Spellbinder submissions for the Autumn 2025 Issue are open until August 1st! We’ll be sharing some prompts over the coming weeks to inspire your creativity during this submission period. For this autumn, we are proposing that you consider language as a subject for your writing. Whether you already speak multiple languages or hope to one day, we would love to see you using writing to consider language and the ways in which you experience it.
First Prompt: Every language is different, even if they have the same roots. This means that they exist within us differently too. If you speak two, or three, or however many other languages, consider how they coexist (or don’t) with each other and within yourself. How did you learn them? Did you grow up speaking two languages at home, taught by your family? Or perhaps you learned them at school, or even as an adult. Write about how learning another language shaped you as a person, and explore whether it changed your outlook on life or the ways in which you interact with other people.
Second Prompt: Imagine a language as a person, and have a conversation with them. Place yourself in the shoes of your first language, and let the other characters be your second, third, etc.(you can have as many other ‘characters’ as you speak). Then put yourself in any scenario: a café, a perilous adventure, or whatever setting you feel best reflects the language and your relationship to it. If you could speak the language, what would you say to it? Or you might describe a scene where all of your languages have a riotous conversation, filled with their individual quirks, where they are able to understand each other despite their differences.
Third Prompt: If you only speak one language, write about whether you want to learn more. Investigate which languages might actually inform and enhance your own. Or, write about the challenges that learning another, very different language might bring. How could learning another language enhance your life? How could it change your relationships with other people? Remove limitations and imagine what it would be like to discover a new language.
These prompts might lean towards non-fiction, and while that may be at the root of your piece, we do not intend to limit you to any style! They can be adapted in all sorts of ways, and can work as remarkable pieces of poetry, drama, or even visual art. Try to play with these forms and see how much you can experiment with the topic.
For example, a poem could explore different languages by playing with the rhythm and line breaks of a stanza. These could be used to reflect the natural rhythm and cadence of a language. And a drama piece could work wonders with the second prompt. Just imagine a scene where one language gets to speak to another! What would they say to each other? Maybe they have history together, or maybe they believe themselves to be complete strangers, who have more in common than they originally thought. Visual art could capture a language just as well. Photos of how language brings people together, or art that reflects how you visualize a language can be powerful expressions of language. So, don’t feel limited to one form, and express your language(s) in whatever style suits you best.
Language is what connects us as humans, however different they may seem. So whether you speak a Romance language, or a Baltic, or any other language family, we want to see explorations of them all. Maybe this prompt will even help you discover things about your language that you didn’t realize before!
Psst… our submissions are now open until August 1st, so why not submit your language explorations? We would love to read anything you produce based on the above prompts, so please don’t hesitate to check out Spellbinder’s submission guidelines and submit your works through our submission form.
Tatianna Kalb, Drama Editor
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