during the winter season to stay safe and healthy.

To prepare for the winter season, people have warm clothing, such as a coat, hat, gloves, and boots. They also stock up on non-perishable food and bottled water in case of a power outage or other emergency.

Overall, winter is a beautiful and transformative season that offers many opportunities for rest, renewal, and outdoor activities.

Physical Characteristics of Winter

Winter is a season that is characterized by its distinct physical features. In this section, we will explore the colors of winter, winter weather patterns, temperature, and climate.

Colors of Winter

Winter is often associated with the color white, which represents the snow that covers the ground during this season. The snow can also create a sparkling effect when the sun shines on it, which adds to the beauty of winter. However, winter is not just about white.

The season can also be characterized by shades of blue, gray, and black, which are often associated with the dark and overcast skies that are common during this time of year.

Winter Weather Patterns

Winter weather patterns can vary depending on the location. However, some common weather patterns associated with winter include snow, ice, freezing temperatures, and frost.

Winter is also known for its foggy and misty conditions, which can create a sense of mystery and beauty. In some areas, winter can bring blizzards and snowstorms, which can be dangerous and disruptive.

Temperature and Climate

Winter is a season that is associated with cold temperatures. In some areas, temperatures can drop below zero, which can be dangerous if you are not properly dressed. The Arctic is a region that is known for its frigid temperatures, which can reach as low as -70 degrees Celsius.

However, winter is not just about cold temperatures. It can also be characterized by crisp and refreshing weather, which can be invigorating.

Winter Clothing

Materials used.

The materials used in winter clothing play a crucial role in keeping folk warm. Here are some common materials used in winter clothing:

Winter Holidays and Traditions

Winter is a season of holidays and traditions. From Christmas to Hanukkah, Kwanzaa to New Year’s Eve, there are many celebrations that take place during the winter months. These holidays are often associated with cold weather, snow, and cozy indoor activities.

One of the most popular winter holidays is Christmas. It is celebrated on December 25th and is a time for family and friends to come together and exchange gifts. Many people decorate their homes with Christmas lights, wreaths, and trees. Some people also attend church services or participate in other religious traditions.

Another popular winter tradition is drinking hot cocoa or eggnog by the fireplace. These warm drinks are perfect for cold winter nights and can be enjoyed alone or with friends and family. Some people also enjoy roasting marshmallows or chestnuts over an open fire.

If you live in a place with a lot of snow, you might enjoy outdoor winter activities like skiing, snowboarding, or ice skating.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are some adjectives that describe the feeling of winter.

Winter can be described as chilly, cold, frosty, crisp, biting, and refreshing. It’s a season that can feel invigorating and energizing, but also harsh and unforgiving.

What are some unique and ancient words used to describe winter?

There are many unique and ancient words used to describe winter. For example, the Old English word “hrim” means frost, and the Finnish word “kaamos” refers to the period of darkness that occurs during the winter months. Other interesting words include “hygge” (a Danish word meaning cozy and comfortable) and “brumal” (a rare English word meaning wintery).

What are some common winter nouns used to describe the season?

Common winter nouns include snow, ice, frost, blizzard, chill, and darkness. These words are often used to describe the weather and conditions that are typical of the winter season.

How can winter be described in writing?

Winter can be described in many ways, depending on the writer’s perspective and the purpose of the writing. Some writers might focus on the beauty of snow-covered landscapes, while others might describe the challenges of navigating icy roads and sidewalks. Descriptive language can help convey the sights, sounds, and sensations of winter, whether it’s the crunch of snow underfoot or the howling of the wind.

What are some cozy words used to describe winter?

Cozy words used to describe winter include snuggly, warm, toasty, comfortable, and inviting. These words evoke feelings of comfort and relaxation, and are often associated with activities like curling up with a good book, drinking hot cocoa by the fire, or spending time with loved ones.

What are some adjectives used to describe snow?

Snow can be described as fluffy, powdery, icy, slushy, wet, and heavy. These adjectives help convey the texture and consistency of snow, as well as its impact on the environment and daily life.

• Jan 8, 2021

Description Practice: Snow Storm

Once again it is time to practice my descriptions a little more. After all, practice makes perfect. And since I’ve started the Writing Wednesday Prompts, I definitely feel like my writing has been improving. So, let’s continue with this bit of practice as well.

