Writer’s block is a common problem for writers of all levels. It can be frustrating when you feel like you’re stuck in a rut or when you’re not making any progress. That’s why our Creative Writing summer courses teach our students various techniques so they won’t run out of ideas to write about. And in the short term, this article talks you through creative writing exercises that’ll help get you in the groove. The more you do these exercises, the smoother the ideas flow from your brain through your hand!
What Are Creative Writing Exercises?
Just like with any task, you’ll get better at creative writing when you practice. If you’re unsure on the exact definition of creative writing, then jump to our guide on creative writing.
20 Creative Writing Exercises to Inspire and Challenge
Creative writing exercises are a great way to get into the habit of writing regularly. There are all sorts of different exercises that you can try, but here are some of our favourite exercises and specific prompts or “story starters.”
1. Free Writing For 10 Minutes
Grab your pen and paper (or your laptop if you prefer typing.) Set your timer to 10 minutes. And let it rip! Write anything that comes to mind. Forget about the spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Throw all those out of the window for now. If you’ve nothing to say, write “…” until the next random thought pops up.
Never stop until the 10 minutes are over.
What’s the point of this creative writing exercise? To help you get over your fear of starting because of pursuit of perfection. Writers often experience a mental block episode when staring at a blank page because they’re afraid of committing mistakes.
With Free Writing, you’ll practice overcoming that fear by ignoring the rules and letting your thoughts and feelings flow through your pen (or keyboard.)
2. The Talk Show
What’s your favourite talk show? Suppose it’s “The Graham Norton Show.” If your character were to go in as a guest for an interview, what questions would Graham ask them? How would they respond? What witticisms would they exchange?
Would they be charming? Awkward? Aloof? Prim and proper? This exercise asks you to go all out and have fun with it!
3. Warm Up With a Flash Fiction Exercise
Are you daydreaming of writing your novel or short story but don’t feel skilled enough to do so? Don’t worry! Flash Fiction creative writing exercises are the perfect training ground. We wrote an article about creative writing examples where we discussed Flash Fiction. In a nutshell, it’s a story less than 1,000 words long. Unlike Free Writing, this creative writing exercise requires you to practice writing the plot, character/s, setting, and other elements of creative writing.
4. But… WHY?
You have a character, but they feel flat. How do you bring them to life? Keep asking why.
Let’s say your character struggles with loneliness:
- Why? Because they keep people at a distance.
- Why do they do that? Because they’re afraid of rejection.
- Why that fear? Because they believe if their own parents abandoned them, anyone could.
Digging deeper into a character’s motivations adds layers, making them feel real rather than just a collection of traits.
Do you see where this is going? The further you go, the deeper and more complex your character gets, showing more of the humanity factor that captivates readers.
5. Self-Encouragement Exercise
Do you feel guilty about your writing? Maybe you neglected your daily 20-minute writing goal. Or you didn’t write that poem you promised yourself you would. List it all down. Then beside it, write a resolution or achievement to counter it.
So you didn’t achieve your daily 20-minute goal? But at least you tried and wrote more this month than in the past 3. You failed to write the poem? Don’t worry! You’ll write one right now.
Reflective creative writing exercises like this one should help you dust yourself off whenever you stumble down on your knees. Onward through your writing journey!
6. It’s Your Turn For The Sorting Hat!
Sometimes an idea is worth borrowing. It’s your main character’s turn for the sorting hat. They approach after their name is called and put the hat over their head. What house will they belong to? Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, or Hufflepuff? List all the reasons that your character belongs there.
7. Write Fanfiction
Speaking of borrowing ideas, fanfiction is a fantastic way of exercising your storytelling skills. What’s fanfiction? It’s a story about an existing fictional character written by its fans. This means you can take your favourite fictional character and write a story about them.
Let’s say you’re a Lord of the Rings fan and love Sam. What do you imagine Sam’s life would be like after saying goodbye to Frodo? Maybe a new threat looms on the horizon, and Sam and the rest of the Hobbits will have to embark on another adventure. How would you write the story?
8. What Would The Story Look Like From Another POV?
If you’re not up to writing a full-blown plot, why not try switching up an existing story’s POV? A thrilling way to do so is to imagine an intense confrontation from an antagonist’s point of view.
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Take the fight between Dumbledore and Voldemort. Imagine what a first-person POV would look like from Voldemort’s perspective! Try to keep your writing style and tone in line with how the author would’ve done it. Fanfiction and alternate-POV creative writing exercises expand your imagination and develop your writing skills!
