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105 Creative Writing Exercises To Get You Writing Again

You know that feeling when you just don’t feel like writing? Sometimes you can’t even get a word down on paper. It’s the most frustrating thing ever to a writer, especially when you’re working towards a deadline. The good news is that we have a list of 105 creative writing exercises to help you get motivated and start writing again!

What are creative writing exercises?

Creative writing exercises are short writing activities (normally around 10 minutes) designed to get you writing. The goal of these exercises is to give you the motivation to put words onto a blank paper. These words don’t need to be logical or meaningful, neither do they need to be grammatically correct or spelt correctly. The whole idea is to just get you writing something, anything. The end result of these quick creative writing exercises is normally a series of notes, bullet points or ramblings that you can, later on, use as inspiration for a bigger piece of writing such as a story or a poem. 

Good creative writing exercises are short, quick and easy to complete. You shouldn’t need to think too much about your style of writing or how imaginative your notes are. Just write anything that comes to mind, and you’ll be on the road to improving your creative writing skills and beating writer’s block . 

Use the generator below to get a random creative writing exercise idea:

List of 105+ Creative Writing Exercises

Here are over 105 creative writing exercises to give your brain a workout and help those creative juices flow again:

• Set a timer for 60 seconds. Now write down as many words or phrases that come to mind at that moment.
• Pick any colour you like. Now start your sentence with this colour. For example, Orange, the colour of my favourite top. 
• Open a book or dictionary on a random page. Pick a random word. You can close your eyes and slowly move your finger across the page. Now, write a paragraph with this random word in it. You can even use an online dictionary to get random words:

• Create your own alphabet picture book or list. It can be A to Z of animals, food, monsters or anything else you like!
• Using only the sense of smell, describe where you are right now.
• Take a snack break. While eating your snack write down the exact taste of that food. The goal of this creative writing exercise is to make your readers savour this food as well.
• Pick a random object in your room and write a short paragraph from its point of view. For example, how does your pencil feel? What if your lamp had feelings?
• Describe your dream house. Where would you live one day? Is it huge or tiny? 
• Pick two different TV shows, movies or books that you like. Now swap the main character. What if Supergirl was in Twilight? What if SpongeBob SquarePants was in The Flash? Write a short scene using this character swap as inspiration.
• What’s your favourite video game? Write at least 10 tips for playing this game.
• Pick your favourite hobby or sport. Now pretend an alien has just landed on Earth and you need to teach it this hobby or sport. Write at least ten tips on how you would teach this alien.
• Use a random image generator and write a paragraph about the first picture you see.

• Write a letter to your favourite celebrity or character. What inspires you most about them? Can you think of a memorable moment where this person’s life affected yours? We have this helpful guide on writing a letter to your best friend for extra inspiration.
• Write down at least 10 benefits of writing. This can help motivate you and beat writer’s block.
• Complete this sentence in 10 different ways: Patrick waited for the school bus and…
• Pick up a random book from your bookshelf and go to page 9. Find the ninth sentence on that page. Use this sentence as a story starter.
• Create a character profile based on all the traits that you hate. It might help to list down all the traits first and then work on describing the character.
• What is the scariest or most dangerous situation you have ever been in? Why was this situation scary? How did you cope at that moment?
• Pretend that you’re a chat show host and you’re interviewing your favourite celebrity. Write down the script for this conversation.
• Using extreme detail, write down what you have been doing for the past one hour today. Think about your thoughts, feelings and actions during this time.
• Make a list of potential character names for your next story. You can use a fantasy name generator to help you.
• Describe a futuristic setting. What do you think the world would look like in 100 years time?
• Think about a recent argument you had with someone. Would you change anything about it? How would you resolve an argument in the future?
• Describe a fantasy world. What kind of creatures live in this world? What is the climate like? What everyday challenges would a typical citizen of this world face? You can use this fantasy world name generator for inspiration.
• At the flip of a switch, you turn into a dragon. What kind of dragon would you be? Describe your appearance, special abilities, likes and dislikes. You can use a dragon name generator to give yourself a cool dragon name.
• Pick your favourite book or a famous story. Now change the point of view. For example, you could rewrite the fairytale , Cinderella. This time around, Prince Charming could be the main character. What do you think Prince Charming was doing, while Cinderella was cleaning the floors and getting ready for the ball?
• Pick a random writing prompt and use it to write a short story. Check out this collection of over 300 writing prompts for kids to inspire you. 
• Write a shopping list for a famous character in history. Imagine if you were Albert Einstein’s assistant, what kind of things would he shop for on a weekly basis?
• Create a fake advertisement poster for a random object that is near you right now. Your goal is to convince the reader to buy this object from you.
• What is the worst (or most annoying) sound that you can imagine? Describe this sound in great detail, so your reader can understand the pain you feel when hearing this sound.
• What is your favourite song at the moment? Pick one line from this song and describe a moment in your life that relates to this line.
•  You’re hosting an imaginary dinner party at your house. Create a list of people you would invite, and some party invites. Think about the theme of the dinner party, the food you will serve and entertainment for the evening. 
• You are waiting to see your dentist in the waiting room. Write down every thought you are having at this moment in time. 
• Make a list of your greatest fears. Try to think of at least three fears. Now write a short story about a character who is forced to confront one of these fears. 
• Create a ‘Wanted’ poster for a famous villain of your choice. Think about the crimes they have committed, and the reward you will give for having them caught. 
• Imagine you are a journalist for the ‘Imagine Forest Times’ newspaper. Your task is to get an exclusive interview with the most famous villain of all time. Pick a villain of your choice and interview them for your newspaper article. What questions would you ask them, and what would their responses be?
•  In a school playground, you see the school bully hurting a new kid. Write three short stories, one from each perspective in this scenario (The bully, the witness and the kid getting bullied).
• You just won $10 million dollars. What would you spend this money on?
• Pick a random animal, and research at least five interesting facts about this animal. Write a short story centred around one of these interesting facts. 
• Pick a global issue that you are passionate about. This could be climate change, black lives matters, women’s rights etc. Now create a campaign poster for this global issue. 
• Write an acrostic poem about an object near you right now (or even your own name). You could use a poetry idea generator to inspire you.
• Imagine you are the head chef of a 5-star restaurant. Recently the business has slowed down. Your task is to come up with a brand-new menu to excite customers. Watch this video prompt on YouTube to inspire you.
• What is your favourite food of all time? Imagine if this piece of food was alive, what would it say to you?
• If life was one big musical, what would you be singing about right now? Write the lyrics of your song. 
• Create and describe the most ultimate villain of all time. What would their traits be? What would their past look like? Will they have any positive traits?
• Complete this sentence in at least 10 different ways: Every time I look out of the window, I…
• You have just made it into the local newspaper, but what for? Write down at least five potential newspaper headlines . Here’s an example, Local Boy Survives a Deadly Illness.
• If you were a witch or a wizard, what would your specialist area be and why? You might want to use a Harry Potter name generator or a witch name generator for inspiration.
• What is your favourite thing to do on a Saturday night? Write a short story centred around this activity. 
• Your main character has just received the following items: A highlighter, a red cap, a teddy bear and a fork. What would your character do with these items? Can you write a story using these items? 
• Create a timeline of your own life, from birth to this current moment. Think about the key events in your life, such as birthdays, graduations, weddings and so on. After you have done this, you can pick one key event from your life to write a story about. 
• Think of a famous book or movie you like. Rewrite a scene from this book or movie, where the main character is an outsider. They watch the key events play out, but have no role in the story. What would their actions be? How would they react?
• Three very different characters have just won the lottery. Write a script for each character, as they reveal the big news to their best friend.  
• Write a day in the life story of three different characters. How does each character start their day? What do they do throughout the day? And how does their day end?
•  Write about the worst experience in your life so far. Think about a time when you were most upset or angry and describe it. 
• Imagine you’ve found a time machine in your house. What year would you travel to and why?
• Describe your own superhero. Think about their appearance, special abilities and their superhero name. Will they have a secret identity? Who is their number one enemy?
• What is your favourite country in the world? Research five fun facts about this country and use one to write a short story. 
• Set yourself at least three writing goals. This could be a good way to motivate yourself to write every day. For example, one goal might be to write at least 150 words a day. 
• Create a character description based on the one fact, three fiction rule. Think about one fact or truth about yourself. And then add in three fictional or fantasy elements. For example, your character could be the same age as you in real life, this is your one fact. And the three fictional elements could be they have the ability to fly, talk in over 100 different languages and have green skin. 
• Describe the perfect person. What traits would they have? Think about their appearance, their interests and their dislikes. 
• Keep a daily journal or diary. This is a great way to keep writing every day. There are lots of things you can write about in your journal, such as you can write about the ‘highs’ and ‘lows’ of your day. Think about anything that inspired you or anything that upset you, or just write anything that comes to mind at the moment. 
• Write a book review or a movie review. If you’re lost for inspiration, just watch a random movie or read any book that you can find. Then write a critical review on it. Think about the best parts of the book/movie and the worst parts. How would you improve the book or movie?
• Write down a conversation between yourself. You can imagine talking to your younger self or future self (i.e. in 10 years’ time). What would you tell them? Are there any lessons you learned or warnings you need to give? Maybe you could talk about what your life is like now and compare it to their life?
• Try writing some quick flash fiction stories . Flash fiction is normally around 500 words long, so try to stay within this limit.
• Write a six-word story about something that happened to you today or yesterday. A six-word story is basically an entire story told in just six words. Take for example: “Another football game ruined by me.” or “A dog’s painting sold for millions.” – Six-word stories are similar to writing newspaper headlines. The goal is to summarise your story in just six words. 
• The most common monsters or creatures used in stories include vampires, werewolves , dragons, the bigfoot, sirens and the loch-ness monster. In a battle of intelligence, who do you think will win and why?
• Think about an important event in your life that has happened so far, such as a birthday or the birth of a new sibling. Now using the 5 W’s and 1 H technique describe this event in great detail. The 5 W’s include: What, Who, Where, Why, When and the 1 H is: How. Ask yourself questions about the event, such as what exactly happened on that day? Who was there? Why was this event important? When and where did it happen? And finally, how did it make you feel?
• Pretend to be someone else. Think about someone important in your life. Now put yourself into their shoes, and write a day in the life story about being them. What do you think they do on a daily basis? What situations would they encounter? How would they feel?
• Complete this sentence in at least 10 different ways: I remember…
• Write about your dream holiday. Where would you go? Who would you go with? And what kind of activities would you do?
• Which one item in your house do you use the most? Is it the television, computer, mobile phone, the sofa or the microwave? Now write a story of how this item was invented. You might want to do some research online and use these ideas to build up your story. 
• In exactly 100 words, describe your bedroom. Try not to go over or under this word limit.
• Make a top ten list of your favourite animals. Based on this list create your own animal fact file, where you provide fun facts about each animal in your list.
• What is your favourite scene from a book or a movie? Write down this scene. Now rewrite the scene in a different genre, such as horror, comedy, drama etc.
•  Change the main character of a story you recently read into a villain. For example, you could take a popular fairytale such as Jack and the Beanstalk, but this time re-write the story to make Jack the villain of the tale.
• Complete the following sentence in at least 10 different ways: Do you ever wonder…
• What does your name mean? Research the meaning of your own name, or a name that interests you. Then use this as inspiration for your next story. For example, the name ‘Marty’ means “Servant Of Mars, God Of War”. This could make a good concept for a sci-fi story.
• Make a list of three different types of heroes (or main characters) for potential future stories.
• If someone gave you $10 dollars, what would you spend it on and why?
• Describe the world’s most boring character in at least 100 words. 
• What is the biggest problem in the world today, and how can you help fix this issue?
• Create your own travel brochure for your hometown. Think about why tourists might want to visit your hometown. What is your town’s history? What kind of activities can you do? You could even research some interesting facts. 
• Make a list of all your favourite moments or memories in your life. Now pick one to write a short story about.
• Describe the scariest and ugliest monster you can imagine. You could even draw a picture of this monster with your description.
• Write seven haikus, one for each colour of the rainbow. That’s red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. 
• Imagine you are at the supermarket. Write down at least three funny scenarios that could happen to you at the supermarket. Use one for your next short story. 
• Imagine your main character is at home staring at a photograph. Write the saddest scene possible. Your goal is to make your reader cry when reading this scene. 
• What is happiness? In at least 150 words describe the feeling of happiness. You could use examples from your own life of when you felt happy.
• Think of a recent nightmare you had and write down everything you can remember. Use this nightmare as inspiration for your next story.
• Keep a dream journal. Every time you wake up in the middle of the night or early in the morning you can quickly jot down things that you remember from your dreams. These notes can then be used as inspiration for a short story. 
• Your main character is having a really bad day. Describe this bad day and the series of events they experience. What’s the worst thing that could happen to your character?
• You find a box on your doorstep. You open this box and see the most amazing thing ever. Describe this amazing thing to your readers.
• Make a list of at least five possible settings or locations for future stories. Remember to describe each setting in detail.
• Think of something new you recently learned. Write this down. Now write a short story where your main character also learns the same thing.
• Describe the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen in your whole life. Your goal is to amaze your readers with its beauty. 
• Make a list of things that make you happy or cheer you up. Try to think of at least five ideas. Now imagine living in a world where all these things were banned or against the law. Use this as inspiration for your next story.
• Would you rather be rich and alone or poor and very popular? Write a story based on the lives of these two characters. 
• Imagine your main character is a Librarian. Write down at least three dark secrets they might have. Remember, the best secrets are always unexpected.
• There’s a history behind everything. Describe the history of your house. How and when was your house built? Think about the land it was built on and the people that may have lived here long before you.
• Imagine that you are the king or queen of a beautiful kingdom. Describe your kingdom in great detail. What kind of rules would you have? Would you be a kind ruler or an evil ruler of the kingdom?
• Make a wish list of at least three objects you wish you owned right now. Now use these three items in your next story. At least one of them must be the main prop in the story.
• Using nothing but the sense of taste, describe a nice Sunday afternoon at your house. Remember you can’t use your other senses (i.e see, hear, smell or touch) in this description. 
• What’s the worst pain you felt in your life? Describe this pain in great detail, so your readers can also feel it.
• If you were lost on a deserted island in the middle of nowhere, what three must-have things would you pack and why?
• Particpate in online writing challenges or contests. Here at Imagine Forest, we offer daily writing challenges with a new prompt added every day to inspire you. Check out our challenges section in the menu.

Do you have any more fun creative writing exercises to share? Let us know in the comments below!

Marty the wizard is the master of Imagine Forest. When he's not reading a ton of books or writing some of his own tales, he loves to be surrounded by the magical creatures that live in Imagine Forest. While living in his tree house he has devoted his time to helping children around the world with their writing skills and creativity.

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• 43 Creative writing exercises

A selection of fun creative writing exercises that can be completed solo, or with a group. Some are prompts to help inspire you to come up with story ideas, others focus on learning specific writing skills.

I run a  Creative Writing Meetup  for adults and teens in Montpellier or online every week. We start with a 5 to 20 minute exercise, followed by an hour and a half of silent writing, during which each participant focuses on their own project. Every exercise listed below has been run with the group and had any kinks ironed out.  Where the exercises specify a number of people, if you have a larger group, simply split everyone up into smaller groups as appropriate.

The solo exercises are ideal to help stimulate your mind before working on a larger project, to overcome writer’s block, or as stand-alone prompts in their own right. If a solo exercise inspires you and you wish to use it with a larger group, give every member ten minutes to complete the exercise, then ask anyone who wishes to share their work to do so in groups of 3 or 4 afterwards.

Looking for something quick to fire your imagination? Check out these  creative writing prompts for adults .

Writing Retreat in South France

A note on running exercises remotely

While you can enjoy the exercises solo, they are also designed for online writing groups using Zoom, WhatsApp, or Discord.

If you're running a group and follow a ' Shut Up and Write ' structure, I recommend connecting on WhatsApp (for example) first, doing the exercise together, sharing writing samples as needed. Next, write in silence for an hour and a half on your own projects, before reconnecting for a brief informal chat at the end. This works great with small remote groups and is a way to learn new techniques, gain online support, and have a productive session.

If you have a larger online group, it's worth looking into Zoom, as this has a feature called  Breakout Rooms . Breakout Rooms let you split different writers into separate rooms, which is great for group activities. The free version of Zoom has a 40 minute limit, which can be restrictive, but Zoom Pro is well worth it if you're going to use it on a regular basis. In my experience, Zoom has a better connection than Facebook chat or WhatsApp.

A Letter From Your Character To You

Spend ten minutes writing a letter from a character in your novel to  you , the author, explaining why you should write about them. This serves three purposes:

• As you write, it helps you get into the mindset of the character. Ask yourself how they would language this letter and what they would consider important.
• It's motivating to know that your character wants you to write about them.
• If your goal is to publish a complete work of fiction one day, whether it be a novel, a play or a movie script, you will want to contact an agent or publisher. This helps you practice in an easy, safe way.