Admittedly, this time around I did things a little differently. Instead of picking an aspect and writing a small paragraph on it, I decided to attempt making some poetry. Again, I’m not great at descriptions, and poetry is very descriptive and full of imagery. The problem is I don’t remember ever really studying poetry in school. I remember each English class in high school would just rush through the poetry section as fast as possible, or skip it entirely.

Needless to say, I am no poet.

I’ll share what I came up with, and then switch it to the format I am much more familiar with.

My Attempt at Poetry

The world fell silent

The horizon drew closer

Snow covered the ground in fluffy heaps.

More continuously followed

The blanket grew thicker with each hour.

The bright colors faded to white

The darker ones stood out against the pale new world.

Most creatures hid away

A few brave birds flitted from shelter to shelter

I remained inside with socks on my feet, flannel on my shoulders, and a fire burning bright.

The world outside becomes blinding as the sun peeks through the clouds.

The world grew still

The air absorbed warmth

Again, I’m not really a poet. I think my biggest problem here is that I don’t really have a message that I’m trying to convey. Instead, I’m just trying, and failing in most spots, to write down some nice prose about what I’m seeing. I didn’t really have a goal in mind with the piece, and that shows.

By the last two lines, I’d given up with the poetry attempt and switched to just writing down observations about the world I was seeing in order to give me something to work with when I rewrote it.

Let’s Turn It into a Nice Description

The world outside the house fell silent and still as the horizon drew closer and closer with the approaching storm. The colors outside slowly faded away to the darkest of colors and brightest of whites. Snow drifted to the ground and covered it in steadily growing heaps of fluff. The flakes came down in bigger and bigger sizes as the hours passed with no end in sight.

The creatures outside hurried for cover, darting from shelter to shelter until they found one that suited them. There they would remain until the storm blew over and the weather warmed once more.

I, too, hid from the storm in the shelter of my home with fuzzy socks on my feet, a flannel shirt on my shoulders, and a warm fire burning in the fireplace. I didn’t dare venture outside until the snow lessened and the sun began to peek out from the clouds.

When that happened I donned my winter coat, hat, and gloves and ventured out into the bright new world. The sunlight shined off the freshly fallen snow in a blinding way and made me wish for my sunglasses. The cold air sapped the heat from me, but the sunlight’s increasing strength promised warmth and drew the critters out from their hiding. They began to explore the new world in much the same way I did.

Final Thoughts

With this method of jotting down notes about the environment, I didn’t give myself nearly as much material to work with as I did the last two times I did this exercise. While this description was a lot shorter as a result of that, I still had fun doing this.

I find it fun and relaxing to write something that I have no real intent of perusing beyond a certain point. It takes a lot of the pressure away that is normally present in writing. These little exercises aren’t meant to be the start of some complex story that needs to be perfect, they are me just practicing, which turns out to be a lot of fun.

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Description Practice: Winter Mountains

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Tag: ways to describe snow

Master List for Describing Weather

A lot of writers struggle with describing settings. I’ve written before about how to describe settings and why it matters, but a few people have told me they’d like me to do some of my master lists for writers to help them out! I have a weird love for creating lists like this, so I’m happy to do it. “How

8 Beautiful Snow Scenes from Literature

1. From An American Childhood , Annie Dillard

"Now we sat in the dark dining room, hushed. The big snow outside, the big snow on the roof, silenced our words and the scrape of our forks and our chairs. The dog was gone, the world outside was dangerously cold, and the big snow held the houses down and the people in.

"Behind me, tall chilled windows gave out onto the narrow front yard and the street. A motion must have caught my mother’s eye; she rose and moved to the windows, and Father and I followed. There we saw the young girl, the transfigured Jo Ann Sheehy, skating alone under the streetlight.

"She was turning on ice skates inside the streetlight’s yellow cone of light—illumined and silent. She tilted and spun. She wore a short skirt, as if Edgerton Avenue’s asphalt had been the ice of an Olympic arena. She wore mittens and a red knitted cap below which her black hair lifted when she turned. Under her skates the street’s packed snow shone; it illumined her from below, the cold light striking her under her chin.

"I stood at the tall window, barely reaching the sill; the glass fogged before my face, so I had to keep moving or hold my breath. What was she doing out there? Was everything beautiful so bold?"

2. From Angle of Repose , Wallace Stegner

"Snow blew down the Royal Gorge in a horizontal blur. With Ollie’s sleeping head in her lap and a down comforter around them both, she tried now and then to get a look at that celebrated scenic wonder, but the gorge was only snow-streaked rock indistinguishable from any other rock, all its height and grandeur and pictorial organization obliterated in the storm. The dark, foaming, ice-shored river was so unlike the infant Arkansas that she used to ford on her horse that she didn’t believe in it. The circles that she blew and rubbed on the window healed over in secret ferns of frost."

