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Divergent Questions: 80 Examples for Class and Work

Creativity Drills··16 min read

A divergent question is a question with many acceptable answers, such as "How many ways could we get to school without a car?" or "What would change if nobody needed to sleep?" A convergent question has one correct answer ("What is 7 times 8?"), so the quick test is simple: if two people can give different answers and both be right, the question is divergent.

Below are 80 divergent questions you can use today, sorted by school subject, by age, and by setting (meetings and solo practice). Each one comes with a short note on why it opens up rather than closes down. After the lists you'll find convergent questions rewritten as divergent ones, a short guide to asking them well, and a 10-minute routine for using them.

What Makes a Question Divergent

A divergent question has three features:

  • No single right answer. The asker can't predict the reply, and doesn't need to.
  • Room for range. Good answers come from different categories, not just more of the same.
  • Something to work with. The question names a concrete object, situation or constraint, so people have a place to start.

"Be creative about anything" is open but empty. "What could you build with only cardboard and string?" is open and specific.

Divergent questions usually start with stems like these:

  • How many ways could...
  • What if...
  • What else could...
  • What might happen if...
  • Suppose that...
  • How is X like Y?
  • What would you change about...

Convergent questions usually start with who, what, where or when, and ask for a fact that can be checked.

Convergent vs Divergent Questions

The fastest way to see the difference is side by side. Each pair below is about the same topic. The first question has one answer; the second has many.

  1. Convergent: What is the boiling point of water at sea level? Divergent: What would change in your kitchen if water boiled at 50 degrees?
  2. Convergent: Who wrote Romeo and Juliet? Divergent: How could Romeo and Juliet end if one character made a different choice?
  3. Convergent: What year did the Titanic sink? Divergent: What are all the things that might have prevented the Titanic disaster?
  4. Convergent: What is the area of a 4 by 6 rectangle? Divergent: How many different shapes can you draw that have an area of 24?
  5. Convergent: What are the three states of matter? Divergent: How would a world with no liquids be different from ours?
  6. Convergent: What is the capital of Japan? Divergent: If you had to design a new capital city, what would it need?
  7. Convergent: What did the meeting decide? Divergent: What other decisions could the meeting have made, and what would each one have cost?

Neither type is better: divergent questions produce options, convergent ones choose among them. For a full set of one-answer questions with worked answers, see these convergent thinking examples, and for the thinking styles behind both question types, see convergent vs divergent thinking.

Divergent Questions Examples by Subject

These work as warm-ups, exit tickets, discussion starters or journal prompts. Each set has six to eight questions; the note after each says why it counts as divergent.

Divergent Questions for English and Reading

  1. How else could this story have ended? Any ending that fits the characters is valid, so answers vary widely.
  2. What would the villain say happened? Retelling from another point of view has as many versions as there are readers.
  3. If this book were set in your town today, what would change? It forces choices about setting, technology and culture at once.
  4. What could the title mean besides the obvious? Words and titles carry several readings.
  5. What happens to the main character five years after the last page? No text to check against, only plausibility.
  6. Which minor character deserves their own book, and what would it be about? The pick and the plot are both open.
  7. What are ten different first lines for this story? Pure fluency with a clear target.

Divergent Questions for Science

  1. What are all the reasons a plant might stop growing? Hypothesis generation before testing any single cause.
  2. How many ways could you keep an ice cube from melting for an hour? Solutions span insulation, cold, shade, pressure and more.
  3. What would happen if gravity were half as strong? A consequences question with dozens of valid chains.
  4. How could you measure the height of a tree without climbing it? Shadows, angles, photos, a drone: several correct methods.
  5. What else could magnets be used for at home? An alternative uses question about a familiar property.
  6. What questions would you ask if you found a new animal? It asks for questions, not answers, which is divergent by design.
  7. How might life on Earth be different if the moon disappeared? Tides, nights, animal behavior, calendars: many angles.
  8. What experiment could you design to test whether music helps plants grow? Many valid designs, each with trade-offs.

Divergent Questions for History and Social Studies

  1. What might have happened if this invention had come 100 years earlier? Counterfactuals have no single answer.
  2. How many different groups were affected by this event, and how? It widens the view beyond the main actors.
  3. What would a newspaper from that day have printed on its front page? It asks for imagined artifacts, not recalled facts.
  4. If you could add one rule to your country's constitution, what would it be? Personal, arguable and open.
  5. What are all the ways people in 1850 could send a message across a country? Several real answers and room for invented ones.
  6. What would a fair solution to this historical conflict have looked like? People will disagree, which is the point.
  7. How might this city look in 200 years? Forecasting with no answer key.