If you're doing this exercise with a group of teens or adults, and some of the group haven't already started working on their masterpiece, they can instead choose any fictional novel they love. Ask participants to imagine that a character within the book wrote to the author in the first place to ask them to write their story. How did they plead their case?

The Opening Sentence

The opening sentence has to grab the reader's attention and make them want to keep reading. Many authors achieve this by starting with an action scene. In modern literature, it's best to avoid starting with someone waking up, or a description of the weather. In this exercise the task is to write an opening sentence either to a book you're currently writing, or simply for an imaginary piece of literature.  Here are some of my favourite opening sentences to get you going:

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

George Orwell , 1984

The Golem's life began in the hold of a steamship.

Helene Wecker , The Golem and the Djinni

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Leo Tolstoy , Anna Karenina

It wasn't a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance.

Diana Gabaldon , Outlander

You better not never tell nobody but God.

Alice Walker , The Color Purple

The cage was finished.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez ,  Balthazar’s Marvelous Afternoon

Imagine that you are living your life out of order: Lunch before breakfast, marriage before your first kiss.

Audrey Niffenegger ,  The Time Traveler's Wife

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Douglas Adams ,  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

There are a plethora of ways you can start a book, however two ways that help engage the reader immediately are:

• Set the scene in as few words as possible, so the reader immediately knows what's happening and wants to know what happens next.  The scene must be original and create a vivid image in the reader's mind.
• Surprise the reader with an unusual event or usual point of view.

Spend 5 minutes working on your own opening sentence, then share it with the other participants.

Make your protagonist act!

Exercise for 2 writers, or can be done solo.

According to John Gardner:

"Failure to recognise that the central character must act, not simply be acted upon, is the single most common mistake in the fiction of beginners."

Spend 5 minutes writing a scene where the protagonist is passive in a conversation with one other character. It could be that the other character says something dramatic, and the protagonist just listens, or it could be anything else of your choice!

Once the 5 minutes is up, swap papers with another writer. If you're using Zoom, or working online, send it to each other in a private chat. Now the other person spends 8 minutes rewriting the scene to make the protagonist as active as possible. This might include:

Read both scenes together. Which makes you want to keep on reading?

If you're doing this as a solo writing exercise, simply complete both parts yourself.

• Showing the emotion this evokes.
• Getting them to disagree with the other character.
• Showing how they respond physically (whether it's as a physical manifestation of how they feel, or a dramatic gesture to make a point).

Overcoming writer's block

Are you staring at a blank page or stuck for any story ideas? This exercise will help anyone who's experiencing writer's block with a particular piece of writing. If this isn't you, that's great, others will value your input!

If anyone has a particular scene they're stuck with (a pool of blood on the floor they have no explanation for, a reason why the rich lady just walked into a particular pub, etc.) then at the start of the exercise everyone briefly describes their scenes (if working online with a large group, typing it into the chat might be best). Everyone then chooses one scene to use as a writing prompt to write a short story for 10-15 minutes.

Afterwards, split into small groups if necessary, and read out how you completed someone else's writing prompt. As everyone listens to everyone else's ideas, this can be a wonderful source of inspiration and also improves your writing. As an alternative solo exercise, try free writing. With free writing, simply write as quickly as you can on the topic without editing or censoring yourself - just let your creative juices flow. If you're not sure what happens next, brainstorm options on the page, jot down story ideas, or just put, "I don't know what happens next." Keep going and ideas will come.

Writing Character Arcs

There are several different types of character arc in a novel, the 3 most common being:

For this exercise choose either a positive or negative character arc. Spend 8 minutes writing a scene from the start of a novel, then 8 minutes writing a scene towards the end of a novel showing how the character has developed between the two points. Don't worry about including how the character has changed, you can leave that to the imagination.

The point here is to capture the essence of a character, as they will be the same, but show their development.

• Positive  - Where a character develops and grows during the novel. Perhaps they start unhappy or weak and end happy or powerful.
• Negative  - Where a character gets worse during a novel. Perhaps they become ill or give in to evil tendencies as the novel progresses.
• Flat  - In a flat character arc the character themself doesn't change much, however the world around them does. This could be overthrowing a great injustice, for example.

Sewing Seeds in Your Writing

In this exercise, we will look at how to sew seeds. No, not in your garden, but in your story. Seeds are the tiny hints and indicators that something is going on, which influence a reader's perceptions on an often unconscious level. They're important, as if you spring a surprise twist on your readers without any warning, it can seem unbelievable. Sew seeds that lead up to the event, so the twists and turns are still surprising, but make intuitive sense. Groups : Brainstorm major plot twists that might happen towards the end of the novel and share it in a Zoom chat, or on pieces of paper. Choose one twist each. Individuals : Choose one of the following plot twists:   -  Your friend is actually the secret son of the king.   -  Unreliable narrator - the narrator turns out to be villain.   -  The monster turns out to be the missing woman the narrator is seeking.   -  The man she is about to marry happens to already have a wife and three kids.

Write for ten minutes and give subtle hints as to what the plot twist is. This is an exercise in subtlety. Remember, when the twist occurs, it should still come as a surprise.

This is a fun writing activity for a small group. You’ve found a magic potion labelled ‘Cat Chat’ and when you drink it, you turn into whichever animal you’re thinking about; but there’s a problem, it also picks up on the brainwaves of other people near you!

Everyone writes down an animal in secret and then reveals it to the other writers.  The spell will turn you into a creature that combines elements of all the animals.  Each person then spends 5 minutes writing down what happens when they drink the potion.

After the 5 minutes is up, everyone shares their story with the other participants.

If you enjoy this exercise, then you may also want to check out our  Fantasy and Sci-Fi writing prompts  full of world building, magic, and character development prompts..

Joe Brainard wrote a novel called:  I Remember It contains a collection of paragraphs all starting with “I remember”.  This is the inspiration for this exercise, and if you’re stuck for what to write, is a great way to get the mental gears turning.  Simply write “I remember” and continue with the first thing that pops into your head.

Spend 5 minutes writing a short collection of “I remember” stories.

Here are a couple of examples from Joe Brainard’s novel:

“I remember not understanding why people on the other side of the world didn't fall off.”

“I remember waking up somewhere once and there was a horse staring me in the face.”

Giving feedback to authors

If you're running a workshop for more experienced adult authors and have at least an hour, this is a good one to use. This is the longest exercise on this page, but I felt it important enough to include.

Give each author the option to bring a piece of their own work. This should be double spaced and a maximum of 3 pages long. If you're running a workshop where not everyone is likely to bring a manuscript, ask everyone who wants to bring one to print two copies each. If someone forgets but has a laptop with them, the reader can always use their laptop.

Print out a few copies and hand them around to everyone in the workshop of the guide on: 'How to give constructive feedback to writers'

Each author who brought a sample with them then gives them to one other person to review. They write their name on the manuscript in a certain colour pen, then add any comments to it before passing it to a second person who does the same (commenting on the comments if they agree or disagree).

Then allow 5 minutes for everyone to discuss the feedback they've received, ensuring they are giving constructive feedback.

The Five Senses

Painting by Giovanni Battista Manerius -  The Five Senses

Choose a scene and write it for 5 minutes focusing on one sense, NOT sight. Choose between:

Hearing  Taste Smell Touch

This can be internal as well as external (I heard my heartbeat thudding in my ears, or I smelt my own adrenaline).

After the 5 minutes stop and everyone reads it out loud to each other. Now write for another 5 minutes and continue the other person's story, but do NOT use sight OR the sense they used.

You can use any sense to communicate the essentials, just focus on creating emotions and conveying the story with the specific sense(s).

If you need some writing prompts, here are possible scenes that involve several senses:

• Climbing through an exotic jungle
• Having an argument that becomes a fight
• A cat's morning
• Talking to someone you're attracted to

Show don't tell

2 or 3 people

A lot of writing guides will advise you to, "Show, don't tell". What does this actually mean?

If you want to evoke an emotional reaction from your reader, showing them what is happening is a great way to do so.  You can approach this in several ways:

Split up into pairs and each person writes down a short scene from a story where they "tell" it.  After this, pass the description of the scene to your partner and they then have 5 minutes to rewrite it to "show" what happened.  If there are an odd number of participants, make one group of three, with each person passing their scene clockwise, so everyone has a new scene to show.  After the 5 minutes, for small groups everyone reads their new description to everyone else, or for large groups, each person just reads their new scene to their partner.

• Avoid internal dialogue (thinking), instead have your protagonist interact with other people, or have a physical reaction to something that shows how s/he feels.  Does their heart beat faster?  Do they notice the smell of their own adrenaline?  Do they step backwards, or lean forwards?
• Instead of using an adjective like creepy, e.g. "Mary entered the creepy house", show why the house is creepy through description and in the way the protagonist responds - "The light streamed through the filthy skylight, highlighting the decomposing body of a rat resting on top of it.  As Mary stepped inside, she felt a gust of freezing air brush past her. She turned, but there was nothing there..."

World building

World building is the art of conveying the magic of living in a different world, whether it's a spaceship, a medieval castle, a boat, or simply someone's living room. To master world building, it's not necessary to know every intricate detail, rather to convey the experience of what it would be like to live there.

Choose one of the above images as a prompt and spend 10 minutes writing a scene from the perspective of someone who is seeing it for the first time. Now, move your character six months forward and imagine they've spent the last six months living or working there. Write another scene (perhaps with an additional character) using the image as a background, with the events of the scene as the main action.

Click the above image for a close-up.

Gossiping about a character as if they're a friend.

Judy Blume says that she tells her family about her characters as if they’re real people. 

Chris Claremont said, "For me, writing the 'X-Men' was easy - is easy. I know these people, they're my friends." 

Today’s exercise has 2 parts. First, spend 5 minutes jotting down some facts about a character you’ve invented that might come up if you were telling your friends about them. Either choose a character in something you’ve already written, or invent one from scratch now.

Answer the questions:

What are they up to? How are they? What would you say if you were gossiping about them?

Then split up into groups of 4 to 6 writers. 2 volunteers from each group then role-play talking about their character as if they were a friend (perhaps another character in the story).  The other participants will role-play a group of friends gossiping about the character behind their back and ask questions. If you don’t know the answer, invent it!

Degrees of Emotion Game

This is based on an acting game, to help actors understand how to perform with different degrees of emotion.

Ask everyone to write the following 4 emotions:

For groups of 5 or less, write down numbers starting with 1 and going up until everyone has a number, then give them out in order. For groups of 6 or more, divide groups into 3's, 4's or 5's.

Each person has to write a scene where the protagonist is alone and is only allowed to say a single word, e.g. "Banana".  The writer with number 1 should write the scene with a very low level of the emotion (e.g. happiness), number 2 increases the intensity a bit and the highest number writes a scene with the most intense emotion you can possibly imagine.

Once each writer has written about happiness, rotate the numbers one or two spaces, then move onto anger, then fear, then sadness.

It can help to give everyone numbers showing the intensity of the emotions to write about at the start of the exercise, in which case you may wish to print either the Word or PDF file, then use the ones corresponding to 3, 4 or 5 writers.

Everyone shares their scene with the other course participants.

Three birds, one line

The first paragraph of a surprising number of best-selling novels serves multiple purposes. These are to:

• Establish a goal
• Set the scene
• Develop a character

Nearly every chapter in a novel also serves all three purposes. Instead of establishing a goal though, the protagonist either moves towards it, or encounters an obstacle that hinders them from achieving it.

Some books manage to meet all three purposes with their opening lines, for example:  

Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

J.K. Rowling ,  Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone  

A little more than one hundred days into the fortieth year of her confinement, Dajeil Gelian was visited in her lonely tower overlooking the sea by an avatar of the great ship that was her home.

Iain M. Banks ,  Excession  

"We should start back," Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them.

George R.R. Martin ,  A Game of Thrones

For this exercise write a sentence or short paragraph that serves all three purposes. If you're already writing a novel, then see if you can do this for the first line in a chapter. If not, choose any combination from the following table:

Blind Date on Valentine's Day (Exercise for Adults)

In pairs one writer spends a minute or two describing a character they're writing about, or alternatively they can describe a celebrity or someone from a work of fiction.  The next writer then describes their character.

The story is that these 2 characters (or in my case, person and alien, as I'm writing a sci-fi) have accidentally ended up on a blind date with each other. Perhaps the waiter seated them in the wrong location, perhaps it's an actual blind date, or perhaps they met in some other fashion the writers can determine.

Now spend 10 minutes discussing what happens next!

A Success (Works best for online groups)

This exercise works best for online groups, via Zoom, for example.  The instructions to give are:

"In a few words describe a success in your life and what it felt like to achieve it. It can be a small victory or a large one."

Share a personal example of your own (mine was watching my homeschooled sons sing in an opera together).

"Once you have one (small or large), write it in the chat.

The writing exercise is then to choose someone else's victory to write about for 10 minutes, as if it was the end of your own book.

If you want to write for longer, imagine how that book would start. Write the first part of the book with the ending in mind."

This is great for reminding people of a success in their lives, and also helps everyone connect and discover something about each other.

Your dream holiday

You’re going on a dream holiday together, but always disagree with each other. To avoid conflict, rather than discuss what you want to do, you’ve decided that each of you will choose a different aspect of the holiday as follows:

• Choose where you’ll be going – your favourite holiday destination.
• Choose what your main fun activity will be on the holiday.
• Decide what mode of travel you’ll use to get there.
• If there’s a 4 th  person, choose what you’ll eat on the holiday and what you’ll be wearing.

Decide who gets to choose what at random. Each of you then writes down your dream holiday destination/activity/travel/food & clothes in secret.  Next spend 5 minutes discussing your dream holiday and add any other details you’d like to include, particularly if you’re passionate about doing something in real life.

Finally, everyone spends another 5 minutes writing down a description of the holiday, then shares it with the others.

A haiku is a traditional Japanese form of non-rhyming poetry whose short form makes it ideal for a simple writing exercise.

They are traditionally structured in 3 lines, where the first line is 5 syllables, the second line is 7 syllables, and the third line is 5 syllables again. Haiku tend to focus on themes of nature and deep concepts that can be expressed simply.

A couple of examples:

A summer river being crossed how pleasing with sandals in my hands! Yosa Buson , a haiku master poet from the 18 th  Century.

And one of mine:

When night-time arrives Stars come out, breaking the dark You can see the most

Martin Woods

Spend up to 10 minutes writing a haiku.  If you get stuck with the 5-7-5 syllable rule, then don’t worry, the overall concept is more important!

See  How to write a haiku  for more details and examples.

Unlike a haiku, which is profound and sombre, a limerick is a light-hearted, fun rhyming verse.

Here are a couple of examples:

A wonderful bird is the pelican. His bill can hold more than his beli-can He can take in his beak Food enough for a week But I'm damned if I see how the heli-can.

Dixon Lanier Merritt, 1910

There was a young lady named Bright, Whose speed was far faster than light; She started one day In a relative way, And returned on the previous night.

Arthur Henry Reginald Buller in  Punch,  1923

The 1 st , 2 nd  and 5 th  line all rhyme, as do the 3 rd  and 4 th  line.  The overall number of syllables isn’t important, but the 3 rd  and 4 th  lines should be shorter than the others.

Typically, the 1 st  line introduces the character, often with “There was”, or “There once was”. The rest of the verse tells their story.

Spend 10 minutes writing a limerick.

Time Travel - Child, Adult, Senior

Imagine that your future self as an old man/woman travels back in time to meet you, the adult you are today.  Alternatively, you as a child travels forward in time to meet yourself as an adult.  Or perhaps both happen, so the child you, adult you, and senior you are all together at the same time.  In story form write down what happens next.

Participants then share their story with other writers either in small groups, or to the whole group.

Focus on faces

Solo exercise.

One challenge writers face is describing a character. A common mistake is to focus too much on the physical features, e.g. "She had brown eyes, curly brown hair and was five foot six inches tall."

The problem with this is it doesn't reveal anything about the character's personality, or the relationship between your protagonist and the character. Your reader is therefore likely to quickly forget what someone looks like.  When describing characters, it's therefore best to:

• Animate them - it's rare that someone's sitting for a portrait when your protagonist first meets them and whether they're talking or walking, it's likely that they're moving in some way.
• Use metaphors or similes  - comparing physical features to emotionally charged items conjures both an image and a sense of who someone is.
• Involve your protagonist  - if your protagonist is interacting with a character, make it personal.  How does your protagonist view this person?  Incorporate the description as part of the description.
• Only give information your protagonist knows  - they may know if someone is an adult, or a teenager, but they won't know that someone is 37 years old, for example.

Here are three examples of character descriptions that leave no doubt how the protagonist feels.

“If girls could spit venom, it'd be through their eyes.” S.D. Lawendowski,  Snapped

"And Ronan was everything that was left: molten eyes and a smile made for war." Maggie Stiefvater,  The Dream Thieves

"His mouth was such a post office of a mouth that he had a mechanical appearance of smiling." Charles Dickens

Spend 5 minutes writing a character introduction that is animated, uses metaphors or similes and involves your protagonist.