3. From Seasons at Eagle Pond , Donald Hall

"They seem tentative and awkward at first, then in a hastening host a whole brief army falls, white militia paratrooping out of the close sky over various textures, making them one. Snow is white and gray, part and whole, infinitely various yet infinitely repetitious, soft and hard, frozen and melting, a creaking underfoot and a soundlessness. But first of all it is the reversion of many into one. It is substance, almost the idea of substance, that turns grass, driveway, hayfield, old garden, log pile, Saab, watering trough, collapsed barn, and stonewall into the one white."

4. From “The Dead,” James Joyce

"A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

5. “Winter,” Takarai Kikaku (Trans. Steven D. Carter)

"'It’s mine,' I think – and the snow seems lighter on my straw hat."

6. From Ethan Frome , Edith Wharton

"But at sunset the clouds gathered again, bringing an earlier night, and the snow began to fall straight and steadily from a sky without wind, in a soft universal diffusion more confusing than the gusts and eddies of the morning. It seemed to be a part of the thickening darkness, to be the winter night itself descending on us layer by layer."

7. From Marcovaldo: Or the Seasons in the City , Italo Calvino (Trans. William Weaver)

"Marcovaldo learned to pile the snow into a compact little wall. If he went on making little walls like that, he could build some streets for himself alone; only he would know where those streets led, and everybody else would be lost there. He could remake the city, pile up mountains high as houses, which no one would be able to tell from real houses. But perhaps by now all the houses had turned to snow, inside and out; a whole city of snow with monuments and spires and trees, a city that could be unmade by shovel and remade in a different way."

8. From The Magic Mountain , Thomas Mann (Trans. John E. Woods)

"Yet there was a momentary hint of blue sky, and even this bit of light was enough to release a flash of diamonds across the wide landscape, so oddly disfigured by its snowy adventure. Usually the snow stopped at that hour of the day, as if for a quick survey of what had been achieved thus far; the rare days of sunshine seemed to serve much the same purpose—the flurries died down and the sun’s direct glare attempted to melt the luscious, pure surface of drifted new snow. It was a fairy-tale world, child-like and funny. Boughs of trees adorned with thick pillows, so fluffy someone must have plumped them up; the ground a series of humps and mounds, beneath which slinking underbrush or outcrops of rock lay hidden; a landscape of crouching, cowering gnomes in droll disguises—it was comic to behold, straight out of a book of fairy tales. But if there was something roguish and fantastic about the immediate vicinity through which you laboriously made your way, the towering statues of snow-clad Alps, gazing down from the distance, awakened in you feelings of the sublime and holy."

This post originally appeared in 2012.

Lost in a surprise blizzard, a young woman trusts a mysterious stranger

That February morning back in ’78, the trees in our yard stood like skeletons, as if something had frightened the life out of them. In the eerie stillness, the air heavy with humidity, mourning doves cooed nervously, huddled in the eaves of our cottage. I watched birds move in squads across the gray sky in a ritual of coalescence. Melancholic birdsong was embedded in the distant, cold air, the music faint as I cast breadcrumbs and sunflower seeds on the frozen lawn. Suddenly, a chaos of crows invaded the winter grass. With fierce intensity, they tore at the ground, seeming desperate, as if searching for something they could neither find nor live without.

I had expected the world to be white when I woke up that morning, the ground covered with snow. Another winter nor’easter had been forecasted. With no falling snow, I was relieved to think the meteorologists were wrong, as they had been several times the previous month. Due to those recent inaccuracies, there was widespread skepticism about how much, if any, snow would actually fall that day. Since schools and businesses were going to be open for their usual hours, I wasn’t concerned about the weather as I headed out the door. As a result, I and many others were surprised when light snow began to fall around noon.

After lunch at a Providence cafe, I began walking the four blocks back to the medical clinic where I worked, gazing up at the gray underbellies of clouds. A flurry softly drifted across the faces of old houses, deceptively delicious. My pace quickened as trees ticked back and forth, the wind picking up. Snow like glossy feathers stretched wings over porches and rooftops. By the time I arrived at work, the sidewalks were luxuriously coated, the streets slick. I pushed open the back door of the clinic, brushing off snow that stippled my long brown hair and adorned my coat with pearl epaulets. Thinking we might need to stay after hours if the storm intensified, I had brought a half-gallon of soup from the cafe for my co-workers, and I placed it in the break room.

