How to Make Your Own Reading Challenge

Feb 22

Written By Ivey

If you've been on Bookstagram or BookTube for a while, you've seen a reading challenge or two. I know I always love seeing a new challenge and getting out of my reading comfort zone every once and a while. Especially when it's a choose-your-own-adventure sort of challenge. But not every challenge you see will be a theme you're interested in, will fit with your schedule, or even give your prompts that you can fulfill with your owned TBR.

So why not make your own? Here's how:

STEP 1: Pick a Theme

This is probably the easiest part of the process because you choose whatever you're interested in. Want to make a LEGO-themed challenge? Go for it! Want to have a Coastal Grandmother-inspired reading month? You can! A Challenge inspired by the songs of your favorite obscure band? Perfect!
Whatever you want to make a challenge around, do it!

STEP 2: Figure out how hard you want to Make Your Challenge

This is your challenge, so you can make it as difficult or as easy as you want. Do you want to have five or twelve books to read in a Month? Or 25 Books or 100 Books to read in a Year? You get the point.

Figure out how many books you want the challenge to be based on how much you think you can read in a given amount of time. You can make a relaxing read-as-you-go thing or a race to the finish line depending on how many book prompts you want.

STEP 3: Think of Prompt Names to Go with the Theme

I think this is one of the best parts about making your own challenge. Coming up with the fun prompt names is the part where you can go crazy with the inspiration you had for this challenge, and nothing is off-limits

For example, if you want to make a challenge based on your favorite movie or tv show, there are many elements that you can choose from. The prompts can be the characters, a significant prop, quotes, the tropes present, or little plot points that made you happy watching it.

Here's an example using one of my favorite movies, The Princess Diaries:

Mia Thermopolis
Queen Clarisse Renaldi
Lily Moscovitz
Lana Thomas
Joe
A Princess, Shut Up!
Please Don't Crush My Soy Nuts
Get Off the Grass
Princess of Genovia
The State Dinner
Makeovers with Paolo
Princess Training
Beach Party
The Genovian Pear
San Francisco
The Order of the Rose
Reconnecting with Family
Secret Royalty

Most of these I just thought up off the top of my head because it was so fun to think about what I love about this movie. If you're making a smaller reading challenge, you don't need to come up with a bunch of prompts, but having a long list to choose from will save you from having to make more later.

STEP 4: Come Up with the Reading Prompts

This part can be difficult because you can go back and forth between having plenty of prompt ideas you want to use or you end up having a block and no ideas coming to you. Luckily, there is a ton of inspiration out there to use. Look at the reading challenges you've participated in during the past and steal some of those prompts. Look through Pinterest to find some inspiration there. Most importantly, think about your reading tastes. This is your challenge after all (even if you share it on social media), so choose prompts you want to fulfill yourself.

For example, when coming up with my yearly reading challenge, I put on a challenge to read a longer book over 500 pages because I tend to read a lot of books that are under 300 pages. This pushes me to read the longer books that I put off. As a writer, I try to expose myself to a variety of writing styles, so I make prompts about reading a poetry book or a graphic novel, something out of my normal reading tastes. But I read a lot of romance books, so I throw a prompt to read a romance in there because I read at least one every month.

Here are some other prompts that I like to play with when coming up with challenges:

A Book that is a Certain Color (To Diversify My Rainbow Shelves)
A Book that is Out of My Comfort Zone (It doesn't hurt to try a new genre every once and a while. You might end up liking it.)
A Fairytale/Mythology Retelling (One of my favorite subgenres of books, but you can use one of yours, like Steampunk, Dystopia, or Dark Romance)
A Book with a Certain Element on the Cover (More than One Person, Flowers, Bones, Cookies, A Book with a Book on the Cover, You get the point)
A Book from One of My Favorite Genres (This challenge is for you! Pick prompts that will let you read the books you want to read.)
A Book that is a Certain Length (If you read a lot of short books, put a big book prompt on or vice versa. Or you can make it that it has to be 342 pages because that's a significant number from your theme.)
A Book with a Certain Amount of Words or Letters in the Title (Always a Fun Prompt to Throw in)
A Book with a Certain Setting (Be it a location or time period)
A TBR Veteran (So you can shrink your owned TBR) or a Book released during a particular year (Maybe the year your theme came out or the current year to read a new release)
An Overhyped or Underhyped Book (See if a book is worth the hype or should have more hype)
A Book with Certain Letters in the Title (A Book with an X in the Title is not that easy to find. Or maybe all of the letters to spell "Monster" has to be in the title, note that some words will be more difficult than others, so choose carefully.)
A Book dealing with a Certain Trope or Subject Matter (Found Family, Enemies to Lovers, Clothing Design, Board Games, TV Producing, Feminism, Whatever Interest Fits with the Theme)

As you can see, there is a lot of variety to work with here, and there is always a way to make the prompt fit the theme, which brings us to our final step.

STEP 5: Put it All Together!

Now's the time to put your prompt names and reading prompts together. When you come up with prompt names, you might already have a reading prompt in mind, but other names may take a bit of work to find a prompt to fit with them. Try not to stress about it though. This challenge is supposed to be for fun, so don't take it too seriously. You can always delete prompts or add more.

Here's how I would match up prompts and names from my Princess Diaries example:

The Genovian Pear: A Green Book
Joe: A Book with a One-Word Title
Beach Party: A Book that takes place at the Beach
Lily Moscovitz: A Book that deals with Making a TV Show
A Princess, Shut Up!: A Book where the Main Character learns a secret
The Order of the Rose: A Romance
Lana Thomas: A Popular Book
Get off the Grass: A Book with Grass on the Cover
The State Dinner: A Big Book
Queen Clarisse Renaldi: A Book with all the letters of "QUEEN" in the title
Princess Training: A Book with a Character Training to be Something
Secret Royalty: A Book with Secret Royalty in it
San Francisco: A Book that takes place in California
Mia Thermopolis: A Book with a Character Having a Confidence Glow Up

Do you see how I did that? And you can customize the challenge in many more ways to suit your wants and needs, but this is a good place to start. If you want another example of how I did this, check out my "A Perfect Day in Paris" Reading Challenge here.

I hope you have fun making your own challenge, tag me on Instagram if you end up making your own.

readingreading challenge

Ivey