If working with a group, then form small groups of 3 or 4 and share your description with the rest of the group.

Onomatopeai, rhyme and alliteration

Today's session is all about sound.

Several authors recommend reading your writing out loud after you've written it to be sure it sounds natural.   Philip Pullman  even goes as far as to say:

"When I’m writing, I’m more conscious of the sound, actually, than the meaning. I know what the rhythm of the sentence is going to be before I know what the words are going to be in it."

For today's exercise, choose the name of a song and write for 10 minutes as if that's the title for a short story. Focus on how your writing sounds and aim to include at least one onomatopoeia, rhyme or alliteration.  At the end of the 10 minutes, read it out loud to yourself, or to the group.

Alliterations

An alliteration example from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, The furrow followed free; We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea.

Onomatopoeias

Buzz, woof, quack, baa, crash, purr, beep, belch,...

The alphabet story - creating a story as a group

This is a novel way to write a story as a group, one word at a time.  The first person starts the story that begins with any word starting with “A”, the next person continues the story with a word starting with “B”, and so on.

Keep going round until you have completed the alphabet.  Ideally it will all be one sentence, but if you get stuck, start a new sentence.  Don’t worry if it doesn’t make complete sense!

It can be tricky to remember the alphabet when under pressure, so you may wish to print it out a couple of times, so the storytellers can see it if they need to, this is particularly helpful if you have dyslexics in the group.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Here’s an example of an alphabet story:

A Band Can Dance Each Friday, Ghostly Hauntings In Jail Kill Lucky Men, Nobody Or Perhaps Quiet Rats, Still That Unifies Villains Who X-Ray Your Zebras.

As I mentioned, it doesn’t need to make sense!

A question or two

Small or large groups

The standard format in our group is a short writing exercise followed by an hour and a half of silent writing on our projects.

At one point I felt like we'd done a lot of small group exercises, and wanted to gain an insight into what everyone was working on, so we did the following exercise instead:

Go round the table and ask everyone to briefly talk about their writing.  Each person then asks one or two yes/no questions.

Everyone responds either by raising their hand for 'yes' or shaking their heads for 'no'. You can also leap up and down to indicate a very strong 'yes'.

Questions can be about anything, and you can use them either to help guide your writing or to help find other people in the group who have similar interests.

Here are some random examples you might ask:

• I want to write a romance novel and am considering setting it in Paris, a traditional romantic setting, or Liverpool which is a less obvious setting. Who thinks Liverpool would be best?
• I need to know more about the life of a farmer. Has anyone got farming experience who I can interview in exchange for a drink?
• My character gets fired and that night goes back to his office and steals 35 computers. Does that sound realistic as the premise of a story?

This works best when you give participants some advance notice, so they have time to think of a question.

Murder Mystery Game

Groups of 3 or 4

This exercise takes 20-30 minutes and allows participants to create a murder mystery outline together.

Phase 1 (3 minutes)

• Split into groups of 3 or 4
• Decide as a group where the murder occurs (e.g. the opera house, a bar, a casino)
• Decide one person who will write the details of the victim and the murder itself.  Everyone else writes the details of one suspect each.
• The ‘victim author’ then invents a few extra details about the scene of the crime, who the victim was (a teenage punk, an adult opera singer, etc.) and the murder weapon and summarises this to the others.

Phase 2 (10 minutes)

Each person then writes a police report as if they are either describing the scene of the crime, or recording the notes from their interview with a single suspect:

Write the following:

• 1 line description of the victim.
• When they were last seen by a group of witnesses (and what they were doing).
• How the murder occurred in more detail based on the evidence available.

Write the following (from the perspective of the investigator):

• 1 line description of the suspect
• What they said during the interview (including what they claim to have doing when the murder occurs).
• A possible motivation (as determined by the police from other witnesses).

Phase 3 (5 minutes)

• Each person reads out their police reports to the other members of their small group
• As a group, decide who the murderer was and what actually happened

See more ideas on  creating murder mystery party games

The obscure movie exercise

Pick a famous movie and spend 5 minutes writing a scene from it from an unusual perspective.  Your aim is to achieve a balance between being too obscure and making it too obvious.  Feel free to add internal dialogue.

At the end of the 5 minutes, everyone reads their movie scene to the others and all the other participants see if they can guess what the movie is.

How to hint at romantic feelings

Write a scene with two people in a group, where you hint that one is romantically interested in the other, but the feelings aren’t reciprocated.

The goal of this exercise is to practice subtlety. Imagine you are setting a scene for the future where the characters feelings will become more important. Choose a situation like a work conference, meeting with a group of friends, etc. How do you indicate how the characters feel without them saying it in words?

Some tips for hinting at romantic feelings:

• Make the characters nervous and shy.
• Your protagonist leans forward.
• Asks deeper questions and listens intently.
• Finds ways to be close together.
• Mirrors their gestures.
• Gives lots of compliments.
• Makes eye contact, then looks away.
• Other people seem invisible to your protagonist.

A novel idea

Take it in turns to tell everyone else about a current project you’re working on (a book, screenplay, short story, etc.)

The other writers then brainstorm ideas for related stories you could write, or directions your project could take.  There are no right or wrong suggestions and the intention is to focus on big concepts, not little details.

This whole exercise takes around 15 minutes.

Creative writing prompts

Exercise for groups of 3-5

If you're in larger group, split up into groups of 3 or 4 people.

Everyone writes the first line of a story in the Zoom chat, or on paper. Other people can then choose this line as a writing prompt.

For this exercise:

• Say who the protagonist is.
• Reveal their motivation.
• Introduce any other characters

Once everyone's written a prompt, each author chooses a prompt (preferably someone eles's, but it can be your own if you feel really inspired by it.)  Then write for 10 minutes using this prompt. See if you can reveal who the protagonist is, what their motivation is (it can be a small motivation for a particular scene, it doesn't have to be a huge life goal), and introduce at least one new character.

Take turns reading out your stories to each other.

• Write in the first person.
• Have the protagonist interacting with an object or something in nature.
• The challenge is to create intrigue that makes the reader want to know more with just a single line.

Creative story cards / dice

Cut up a piece of paper and write one word on each of the pieces of paper, as follows:

Give each participant a couple of pieces of paper at random.  The first person says the first sentence of a story and they must use their first word as part of that sentence.  The second person then continues the story and must include their word in it, and so on.  Go round the group twice to complete the story.

You can also do this creative writing exercise with story dice, your own choice of words, or by asking participants to write random words down themselves, then shuffling all the cards together.

Alternative Christmas Story

Every Christmas adults tell kids stories about Santa Claus. In this exercise you write a Christmas story from an alternative dimension.

What if every Christmas Santa didn't fly around the world delivering presents on his sleigh pulled by reindeer? What if gnomes or aliens delivered the presents? Or perhaps it was the gnomes who are trying to emulate the humans? Or some other Christmas tradition entirely that we humans have never heard of!

Group writing exercise

If you're working with a group, give everyone a couple of minutes to write two possible themes for the new Christmas story. Each theme should be 5 words or less.

Shuffle the paper and distribute them at random. If you're working online, everyone types the themes into the Zoom or group chat. Each writer then spends 10 minutes writing a short story for children based on one of the two themes, or their own theme if they really want to.

If working alone, choose your own theme and spend 15 minutes writing a short story on it. See if you can create the magic of Christmas from another world!

Murder Mystery Mind Map

In a murder mystery story or courtroom drama, there's often conflicting information and lots of links between characters. A mind map is an ideal way to illustrate how everything ties together.

Split into groups of 3 or 4 people each and place a blank piece of A3 paper (double the size of A4) in the middle of each group. Discuss between you who the victim is and write their name in the middle of the piece of paper. Then brainstorm information about the murder, for example:

Feel free to expand out from any of these, e.g. to include more information on the different characters involved.

The idea is that  everyone writes at the same time!   Obviously, you can discuss ideas, but anyone can dive in and write their ideas on the mind map.

• Who was the victim? (job, appearance, hobbies, etc.)
• Who did the victim know?
• What were their possible motivations?
• What was the murder weapon?
• What locations are significant to the plot?

New Year’s resolutions for a fictional character

If you’re writing a piece of fiction, ask yourself how your protagonist would react to an everyday situation. This can help you to gain a deeper insight into who they are.

One way to do this is to imagine what their New Year’s resolutions would be.

If completing this exercise with a group, limit it to 3 to 5 resolutions per person. If some participants are historical fiction or non-fiction writers, they instead pick a celebrity and either write what their resolutions  will  be, or what their resolutions  should  be, their choice.

Verb Noun Fiction Exercise (Inspired by Stephen King)

Stephen King said, "I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops."

He also said, "Take any noun, put it with any verb, and you have a sentence. It never fails. Rocks explode. Jane transmits. Mountains float. These are all perfect sentences. Many such thoughts make little rational sense, but even the stranger ones (Plums deify!) have a kind of poetic weight that’s nice."

In this fiction writing exercise, start by brainstorming (either individually or collectively) seven verbs on seven different pieces of paper. Put those aside for later. Now brainstorm seven nouns. Randomly match the nouns and verbs so you have seven pairs. Choose a pair and write a piece of fiction for ten minutes. Avoid using any adverbs.

It’s the end of the world

It’s the end of the world!  For 5 minutes either:

If working as a team, then after the 5 minutes is up each writer reads their description out to the other participants.

• Describe how the world’s going to end, creating evocative images using similes or metaphors as you wish and tell the story from a global perspective, or
• Describe how you spend your final day before the world is destroyed.  Combine emotion and action to engage the reader.

7 Editing Exercises

For use after your first draft

I’ve listened to a lot of masterclasses on writing by successful authors and they all say variants of your first draft won’t be good and that’s fine. Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman summarise it the best:

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”  

Terry Pratchett

“For me, it’s always been a process of trying to convince myself that what I’m doing in a first draft isn’t important. One way you get through the wall is by convincing yourself that it doesn’t matter. No one is ever going to see your first draft. Nobody cares about your first draft. And that’s the thing that you may be agonising over, but honestly, whatever you’re doing can be fixed… For now, just get the words out. Get the story down however you can get it down, then fix it.”

Neil Gaiman

Once you’ve written your first draft, it will need editing to develop the plot, enhance the characters, and improve each scene in a myriad of ways – small and large. These seven creative editing exercises are designed to help with this stage of the process.

The First Sentence

Read the first paragraph of the novel, in particular the first sentence. Does it launch the reader straight into the action? According to  On Writing and Worldbuilding  by Timothy Hickson,  “The most persuasive opening lines are succinct, and not superfluous. To do this, it is often effective to limit it to a single central idea… This does not need to be the most important element, but it should be a central element that is interesting.” Ask yourself what element your opening sentence encapsulates and whether it’s the best one to capture your readers’ attention.

Consistency

Consistency is crucial in creative writing, whether it’s in relation to location, objects, or people.

It’s also crucial for personality, emotions and motivation.

Look at scenes where your protagonist makes an important decision. Are their motivations clear? Do any scenes force them to choose between two conflicting morals? If so, do you explore this? Do their emotions fit with what’s happened in previous scenes?

As you edit your manuscript, keep the characters’ personality, emotions and motivation in mind. If their behaviour is inconsistent, either edit it for consistency, or have someone comment on their strange behaviour or be surprised by it. Inconsistent behaviour can reveal that a character is keeping a secret, or is under stress, so characters don’t always need to be consistent. But when they’re not, there has to be a reason.  

Show Don’t Tell One

This exercise is the first in  The Emotional Craft of Fiction  by Donald Maass. It’s a writing guide with a plethora of editing exercises designed to help you reenergize your writing by thinking of what your character is feeling, and giving you the tools to make your reader feel something.  

• Select a moment in your story when your protagonist is moved, unsettled, or disturbed… Write down all the emotions inherent in this moment, both obvious and hidden.
• Next, considering what he is feeling, write down how your protagonist can act out. What is the biggest thing your protagonist can do? What would be explosive, out of bounds, or offensive? What would be symbolic? … Go sideways, underneath, or ahead. How can your protagonist show us a feeling we don’t expect to see?
• Finally, go back and delete all the emotions you wrote down at the beginning of this exercise. Let actions and spoken words do the work. Do they feel too big, dangerous, or over-the-top? Use them anyway. Others will tell you if you’ve gone too far, but more likely, you haven’t gone far enough.

Show Don’t Tell Two

Search for the following words in your book:

Whenever these words occur, ask yourself if you can demonstrate how your characters feel, rather than simply stating it. For each occasion, can you use physiological descriptors (a racing heart), actions (taking a step backwards) or dialogue to express what’s just happened instead? Will this enhance the scene and engage the reader more?

After The Action

Find a scene where your characters disagree – in particular a scene where your protagonist argues with friends or allies. What happens next?

It can be tempting to wrap up the action with a quick resolution. But what if a resentment lingers and mistrust builds? This creates a more interesting story arc and means a resolution can occur later, giving the character development a real dynamic.

Review how you resolve the action and see if you can stretch out the emotions for a more satisfying read.

Eliminating the Fluff

Ensure that the words used don’t detract from the enormity of the events your character is going through. Can you delete words like, “Quite”, “Little”, or “Rather”? 

Of “Very” Florence King once wrote: “ 'Very' is the most useless word in the English language and can always come out. More than useless, it is treacherous because it invariably weakens what it is intended to strengthen .” Delete it, or replace the word after it with a stronger word, which makes “Very” redundant.

“That,” is another common word used in creative writing which can often be deleted. Read a sentence as is, then reread it as if you deleted, “That”. If the meaning is the same, delete it.

Chapter Endings

When talking about chapter endings, James Patterson said,  “At the end, something has to propel you into the next chapter.”

Read how each of your chapters finish and ask yourself does it either:

• End on a cliff hanger? (R.L. Stine likes to finish every chapter in this method).
• End on a natural pause (for example, you’re changing point of view or location).

Review how you wrap up each of your chapters. Do you end at the best point in your story? Can you add anticipation to cliff hangers? Will you leave your readers wanting more?

How to run the writing exercises

The editing exercises are designed to be completed individually.

With the others, I've always run them as part of a creative writing group, where there's no teacher and we're all equal participants, therefore I keep any 'teaching' aspect to a minimum, preferring them to be prompts to generate ideas before everyone settles down to do the silent writing. We've recently gone online and if you run a group yourself, whether online or in person, you're welcome to use these exercises for free!

The times given are suggestions only and I normally get a feel for how everyone's doing when time's up and if it's obvious that everyone's still in the middle of a discussion, then I give them longer.  Where one group's in the middle of a discussion, but everyone else has finished, I sometimes have a 'soft start' to the silent writing, and say, "We're about to start the hour and a half of silent writing now, but if you're in the middle of a discussion, feel free to finish it first".

This way everyone gets to complete the discussion, but no-one's waiting for ages.  It's also important to emphasise that there's no wrong answers when being creative.

Still looking for more? Check out these creative writing prompts  or our dedicated Sci-Fi and Fantasy creative writing prompts

If you've enjoyed these creative writing exercises, please share them on social media, or link to them from your blog.

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57 Genius-Sparking Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers

The best writing exercises for fiction writers are the ones that help you tap into the story you already wanted to tell.

Sometimes we writers get ourselves overwhelmed by the thought that there’s something we “should” be writing. We play fill-in-the-blanks with the supposed formula for a bestseller or obsess over style rules until writing is more confusing than fun. That’s why we need writing exercises.

To be clear, I’m not against formulas. Plot structures , character archetypes , and genre tropes exist to help us create seamless, compelling stories that satisfy expectations.

But writing exercises allow us to step away from the formulas, think purely in terms of creation, and harvest our inner fields of genius.

After all, you are a writer because the urge to tell stories is already within you. There is something you want to communicate, even if you haven’t quite put your finger on it, yet.

A great writing exercise helps a fiction writer like you pinpoint that something. It helps you find inspiration in the world around you and connect it with the deeper purpose that drives you. It can even help you improve your voice and style without having to analyze the living daylights out of these elements.

And lucky you! We’ve put together 57 writing exercises just for you. Whether you need help finding story ideas, fleshing out a work in progress, or advancing your prose, you’ll find something here that does the trick.

What’s the Point of Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers?

Unlike, say, math exercises, writing exercises are designed to spark unique responses. There are no correct answers here. There’s only the vast sea of your imagination, washing magical objects up onto the shore when you summon its waves.

Or whatever.

Writing exercises can fulfill a wide range of purposes (more on that in a moment), but one thing they all have in common is they’re meant to inspire new ideas. In many cases, they also challenge you to add complexity or nuance to your storytelling.

And—my favorite benefit—they help you stay connected to the joy of creativity even through the tedious, pride-crushing editing process .

When to Do Writing Exercises

Do writing exercises whenever you need them! Seriously. All writing exercises fulfill at least one of these four needs:

• Inspiration to get started
• Help getting unstuck
• A guide for perfecting your craft
• Something to reignite creative enthusiasm

That pretty much covers every conceivable goal you might have when you sit down to write.

