CREATIVE WRITING EXERCISES

These are some of the exercises I have used when running creative writing workshops. If you have writer’s block or are just generally stuck for ideas, try some of these exercises yourself. If you write a web page of feature based on something you wrote from these exercises let me know. Good luck.

As a basic writing rule, always be ready to write. Carry a pen or pencil and notepad around, and have one by your bedside at all times. Jot down anything that comes into your head, no matter how mundane it might seem. Keep lists and notes as often as possible.

1/.  WORDS PICKED FROM MAGNETIC POETRY SETS – Worth buying one of these and setting the words out on the fridge or another metallic surface. Just twist words round to make lines and sentences or pick individual words out (mentally) to write notes on for writing exercises.

2/. KEYWORDS – pick a word out of the dictionary, snow, night, gun, cat, cucumber, etc – and spend a while writing down any free association ideas based on it.

3/. THESAURUS WORDS  – Look at alternative words for a word you’ve picked out – Beautiful could be Lovely, nice, pretty, etc. Look at the opposite words and meanings too, i.e., ugly, plain, ordinary, not nice, etc.

4/. ANIMAL MINERAL VEGETABLE – Pick one of each at random and write about them, but don’t use the actual word itself that you have picked for each.

5/. SOMETHING YOU … love, hates fear, wants, have, couldn’t care less about, something that makes you laugh, something that makes you cry. Use these as separate exercises or as one big piece of writing using all of the above. 

6/. PICTURES / PHOTOGRAPHS Pick a photo or drawing from a magazine, newspaper, website, etc and write a story about it.  Keep a clippings file of as many photos and pictures as you can get together from a variety of sources. Use them whenever you want to write this way.

7/. DESCRIPTIVE PIECE – HANDS, FEET, A NOSE, EYES, Pick a part of your anatomy) or someone else’s and write a purely descriptive poem or feature on it).

8/. THE VIEW THROUGH A WINDOW – You might imagine a view or look through an actual window to do this,