Divergent Questions for Math

  1. How many ways can you make 24? Addition, multiplication, fractions, powers: all correct.
  2. What are all the shapes you can make with four squares? Many arrangements, which leads to a real pattern hunt.
  3. Where do you see fractions outside school? Answers come from cooking, music, sport, time and money.
  4. What different strategies could solve this problem? One answer, many routes, so the question about method is divergent.
  5. What would change if there were no number zero? It invites reasoning about place value, money, clocks and more.
  6. How could you estimate how many people are in a stadium? Many valid estimation methods.

Divergent Questions for Art, Music and Design

  1. What could this scribble become? Every person sees something different.
  2. How many ways could you show "loud" without sound? Color, line, size, texture, motion.
  3. What would this painting sound like as music? A cross-sense question with no correct answer.
  4. How could you redesign a chair for someone who never sits still? Open design brief with a human constraint.
  5. What else could a paintbrush paint with besides paint? Alternative uses again, applied to materials.
  6. If this song were a place, what would it look like? Each listener builds a different scene.

Divergent Questions for Kids

These suit ages 5 to 10. Keep them concrete, and accept silly answers: they still count.

  1. What could you do with a big cardboard box? A classic starting point that every child can answer.
  2. What if animals could talk for one day? Imaginative, with no wrong reply.
  3. How many ways can you move across the room without walking? Answers come from the body, not a worksheet.
  4. What would you put in a museum about your family? Personal and open.
  5. What could a cloud be, if it weren't a cloud? Seeing one thing as many things.
  6. How would you help a snowman stay cold in summer? A problem with lots of playful fixes.
  7. What new holiday should we have, and what would we do on it? Two open parts: the reason and the rituals.
  8. What would happen if it rained candy? Kids quickly find the problems as well as the fun.

Let children draw or act out answers before they speak.

Divergent Questions for Middle and High School

These suit ages 11 to 18 and lean toward real stakes.

  1. How could our school cut its waste in half? Real problem, many partial solutions.
  2. What would change if phones only worked for one hour a day? Consequences reach sleep, friendship, safety and work.
  3. What are all the jobs that might exist in 30 years that don't exist now? Forecasting with no answer key.
  4. How could you explain this topic to a 6-year-old? Many valid analogies and framings.
  5. What would you change about how grades work? Personal, arguable and specific.
  6. What's a rule everyone follows that might be wrong? It invites students to question assumptions.
  7. How many ways could a town make getting around cheaper? Buses, bikes, car shares, zoning, remote work.
  8. If you had a budget to improve one street, what would you do with it? Concrete constraint, open answer.

Many of these drift into reasoning about evidence and trade-offs. When you want students to evaluate answers rather than generate them, switch to these critical thinking questions.

Divergent Questions for Meetings and Teams

Teams use divergent questions to open a problem before choosing a fix. Ask one, give everyone two minutes to write answers alone, then share.

  1. What are all the ways this project could fail? Pre-mortems surface risks no one wants to raise first.
  2. How else could we solve this if we had no budget? Removing a resource changes the kind of answer.
  3. What would a competitor do with our product? A change of viewpoint produces different ideas.
  4. What could we stop doing without anyone noticing? Everyone sees different waste.
  5. How might a customer misuse this feature? Many plausible stories, each a test case.
  6. If we had to launch in half the time, what would we cut? Constraint plus open choice.
  7. What problems could this solution create later? It asks for side effects, not just benefits.
  8. Who else could use what we've built? Alternative users, like alternative uses.
  9. What would we do if our biggest assumption turned out to be wrong? Several possible assumptions, several plans.
  10. How could we make this meeting unnecessary next time? Practical, with real stakes.

Questions 57 and 59 ask what follows from a choice, which is a skill of its own. The Second Order Consequences drill trains it directly: each prompt describes a change and asks for three second-order consequences for a specific group of people. For full meeting formats, see these brainstorming techniques.

Divergent Questions for Self-Practice

Divergent questions also work alone. These are good journal prompts or 3-minute sprints. Set a timer, write as many answers as you can, and don't cross anything out.

  1. What are 20 uses for a paperclip? The standard alternative uses prompt.
  2. How many ways could I make my mornings easier? Practical and personal.
  3. What would I do with an extra day each week? Open, and it says a lot about your priorities.
  4. What are ten different careers that would use my strongest skill? It widens your sense of what you could do.
  5. How is my job like a garden? A forced comparison, which pushes past surface features.
  6. What could I learn in 30 days? Many good answers, each a possible plan.
  7. What would I change if I were starting this hobby over? Hindsight opens new routes.
  8. What are all the reasons I keep putting this task off? Divergent self-diagnosis before you fix anything.

