Writing Exercises
Recommended
Try an inspiring writing exercise every day with Wake Up Writing.
Writing exercises help you by getting you used to writing all of the time, especially when you are finding it hard to write your story or novel.
If you have some plots or ideas for stories hanging around and don’t know what to do with them here’s an idea - develop some characters, drop each of them into the same role (i.e. you’ll be writing a different story for each character) and let their personality decide which way they go. You can then see how different characters can drive a plot forward.
A good place to start writing may be to write about your childhood - take an event which you remember vividly and try to create a “sense of place”, take yourself back there and describe how it was and how you felt.
15 Minute Writing
One of my writing teachers used to set a timer during class and each student would have to come up with a story in 15 minutes. I’ve found this to be a great exercise for when I have writer’s block. You can start out by taking a short clip from a newspaper and expanding into a story. It’s surprising what you can come up when you know you have to get it done in 15 minutes! Even if you end up hating what you wrote, at least you’re writing and who knows, it may develop into something else later on. - Laurie Bosco.
Writers’ Tennis
You’ll need two people for this one. One of you writes a few paragraphs of a story. It can be about anything. You then pass it on to your writing partner (email is perfect for this) who then writes the next paragraph and so on and so on. If you both try to keep the two parts of the story consistent you can achieve interesting results. Thanks to Colin Lawson for suggesting this exercise.
Pictures & Words
Take a painting and look at it for a while then write a story about it. You can write about the actual painting or take the theme of the painting as the theme of your story. You can do the same with poems or with book and movie titles. Thanks to Sam Lomax for suggesting this.
Writing exercises from Wake Up Writing
The Wake Up Writing website (www.wakeupwriting.com) has frequently updated writing exercises. Check out the latest ones below, and keep checking back here as this list will update itself.
Friday Story Seeds are Here
Can you believe it’s Friday again? Where does the week go?
Here are the latest batch of Friday story seeds. As usual start a piece of fiction or non-fiction with any of the following. If you’re up for a serious challenge today, try and use them all (one of them must be the first sentence) in [...]
In the Interest of a Good Cause….
Write a letter to your local newspaper (whether or not to send it is up to you) drawing attention to your favorite good cause, and encouraging readers to support it.
A Wednesday Weave-a-Word Challenge
Use the following 10 words in a piece of fiction or non-fiction:
Bench
Dresser
Fleece
Impede
Magnified
Olive
Prison
Seclusion
Tracks
Ventilation
Timers at the Ready for Today’s Writing Exercise
Set your timer for 20 minutes, type the title at the top of the page and start typing. Stop when your timer goes off and read back what you’ve created!
Title: The Truth Behind The Secret!
Are you a Passionate Person?
What ignites your passion? Write about the main passion in your life.
Further Reading
On this site:
Have your say in our discussion forums.
On the web:
Try an inspiring writing exercise every day with http://www.wakeupwriting.com.
About.com’s Creative Writing for Teens site has some good creative writing exercises - http://teenwriting.about.com/library/exercises/blexercises.htm
Books:
What If?: Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers - Anne Bernays & Pamela Painter.
The Creative Writing Coursebook (Forty authors share advice and exercises for fiction and poetry) - Andrew Motion (Foreward) & Julia Bell (Editor).
Browse writing books at amazon.co.uk.
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