Take a familiar story and change the point of view.

For The Hobbit, students might write from:

Smaug’s perspective,

Gollum’s perspective,

Bard’s perspective,

Beorn’s perspective,

the Arkenstone’s perspective if you want to let them get weird,

or even an ordinary Lake-town resident who has absolutely had enough of dwarves arriving and causing events.

That allows creativity while still demonstrating comprehension.