The Isis MT25 Pitch Prompts – Juvenilia Issue

1. Write a visual poem that looks like its subject.
2. Invent a language. Use it to write a story.
3. Is it gross to call your significant other ‘baby’?
4. Is nostalgia the root of all evil?
5. Do you still believe in magic?
6. Write us a closet drama.
7. Would your younger self be proud of the person you’ve become?
8. Write a defense of iPad babies.
9. Is sincerity dead?
10. Can you really walk a mile in someone else’s shoes?
11. Has everything really already been done before? 
12. Write something psychosexual.
13. Draw something you wish you could escape.
14. Draw something you wish you could find.
15. Make a comic strip about your teenage self. 
16. What historical event do you wish you had lived through?
17. Tell us why you thought your childhood home was haunted.
18. Regress: who do you think you were in a past life?
19. Tell us a fib.
20. If you could spend 7 minutes in heaven with anyone, who would it be? What would you do to them?
21. Why do you hate your siblings?
22. Critically review your dream from last night.
23. Was your childhood cut short?
24. When did your parents lift you up for the last time?
25. Show us around your childhood home.
26. Does your shit stink?
27. Write a letter to your 14-year-old self (a terrifying age).
28. Create something cringy.
29. Do you believe that you were entitled to a place at Oxford from birth?
30. What do you collect? Why? 
31. Has the invention of psychotherapy done more harm than good?
32. Who was your worst mistake?
33. Show us your childhood diary.
34. What should we all outgrow?
35. Tell us about the art that raised you.
36. Who’s your problematic fave?
37. Write us the most pretentious thing you can think of. We’re The Isis, after all.
38. Tell us about a formative childhood memory.
39. Are you a good sibling? 
40. Are you more like your mum or your dad?
41. Is there even a place for art criticism anymore, or should we keep our nasty opinions to ourselves?
42. Imagine the story behind an antique, from workshop to charity shop.
43. Can Britain break out of this downward spiral?
44. Write something you can only say anonymously.
45. How would you get away with murder?
46. Is a Just Stop Oil protester the new Jackson Pollock?
47. What have you had to unlearn?
48. Make some erasure poetry.
49. Write automatically for ten minutes.
50. Take a minute and be a hater. Don’t hold back.
51. Is the panopticon our reality now?
52. Write a limerick in poor taste.
53. Does he love you? Does he love you not? Write about yourself from your crush’s perspective.
54. Why are you not like other girls?
55. Write something highbrow about something lowbrow.
56. ‘Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’ – Matthew, 18:3
57. What does life look like from the foetal position?
58. Is the cost of love loss?
59. Show us your unfinished artwork.
60. Do you remember being born?
61. Can you forgive the sins of your parents?
62. Are you anti-natalist? Why?
63. What would you (hypothetically) graffiti onto the Radcam?
64. Is the digital world turning us all to children?
65. Are you ambitious for our culture?
66. Is the institution of marriage a tired fad?
67. Adopt a new perspective.
68. Tell us about something you don’t remember.
69. Can you go forwards while looking backwards?
70. Tell us a childhood secret.
71. What’s one bad habit you’ve never managed to shake?
72. Ex-teacher’s pets: do you wish you’d been a rebel?
73. Draw us a dinosaur.
74. You’re playing spin the bottle with your tutors. Who do you hope it lands on?
75. Is nepo baby discourse over?
76. What magazine do you wish you were writing for right now, instead of this one?
77. Why is the right so obsessed with fertility?
78. How can we protect queer children?
79. Can performative activism still effect change? 
80. Is the good life even real?
81. Do you miss the language you grew up in?
82. Who is your nemesis? 
83. Were you a bully? Is that forgivable?
84. Write a monologue that you wish you could deliver to your parents.
85. Have you been a sugar baby? What was your price?
86. ‘Youth is the only thing worth having’ – Oscar Wilde.
87. Write to us about boyhood.
88. Show us a film you’ve made.
89. What’s the most painful thing you’ve experienced?
90. Invent a new genre-bending literary style.
91. Is self-knowledge an illusion?
92. Show us the best photo you’ve ever taken.
93. What’s the weirdest thing in your search history?
94. Have you ever had a near-death experience?
95. Tell us something you weren’t meant to overhear.
96. What’s a life lesson you learnt on the playground?
97. What weird thing makes you one-in-a-million?
98. Where was your favourite hide-and-seek spot?
99. If walls could talk, what would your childhood bedroom say?
100. Write your way out.

Graphic by Lilia Goldstein