“Thank you!” a senior nurse said, smiling as she opened the lid, lowering her nose to the aromatic mist.

“When will it end?” I wondered aloud, worrying about the drive home without snow tires in my eight-year-old Chevy. Icy rivulets ran down my forehead. I dabbed my wet face as garlic, ginger, and cinnamon wafted through the air, the hot soup reminding me of my mother’s favorite recipe. As I breathed in deeply, an airy calm settled inside me.

That afternoon, the storm rapidly worsened. The blizzard came without warning—only a winter storm had been forecasted—its sudden ferocity blindsiding us. Radio reports announced that state and city employees would be let out of work early. By midafternoon, the highways were jammed with traffic as 60,000 people flooded the streets of Providence, trying to rush home. The medical clinic where I worked remained open as long as possible, closing at 5 pm. When I left work, five inches of snow had already fallen. At 5:30 pm, with the roads impassable and snow falling at a rate of three inches per hour in extreme winds, the governor declared a state of emergency.

Like an assault, the snow blasted through, bushwhacking the city, choking the streets and shuttering every house. Snow fell and fell with penetrating urgency. After sitting in dead-still traffic for three cold hours, my car was buried in a halo of white. I was enclosed in the compartment’s dark, cold cave, the windshield a solid wall of white. With the gas tank empty and the heater no longer working, I faced a choice: should I stay here and wait for a possible rescue, or try to find my way to an unknown shelter? Either way, I risked freezing to death. Tucking my feet under the car mat, I opened the window slightly as a column of snow collapsed into my lap. I peered into the blustery night at the highway-turned-parking-lot, the city streets immobilized as far as my eyes could see.

Better to take a chance, I thought. It seemed clear that no one would be coming. How could I sit there for hours, maybe days, with no heat? Abandoning my car, I grabbed a folded map to shield my face from the wind, but it quickly blew out of my hand. Without boots or gloves, I walked and walked against the screaming white gusts, seeking safety in downtown Providence. The wind-whipped snow billowed around me, biting and frigid, like little knives slicing my face. The street was a disorienting blur, ghostly and glacial. A frozen expanse—no lights, no businesses open, just deadly, dark quiet. Suddenly, lightning struck terrifying jagged arrows at the corner of a building. I tried to escape the storm’s diabolical frenzy by turning down a street, but realized I was walking in an alley. I grew colder, dragged into the white rip currents of snow, as if exiled from time and space. The ground beneath my numbing feet constantly gave way, slipping beneath me. I was alone in the center of an immense spinning, my body, my life, uprooted, tumbling inside it, engulfed by the rapacious arms of this swirling ghost, pushing and dragging, wanting to knock me down and out and out. A monstrous force stirred within it. Was I walking in circles? What frightened me wasn’t so much the snow, with its incalculable depth and motion, but the angry wind, its strange unearthly howl burrowing inside me. I felt the chill of death, like a cold breath on my neck. Its brightness and suddenness enfolded me as I trudged through foot-high snow, my calves disappearing in the icy mounds, my body numbing, wanting warmth, wanting sleep.

I have to keep moving , I thought. If I rested in one place without moving, if I fell, I’d freeze to death. My heart raced. Was this the spot where I’d fall? I moved slowly, prodding the slippery bog with my frozen feet, heavy as anvils. I lifted them, one in front of the other, losing my equilibrium, as snow encircled me in a blinding cyclone. I can do this. I’ve been through worse. My eyes barely opened slits, I bowed my head against the furious wind, as if pushing against a white-throated beast. I was moving forward, wasn’t I? The alley was a maze of ice mirrors, a dizzying blur. The horizon vanished; the sky turned upside down. Fatigued, my leaden legs buckled under. I stumbled into a snowdrift, feeling almost invisible. Swallowed in the snow-wind turning on itself, I slipped, tumbling all the way to the bottom of a long white slide. My body bowed forward, a blue speck turning to ice. Stay here , the wind seemed to moan, and I sat for just a moment, and then another, as time froze. I don’t know how long I sat there, motionless, looking at the white road before me, as if it were a way to enter paradise. My breaths strung together like a rosary―cold breath in, fast breath out; my lungs were frozen pipes about to burst. I sat frozen in the posture in which I fell, the snow thrashing in mini-whirlwinds, my body being molded into a snow sculpture. Exhausted, I imagined lying down in the strangely comforting snow, letting it possess me.