9. BOOM, CRASH!
How would it sound if you were to hear a noise that would send chills down the marrow of your bones? Describe the sound in as much detail as you can. And make your characters listen to it.
What will your main characters feel when they hear it? Will they spring to action? Maybe the nonchalant character remains as collected as ever and immediately tries to assess the situation. But, on the other hand, if a character has been through a rough childhood, perhaps they’ll freeze and struggle to breathe as they relive horrible memories.
10. Breathing Exercises
Sometimes, it’s hard to start writing because you’re not fully relaxed. The day’s worries fill your mind, and it’s challenging to get into that writing flow where inspiration flows through you with relative ease.
That’s when breathing exercises come in handy. Close your eyes and focus on your breathing. Forget the world around you, and breathe in, breathe out. When you feel more relaxed, do some neck stretches and shoulder rolls. Then shake your hands as if to throw off whatever is weighing you down.
After doing this exercise, you’ll feel more in tune with your creative mind when you look back at your writing page.
11. Write A Poem About A Random Object
Look around and notice the various objects strewn about. Pick one that catches your eye and proceed to write a poem about it. But here’s the catch: don’t tell us what it is! The goal is to sharpen your ability to describe through imagery.
Talk about its shape, colour, size, texture, or state of matter. Use metaphors to spice things up. You’ll have a blast reading what you come up with after!
12. Convert the Genre!
Get a hold of your favourite chapter or short story and change the genre! Is your chosen story sci-fi? Try turning it into romance. Maybe you chose a comedic piece of literature. What happens if you add a sinister turn to make it horrific and bone-chilling?
13. In Your Room!
You’re likely to be completing creative writing exercises in your room, so why not use it for inspiration?
Go inside the mind of a character. It could be your own creation, or an existing fictional character you admire. If they were to step into your room, what would they notice first? What would they say? Will there be a particular object that’ll catch their eye? Maybe a characteristic about your room they dislike?
When writing down their reactions, remember to capture their personalities. Maybe there’s a word they often use or a gesture they make when assessing their surroundings.
14. Ditch the Adverbs and Adjectives… For Now
So you can work on powering up your noun and verb usage skills. Since adverbs and adjectives are modifiers, you may have the temptation to rely on them too much. This can weaken the impact of your writing. What if you can use nouns and verbs with such precision that you rarely need to depend on modifiers?
15. Edit Another Person’s Writing
Editing another person’s writing forces you to slow down and digest each word. It kickstarts your brain as you ask yourself, “Is this the perfect word?” or “What if the sentence structure could use a little makeover?”
You’ll sharpen your critical thinking, problem-solving, and reading comprehension as you go through the piece. And you may even pop up a light bulb or two as you extract new ideas!
This is a particularly great idea if you have friends at school who are also interested in creative writing. And, if you’re looking to pursue it further then check out the A-level requirements for creative writing.
16. Image Association
When you think of your theme, what images come to mind? Note them down. If your theme is about betrayal, maybe you imagine knives, masks, scratched-out words on a secret note, dirty mirrors, broken magnifying lenses, and muddy waters.
What images come to mind if you repeat the process with each of your major characters? These will come in handy when you need a mood lift or when making your sentences more exciting and engaging using metaphors.
17. If You Can Talk To Your Younger Self, What Will You Say?
Creative writing exercises can often double as great journal quotes. You’ve come a long way from where you were years ago. If you were to think back, what was a tough situation you had to go through? And if you could write a letter to your younger self, what would you say? What will be the tips, encouragements, and warnings you’d give?
Write the letter as if you were a different person. Your younger self could use the lift!
18. You’re In The Newspaper!
What would your character have done to make themselves appear on a newspaper headline? Or what would have happened to them?
If your character works at a watch repair store, maybe they came across an antique that used to belong to a late war hero. If the journalist were to interview them, how would they respond?
What if your antagonist is a psychopath, and they were caught red-handed by the police as they attempted murder? Feel free to write a newspaper article!
Then, say your characters happened to come across the newspaper article written about them, how would they react?
19. X On The Map
Grab a map (Google Maps will work too!) and find a spot at random – close your eyes and point, or zoom in with your eyes shut.
Repeat if it happens to be your hometown or somewhere you already know – it has to be an unfamiliar place for this exercise to work.
Once you have your “X” on the map, research the place. Indulge in its history, culture, and people. What do the people wear? Is the population primarily young or old? Is the climate temperate or tropical? Note down as much information as you can.
And then write a scene or story with this place as the setting. You could combine this with another of our character-based creative writing exercises and bam – character and setting sorted!