Not sure what to write about? Do a writing exercise. Your scene description reads like you vomited a thesaurus onto the page? Writing exercise. Discouraged, bored, or distracted? You know what to do.

You can even use a writing exercise as a warm-up before every writing session. The possibilities are endless.

Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers

Okay, let’s get to the goods. Here are 57 writing exercises for fiction writers, organized by category. Some prompts are designed to help you come up with new ideas, while others are meant to help you go deeper on an existing project.

Try the exercises that speak to you, skip the ones that don’t, and adapt anything to meet your needs.  

Story Ideas

• Start a story folder. Anytime you come across an article, social media post, or even an ad that sparks thoughts like, “I wonder what that was like,” or “I wonder what happened next,” cut it out or print it out. Put it in a folder. When you need inspiration, open the folder, pick an item, and write the part of the story the article doesn’t show.
• Look at your own life and ask “What if?” Imagine if you’d made a different decision or if your biggest worry (or biggest dream) actually had come true. Write that story.
• Try a modern day retelling of a myth or fairy tale.
• Here’s a fun question: what’s going on in your life right now in a parallel universe? Write that story.
• Wander an art museum and find a work of art that speaks to you. What’s the story here? Even if the art is three hundred years old and you don’t write historical fiction, identify a narrative, theme, or emotion. Place it in the modern day (or whenever your stories take place) and get writing. 
• Choose three objects at random, then look them up in a dream dictionary . Write down what each object symbolizes and imagine the person who would dream about them. What is the dreamer going through? Build a story from there.
• Start with a character goal . Write down an obstacle that makes reaching that goal hard. Think of a bigger obstacle that makes it even harder. Do that again three more times. Find an obstacle so big you’re not sure how your protagonist can get around it. Build your story from there.
• Write the last line of your favorite book. This is the first line of your story. Keep writing.
• Think of an invention you wish existed. Who would invent it? Tell their story.
• Start with a problem. A shocking murder, a struggling marriage, melting ice caps… anything. Now create a character who seems like the least likely person to solve this problem. Explain why they’re actually the best candidate for the job. 
• Search your soul. What ideas do you feel strongly about? What societal issues weigh on your mind? What do you think is the best or worst thing about being a human in the world? What makes you laugh? What does it mean to hope? Love? Rescue someone else? Rescue yourself? Once you find the themes that tug at you, find the story.
• Someone is cleaning out their garage, and it’s a bigger deal than it seems. What are they hiding, clearing out, or preparing for?
• A hurricane has trapped two people together in a tiny island airport. They have opposing goals, personalities, or viewpoints. What happens?

• Take a walk or go to a park. Find a really cool tree. Write about its shape, angles, health, stature, movement, scent… whatever stands out to you. Then use the same descriptions to write about a new character .
• Eavesdrop on a conversation in a public place. Zero in on one specific person. Listen until you have a grasp on their voice. Then write a completely different conversation involving that person.
• Remove a random object from your junk drawer. This is the most important thing to someone. Write about that person and why the object is so valuable to them.
• Explore your character’s signature style. Take inspiration from television characters, magazines, and friends as needed. Write a description of your character’s three favorite outfits and how they feel in those clothes. (For a little help, check out our article on clothing description.)
• What was the defining moment that made your character the person they are at the start of your story? Write that scene.
• What’s something your character feels very strongly about? Write their rant.
• Someone else is toasting (or roasting) your character. Write their speech.
• What is the opinion, desire, fear, or behavior that makes your character unique? Write about it from their point of view. Keep digging until you hit on the universal emotion at the core of that seemingly unusual trait.
• Imagine someone who would be the polar opposite of your character. Describe them: how they look, what they love, what they hate, what they believe… everything. Then pick one trait and make it part of your character. 
• Write a dialogue between you and your character . You’re giving them a heads-up about the flaws they can’t see in themselves. How do they take it? Are they ready for this conversation?
• Write your protagonist’s one-sentence definition of love. Do the same for every character in your story.
• Who does your character love most in the world? Write a scene showing where that relationship is ten years after the story ends. If that person is no longer in the character’s life, write a scene from each person’s life without the other.

• Rewrite the climactic scene of your favorite book from the antagonist’s point of view.
• Write a tense, dialogue-only scene where your characters never really say what they’re really mad about.
• What is the worst thing that could happen to your protagonist? Write a scene where it happens and make their most trusted friend the reason it happens. (I know it hurts. Try it, anyway.)
• What is something your protagonist would never, ever do. Now make it something they have to do to reach their goal.
• Write a scene that makes your reader think everything is going to be okay. Put it immediately before the most devastating scene of your story. See what that does.
• Write about the biggest mistake your protagonist has ever made in their pre-story life. Then decide what mistake they can make within the story that is even bigger than that.
• Revisit a scene where a character gets bad news. Make the news worse. See what happens.
• Write an apology letter to your character. Tell them you’re sorry for all the misery you are about to put them through. Explain why it’s necessary for the story—why you can’t hold back or solve all their problems immediately. Let them forgive you. Forgive yourself. Writing is brutal.
• Write a monologue in which your character confesses what they hate most about themselves. Don’t add the monologue to your book, but see what happens if you give that same quality to the antagonist.
• Write the villain’s most painful memory from their point of view. Keep writing at least until you feel genuine empathy for your villain . Read the memory every time you are about to write a scene between your villain and hero.
• Pick a scene that’s already heavy with conflict and throw a little nature into the mix. It can be as small as an obnoxious gust of wind or as destructive as a tornado. It just has to be an antagonistic force that cannot be controlled or persuaded to back off.

• Think about your favorite vacation spot. Look up their local online newspaper and get a sense of what life is like there. Write about a community event from the perspective of someone who was born there. 
• Think of a place that is incredibly familiar to you. Imagine it, or—if you can—go there. Describe it like you’re discovering it for the first time.
• Write about the place where your character feels the safest.
• Write about the place where your protagonist feels like an outsider.
• Take a tour of your home like you’re at an estate sale or open house. Draw conclusions about the people who live here.
• Write a scene where something huge happens in a small place or something small happens in a huge place.
• Write a scene in which the setting is important. You can describe exactly five details about the setting. Which five do you pick to give the reader the most vivid image? How can you use dialogue or character actions to deepen the sense of place?
• Think of a place that makes you feel big feelings. Describe that place, trying to get the reader to feel what you feel without using any emotion words.
• Describe a setting that embodies isolation. Terror. Hope. Anticipation. Security. Adventure. Menace.
• Do an Internet search for “abandoned places.” Pick one. Write a scene that takes place there either in the present day, in that location’s heyday, or at the time when it became abandoned.

• Pick a scene from your story. Find every abstract description in your narration—any instance where you talk about an emotion or a “vibe.” Replace it with something concrete that creates the same feeling. (Example: “The guy was creepy” becomes, “He didn’t break eye contact as he wiped his hands on his bloodstained shirt.”)
• Highlight all the adverbs in one scene. Delete each one. If it feels like they’re needed to clarify the adjectives or verbs they describe, try finding better adjectives or adverbs.
• Try the exercise above but with adjectives. When you remove an adjective, can you replace the noun it describes with a more specific noun? “Louboutins” instead of “expensive shoes”?
• Get wild and reckless with language. Make a list of ten nouns. Then write a scene using all ten nouns as verbs. Have your protagonist “flashlight” a memory or attempt to “drywall” someone’s reputation. Don’t worry if it works; just play. 
• Think of a real-life person whose voice you know very well. Rewrite the first page of your story as in that voice. Then write the page one more time in your own narrative voice. Has anything changed from your original version? 
• Rewrite a scene as a poem, twelve lines maximum. When you have to recreate your scene as something much shorter and (probably) more emotionally driven, what do you discover? What is the core story at the heart of this scene? How do you draw that out of your prose?
• Choose a mundane thing you do every day. Write a story or scene where this action takes center stage as a symbol of something greater.
• Choose ten textbooky words from a textbook. Words like “theorem,” “chlorophyll,” or “gerrymandering.” Work them into a scene that is not about that topic.
• Buy a postcard. Write a message on it from an imaginary sender. In that one message, tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end .
• Go to your local hardware store and get a bunch of color chips from the paint section. Organize them by character. Who would wear cupcake pink ? Whose apartment would be painted in glacial stream ? Add one color to each of your characters’ worlds. 
• Read. Write down sentences that stun you. Explain what you like about them. Read them again before your next writing session.

When in Doubt, Try Fanfiction

On a grand, philosophical level, fanfiction is a beautiful testament to the way we connect with one another’s stories. On a practical, writerly level, it’s a darn good way to sharpen your storytelling skills.

I was about to disclose that I have never actually written fanfiction myself, but then I remembered that Anne of Green Gables / Little House on the Prairie hybrid play I wrote when I was about nine. My cousin and I performed it for our grandma, and I’ll have you know: she loved it. As for me, it was a useful writing exercise, because it allowed me to play with elements that already worked.

With fanfiction, you’re starting with compelling characters whose rich backstories are already known to you. The world and its rules are clear as day. You’re clear on motivations and goals. All the pieces are there for you to play with. You can take things apart, rearrange them, and reconstruct them.

It’s a hands-on way to understand why things work. Not to mention, it’s not unheard of for a work of fanfiction to morph into its own successful series .

Where Do Your Best Ideas Come From?

People will ask you this someday. A lot. When you’re on your book tour or being interviewed on television, people will want to know where you get your ideas.

For most writers, this is a semi-impossible question. Our best ideas are often a weird soup made from childhood memories, song lyrics, and the evening news. And of course, writing exercises.

If you need somewhere to manage that mess of ingredients, I recommend Dabble . Between the Character Notes, Story Notes, Plot Grid, Comments, and Stickies, there are plenty of tools for organizing your bursts of inspiration as you plan and as you draft. Bonus: you can try all the Premium Features for free for fourteen days without involving your credit card. Just click here.

‍ And even if you’re not ready to become a full-fledged Dabbler, you can still find inspiration and support in the Story Craft Café community. It’s free, and it rocks.

Abi Wurdeman is the author of Cross-Section of a Human Heart: A Memoir of Early Adulthood, as well as the novella, Holiday Gifts for Insufferable People. She also writes for film and television with her brother and writing partner, Phil Wurdeman. On occasion, Abi pretends to be a poet. One of her poems is (legally) stamped into a sidewalk in Santa Clarita, California. When she’s not writing, Abi is most likely hiking, reading, or texting her mother pictures of her houseplants to ask why they look like that.

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Looking for tips on how to write an engaging story all in verse? You'll find everything you need to know in this article, from crafting your narrative to managing your meter.

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The best writing exercises bring out our latent creativity. Especially if you ever feel stuck or blocked, making creative writing exercises part of your daily writing practice can be a great way to both hone your skills and explore new frontiers in your writing. Whether you’re a poet, essayist, storyteller, or genre-bending author, these free writing exercises will jumpstart your creative juices and improve your writing abilities.

24 of the Best Free Writing Exercises to Try Out Today

The best creative writing exercises will push you out of your comfort zone and get you to experiment with words. Language is your sandbox, so let’s build some sand castles with these exercises and writing prompts.

Write With Limitations

The English language is huge, complicated, and — quite frankly — chaotic. Writing with self-imposed limitations can help you create novel and inventive pieces.

What does “limitations” mean in this context? Basically, force yourself not to use certain words, descriptions, or figures of speech. Some writing exercises using limitations include the following:

• Write without using adverbs or adjectives.
• Write without using the passive voice – no “being verbs” whatsoever. (Also called “E-Prime” writing.)
• Write a story without using a common letter –  just like Ernest Vincent Wright did .
• Write a poem where each line has six words.
• Write without using any pronouns.

Among exercises to improve writing skills, writing with limitations has the clearest benefits. This practice challenges your brain to think about language productively. Additionally, these limitations force you to use unconventional language – which, in turn, makes you write with lucidity, avidity, and invention.

Freewriting & Stream of Consciousness

What do you do when the words just don’t come out? How can you write better if you can’t seem to write at all? One of the best poetry exercises, as well as writing exercises in general, is to start your day by freewriting.

Freewriting, also known as “stream of consciousness writing,” involves writing your thoughts down the moment they come. There’s no filtering what you write, and no controlling what you think: topicality, style, and continuity are wholly unnecessary in the freewriting process. While the idea of freewriting seems easy, it’s much harder than you think – examining your thoughts without controlling them takes a while to master, and the impulse to control what you write isn’t easy to tame. Try these exercises to master the skill:

• Do a timed freewrite. Start with five minutes.
• Freewrite until you fill up the entirety of something – an envelope, a receipt, a postcard, etc.
• Freewrite after meditating.
• Freewrite off of the first word of today’s newspaper.

Among daily writing exercises, freewriting is one of the best writing exercises. Poets can use freewritten material as inspiration for their poetry. Prose writers can also find inspiration for future stories from the depths of their consciousnesses. Start your writing day with freewriting, and watch your creativity blossom.

Copy What You Read

Plagiarism is still off the table; however, you can learn a lot by paying attention to how other people write. This is what we call “reading like a writer.”

Reading like a writer means paying attention to the craft elements that make an excellent piece of literature work. Good writing requires different writing styles, figurative language, story structures, and/or poetry forms, as well as key word choice.

When you notice these craft elements, you can go ahead and emulate them in your own work. As a fiction writer , you might be drawn to the way Haruki Murakami weaves folklore into his stories, and decide to write a story like that yourself. Or, as a poet, you might be inspired by Terrance Hayes’ Golden Shovel form — enough so that you write a Golden Shovel yourself.

• Read a favorite poem, and write your own poem in the same poetic form.
• Blackout poetry: take another poem, cross out words you don’t want to use, circle words you do, and write a poem based on the circled words.
• Copy a single sentence from a favorite novel, and write a short-short story with it.

Among free writing exercises, this is a great way to learn from the best. The best kinds of exercises to improve writing skills involve building upon the current canon of works — as Isaac Newton said, you achieve something great by “standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Write From Different Perspectives

The conventional advice given to writers is to “write what you know.” We couldn’t disagree with that statement more. The best creative works force both the writer and the reader to consider new perspectives and learn something new; writing from a new point-of-view makes for a great exercise in expanding your creative limits.

Try these ideas as daily writing exercises:

• Write a story with the same plot, but with two or more perspectives. For example, you could write a lover’s quarrel from two different view points.
• Write from the point-of-view of a famous historical figure.
• Write a story or poem from the perspective of an object: a statue, a doll, a roomba, etc.
• Write from the perspective of a person you dislike.

While playing with perspective makes for a great fiction writing exercise , poets and essayists can do this too. Patricia Smith’s poem “Skinhead,” for example, is a persona piece written from the perspective of a white nationalist, but the poem clearly condemns the speaker’s beliefs.

Thus, perspective writing also works as a poetry exercise and an essay writing practice exercise . If you’re stuck in your own head, try writing in someone else’s!

Write Metaphor Lists

All creative writers need figurative language. While metaphors, similes, and synecdoches are more prominent in poetry , prose writers need the power of metaphor to truly engross their reader. Among both exercises to improve writing skills and fun writing exercises for adults, writing metaphor lists is one of the best writing exercises out there.

A metaphor list is simple. On a notebook, create two columns. In one column, write down only concrete nouns. Things like a pillow, a tree, a cat, a cloud, and anything that can be perceived with one of the five senses.

In the other list, write down only abstract ideas. Things like love, hate, war, peace, justice, closure, and reconciliation — anything that is conceptual and cannot be directly perceived.

Now, choose a random noun and a random concept, and create a metaphor or simile with them. Delve into the metaphor and explain the comparison. For example, you might say “Love is like a pillow — it can comfort, or it can smother.”

Once you’ve mastered the metaphor list, you can try the following ideas to challenge yourself:

• Create a coherent poem out of your metaphor list.
• Turn your metaphor list into a short story.
• Try making lists with a different figurative language device, such as personification, pathetic fallacy, or metonymy.

Any free creative writing exercise that focuses on figurative language can aid your writing immensely, as it helps writers add insight and emotionality to their work. This is an especially great creative writing exercise for beginners as they learn the elements of style and language.

Daily Journaling

Of course, the best way to improve your creative writing skills is simply to write every day. Keeping a daily journal is a great way to exercise your writing mind. By sitting down with your personal observations and writing without an agenda or audience, a daily writing practice  remains one of the best writing exercises , regardless of your genre or level of expertise.

Consider these ideas for your daily journal:

• Track your mood and emotions throughout the day. Write those emotions in metaphor — avoid commonplace adjectives and nouns.
• Write about your day from the second- or third-person.
• Journal your day in verse. Use stanzas, line breaks, and figurative language.
• Write about your day backwards.
• Write about your day using Freytag’s pyramid . Build up to a meaningful climax, even if nothing significant seemed to happen today.

Learn more about keeping a journal here:

How to Start Journaling: Practical Advice on How to Journal Daily

Writing Exercises: Have Fun with Them!