Something beckoned me—some rousing, distant voice tied to me for all eternity. You’re not a victim. You’re a survivor. Still alive. I won’t leave your side. I struggled to my feet, hauled up by that godsent coil of strength. If only I could see where I was going, I thought, slogging through the snowy peaks and ridges, my spine turning hard as an icicle, ice slicing through my veins. My face rimed with snow, I shivered so much I could barely move my limbs. Was I really alone here? Weren’t there any shelters in this part of the city? I felt short of breath as if I’d been dropped on a mountaintop, the snow gulping oxygen from the air. With each step, I sank deeper and deeper into the snow, which wrapped around me like a mummy. As the numbing cold bore into me, my thoughts drifted to another savage winter night in Providence, a few years earlier. I had almost died then, too.

Suddenly in the whiteout, two lights flashed in the distance, growing larger, brighter, closer. A large, dark mass jerked forward down the narrow alley. Sliding, it slowly careened toward me—a black sedan, spinning its tires and pushing its weight through the heavy snow. Getting its grip, the car moved forward. The driver spotted me, his eyes locking onto my face, my long blue coat. The car stopped, and the window rolled down.

“Get in,” the driver shouted, his voice pushing against the roar of the wind, scattering. I froze as he stared at me, shoving open the heavy door. “Want a ride?”

In the whipping snow, I could barely see his face. He was thirtyish, with longish brown hair, a black faux-fur collar framing his square jawline. Who was this man? Why was he driving down this alley of barricaded doors and broken windows? There were no signs of life, no cars on the streets. Could I trust this stranger?

I froze in a flashback of that other frigid winter night, several years earlier, just a few miles from this spot. The incident was still raw, terrifying. I had left work at 7 pm, walking through a dimly lit hospital parking lot to my car. I was eighteen years old. In the nine-degree temperature, icy winds pierced through me as I started to unlock the car door. Suddenly, a man lunged from the shadows and grabbed me from behind in a chokehold. There was no one in sight except a witness nearby, frantically shouting, “Let go of her! Let go! Stop! I’m calling the police!” But the man was not deterred.

“Get into the car! Open the door!” he shouted, pushing a knife against my throat, his other hand clenching my chest. I fumbled with my car keys, stalling for time, knowing I must not get into my car with him, I must not. “Hurry!” he growled, pressing the cold steel into my skin as the witness kept shouting to release me. Fearing I would never be found if he pushed me into the car, I dropped the keys, but then he dragged me away, through the streets, through the traffic, into the endless night. Somewhere along the way, one of my white shoes fell off.

Kicking up small spumes of snow, I plodded to the black sedan. I had to trust this stranger, I thought. I climbed in and sat close to the door, white-knuckling the warm handle. Please, God, keep me safe.

“Thank you,” I said, shivering.

“Hi, I’m Fred,” he replied, smiling as he spoke, his smile broad and friendly. “It’s some storm,” he remarked.

I looked at him briefly and smiled back.

He had large hands and the rugged features of an outdoorsman. A cloud of unspoken emotions hung in the air, like thick flakes of snow refusing to melt. “Let’s try to get out of here,” he said, cranking up the heat and repositioning the vents.

I sat there, silent and demure, as the warmth poured out, the car’s dark red interior a small reprieve.

Fred drove just one block before the radials became embedded in deep snow, spinning futilely. We could go no farther; the car was stuck in a snowbank. Together, we walked into the raging blizzard, the icy wind pounding my face and bare legs, each footstep encased in snow. Walking in the foot-high snow became increasingly difficult, and I felt I was slowing Fred down, but he held my arm and lifted me when I stumbled, his broad chest shielding me from the wind’s constant battering. Disoriented in the whiteout, I didn’t know where we were going. With each plodding step, I became smaller and smaller, like a tiny, cold seed.

We turned a corner. Icy chips whipped my body at stupefying speeds, stinging my face and thickly clinging to my eyelids. The cold wet seeped into my shoes and through the wool fibers of my coat. The snow changed the color, shape, and weight of what it touched, a white shroud covering everything.

Faint amber light glowed through the stained glass windows of a chapel. I rang the bell several times before a robed man appeared at the door. “Sorry, we’re full,” he replied, lowering his head. Lifting our collars, we trudged our way through the swirling, deserted streets. I thought of my mother, worrying at home, waiting, hoping for my return as she had done on that night years earlier, her daughter missing, kidnapped. The hours spent not knowing, praying—a parent’s worst nightmare.

