Creative Writing Exercises

Creative writing exercises are a great way to develop your skills and techniques to become a more rounded and accomplished writer. These simple prompts can help you to get over writers block and see a much clearer path for your writing.

Being a great writer is all about developing specific skills and techniques that you can use in your work.

When approaching creative writing exercises, do so with an open mind, don't try to force ideas and do not block any creativity that might be induced whilst using these exercises.

As with your own writing, get your thoughts and ideas down, don't stop the flow by worrying about grammar, spelling or punctuation etc, just write and let it all out.

Try this creative writing exercise yourself right now...

Write down 4 random words, or get someone else to write them down for you. Then connect them in to a sentence with a few other words to make sense of them. Next try expanding that sentence to make paragraph or two. Don't be afraid about writing rubbish, not everything you write will be a best seller.

Get used to writing and then discarding it. The more you write and the more practice you get using different stimulation techniques then the better writer you will become.

Here's another creative writing technique you can try...

Think about a person right now, give that person a name and an accent. What do they do? Where do they live? Take some time to expand upon your thoughts. Describe as clearly and vividly as possible the person that you can imagine. Write in such a way that someone else could also picture that exact character from your description. Now show your work to someone else and get their feedback. Who is the person that they are describing back to you after reading your description.

Is it the same person or someone completely different?

Better still, give your description to a few people and get their feedback, then try the exercises again using the advice and lessons learnt the first time. Remember one of the greatest skills of any writer is to be able to illicit an almost exact replica in the readers mind of the picture you had in your mind when you first created the idea.

Keep the work you do as it will serve as a good reminder as to how your work matures over time.

How about joining a writing group if there are any locally or searching online for some writing forums. Here's a couple you could take a look at right now -
www.writersbeat.com
www.legendfire.com
www.writingforums.org

You'll often find that the inspiration you get from others really can kick start the creative thought process far quicker than battling it out on your own.

Here's another creative writing exercise you could try...

Write three lists of words in three columns on a piece of A4 paper. Next write a poem of 4 verses in which one random word from each column ( so that's 3) must feature in each of the verses.

One final exercise you might like to test out for yourself is to take a fiction book, any one will do and copy out the very first sentence in the book. You'll now add the rest of the page on the end of this sentence. It doesn't need to link in with the story or the rest of the book, just simply write what you like. Get used to writing from different starting points.

Without doubt a good novelist will need to practice, the same way a world class pianist or top tennis player will have to refine their skills, you too will have to develop and hone your talents.

Creative writing exercises are an excellent way of doing this.