Many of these writing exercises might feel challenging at first—and that’s a good thing! You will unlock new ideas and writing strengths by struggling through these creative challenges. The main point is to have fun with them and use them to explore within your writing, without indulging too many monologues from your inner critic.

Are you looking for more exercises to improve your writing skills? Our instructors can offer prompts, illuminating lectures, one-to-one feedback, and more to help you improve your craft. Check out our upcoming creative writing courses , and let’s put these skills to practice.

Sean Glatch

Thank you for this. I’ve been stuck for months—more than that, actually, and you’d think that a pandemic stay-at-home would be the perfect time to do some writing. But no. I’m as stuck as ever. In fact, the only time I seem able to write consistently and well is when I’m taking one of your classes! I’m still saving my pennies, but these exercises will hopefully get me writing in the meantime. Thanks again!

Hi Kathy, I’m glad to hear some of these tips might spark your creativity 🙂 I feel the same way, I was hoping the stay-at-home order might spark some creativity, but we shouldn’t push ourselves too hard – especially in the midst of a crisis.

The best part about writing: all you have to do is try, and you’ve already succeeded. Good luck on your writing endeavors!

Bravo….!What a great piece! Honestly I learnt a lot here!

I picked interest in poetry just a week ago after reading a beautiful piece which captivated my mind into the world of writing. I’d love to write great poems but I don’t know anything about poetry, I need a coach, a motivator and an inspiration to be able to do this. This piece really helped me but I will appreciate some more tips and help from you or anyone else willing to help, I am really fervid about this.

Hi Anthony,

Thanks for your comment! I’m so excited for you to start your journey with poetry. We have more advice for poetry writing at the articles under this link: https://writers.com/category/poetry

Additionally, you might be interested in two of our upcoming poetry courses: Poetry Workshop and How to Craft a Poem .

If you have any questions, please feel free to email us at [email protected] . Many thanks, and happy writing!

[…] 24 Best Writing Exercises to Become a Better Writer | writers.com  […]

Hi, kinsey there. Thanks for giving information. it is a very informative blog and i appreciate your effort to write a blog I am also a writer and i like these type of blogs everyone takes more knowledge to check out my essay writing website

As a writer, I often struggle to break free from the chains of writer’s block, but this blog has gifted me with a map of inspiration to navigate through those creative storms. It’s like being handed a box of enchanted writing exercises

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50 Fantastic Creative Writing Exercises

Good question.

Creative writing exercises are designed to teach a technique. They are highly specific, more specific than creative writing prompts, and much more specific than story generators.

Creative writing exercises for adults are not designed to lead the writer into crafting a full story, but are only designed to help them improve as a writer in a narrow, specific category of writing skills.

I’ve broken the exercises below into categories so you can choose what category of skill you’d like to practice. Can you guess which category in this list has the most prompts?

If you guessed characters, then you’re right. I think characters are the heart blood of every story, and that a majority of any writing prompts or writing exercises should focus on them.

But I also think any of these will help you create a narrative, and a plot, and help you generate all kinds of dialogue, whether for short stories or for novels. These writing exercises are pretty much guaranteed to improve your writing and eliminate writer’s block. 

Also, if you’re a fledgling writer who needs help writing their novel, check out my comprehensive guide to novel writing.

Enjoy the five categories of writing exercises below, and happy writing!

1. Think of the most deafening sound you can imagine. Describe it in great detail, and have your character hear it for the first time at the start of a story.

2. Have a man cooking for a woman on a third date, and have her describe the aromas in such loving and extended detail that she realizes that she’s in love with him.

3. Pick a line from one of your favorite songs, and identify the main emotion. Now write a character who is feeling that emotion and hears the song. Try to describe the type of music in such a beautiful way that you will make the reader yearn to hear the song as well.

4. Have a character dine at a blind restaurant, a restaurant in pitch blackness where all the servers are blind, and describe for a full paragraph how the tablecloth, their clothing, and the hand of their dining partner feels different in the darkness.

5. Select a dish representative of a national cuisine, and have a character describe it in such detail that the reader salivates and the personality of the character is revealed.

7. Describe two characters having a wordless conversation, communicating only through gestures. Try to see how long you can keep the conversation going without any words spoken, but end it with one of them saying a single word, and the other one repeating the same word.

8. In a public place from the last vacation you took, have two characters arguing, but make it clear by the end of the argument that they’re not arguing about what they’re really upset about.

9. Write a scene composed mostly of dialogue with a child talking to a stranger. Your mission is to show the child as heartbreakingly cute. At the same time, avoid sentimentality. 

10. Have two character have a conversation with only a single word, creating emphasis and context so that the word communicates different things each time it is spoken. The prime example of this is in the television show “The Wire,” where Jimmy and Bunk investigate a crime scene repeating only a single expletive.

11. Pick an object that is ugly, and create a character who finds it very beautiful. Have the character describe the object in a way that convinces the reader of its beauty. Now write a second version where you convince the reader (through describing the object alone) that the character is mentally unstable.

12. Write down five emotions on slips of paper and slip them into a hat. Now go outside and find a tree. Draw one emotion from the hat, and try to describe that tree from the perspective of a character feeling that emotion. (Don’t mention the emotion in your writing — try to describe the tree so the reader could guess the emotion).

13. Describe a character’s bedroom in such a way that it tells us about a person’s greatest fears and hopes.

14. Root through your desk drawer until you find a strange object, an object that would probably not be in other people’s drawers. Have a character who is devastated to find this object, and tell the story of why this object devastates them.

15. Go to an art-based Pinterest page and find your favorite piece of art. Now imagine a living room inspired by that flavor of artwork, and show the room after a husband and wife have had the worst fight of their marriage.

16. Pick a simple object like a vase, a broom, or a light bulb, and write a scene that makes the reader cry when they see the object.

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17. Make a list of the top five fears in your life. Write a character who is forced to confront one of those fears.

18. Write an entire page describing the exact emotions when you learned of a happy or calamitous event in your life. Now try to condense that page into a single searing sentence.

19. Think about a time in your life when you felt shame. Now write a character in a similar situation, trying to make it even more shameful.

20. Write a paragraph with a character struggle with two conflicting emotions simultaneously. For example, a character who learns of his father’s death and feels both satisfaction and pain.

21. Write a paragraph where a character starts in one emotional register, and through a process of thought, completely evolves into a different emotion.

Characters:

22. Create a minor character based upon someone you dislike. Now have your main character encounter them and feel sympathy and empathy for them despite their faults.

23. Have a kooky character tell a story inside a pre-established form: an instruction manual, traffic update, email exchange, weather report, text message.

24. Write about a character who does something they swore they would never do.

25. Have a character who has memorized something (the names of positions in the Kama Sutra, the entire book of Revelations) recite it while doing something completely at odds with what they’re reciting. For instance, bench pressing while reciting the emperors in a Chinese dynasty.

26. Write a paragraph where a character does a simple action, like turning on a light switch, and make the reader marvel at how strange and odd it truly is.

27. Have a couple fight while playing a board game. Have the fight be about something related to the board game: fighting about money, have them play monopoly. Fighting about politics, let them play chess.

28. Write about two characters angry at each other, but have both of them pretend the problems don’t exist. Instead, have them fight passive-aggressively, through small, snide comments.

29. Describe a character walking across an expanse field or lot and describe how he walks. The reader should perfectly understand his personality simply by the way you describe his walk.

30. Write a first-person POV of a character under the influence of alcohol or drugs, and try to make the prose as woozy and tipsy as the character.

31. Describe the first time that a character realizes he is not as smart as he thought.

32. Describe an hour in the life of a character who has recently lost their ability to do what they love most (a pianist who has severe arthritis; a runner who became a quadriplegic).

33. Write an argument where a husband or wife complains of a physical ailment, but their spouse refuses to believe it’s real.

34. Write a scene where a stranger stops your main character, saying that they know them, and insisting your main character is someone they are not. Describe exactly how this case of mistaken identity makes your character feel.

35. Describe a small personality trait about a person you love, and make the reader love them, too.

36. Write a personality-revealing scene with a character inside a public restroom. Do they press a thumb against the mirror to leave a subtle mark? Do they write a plea for help on the inside of the stall door? Do they brag about the size of what they’ve just dumped off?

37. Give your character an extremely unusual response to a national tragedy like a terrorist attack or natural disaster. Maybe have them be aware their response is unusual, and try to cloak it from others, or have them be completely unaware and display it without any self-consciousness.

38. Have one of your main characters come up with an idea for a comic book, and tell a close friend about the idea. What about this idea would surprise the friend, upsetting what he thought he knew about your main character? Also, what would the main character learn about himself from the comic book idea?

39. Think of an illness someone you love has suffered from. How does your character respond when someone close to them has this illness?

40. Have your main character invent an extremely offensive idea for a book, and show their personality faults through discussing it with others.

41. Have your character write down a list considering how to respond to their stalker.

42. Write a scene where a man hits on a woman, and although the woman acts repulsed and begs her friends to get him away from her, it becomes apparent that she likes the attention.

43. Write about a 20-something confronting his parents over their disapproval of his lifestyle.

44. Have your character write a funny to-do list about the steps to get a boyfriend or girlfriend.

45. Have a risk-adverse character stuck in a hostage situation with a risk-happy character.

46. For the next week, watch strangers carefully and take notes in your phone about any peculiar gestures or body language. Combine the three most interesting ones to describe a character as she goes grocery shopping.

47. Buy a package of the pills that expand into foam animals, and put a random one in a glass of warm water. Whatever it turns out to be, have that animal surprise your main character in a scene.

48. Have your character faced with a decision witness a rare, awe-inspiring event, and describe how it helps them make their decision.

49. Imagine if your character met for the first time his or her long-lost identical twin. What personality traits would they share and which ones would have changed because of their unique experiences? 

50. If a character got burned by a hot pan, what type of strange reaction would they have that would reveal what they value most?

Once you’ve taken a stab at some of these exercises, I’d recommend you use them in your actual writing.

And for instruction on that, you need a guide to writing your novel . 

That link will change your life and your novel. Click it now.

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34 comments

John Fox, you have some excellent resources, and I thank you. I read your comments, then scrolled down to glance at the list of 50 exercises. The FIRST one, “loud noise’ is already in my head. My Hero is going to be side swiped in my Cozy. I was side swiped on a state highway here in Virginia a couple of weeks ago and, although the damage was minor, the sound of that big SUV “glancing” off my little car was SCARY!!! I once heard a fast-moving car REAR-END is stand-still car; that sound was something I’ll never forget. So, your exercise is very timely. THANK YOU!!!

This is a great list! Thanks!

You know what would be motivating? If we could turn these in to someone and get like a grade lol

I can really see the benefit of doing these writing exercises. (Versus using prompts) The purpose is so much clearer. Some I can imagine my response fairly easily. (Though the task of not jumping on the obvious might make it harder than I imagine at this point) Some however I would struggle with ( number 42 for example), where I have zero sympathy for the main character’s plight. Hhhmmmm. But maybe they are the very ones I should be tackling – to see if I can develop them in a way that explains their behaviour and so creates sympathy. Thank you. Much food for thought.

I’ve been thinking a lot about “how to master writing,” and this is the first time that I found an article that makes it clear the difference between prompts and exercises. I fully agree with you. These are bound to make you a better writer if you focus on doing a variation of them daily.

An excellent list – thank you very much. I run a small writing group and we’ll be trying some.

Yes, thank you. I too run a small writing group and you got me out of a slump for tomorrow’s group!

yes,thank you . It’s good for improve your writing skills.

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What a lovely list! I am working on the final draft of my very first novel, and am constantly working at improving the final product. Your exercises are just what I need to kickstart my writing day. Thank you so very much.

Thank you very much When I turned50 I received my diploma from Children’s Institute in West Redding Ct I got my inspiration from being near water however now that I am in Oregon I have had a writing block thanks to your list my creative juices are flowing

I suppose I better have good punctuation, seeing this is about Writing. Thank you for this great list. I am the Chair of our small Writing group in Otorohanga and we start again last week of Feb. I have sent out a homework email, to write a A4 page of something exciting that has happened over the holiday break and they must read it out to the group with passion and excitement in their voices. That will get them out of their comfort zone!

A formidable yet inspiring list. Thank you very much for this. This is really very helpful. I am from India, and very new to writing and have started my first project, which I want to make it into a Novel. This has been very helpful and is very challenging too. Prompts look sissy when compared to this, frankly speaking. Thank you very much again.

Where can I get the answers for these?

There aren’t “answers.” You create responses to these exercises.

Thank you so much for the detailed suggestions focusing on HOW to put the WHAT into practice; really helpful & inspiring.

Just started rough drafting a story I’ve always wanted to write. Do you have any advice for someone writing their first real story? I’m having trouble starting it; I just want it to be perfect.

I consider this very helpful. Just started my journey as a creative writer, and will be coming back to this page to aid my daily writing goal.

I have always loved writing exercises and these are perfect practice for my competition. I have tried lots of different things that other websites have told me to try, but this by far is the most descriptive and helpful site that i have seen so far.

This is really a creative blog. An expert writer is an amateur who didn’t stop. I trust myself that a decent writer doesn’t actually should be advised anything but to keep at it. Keep it up!

I’ve always enjoyed writing from a little girl. Since I’ve been taking it a bit more seriously as does everybody else it seems; I’ve lost the fun and sponteneity. Until now…..this is a marvelous blog to get back the basic joy and freedom in writing. Or should that be of?:) These exercises are perfect to get the creative juices flowing again…..thank you:)

These are interesting exercises for writing.

These are fantastic! I started reading a really awesome book on creative writing but it just didn’t get any good or easy to follow exercises. So I found your site and having been having a lot of fun with these. Exactly what I was looking for, thank you!

creative and inspiring, thank you

I always wanted to have an exercise where a friend and I each wrote a random sentence and sent it to each other to write a short story from that beginning sentence, then exchange the stories for reading and/or critique. Maybe both writers start with the same sentence and see how different the stories turn out.

Thanks for these exercises. Some are really challenging. To truly tackle them I’m having to spend as long beforehand thinking “how the HECK am I going to do this?” as I do with ink on paper. Would be a great resource if other authors submitted their replies and thoughts about how they went about each exercise.

Start the conversation: submit one of yours.

I think I can use these to inspire my students.

Hi there. Thank you for posting this list- it’s great! Can I ask you to consider removing number 42 or perhaps changing it somewhat? I teach sex ed and every year am shocked by how many young people don’t understand issues around consent. Stories about woman who ‘say no but really mean yes’ are deeply unhelpful. Really appreciate your post but felt I had to ask. Thanks.

What’s wrong with the number 42?

It promulgates the belief that when a woman says no, she doesn’t mean it, potentially resulting in sexual assault.

I just make this list a part of my teaching in Creative Writing Classes. Very good list of ideas!

Thank you so much for posting this! I have used it to create a creative playwriting activity for my high school creative writing class–so much good stuff here for me to pick through and select for my kiddos that will allow them to shine and improve their knowledge of writing as a craft!

These exercises are amazing! Thank you so much for sharing 🙂

Every writer NEEDS this book.

It’s a guide to writing the pivotal moments of your novel.

Whether writing your book or revising it, this will be the most helpful book you’ll ever buy.

11 Creative Writing Exercises To Awaken Your Inner Author

I believe there’s a writer inside of all of us.

Even if you don’t think you write well, you do have something to say.

You have a story to tell, knowledge to impart , and experiences to share.

You’ve lived a full life that’s packed with observations and adventures, and you shouldn’t exit this Earth without chronicling them in some way.

Whether you write fiction or non-fiction, your life is the laboratory for creating a great book or story.

If you can talk, you can write — even if you need to brush up on grammar and spelling. You’ll naturally become a better writer the more you write.

You’ll learn how to organize ideas, make smooth transitions, and expand your vocabulary.

Reading also improves your writing, so if you have the tiniest desire to write well, read a wide variety of books in different genres.

You can accelerate your writing competence with some simple writing exercises.

Your inner creative muscle needs exertion to stay fit and strong — but writing exercises don’t need to be drudgery.

They can be fun and exciting as you see how much creative juice you have just waiting to be squeezed.

These creative exercises should be practiced without self-judgment, inner filters, or concern about what a reader might think.

The purpose is to allow your creative mind complete freedom to cut loose.

You don’t have to show these writing exercises to anyone if you don’t want to.

It’s a good weekly practice engage in writers exercises to what catches your imagination and awakens your inner author .

1. Answer 3 questions.

2. write a letter to your younger self., 3. use writing prompts., 4. write about your expertise. , 5. write a stream of consciousness page., 6. write a story told to you., 7. pretend to be someone else. , 8. write about something or someone who changed your life., 9. describe your surroundings., 10. pick a number., 11. describe a dream of yours — or the life of your dreams., what are creative writing exercises.

“Perfect” writers don’t exist. Even Ernest Hemingway and Alice Walker honed the craft right up to their waning days. Growth, improvement, and experimentation are the clarion calls of professional and aspiring scribes. And those who succeed put in the work.