In the distance, a neon sign flickered in the white haze above a donut shop, shadows moving behind the windows. Fred looked at me as if reading my thoughts, his stocky shoulders lifting beneath his heavy jacket. I paused for a moment, closing my eyes against the wind. “Holding up?” he asked, his face a perfect white mask. I felt it now, relief, as we strode in slow rhythm toward the halo of orange lights. We entered the warm air, shedding puddles of snow, joining a huddle of snow-weary travelers. Our faces thawed into smiles as an elderly man welcomed us with free coffee and donuts, our dinner for the night. Suddenly, a cannon boom of thunder exploded above us. The room grew quiet with a palpable anxiety, the hot liquid jittering in my cup.

After warming up, Fred and I trekked several blocks to the Outlet Company department store, where we were confined to one area: the bedding department and its rows of bare mattresses. The room had the feel of a homeless shelter. Still, I felt fortunate to sleep on a twin bed in a room with fifty other people. As night pressed around us, I slipped a chocolate bar from my pocket that I had bought at the donut shop, sharing it with Fred. I used my coat as a blanket, clutching my purse to my chest in the dim light. That long first night, I could hardly sleep, the wind knocking against the walls, the heat barely on. I got up several times and stood by a large window that overlooked the wide white corridor of the empty street. I pictured my mother sleeping restlessly, getting up to sit by the window, and my father plowing throughout the night, and I prayed for their safety.

Called “the week the state stood still,” the Great Northeast Blizzard of ’78 killed more than one hundred people in New England, including a five-year-old girl ripped from her mother’s arms when their rescue boat capsized and a ten-year-old boy who was found weeks later in a snowbank just three feet from his home. Fourteen people perished on the highway as snow piled high around their cars, trapping poisonous exhaust fumes. Several people trying to seek shelter were found dead in downtown Providence. With record-breaking snow of two to three feet, hurricane-force winds, and snowdrifts as high as twenty-seven feet, the blizzard held a sense of possession over us, like an act of violence or hate. It was a time when we could not see our way out, when we depended upon the mercy of strangers.

Many New Englanders who survived the blizzard experienced a kind of shell shock that spills over to this day. The memory of its terrible force remains like a scar in our collective psyche. When snow begins to fall, a subconscious panic invades, and we brace ourselves against disaster, trying to stave off danger before the snow piles on itself and we fall under its weight. The children may not realize that our hypervigilance is a reaction to the ’78 blizzard trauma. Adults have handed this wariness down to the next generation, as if in reparation for the past when the blizzard struck, blind with rage for thirty-three hours. We won’t be caught off guard again.

Perhaps we are not meant to know why bad things happen, why nature or people behave in menacing, uncontrollable ways. Still, we try to make sense of the incomprehensible, to attribute at least some small meaning to the meaningless, hoping there may be some unknown purpose being served beyond our mortal understanding.

At the Outlet Company the following morning, the heat ticked on amid rows of boots and socks hanging over chairs to dry. Store employees permitted us to take the elevator to another level, where we stood in line to use the pay phone in a far corner of the dark and cavernous floor. A television station located on the top floor broadcast during the blizzard and provided us with blueberry muffins and coffee. As the blizzard raged on that day, people gathered around a small television, sharing stories and playing cards in the bedding department. We heard that plows couldn’t handle the onslaught of snow, that roads and businesses would be closed all week, the city turned into a ghost town. Many of us would be marooned at the Outlet Company for three days, our cars towed off the highway, impounded in a state lot with more than a thousand other stranded cars. It would be two weeks before I saw my Chevy again.

Walking to the restroom with my store-issued toothbrush, I noticed an older woman, pale and fragile as a snowflake, standing alone between tables of linens and lamps. Her hands were clenched, shriveled up in secret folds, her thin arms hanging like flimsy chains. A coffee cup lay on the floor, leaving wet tracks. Something was breaking apart inside her. Still dressed in my nurse’s uniform, I pressed my hand into hers. “I’m fine. Can I go home now?” she mumbled, a tremor in her squalling eyes. I felt her clammy skin and rapid pulse. “Where’s my insulin?” she whispered, leaning close, her hand letting go. Then her legs went weak, and she started to fall. I helped her lie down on a mattress. She was growing further away, spiraling out, as if she were fleeing or falling from the sky. Her papery face became whiter, slacker; her mouth hung open as I alerted the police of her diabetic emergency. A rescue snowmobile was dispatched to transport her to Rhode Island Hospital. There were several other people who needed their medications, too, and I became worried about the possibility of more emergencies.