Question 61 is the same task the Divergent Thinking drill runs. It gives you an object, a timer (3 minutes by default), and a box to type each use. When time ends, you pick your two best ideas, and the drill scores your pace, how novel the ideas are, how many categories they span, and the quality of your top two. If you'd rather practice on paper first, this alternative uses test explains the scoring.

Turning Convergent Questions into Divergent Ones

You don't need a new list to ask divergent questions. Take any convergent question and change it with one of four moves.

Move 1: ask for many, not one.

  1. "What is a renewable energy source?" becomes "How many renewable energy sources can you name, and which would suit our town?"
  2. "What is the main cause of the French Revolution?" becomes "What were all the causes of the French Revolution, and which mattered most?"

Move 2: add "what if".

  1. "How does a bicycle work?" becomes "What if bicycles had never been invented?"
  2. "What are the rules of chess?" becomes "What one rule change would make chess more fun for beginners?"

Move 3: ask "what else".

  1. "What is a brick for?" becomes "What else could a brick be used for?"
  2. "What is this chart showing?" becomes "What else could explain the pattern in this chart?"

Move 4: ask for a comparison.

  1. "What is a cell?" becomes "How is a cell like a city?"
  2. "What does a manager do?" becomes "How is a manager like a coach, and how are they different?"

Try it yourself with these four. Rewrite each one, then check your answer against the move in brackets.

  1. "What is the tallest mountain in the world?" (Move 2: what if)
  2. "What is the plot of this film?" (Move 1: many endings)
  3. "What does a thermometer measure?" (Move 3: what else)
  4. "What is democracy?" (Move 4: comparison)

Possible rewrites: "What if the tallest mountain were in your country?", "How many different endings could this film have had?", "What else could you measure with a thermometer?" and "How is democracy like a group project?"

How to Ask Divergent Questions

A good question can still fall flat. These habits make the difference:

  • Wait. Count to five before you rephrase or answer. Silence is where the second and third ideas come from.
  • Write before you talk. In a group, two minutes of silent writing gives quieter people a chance and stops the first answer from setting the frame.
  • Ask for quantity. "Give me ten" works better than "Any ideas?" A number makes the task feel finite.
  • Don't judge too soon. Saying "good" to one answer tells everyone what you were hoping for, and the range narrows. Collect first, discuss second.
  • Follow up with "what else?" The first answers are usually the obvious ones. The interesting ideas tend to come after them.
  • Add one constraint. "How could we raise money?" is vague. "How could we raise money in one afternoon with no budget?" gives people something to push against.
  • Close the loop. When you have a list, switch to a convergent question ("Which two are worth trying?") so the ideas lead somewhere.

How to Use These Divergent Questions

A 10-minute routine for a class, team or yourself:

  1. Pick one question from the lists above that fits the topic or problem (1 minute).
  2. Write alone for 3 minutes. Aim for at least eight answers, including some that seem silly.
  3. Share in pairs or as a group, adding new ideas as they come up (3 minutes).
  4. Sort the answers into categories. If they all fall into one, ask the question again with a constraint (2 minutes).
  5. Choose the one or two answers worth following up, and say why (1 minute).

For a timed version you can score, run one round of the Divergent Thinking drill at the end of the routine. For more open prompts with worked examples from science, art and business, see these divergent thinking examples, and for group formats, try these creative thinking activities.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a divergent question? A divergent question is an open question with many acceptable answers, such as "How many ways could we use this empty room?" It asks people to generate possibilities rather than recall a fact, so two people can give different answers and both be right.

What is the difference between convergent and divergent questions? A convergent question has one correct or best answer ("What is the capital of Japan?"). A divergent question has many ("What would a new capital city need?"). Convergent questions check knowledge and narrow a discussion; divergent questions open it up and produce options.

What are some examples of divergent questions? "What else could a brick be used for?", "How might life change if the moon disappeared?", "What are all the ways this project could fail?" and "How is a library like a forest?" Each has many valid answers and gives people something concrete to start from.

How do you write a divergent question? Start with a stem such as "How many ways...", "What if...", "What else could..." or "How is X like Y?", then name a specific object, situation or constraint. Check that you can't predict the answer. If you can, the question is still convergent.

Are open-ended questions the same as divergent questions? Mostly. Both have more than one acceptable answer. Some open-ended questions ask for an opinion or explanation ("Why do you think that?"), while divergent questions specifically ask for many possibilities. All divergent questions are open-ended, but not every open-ended question asks for range.

Why are divergent questions useful? They give people practice producing many options before choosing one, which helps in writing, problem solving and planning. They also surface ideas a group would miss if it settled on the first answer. Use them first, then follow with a convergent question to pick the best options.

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