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.
This Week’s Supply of Story Seeds have Arrived!
Use any of the following as the start of a piece of fiction or non-fiction:
Overnight the snow had thawed to reveal ………
Squeals and chaos followed ………
The daily 5 mile jog helped ………
Timers at the ready this morning!
Set your timer for 20 minutes, write the title at the top of your page, and start writing. Simple, yes?
Title: “The Right Size”
Note: Fiction or non-fiction, the choice is yours.
Wednesday’s Weave-a-Word Challenge is Here!
Use all of the following words in a piece of fiction or non-fiction. Word order isn’t important, just make sure you use them all. The super-star challenge today is to use all 10 in a piece of short fiction that is a complete story in less than 300 words!
Copious
Flip-flops
Glaze
Homework
Interrogate
Knitted
Panel
Sizzle
Terminate
Waterfall
Shall We Dance?
Today’s creative writing exercise is to write a scene where your protagonist attends a dance. What kind of dance, who they take with them, what happens there etc is all up to you!
If you don’t write fiction, write a short article about how dancing can help improve your fitness level.
Are you a Slave to your Cell?
Imagine waking up one morning and finding that cell phones were illegal. Write about how you would feel. Would this affect your life in a positive or a negative way? Have you ever tried going without your cell phone for 24-48 hours (no texting/calls incoming or outgoing) either because you wanted to consciously take a [...]
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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