In the early evening, we were escorted to a large break room for dinner, the air swelling with the resinous smoke of cigarettes. The lights flickered as a thunderous sound shook the windowpanes. We darted from window to window, searching the sky, the way one does when hoping for the sighting of birds or expecting the weather to change. The whirr of monstrous blades from military helicopters crackled the sky. Green airships hovered by the window, the downdraft beating constant and steady into the snow surrounding our ice palace. Memory unsealed, and I was reminded of the helicopter and squad car searchlights several years earlier, the police spotting me late that night, hours after being abducted, brutally beaten, and violated. I remembered myself infinitely hurt, buried in a whiteness without end, beyond words.

The blizzard’s cruel disturbance, its catastrophic violation of our world, like grief or violent crime, had interrupted―no, halted―our lives. I looked around the room of strangers, young and old, wondering how many were coping with other major traumas, not as visible as a broken arm or other physical malady, but their own personal blizzards, now and in deep time, their own silent snow. What stories lay beneath the fixed smiles, carried unseen, like icy seeds growing heavy inside? What burned in the heart of each person; who needed the hand that reaches out, whether it’s taken or not, to keep reaching?

Even now, decades later, everyone in town becomes edgy at the rumor of snow, declaring personal states of emergency, as if something’s breaking or broken. I scan my cupboards for emergency supplies and pack a blanket in the car before joining neighbors in a ritual dash to the market to stock up on milk, bread, and gallons of water. We leave store shelves bare, not trusting even our modern-day forecasters with their supercomputers, so vastly superior to those of the ’70s. My dog Isabella circles me in a full-hearted panic, sensing a large drop in the barometric pressure—“an exploding bomb,” the meteorologist calls it. My dull terror is wedded to hers. “It’ll be fine,” I reassure her, feeling a heaviness in the air. Her head tilts, her eyes rooted in hope, patterning mine. My eyes glance away. Lying on my desk is February’s parole notification, which my eyes blur to read. I tuck it into my purse, waiting for my husband to return home from work, as the sky darkens and a storm threatens to bury the house. Finally, I hear his car in the driveway, the jangle of keys. As I open the door, cold air slaps my face, and I remember the wind’s assault on the night of the blizzard and the night of the attack, how I shivered to stay alive.

The conviction still grows in me that there are godsent moments in life when the right person appears, especially in times of need or danger, for the world can indeed be a dangerous place. These moments, for me, are more than incredible: they are miraculous. I continue to learn what I can endure and what’s important—not the forgetting, but the remembering with peace and being alive in the world again.

On the second morning, Fred and two other men decided to walk across the bridge to their homes seven miles east of Providence. “It’s like going off to Siberia,” Fred marveled, smiling. The three men stocked up on provisions from the Outlet before leaving: candy bars, earmuffs, ski masks, and drinks. “I’ll be back for you tomorrow in a four-wheel drive,” he said gallantly, outfitted for battle.

“That’s nice of you, but I don’t expect you to go through all that trouble. You need to take care of things at home. Just be safe,” I said.

As promised, he returned the next morning. “Get in,” he urged, with a heroic smile.

But there were older people with health problems who needed the ride more urgently, so I declined his offer.

“Thank you for—”

Fred interrupted before I could finish. “How about a real dinner when this is all over?” he asked.

“I’d like that,” I said.

Later that morning, I tied plastic bags over my shoes and walked the three miles to my home alongside many other stranded people, everyone friendly and grateful, the day turned into prayer. Time stood still, as if we had entered a fourth dimension where hope crept back through the shadows, where neighbors connected with neighbors. In the throes of disaster, we were reminded again of what it means to be human. The city was luminous, and we kept walking our way into its difficult beauty. We blazed paths, matching our paces, possessing the earth again. The streets were quiet, except for our home journeying laughter and the sound of our steps crunching the virgin snow. The roads were not plowed, wouldn’t be for another week, the snow so mountainous we walked on the roofs of buried cars jutting up like headstones in a snowy graveyard. I later heard that a man was found dead in his car on one of those city streets, the snow wrapped around it like a cement tomb. The air smelled clean, filled with our warm misting breaths, and the road ahead sparkled irresistibly.