20. Same Picture, Different Mood
Scroll down travel blogs and look at the various pictures of places. Pick one that attracts your attention. Suppose it’s a long stretch of road, surrounded by tall trees on either side, with the city skyscrapers looming on the horizon.
Describe the feeling through your character’s eyes. Maybe they feel relaxed as they drive through, windows down, and the wind brushes against their faces. And perhaps excitement too, as they’re about to explore a new place.
Now pick another character who’s present at the same scene, and turn the mood 360. From a casual onlooker, the place looks beautiful and tranquil. But maybe from this character’s point of view, the place evokes emotions of fear and anxiety. Perhaps they’ve been to this place before, and they had a life-threatening experience at one of the skyscrapers that are fast coming into view.
Give special attention to the sensory details! From the way the trees sway in the breeze to the sound of the engine roaring. Maybe the glare of the sun as it shines in a nearly cloudless sky. Connect these details with the characters’ memories, feelings, and musings. The goal is to make your readers feel what your character feels!
What Are The Rules Of Creative Writing?
There are no fixed rules about creative writing. However, if it helps, we’ve put together some standard pieces of advice that will help you to up your game.
Focus on one task.
Multitasking sounds cool, but it often kills your performance. A Psychonomic Bulletin & Review study shows that 97.5% of 200 participants experienced decreased performance when multitasking. So, when you dive into our creative writing exercises, try to dive
Read, read, and read!
What’s the most effective way to spur your imagination and creativity to maximum capacity? Reading! Vehicles need fuel to run, and your mind needs fresh inspiration from reading for it to produce something worthwhile. Perhaps it’s something to do between creative writing exercises.
Find a quiet place to complete exercises.
A research article from Applied Cognitive Psychology reports that listening to music (with or without lyrics) impairs creativity while you’re writing compared to working in quiet backgrounds. Perhaps many of us feel inspired or get an idea when listening to music during our mind-wandering moments. But when it’s time to write, working in silence works best!
Remove distractions.
A quiet place is effective. But suppose you keep getting vibrations from your phone about a Facebook or Twitter notification. In that case, you’ll lose focus all the same, so put away your gadgets when you write. Protect and respect writing time as sacred.
Show, don’t tell.
Of course, in writing a story, you will have to tell information, especially when you have to speed up some less important parts. But when you want your readers to feel like they’re in the character’s shoes, you’ll have to “show, don’t tell.”
What does it mean? Let’s say you want to inform the readers that Sally hates chocolates. Instead of stating “Sally hates chocolates”, why not show it? “Her new acquaintance offered her a chocolate bar he bought from the store. Sally looked down on it with contempt, wrinkling her nose. Her hand twitched on her side. Then she forced a smile, took the candy in her hand, and uttered a polite ‘thanks.’” Showing gives readers a more immersive experience than telling, and incorporating this idea into your creative writing exercises will strengthen your writing skills.
Read what you write out loud at the end of each exercise.
When you finish a draft, read it out loud. You’ll realise that not everything you write sounds as smooth as you imagined. If the words don’t roll off your tongue, revise until it does.
Define why your reader should root for your character.
Remember watching a movie, and the character goes on fighting villains and risking their lives, but you have no idea why? You squint harder as the film progresses, becoming more frustrated because you don’t get the motive.
And so, how are you supposed to relate? Why should you care? If you want your readers to invest their hearts in the characters, define motivations as soon as possible!
Each sentence should have a purpose.
Each sentence should have a purpose. Your readers could be doing a million other things. Yet they choose to read your story. So give them your best by making each sentence useful. It has to advance the story or reveal something essential about the characters. If it doesn’t? Delete! Returning to our creative writing exercises, ‘flash fiction’ is a great way to practice this one, because you’ll be working within a word limit.
Don’t get tired of rewriting.
You can upgrade a simple sentence just by changing its verb. Or changing the structure from passive to active. Don’t be afraid to rewrite a sentence, paragraph, or chapter as often as necessary until you arrive at the finest version.
Go back to the basics.
The hallmark of an advanced and experienced writer is how masterful they are in keeping the basics. Punctuation, spelling, and grammar make a piece clear and delightful to read.
Conclusion: Developing Mastery With Creative Writing Exercises
You now have a handful of creative writing exercises and rules to practice. Have you tried doing any of the exercises? Which ones are your favourites so far?
Suppose you’re passionate about improving your writing skills and want to learn from talented Oxford, Cambridge, and Ivy League tutors. In that case, you may want to check out our Creative Writing summer courses.