That’s where creative writing exercises come in, as they’re designed to help you play with words in a non-judgmental environment.

Common “craft-sharpening” writing games and tools include:

• Prompt prose
• Timed freewriting
• Stream-of-consciousness exercises
• Vocabulary teasers / mad libs
• Restricted writing (i.e., every sentence must start with a verb, certain words cannot be mentioned, et cetera)

Serious writers — and people serious about becoming better writers — are perpetually composing pieces that will never see the light of day. But just as a tennis player hits thousands of serves during practice sessions, writers scribe thousands of short language exercises. To continue the sports analogy: Writing exercises are the equivalent of an athlete stretching before a game or match.

Here are 11 creative writing exercises to get you started:

In this exercise, you’ll use three questions to stimulate creative thought. You can write these questions yourself, but I’ll give you some examples to show you what to do.

You want to answer the questions as quickly as you can, with whatever ideas pop into your mind.

Write as much or as little as you wish, but just allow the words to flow without pondering too much what you want to say.

• Who just snuck out the back window?
• What were they carrying?
• Where were they going?
• Who is Ethan?
• Why is he crying?
• What is he going to do about it?
• Whose house is Julia leaving?
• Why was she there?
• Where is she going now?

In this exercise, you are writing to yourself at a younger age. It can be your childhood self or yourself just a few years back.

You can offer advice, compassion, explanation, forgiveness, or praise.

Or you can simply recount an experience you had and how it impacted you as your adult self now.

Try to see this younger self as a real and separate person when you write the letter. This exercise helps you think about your reader as a real person with emotions — a person who can be moved and inspired by your writing.

Again, try not to overthink this exercise. Spend a few minutes deciding the core message of the letter, and then just start writing without filters.

A writing prompt is an idea that jumpstarts the writing process.

The prompt can be a short sentence, a paragraph, or even a picture, but the purpose is the same — to ignite your creativity so you’ll begin writing.

Writing prompts can help you when you feel stuck while writing your book.

If you take ten minutes to work on a writing prompt, you can go back to your book writing primed to get down to business. It stimulates ideas for a writer and releases the creative process.

Here are a few prompts you can use:

Think about something you know how to do well. It can be anything from washing the dishes to selling stocks.

Write a few paragraphs (or more if you wish) explaining some aspect of how to do what you do.

Assume your reader is completely ignorant about the subject.

This writing shouldn’t sound like a dry instruction manual. Try to write in a conversational style, as though you’re verbally explaining the process.

Break down the steps in a way that makes the reader understand exactly what to do, without using business jargon or buzzwords.

This is an easy and fun exercise. You want to write it in longhand rather than typing on your computer, as handwriting slows down the process and allows more time for your creative brain to do its work.

Grab a pen and blank pad and simply start writing. Write down whatever comes into your brain, no matter how nonsensical or disjointed.

There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages — they are not high art. They are not even “writing.” They are about anything and everything that crosses your mind– and they are for your eyes only. Morning Pages provoke, clarify, comfort, cajole, prioritize and synchronize the day at hand. Do not over-think Morning Pages: just put three pages of anything on the page…and then do three more pages tomorrow.

In this exercise, you want to recount a story told to you by another person.

It can be a story one of your parents or grandparents shared about something that happened many years ago, or it can be a more recent event a friend or family member recounted.

Or you can tell a story you learned in school or through reading about a well-known person or event.

The story can be funny, sad, or educational — but it should be interesting, entertaining, or engaging in some way.

Whether your book is fiction or non-fiction, readers love stories.  They enjoy relating to the lives and experiences of other people.

When you share stories in your writing, you humanize your writing and take your readers on a small journey.

In this exercise, you’ll practice writing from another person’s perspective. You can choose a person you know well, or you can write from the point of view of an imagined character.

Put yourself in this person’s shoes, see things through their eyes, and react the way they would react.

Choose one situation, encounter, or setting, and write what you see, hear, think, and feel about the scenario. Get inside of this person’s brain, and try to be as descriptive as possible.

You can write a paragraph or several pages if you’re inspired.

In this exercise, rather than telling the story of someone else or pretending to be another person, you want to share your story from your perspective.

Write about a person or event that has profoundly impacted you and changed your life.

Rather than simply recounting the situation, talk about how it made you feel, what your reactions were, and how you were changed on the inside as well as the outside.

Pour your heart into this writing. Remember, you don’t have to show it to anyone, so be completely vulnerable and real in this exercise.

More Related Articles

27 Powerful Writing Tips For Your First Book

252 Of The Best Writing Prompts For All Writers

17 Things to Write About For Your Next Nonfiction Book

Simply write a paragraph or two about your surroundings.

You can write in first person (“I am sitting at my desk, which is littered with papers and old coffee cups.”), or write in third person, simply describing what you see (“The room is bleak and empty except for one old wooden chair.”).

Challenge yourself to use descriptive language to set the scene.

Rather than saying, “The light is shining through the window,” you might say, “The morning sun is streaming through the window, spotlighting a million dancing dust particles and creating mottled shadows on my desk.”

Whether you write fiction or non-fiction , you want to write intriguing descriptions that invite the reader into the setting so they can “see” what you see.

Even numbers can serve to inspire writing. This exercise combines numbers with something else you probably have at your disposal.

Pick a random number between 1 and 30. We’ll call it number n. Then look to your bookshelf (real or virtual) and choose the nth book.

( Note: If you have more than 30 books on your shelf, you can choose a bigger number).

Then you’d open that book to the nth page and go to the nth sentence on that page.

Write that sentence down and make it the first sentence of a new freewriting exercise. Just write whatever comes to mind for the next sentence and the one after that, and so on.

Write at least as many sentences as the number you chose.

Think of a dream you remember and describe it in as much detail as you can recall.

From there, you can take that dream and turn it into a story or play with possible interpretations — serious or just for fun.

Or you can write about the life you dream of living. Describe a perfect day in that life, from the time you wake up to the time you lie back down.

Describe the home in which you live or the places you want to go. Imagine you’re living there in the locale of your choice for as long as you wish.

Don’t bother trying to make it sound realistic.

Just let the words flow, and enjoy the ride. Part of the fun of learning how to practice writing fiction is letting your imagination take over — without any heckling from your inner editor.

How These Exercises Can Make You a Better Writer 

At first explanation, writing exercises may sound a tad tedious. But people who do them improve by leaps and bounds. 

For starters, it all comes down to the human brain’s wiring. In short, every thought and idea we have is conducted by electrical impulses that torpedo around our nervous systems. When we practice something, the associated “circuits” grow myelin, a biological cushion that protects nerves. The added shielding optimizes the relevant electrical paths, rendering them more efficient. 

In other words: The more you do something, the better you’ll get. It doesn’t matter if you have an IQ of 80 or 180. Practice yields results. With writing, the more you do it, the better work you’ll produce. 

Specifically, creative prose lessons also:

• Keep your creativity muscles limber
• Help exercise your vocabulary
• Present opportunities to think about ideas and situations from different perspectives
• Help writers workshop characters, plots, and ideas

Final Thoughts

No matter how experienced you are as a writer, you can always improve and tap deeper into the wellspring of your own creativity.

You can always learn new ways to express yourself and delight your reader.

View these writing exercises as a means to opening doors of insight and imagination and enjoy the process of becoming a better writer.

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WEEKLY WRITING PROMPTS

Join (probably?) the world's largest writing contest. Flex those creative muscles with weekly writing prompts.

Showing 2159 prompts

The talk of the ton, write a story in the format of a gossip column..

LIVE – Short Story

Write a story where an important conversation takes place during a dance.

Write a story about two characters who start as mortal enemies but learn to embrace their differences., write a story where a rumor starts to spread. your protagonist is either the topic or the source., set your story at a regency-themed fair..

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Write about a character who has the ability to pause the passage of time.

Write a story that contains the line, "i wish we could stay here forever.", start your story with a character canceling their plans., set your story over the course of a few minutes; no flashbacks, no flashforwards., write a story about a highly-strung character learning to slow down, or someone pursuing a quieter way of life., subscribe to our prompts newsletter.

Never miss a prompt! Get curated writing inspiration delivered to your inbox each week.

Write a story that includes someone saying, “Be careful what you wish for.”

Make a character’s obsession or addiction an important element of your story., write a story in which one of the characters is a narcissist., write about a character who struggles to do the right thing., start your story with a character being followed., your protagonist is a voracious reader. lately, they’ve been noticing odd synchronicities in the books he or she is reading. what does the protagonist discover is happening, dream up a secret library. write a story about an adventurer who discovers it. what’s in the library why was it kept secret, write a story about a future academic (or another influential person) “rediscovering” a book that, in its time, was dismissed. the book can be fictitious or real., your protagonist is a writer who discovers a new favorite author. how does their writing, or even their own personality, change as the protagonist falls under the writer’s influence, write a story about discovering a lost manuscript. it can be from a famous (or infamous) author, or an unknown one., win $250 in our short story competition 🏆.

We'll send you 5 prompts each week. Respond with your short story and you could win $250!

Contest #254 LIVE

Enter our weekly contest.

This week's theme: The Talk of the Ton

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Creative Writing Prompts

When the idea to start a weekly newsletter with writing inspiration first came to us, we decided that we wanted to do more than provide people with topics to write about. We wanted to try and help authors form a regular writing habit and also give them a place to proudly display their work. So we started the weekly Creative Writing Prompts newsletter. Since then, Prompts has grown to a community of more than 450,000 authors, complete with its own literary magazine, Prompted .  

Here's how our contest works: every Friday, we send out a newsletter containing five creative writing prompts. Each week, the story ideas center around a different theme. Authors then have one week — until the following Friday — to submit a short story based on one of our prompts. A winner is picked each week to win $250 and is highlighted on our Reedsy Prompts page.

Interested in participating in our short story contest? Sign up here for more information! Or you can check out our full Terms of Use and our FAQ page .

Why we love creative writing prompts

If you've ever sat in front of a computer or notebook and felt the urge to start creating worlds, characters, and storylines — all the while finding yourself unable to do so — then you've met the author's age-old foe: writer's block. There's nothing more frustrating than finding the time but not the words to be creative. Enter our directory! If you're ready to kick writer's block to the curb and finally get started on your short story or novel, these unique story ideas might just be your ticket.

This list of 1800+ creative writing prompts has been created by the Reedsy team to help you develop a rock-solid writing routine. As all aspiring authors know, this is the #1 challenge — and solution! — for reaching your literary goals. Feel free to filter through different genres, which include...

Dramatic — If you want to make people laugh and cry within the same story, this might be your genre.

Funny — Whether satire or slapstick, this is an opportunity to write with your funny bone.

Romance — One of the most popular commercial genres out there. Check out these story ideas out if you love writing about love.

Fantasy — The beauty of this genre is that the possibilities are as endless as your imagination.

Dystopian – Explore the shadowy side of human nature and contemporary technology in dark speculative fiction.

Mystery — From whodunnits to cozy mysteries, it's time to bring out your inner detective.

Thriller and Suspense — There's nothing like a page-turner that elicits a gasp of surprise at the end.

High School — Encourage teens to let their imaginations run free.

Want to submit your own story ideas to help inspire fellow writers? Send them to us here.

After you find the perfect story idea

Finding inspiration is just one piece of the puzzle. Next, you need to refine your craft skills — and then display them to the world. We've worked hard to create resources that help you do just that! Check them out:

• How to Write a Short Story That Gets Published — a free, ten-day course by Laura Mae Isaacman, a full-time editor who runs a book editing company in Brooklyn.
• Best Literary Magazines of 2023 — a directory of 100+ reputable magazines that accept unsolicited submissions.
• Writing Contests in 2023 — the finest contests of 2021 for fiction and non-fiction authors of short stories, poetry, essays, and more.

Beyond creative writing prompts: how to build a writing routine

While writing prompts are a great tactic to spark your creative sessions, a writer generally needs a couple more tools in their toolbelt when it comes to developing a rock-solid writing routine . To that end, here are a few more additional tips for incorporating your craft into your everyday life.

• NNWT. Or, as book coach Kevin Johns calls it , “Non-Negotiable Writing Time.” This time should be scheduled into your routine, whether that’s once a day or once a week. Treat it as a serious commitment, and don’t schedule anything else during your NNWT unless it’s absolutely necessary.
• Set word count goals. And make them realistic! Don’t start out with lofty goals you’re unlikely to achieve. Give some thought to how many words you think you can write a week, and start there. If you find you’re hitting your weekly or daily goals easily, keep upping the stakes as your craft time becomes more ingrained in your routine.
• Talk to friends and family about the project you’re working on. Doing so means that those close to you are likely to check in about the status of your piece — which in turn keeps you more accountable.

Arm yourself against writer’s block. Writer’s block will inevitably come, no matter how much story ideas initially inspire you. So it’s best to be prepared with tips and tricks you can use to keep yourself on track before the block hits. You can find 20 solid tips here — including how to establish a relationship with your inner critic and apps that can help you defeat procrastination or lack of motivation.

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Adventure Writing Prompts ⭢

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50 fun group writing exercises

Group writing exercises you can do with your writing circle or critique group are a fun ice-breaker and a way to get creative ideas flowing. Read 50 ‘fill in the blank’ creative writing prompts.

• Post author By Jordan
• 6 Comments on 50 fun group writing exercises

‘Fill in the blank’ writing exercises are fun to do in a group. Writing exercises with some set parameters highlight the diverse, interesting ways different writers interpret and respond to the same prompts. Try one of 50 ‘fill in the blank’ creative writing prompts below, and share your creativity in the comments or tag @NowNovel if sharing your version on social media.

The group writing exercises

The first prompt was a prompt for a contest to win a place on our Group Coaching writing course .

Contest prompt

Every year, I’d made a resolution not to ever __ again. Yet by January 20th I’d already __ and __.

Entries were voted on blind by a panel of four from the Now Novel team, and the winner was Ethan Myers with this entry:

Here are 49 more prompts to enjoy and stimulate creative ideas:

Writing exercises featuring scene-setting

On leaving As soon as I turned 18, I left__. It was a town of__and__ .

On arrival I walked through the arched entryway and my jaw dropped. Everywhere you looked there were__. Marco Polo himself could never have imagined__.

The first time It was my first ever flight. I was__. Then a__ sat down next to me, turning to me and asking, “__?”

Compare and contrast My hometown was__. When I got to__, a college town, the first thing I noticed was__.

Use the senses The minute you entered, you could smell __. Paired with the sound of __, it was unmistakably home.

Be specific The home we’d rented for the holidays was neither__ nor__, contrary to the listing. Yet my younger brother was delighted when we found__.

Build a bucket list I’d always wanted to go to__. I’d read so much about its__, though nothing had prepared me for__.

Create a world In the books I had read as a kid, portals were gateways to worlds where __. Yet here, I was surprised to find a__.

Outside/inside Outside, the sounds of__ filled the air__. Yet inside, the 19th Century __was like another world, full of strange __.

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Group writing exercises featuring conflict

Lovers’ quarrel We thought it would be a romantic getaway to Rome. Then__. By the end of the day, hot and fed up, we__.

A troubling lookout He climbed the watchtower, yet when he turned to the window, what he saw made him tremble.__.

The duel Many had said that if they were ever to duel, no two could be more equally matched. But what his opponent didn’t know was__.

Alien invasion In alien movies, they always blew up The White House or__. So he hadn’t expected to be toe to toe with an extraterrestrial having a screamed debate about__.

An assassin As the most skilled contract killer in the kingdom, she knew how to__. Yet nobody knew that she__.

Warring nations It started with a trade embargo. Then the president said that our neighbors’ president was a __ with a __. Next thing we knew, __.

Difficult decisions I couldn’t decide whether to__ or to__, but it was 4:45 pm and the last train was leaving in five minutes.

Writing exercises using dialogue

Secrets and lies “I never__,” he said. Yet I knew he was lying because__.

Surprises “Guess what I have behind my back?” she said. “__?” I guessed. “No!” She held out__.

Confessions “I didn’t know how to tell you this … I__.” “I’m glad you told me, now we can__.”

Embarrassing family “Your son is very talented, Mr Jones,” the__ said. “You say that now. You should have seen when he was 9. He__ and we were told that__.”

Thinking aloud “You should__.” “What did you just say?” “Did I just say that out loud? I was thinking about__.”

Know-it-all “Bet you didn’t know__,” he gloated. “Bet you didn’t know__,” I clapped back, full sass.

Bad bard “Shall I compare thee-“ I married a thespian. “Shall I compare you to __?” I rolled my eyes.

Writing exercises using simile and metaphor

Wild reactions His face was as __ as a__ after the bug bite and we were all a bit worried.

Comparing the moon The moon is a__ tonight, its thin crescent glowing like a__.

Making abstraction specific My anxiety is like a__ on the first day of school. A__ with a __.

Sound and simile The first minutes the orchestra was like a __, the music shimmering like __. But in the allegro the principal violinist’s string broke and the conductor__.