For that moment, all was oddly calm; the snow, forgiven. The winter sun beamed over storefronts and tin sheds, climbing the eastern sky like a red house. Blue sky, blue sky. All ecosystems were resolving. Winter birds, built to withstand migration from pole to pole, were coming back, like us, changed by the weather’s rough mercy. In the hush, I heard birdsong in the distance, the clear rhapsodic notes growing stronger. Strange chirps and songs, different than I knew. I watched sparrows fly free of their snow cages, their bodies glittering as they rose, disappearing into the warmth of the sun. I cried silently as I turned the bend and saw my ice-encrusted white house swallowed in a volcano of snow: the house almost invisible; my mother homebound inside, waiting for me.

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KS2 Descriptive Writing - Thunderstorm! PDF

Subject: English

Age range: 7-11

Resource type: Worksheet/Activity

Last updated

3 September 2024

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Great descriptive/creative writing example paragraph - describing a thunderstorm.

Can be used to introduce a descriptive writing activity for pupils.

Also included are notes re: which features to include to make writing more expressive.

Key features include: examples of creative language choices/vocabulary in order to create mood/atmosphere/setting.

Illustrates expaned noun phrases/adverbials/varied sentence structures.

Suitable for KS2.

Further descriptive paragraphs can be found at following:

Erupting Volcano: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/resource-12960494 (word doc)

https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/resource-12984370 (powerpoint)

Abandoned House in Forest:

https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/resource-12960501 (word doc) https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/resource-12978017 (powerpoint)

Dragon hunting: KS2 Descriptive Writing Paragraph Model – Dragon! https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/resource-12959414

Same dragon paragraph as a Powerpoint: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/resource-12959437

Also, a resource with ideas of how to make descriptive/creative writing more exciting using figurative language: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/resource-12986538

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Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow

Victor hugo.

Translated by Timothy Adès Snow fell. By his own conquest overpowered, For the first time the eagle's head was lowered. In slow retreat the emperor (dark days!) Left in his wake charred Moscow still ablaze. Snow fell. Harsh winter loosed her avalanche, And white expanse led on to white expanse. Rank went unrecognised, the colours blurred, The once Grand Army had become a herd. The flanks and centre could not be descried. Snow fell. The wounded huddled up inside Dead horses' bellies; buglers, white with frost, Stiff in the saddle, frozen at their post, Manned windswept bivouacs, erect, alone, The brass clamped silent to their lips of stone. Shells, bullets, grapeshot rained, with every flake. Guardsmen, surprised to learn their limbs could shake, Trudged, pensive; ice on grey moustaches bristled. Snow fell unceasingly; the cold wind whistled; Onward across uncharted wastes they trod, Starving and barefoot on the frozen mud, No longer living hearts, nor soldiery, A dream that strayed in fog, a mystery, A string of shadows on funereal sky. The fearsome wasteland stretched out endlessly, A mute avenging presence all around. The sky and thick-massed snow without a sound Made a great shroud round the great army lying; Each was alone; each knew that he was dying. Could they escape this vast and sombre power? Two foes! the czar, the north: the north, more dour. Who lay down, died. Confused, dejected, solemn, They fled: the barren waste devoured the column. Gun-carriages were burned, the guns were ditched. The snow all puckered over drapes rough-pitched Marked where his regiments in slumber lay. Hannibal routed! Attila's reckoning-day! Barrows, kegs, stretchers, fugitives, wounded, slain, Crammed bridges till they trod dry ground again. Ten thousand slept, a hundred woke next day. Late leader of an army, Marshal Ney Fought for his pocket-watch with three Cossacks. Each night brought skirmishes, alerts, attacks! Each night these phantoms grasped their guns; they heard Yelps of the bald marauding carrion-bird: Saw hurtling at them monstrous looming forms, Horrible squadrons, men in bestial swarms. Thus a whole army perished in the night. The emperor stood at hand, took in the sight; He was a tree to whom the axe was laid: Upon this giant there climbed with deadly blade Misfortune, the grim woodman; long intact And proud the tree had stood; now rudely hacked, The living oak shook at the vengeful blast Of doom, and saw his branches fall at last. All ranks were dying. Remnants round his tent, Loving him as his shadow came and went Across the canvas, trusting in his star, Charged fate with treason! Now the emperor, Suddenly, deeply stricken by the rout, His spirit overcome and full of doubt, Turned towards God: the man of glory quailed: Such was his due for having somehow failed: His expiation. This he seemed to know; Before his legions scattered on the snow, Thus said Napoleon, pale and wondering: `O Lord of hosts, is this the chastening?' He listened; and his name was called, and lo, One in the shadow spoke, who told him: No!

Moscow, Russia