Describing emotions Fear is a__ with a__.

Describing the human voice He had a voice like__, like a__ echoing in a __.

Degrees of comparison The mysterious drink they prepared was sweeter than__. But sweeter still was__.

Writing exercises using different POVs

Fugitive I had run all night, adrenaline keeping fatigue at bay. When I saw__ as dawn broke, I knew__.

Collective They had ways of dealing with dissent. If you dared to go against the clan, you would be__, God help you.

The reader as reader You decide to go to the library. You want to read a book about__. The librarian raises an eyebrow as they run the barcode scanner. “__?” They ask, as you blush.

The group as one That summer, we__ until we couldn’t__. We were all in our twenties, and the days were__.

Writing exercise using different moods of the verb

Future perfect tense, indicative mood In several years’ time, she will have changed, our__ changing like__.

Present tense, potential mood “They may change their minds,” the King says, scowling, “or else we may have to__ and__.”

Future tense, subjunctive mood If I should__, then tell everyone I never__.

[See a helpful explanation of verb moods and tenses in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Steering the Craft . ]

Writing exercises from creating blanks in books

Colum McCann – Let the Great World Spin We had a short driveway full of__. If we crossed the road, we could stand on__ and__.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez – Love in the Time of Cholera He had returned from a long stay in Paris, where he__, and from the time he set foot on solid ground he__.

Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake Jimmy’s earliest complete memory was of a huge__. He must have been five, maybe six. He was wearing__.

Virginia Woolf – Mrs Dalloway Her only gift was__. If you put her in a room with some one, up went her back like a cat’s; or she__.

Italo Calvino – The Complete Cosmicomics I thought only of the Earth. It was the Earth that caused each of us to__.

David Sedaris – Me Talk Pretty One Day When painting proved too difficult, I turned to__, telling myself__.

Eva Hoffman – Lost in Translation The library is located in a__ street, in an ancient building, which one enters through a__. It is Plato’s cave, Egyptian temple, the space of__.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Half of a Yellow Sun Richard said little at the parties Susan took him to. When she introduced him, she always added__. But they were pleasant to him; they would be to__.

Ursula K. Le Guin – The Left Hand of Darkness I’ll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught__.

Colson Whitehead – The Zone The reunions were terrific and rote, early tutelage in the recursive nature of human experience. “__?” the girlfriends asked as they padded in bearing__, and he’d say “__”.

Barbara Kingsolver – The Poisonwood Bible Once every few years, even now, I catch the scent of__. It makes me want to keen, sing,__.

Jorge Luis Borges – Labyrinths He opened a drawer of the black and gold desk. He faced me and in his hands he held__.

Emily Brontë – Wuthering Heights While enjoying a month of fine weather at the sea-coast, I was thrown into the company of a__, a real__.

Find daily writing prompts plus literary device definitions and terms.

Build focus and a steady writing routine, and get help from experienced coaches and editors while connecting with other writers on our 6-month Group Coaching course. Learn more and see what alumni loved.

Related Posts:

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Jordan is a writer, editor, community manager and product developer. He received his BA Honours in English Literature and his undergraduate in English Literature and Music from the University of Cape Town.

6 replies on “50 fun group writing exercises”

These exercises look like fun!

Sometimes there comes a point when you can’t think of anything worth writing. I guess every writer will know what I mean. But with these templates, I can get some inspiration and share whole stories with my friends.

Thank you, Jordan.

Hi Daisy, I’m glad that you found these ideas inspiring, it’s a pleasure. Thank you for sharing your feedback!

I love these! They’re inspiring (although I want to cheat and use them as-is). Lots of material for future fun 😉

Hi Margriet, thank you! I’m glad you find these writing exercises fun. We can share fill-in-the-blank exercises in the challenge group, that’s another idea.

Thankyou Jordan for these great points.

It’s a pleasure, Dave. Thank you for reading our blog.

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ThinkWritten

7 Creative Writing Exercises For Writers

Need a creative lift as a writer? Try these 7 creative writing exercises for writers to boost your writing skills.

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Has your creative well run dry? Are you struggling to find inspiration for your next written work? Creative writing exercises could be the answer.

Just like any other skill, the art and craft of writing will benefit from the frequent working and reworking of your practices and habits. Creativity exercises for writers could unlock that writer’s block that you have been struggling to overcome and spur you on to new and exciting creative directions. 

What are Creative Writing Exercises?

Creative writing exercises can take on many forms and can mean different things to different people. However, certain elements are common to most examples of creative writing exercises.

They are often produced in short, intense bursts, for one thing, and they are often entirely improvised. Improvisation is one of the earmarks of the creative writing exercises employed by many writers.

One other factor that most creative writing exercises have in common is that they often encourage the exploration and expounding of familiar subject matters in novel ways.

Many classes and guides that focus solely on developing creative writing techniques involve adopting short and spontaneous approaches. 

How often should writers practice creative writing exercises?

Regardless of what form a creative writing exercise takes, it is smart for writers to adopt these practices and incorporate them into their daily routines. The goal is to expand their writing skills and develop the ability to tell the same story in as many different ways as possible. 

Start by writing a few lines once or twice a week, spending only a few minutes each session. Gradually increase the length of each session and how many times you sit down to write per week.

Eventually, you could work up to about ten minutes per session, performing these exercises several times throughout the week. 

Here are 7 Creative Writing Exercises for Writers

If you feel like taking a break from a writing assignment or are between projects, you can try your hand at these creative writing exercises. They can also serve as inspiration for your next opus or strengthen your creative muscles. 

1. Follow your stream of consciousness.

Many writers have become conditioned to feel a great deal of stress or worry about being confronted by a blank page. This exercise will help you address this fear head-on. 

Get a piece of paper and start writing the first thing that comes to mind. Don’t even think about what you are writing or edit your thoughts. This type of writing is known as “free writing”. Author Julia Cameron referred to this as the “morning pages” in her award-winning book, The Artist’s Way . 

2. Work with different points of view.

If you find yourself struggling with expressing yourself, try switching up your point of view. Take a chapter from your favorite book, or even just a scene if you want to start slow. Write everything that takes place from the point of view of another character. The goal here is to communicate the story in another way. 

You could also vary this exercise by writing as if you are the main character by changing their point of view. If the story is written in the first person, try writing it from the third person. Be aware of the details that are omitted when you switch viewpoints. This frequently leads to an interesting new twist to the story. 

3. Take advantage of writing prompts.

Writing prompts or story starters can be invaluable writing tools that could encourage you to explore unfamiliar but interesting creative directions. These are sentences or short passages that could serve as springboards for writing spontaneous stories. 

We have many writing prompts lists here at ThinkWritten you can use for inspiration, including 365 Creative Writing Prompts , 42 Fantasy Prompts , and 101 Poetry Prompts .

4. Have a Conversation With Yourself

See what it’s like to write a letter or converse with yourself. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to have a conversation with your younger self, this is the perfect opportunity to do so.

You can choose any subject you want, from a significant social or political event or some words of wisdom to your younger version. Try to be as honest and as forthcoming as possible. The results might surprise you.

5. Try Writing Flash Fiction

Try to crank out a piece of flash fiction. As with other creative writing exercises, don’t spend too much time at it. Simply sit down in front of the computer or a piece of paper, and begin writing. Flash fiction doesn’t usually go beyond 500 words, so try to keep it short.

Note: It might be helpful to differentiate flash fiction from the freewriting exercise discussed earlier. While freewriting involves generating words and ideas in an unbridled stream of consciousness, flash fiction is more about writing within a set of guidelines. In this particular exercise, try incorporating structural elements such as plots, conflicts, and character development, all in the goal of developing a logical story arc. 

6. Practice writing fake ads

Writing fake advertisements is another potentially useful exercise. Few tasks can flex your creative muscles than trying to sell a product, person, company, or idea. You don’t need a lot to get started either. All you have to do is to select a word at random from a magazine or newspaper and get started writing an ad for it. 

It might help to write one ad in a more formal tone, similar to the classified ads published in newspapers. This exercise will train you in using a few words effectively to sell your subject. You can then write another ad in a style similar to that published in online marketplaces, which allow for longer text. In both exercises, try to convince your readers to purchase the product in as definitive terms as possible. 

7. Rewrite someone else’s story

Consider adopting a story from someone else and making it your own. Unlike the exercise that involves writing a story from another point of view, this one involves telling the same story from the same viewpoint but using your own words.

It could be any story you want to write about, from something a family member told you about or an urban legend that has long made the rounds of your town.

Whichever story you choose, try to write it as if it happened to you. If certain details are missing–which is often the case with old stories–don’t hold back from adding your own touches. You could even take a well-known story and write it as if you were there when the events took place. 

There are only a few of the creativity exercises for writers you can try. There are many more variations that you could use to help you get back into the pattern of writing creatively.

If you ever find yourself stuck and unsure of what your next step should be, consider taking some time off and working on some creative writing exercises instead. After some time, you might find yourself becoming more eager to get back into it and more inspired than ever. 

Tell us what you think! Do you enjoy creative writing exercises? Do you have any additional ideas for ways writers can continue to build and work on their writing skills? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Eric Pangburn is a freelance writer who shares his best tips with other writers here at ThinkWritten. When not writing, he enjoys coaching basketball and spending time with his family.

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From 101 Creative Writing Exercises: Symbols and Symbolism

by Melissa Donovan | Feb 20, 2024 | Creative Writing Exercises | 4 comments

Symbolism and symbolism in fiction writing.

Today’s post comes from my book 101 Creative Writing Exercises  (aff link). This is from “Chapter 5: Fiction.” Let’s take a look at symbolism in fiction.

Symbols and Symbolism

In Alice and Wonderland , a white rabbit appears, and Alice follows him down the rabbit hole that leads to Wonderland. The white rabbit is a herald — a character archetype that signifies the first challenge or the call to adventure. This is the change in the main character’s life that marks the beginning of the story.

Symbolism in Fiction

The white rabbit can function as a traditional symbol or as a reference to Alice in Wonderland. Such is the case with the song “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane.

Symbolism occurs whenever one thing represents something else. For example, a book could represent knowledge. A caged bird could represent oppression or imprisonment. In a story, the repetition of a symbol (every time the book or caged bird appears) can have significance to the story. Maybe every time a character fails because he doesn’t know enough, there’s a book in the scene. Or perhaps a person who is oppressed keeps a caged bird but doesn’t recognize the irony (that he is imprisoning a living creature while suffering his own oppression).

The Exercise

Develop a list of five to ten symbols. Invent your own symbols rather than using ones that commonly appear in fiction. If you’re working on a story or novel, make a list of symbols that you might use in your project. Symbols are often linked to big themes: love, revenge, sacrifice, redemption, narcissism, etc.

Tips: You might find it easier to choose a theme or issue and then look for a symbol that represents it. On the other hand, if you have an interesting image (a red scarf, a snow globe), you might find a way to turn it into a meaningful symbol.

Variations: Choose one symbol and write a list of ways it can be used throughout a story. For example, a white rabbit in a story could appear in a pet store. It could be somebody’s pet. It could be in a science lab. It could be part of a magic show. Make sure you don’t give the symbol more importance than the plot or characters. A symbol is present to add depth and give the story greater meaning. It’s an accent to the story, not the central focus of it.

Applications: Symbols enrich a piece of writing, adding layers to the themes and meaning of the piece.

This is a very interesting concept.I never used this ever in 6 years that I have been writing.

Symbols work best when they are subtle. I think a lot of people have to actively look for them. I always try to find symbolism in fiction.

Very interesting and as I am a third of a way through my novel it’s an idea worth exploring…Thank you 🙂

You’re welcome!

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Nearly fifty years ago, the writer George Perec spent three days sitting behind a café window in Place Saint-Sulpice in Paris recording everything he saw. In his short book, An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris , his observations of mundane occurrences and objects often considered unnoteworthy—passersby, cars, buses, pigeons, signs, and slogans—are documented. This week situate yourself in one spot, perhaps in your home or workplace, or in a public space like a park, busy crossroad, commercial area, library, or café. Then, jot down the objects and behavior you see, and the snippets of conversation you hear. Write a lyric essay composed of these notes, trying to avoid interpretations or analysis. Taken together, how do your observations create a portrayal of a specific time or place? Pay particular attention to how one observation might lead to another, and to potential rhythms and repetitions.

Power Couple

The 2023 thriller film Fair Play , written and directed by Chloe Domont, follows the lives of a young, newly engaged couple, Luke and Emily, who are colleagues working as analysts in the cutthroat world of high finance in New York. The film focuses on the progression of their relationship, which has been kept hidden from their hedge fund office, and the bitter disintegration of their happiness after a promotion that was initially rumored to go to Luke is unexpectedly bestowed upon Emily, which situates him as a subordinate to his wife within a misogynistic workplace. Write a short story that revolves around an occurrence that catalyzes a shift in the power dynamic between two main characters who have a close relationship. What are the initial responses, and does the transformation happen suddenly or gradually? Are there gender, generational, or other cultural issues that play a role?

Organic Insinuations

“All too often, on a ‘poetry scene,’ people prioritise ‘subject matter,’” says John Burnside in a 2023 interview about his writing process by Jesse Nathan published on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. “I am sure that, as I am working, environmental concerns insinuate their way into the content of a poem organically, as other concerns will—but I would never start from there.” Inspired by the late Scottish poet, who died at the age of sixty-nine on May 29, write a poem that springs not from a predetermined topic or subject matter, but instead allows you to “trust in the sounds, the rhythms that come out of the day-to-day, the sheer immediacy and truth of the quotidian…and the images that lead, sometimes via fairly roundabout paths, to metaphor.” Later, as you reread and revise, what do you discover is the subject of your poem? What might have organically insinuated itself into your poem?

The maintenance or restoration of native plant and animal species has long been at the heart of many ecological and conservation projects, and has historically been a focus of land and environmental stewardship principles held by native and first peoples all over the world. But what if a beloved plant or animal is considered invasive, like the palm trees of Los Angeles or the cattle of Texas? What are the effects or consequences of centuries of existence with this invasive species in a particular locale? This week reflect on the notion of belonging—what are various places and times when you have felt a strong sense of belonging, and situations when you did not feel you belonged? Consider your own perspectives and responses when you encounter someone or something else that seems invasive or does not belong.

In Stephen King’s 1983 novel, Pet Sematary , a doctor moves into a remote house in Maine with his wife, two young children, and their pet cat, and learns from a neighbor about an ancient burial ground nearby cursed by a malevolent spirit which gave it power to reanimate those buried there. This is put to the test first by the family cat, and then by members of the family who die throughout the course of King’s horror story. While each formerly dead being is returned to the land of the living, they don’t come back quite the same. Write a story in which a creature or person returns from the dead, either in actuality or under circumstances in which their reappearance feels as if they are “back from the dead.” What familiar traits remain the same and what is disconcertingly different? Is their return ultimately for the better or the worse?

“I told a friend about a spill at the grocery store, which—the words ‘conveyor belt’ vanishing midsentence—took place on a ‘supermarket treadmill,’” writes Madeleine Schwartz in a recent essay published by New York Times Magazine about her experience of negotiating with and toggling between the French and English languages after moving from New York to Paris. In the piece, Schwartz notes that as she became more comfortable with living and thinking in French, she noticed a blurring of her linguistic capabilities, including a muddling of her articulative abilities in English. Think about a time or situation when words have failed you, or you’ve drawn a blank as to the mot juste. Write a poem that traces or enacts a loss of language, perhaps using invented words, phrases, and spellings or experimenting with font sizes, line breaks, and spacing.

Edible Memories

Many foods, flavors, and dishes hold a wellspring of emotional associations because they remind us of loved ones, habits and traditions, specific locales, and a different time of our lives when we were different people. Write a series of flash nonfiction pieces this week with each segment focusing on an edible item that evokes particularly resonant memories for you. You might begin by jotting down lists of foods you ate regularly growing up—breakfasts, school lunches, vending machine go-tos, favorite fast-food joints, diners, late night spots, home-cooked specialties—as well as a few momentous meals. Who are the people you associate with each one? Aside from taste and smell, consider the surrounding environment, atmospheric sounds, time of year, and who you were at that point in your life.

Wheels and Nails

While the American proverb “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” may be one you’ve heard time and again, often in reference to the idea that whoever raises or vocalizes a criticism the loudest will be appeased, there is a Japanese saying that translates to “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down,” which points to the positives of conformity in order to maintain a productive and humble society. It can also refer to putting someone who has become too successful back down in their place. Write a story in which your main character diverges from a group of people, and sticks their neck out, so to speak. Perhaps they vocalize a contrary perspective, protest something they feel is unjust, or simply present themselves in an unconventional manner. What are the consequences? Does your story lean toward one proverbial lesson or the other, or does the conclusion demonstrate more ambiguity?

Night at the Museum

If you could spend a night at any museum, which would you choose, and why? The French publisher Editions Stock has a series of books that begins with this premise—each author selects a museum, arrangements are made for an overnight stay, and a book is written about the experience. In Jakuta Alikavazovic’s Like a Sky Inside , translated from the French by Daniel Levin Becker, she spends a night at the Louvre in Paris, where childhood memories of visits with her father are vividly recalled. “From March 7 to 8, 2020, I spent the night in the Louvre, alone. Alone and at the same time anything but,” writes Alikavazovic. Write a poem that imagines a night at a museum of your choosing, anywhere in the world. What memories will you excavate from this imagined, solitary experience?

Chosen Family

Although the origin of the term is unknown and can be defined in many ways, a chosen family is made up of a group of people who choose to embrace, nurture, and support each other despite conventional understandings of biological or marital relationships. Oftentimes a chosen family is formed to take the place of a biological family, however, in some cases, these relationships are formed to expand a family. Write a personal essay about a relationship you have with a chosen family member. How did you first meet? Was there a particular incident that catalyzed what would become an inextricable bond? Has your commitment to each other been tested in ways big or small? Reflect on past memories and experiences you have had with this special person and how your relationship has evolved over the years.

Kingdom of the Planet

In the 1968 science fiction film Planet of the Apes , which is based on French author Pierre Boulle’s 1963 novel and has spawned several sequels and a recent reboot, a crew of astronauts crash-lands on a planet ruled by apes who have developed an advanced and hierarchical civilization, complete with systems of governance, labor, scientific research, and a military force. In this far-off place, humans have been reduced to mute primitive beings who are subjugated and kept captive as workers for the primates. Write a speculative story that takes place in another universe with a premise revolving around a role reversal. What are the rules and governing structures of the society that you invent? You might decide to approach your narrative with a tone of horror, satire, or comedy to emphasize your perspective on stereotypical assumptions and social expectations.

Another Country

“I love these raw moist dawns with / a thousand birds you hear but can’t / quite see in the mist. / My old alien body is a foreigner / struggling to get into another country. / The loon call makes me shiver. / Back at the cabin I see a book / and am not quite sure what that is.” In these eight lines that comprise Jim Harrison’s poem “Another Country,” which appears in his final collection, Dead Man’s Float (Copper Canyon Press, 2016), the late poet moves between observations about a natural outdoor setting and the speaker’s own bodily presence, arriving in the final two lines at a sentiment that expresses a feeling of defamiliarization at the seemingly mundane sight of a book. This week write a poem that explores the concept of being so absorbed in one environment or circumstance that to behold a different scene is like traveling to a strange and unknown realm.

Self-Healing

A recent study in Scientific Reports journal revealed that, for possibly the first time, a nonhuman wild animal was seen using plant medicine to heal an active wound. In a rainforest in Indonesia, a Sumatran orangutan was observed ripping off leaves from a climbing vine plant, chewing them, and applying the plant sap to treat a wound on his face, which then healed after a few days. Write a personal essay on the theme of self-healing. Think about experiences when you’ve witnessed another person perform this task, or particularly resonant memories that pertain to your own past behavior. What are the primary emotions present throughout this process? What instances of self-treatment or self-medication in film, art, or literature created an impression on you?

Campus Story

Take inspiration from the concept of a campus novel—which takes place in and around the campus of a university and often involves the intertwined dynamics of students, professors, and conventions about learning and power—and write a story that engages with a school setting, whether prominently situated in the context of the plot or used for a particular scene. Some recent additions to the campus novel canon include Elif Batuman’s The Idiot (Penguin Press, 2017), Xochitl Gonzalez’s Anita de Monte Laughs Last (Flatiron Books, 2024), Kiley Reid’s Come and Get It (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2024), and Brandon Taylor’s Real Life (Riverhead Books, 2020). Will you include a character who is a student, teacher, administrative staff member, custodial worker or caretaker, or possibly an alumni revisiting the past? Consider the multitude of ways the incorporation of an educational environment might permeate the atmosphere of the narrative.

The Last Friend

“The day the last friend / dies / we sit alone. / A visitor / from outer space / tries hard / to summon us. / Someone says / EAT DEATH. / I fish around for answers / but the questions / still won’t come,” writes Jerome Rothenberg, who passed away in April, in his poem “The Last Friend.” Included in his collection of one hundred poems, A Book of Witness: Spells & Gris-Gris (New Directions, 2022), the poem presents a list of statements and observations, many of which refer to death or dying in some personal way, though the connections are enigmatic and the logical progression is oblique. Try your hand at writing a poem that mentions its subject directly, but which also deliberately obfuscates or remains ambiguous in its intentions. How might using the “I” as a witness include the reader into your point of view?

Mind Your Manners

The New York City culture and news website Gothamist recently asked New Yorkers about their thoughts on sidewalk etiquette in the crowded, bustling streets of their beloved city. What are the rules, who has the right-of-way, and who should yield? Respondents focused on always walking to the right of the sidewalk and to “move quickly and never stop.” One thoughtful respondent considered the cultural differences of sidewalks used for recreational strolls versus commuting. But the overall consensus was that among nine-to-fivers, tourists, parents with kids, dogwalkers, bicyclists, and groups, seniors deserve the right-of-way. Write an essay about the unwritten rules or etiquette you have observed in your daily surroundings. How have these common practices adapted to fit the needs of different people? Do they evolve over time as social norms change? Consider some of your own experiences with how public etiquette has helped or hindered harmonious community life.

The term sub rosa means “under the rose” in Latin and refers to something said or done in private. The rose has been associated with secrecy since ancient times, a decorative symbol often carved and painted in places like meeting rooms, banquet halls, and confessionals as reminders of confidentiality. This week write a short story that revolves around a conversation or discussion that occurs sub rosa in an enclosed space. Does a certain detail get leaked out or overheard? How might the secretive nature place a burden on your characters? Consider the ways in which the atmosphere and tone of your story feel distinctive in the time and space of your sub-rosa conversation versus the scenes that take place before or after the talk.

Wisdom in Translation

In the anthology Another Room to Live In: 15 Contemporary Arab Poets (Litmus Press, 2024) edited by Omar Berrada and Sarah Riggs, multinational and multilingual poet-translators challenge foundational narratives and rework mythologies through poetic expression. Yasmine Seale’s poem “Conventional Wisdom (Arabic Saying Translated Twenty Ways)” is composed of translations of an ancient aphorism expressing the inextricable place of poetry within Arab cultural heritage. Each line presents a variation on the truism: “Poetry is the record of the Arabs / The art of poetry is Arabs, collected / Good poetry is a list of Arabs / To speak in verse is to remain in Arab memory / To surpass another poet is the Arab odyssey.” Write a poem inspired by this idea of translating a proverb or maxim—either from another language or from English into English. How might you creatively interpolate different “translations” of the saying by incorporating connotations and riffing on free associations and personal experiences?

In Response

In a recent interview with Aria Aber for the Yale Review , when asked his thoughts on the responsibility of the poet, Jackson Prize–winning poet Fady Joudah says, “I often think that the responsibility of the poet is to strive to become the memory that people may possess in the future about what it means to be human: an ever-changing constant. In poetry, the range of metaphors and topics is limited, predictable, but the styles are innumerable. Think how we read poetry from centuries ago and are no longer bothered by its outdated diction. All that remains of old poetry is the music of what it means to be human.” Write a creative nonfiction piece that presents your personal theory of the responsibility of a writer or an artist. To construct an expansive approach, you might use observations about how different creative disciplines overlap in their goals, or consider what has remained resonant as the arts make their mark throughout various eras.

Earth to You

In honor of Earth Week, write a scene that revolves around a character who experiences an unexpected moment in a natural environment that produces a sensation of wonder, perhaps an unusual encounter with wild flora or fauna. You might contrast the elements of this scene with others in your story in which the character is interacting solely with humans or only attuned to the sounds, rhythms, and sights of city life and densely packed civilization. Is the occurrence mind-bogglingly quick and then reflected upon in hindsight, or does time slow down in the scene? How do you manage or manipulate the pacing and rhythm of your prose to draw attention to the emotional and psychological response of the character?

From Dirt Level

In Sharon Olds’s poem “May 1968,” the speaker recounts the memory of spending the night with other protesting students, who lay down their bodies on a New York City street at a university’s campus gates in order to obstruct the mounted police force that had been called in. While “spine-down on the cobbles,” she observes the city and surrounding scenery—the soaring buildings and the police and horses’ bodies—as she gazes upward, thinking about the state of her pregnant body. Write a poem this week from the vantage point of lying face-up, “from dirt level.” What circumstances bring you into this position? How does this upward point of view transform what you see, and how you feel about your own body?

More, please? Or, no more, please? In The Fast: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Promise of Doing Without (Avid Reader Press, 2024), John Oakes recounts his personal experience conducting a weeklong fast and examines the practice’s history and place within a wide range of religions and philosophies. The book also explores the act of self-deprivation and the potential transformative benefits of subtracting rather than adding to one’s life. “The act of fasting…won’t stop routine, but impedes it for a bit, signifying a shift and a determined unwillingness to follow standard operating procedure,” writes Oakes. Use this idea to consider your personal relationship with consumption—of food, conversation, media, clothes, space—and write a personal essay that reflects on what you might otherwise take for granted.

All in Your Head

In “Table for One,” a short story from Korean author Yun Ko-eun’s new collection of the same name, translated by Lizzie Buehler and published by Columbia University Press in April, a surreal quality seeps into the tale of a lonely office worker who enrolls in a course to make solitary dining easier. Tips from the course include: “Target corner tables rather than those in the middle. Seats at the bar are also good. Hang your coat or bag on the chair facing you and take advantage of tools like a book, earphones, a cell phone, or a newspaper.” The fantastic element of the story lies less in the oddity of the premise than in the narrator’s meticulously recounted neuroses and detailed rendering of processes that become seemingly cyclical. Write a scene that focuses on your character’s minute observations as they attempt to overcome something debilitating. Does the situation lend itself to a quirky or dark sense of humor?

Neither Questions nor Answers

“Where is the homeland / to lay a cradle for the dead / Where is the other shore / for poetry to step across the end point / Where is the peace / that lets the days distribute blue sky...” In Sidetracks , forthcoming in May from New Directions, the Chinese poet Bei Dao begins his book-length poem with a list of twenty-five enigmatic questions that dance around mythological, philosophical, and existential subjects. In Jeffrey Yang’s translation, the speaker’s questions lack the end punctuation of the original text, with question marks omitted. Through these unanswered questions, the poet conjures loss and nostalgia. Loosely following this structure, write a prologue to a poem that poses a series of questions gesturing toward your most pressing uncertainties. While Bei Dao’s lines are mysterious and mystical, allow your poem the tone and allusions that feel instinctive to you.

With Certainty

In a 1789 letter, Benjamin Franklin wrote the phrase, “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Franklin was reflecting on the establishment of the U.S. Constitution, which he said promised to be durable, as well as his own ailing health and mortality. This week write a personal essay that riffs off this proverb, reflecting on your own worldview about what can be certain. You might start off with the prompt: “In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death, taxes, and ______.” Tell the story of how you arrived at your own ideas about what you can always count on, whether good or bad. What past experiences, encounters, or memories seem to reinforce your belief?

About Our Writing Prompts

What is a writing prompt and how do you use one? Whether you find yourself in front of a blank page or stuck in a work-in-progress, writing prompts can offer a spark that ignites your creative thinking and can lead to new writing. Prompts offer guidance, fresh ideas, and direction for writers of all levels of experience. First, choose a prompt for the genre in which you’d like to write, then carefully read it and consider what it is asking you to think about. It could be a specific setting, a writing technique, or an element of an imagined character; a specific poem, story, essay, song, book, or film from which you might take inspiration; or a current event or a topical theme. A writing prompt is filled with endless possibilities—and there is no wrong way to use one to generate new writing!

What makes our writing prompts unique? We have an archive of over 2,000 prompts, all original and offered here and in our weekly newsletter . You’ll find a variety of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction prompts—some inspired by recent and classic literature and other forms of art, current events, and writing practices, and others that offer guidance for a particular form, including sonnets, erasure poetry, flash fiction, lyric essays, and more. For more than fifty years, Poets & Writers has supported creative writers with trustworthy information and inspiration, and our weekly prompts provide a regular dose of encouragement and motivation.

What are the benefits of using writing prompts? Writing prompts can help you get unstuck if you’re in a rut and the ideas aren’t flowing. But even if you’re not experiencing writer’s block, writing prompts can offer a fresh take or a new approach to a work-in-progress. Writing prompts can also provide the motivation to experiment with a new form, try out a new genre, or learn about other writing techniques. And writing prompts are an invaluable tool for teachers who want to encourage and inspire their writing students.

What is this list of Best Books? Best Books for Writers is a list of essential books for creative writers that we curate to support your writing practice. Every week, we add a book (whether new or a classic) with a synopsis and highlights. Included are books on the writing life, anthologies of craft essays, collections of lectures, practical guides with writing exercises, and more.

Poetry writing prompts Every Tuesday we post a new poetry prompt to guide you in your practice. Get to know the work of contemporary and classic poets, as well as a variety of poetic forms.

Fiction writing prompts Every Wednesday we post a new fiction prompt to spark your imagination. Take inspiration from recently published short stories and novels, and of course, the classics.

Creative nonfiction writing prompts Every Thursday we post a new creative nonfiction prompt to help your exploration of this ever-changing genre. These prompts include information and inspiration for a variety of essays as well as memoirs. Discover new writers and their craft, and fresh ways to generate writing inspired by your life.

Need a starter pack? Check out our Writing Prompts for Beginners .

70 Picture Prompts for Creative Writing (with Free Slides)

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Visual writing prompts help young writers generate new ideas and overcome writer’s block. We’ve put together 70 picture prompts for creative writing that you can use for morning work or in your writing centers or lesson plans to get your students’ creative juices flowing.

The Benefits of Using Visual Writing Prompts

Writers of all ages and experience levels can get stuck thinking about what to write. Writer’s block is not just a challenge for reluctant writers. Even professional writers have days when they feel less than inspired.

Visual prompts can result in a vast array of story ideas. A single image viewed by ten writers will result in ten completely different short stories. Even if you use verbal cues to get students thinking about the picture, each student will still write a unique response to the image.

Visual creative writing prompts are fantastic for elementary school because younger students often relate more to a pictorial prompt than a written one, but don’t shy away from using these with high school and middle school students as well. Pictures make a fun alternative to your typical writing prompts and story starters and can help shake up your regular English language arts routine.

How to Use Picture Prompts for Creative Writing

There’s no limit to the ways you can use writing prompts. Here are some of our favorite ways to incorporate image prompts into your weekly lesson plans .

• Writing Center. Print cards or writing pages with these images on them and put them in a writing center for your students to discover at their own pace.
• Specific Skills. Use story picture prompts to help kids work on specific writing skills. For example, you could work on descriptive writing by having them describe the setting of the picture in detail, character development by having them make up a history for a person (or animal) in the picture, or narrative writing by having them make up a story based on the picture.
• Warm-up Activity: Download the slides that accompany this post and project an image on a screen or whiteboard for the first fifteen minutes of class and have students work on a short story as soon as they enter. This helps jumpstart the creative process before you move into your regular writing program.
• Independent Work: If you need a fun activity for kids to do when they’ve completed their assignment and are waiting for other students’ to finish, keep a supply of these images on hand and challenge them to write flash fiction of 250 words or less while they wait.
• Sub binders: Want to have some easy, no-prep projects on hand for those days when you’re unexpectedly away? Elementary picture writing prompts are perfect for substitute teachers to do with your students in your absence.
• Distance learning: If you are working with students whom you don’t see face-to-face, picture writing prompts are a great way to inspire them. You can use them in a virtual lesson to kickstart a discussion on brainstorming story ideas or post a few of these images to your learning management system and let students select the one they want to write about.

No matter how you decide to use them—whether at home or in the classroom—photographic writing prompts are a great way to cultivate a daily writing habit and encourage kids to explore new topics.

Picture Writing Prompts for Kids

We’ve selected 70 of the most interesting pictures we could find for this exercise. When choosing photos for writing prompts, we look for high-quality photos with intriguing subject matter, but we try to go beyond that. We want to share images that suggest a story, that make the viewer ask questions and wonder why things are the way they are.

We want to feel propelled to explore questions like, What happened before the photo that led to this moment? What are we witnessing in this photo? What’s about to happen?

A photo doesn’t make much of a story starter if it doesn’t suggest that there might be a bigger picture lurking beneath the surface.

We hope you and your students love these picture prompts for creative writing as much as we do. If you love them, go ahead and fill out the form below to grab your own copy.

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We’ve included a couple of questions with each picture that you could use to spark pre-writing conversations in your classroom, which can be helpful when working with younger students who might need a little more direction.

Bear in mind though that some kids really struggle with these types of questions that ask them to make inferences about details that they can’t possibly know the ‘answer’ to. When you ask them things like, “What was the author probably trying to do?” they have no idea and won’t dare to hazard a guess. If you are working with kids who feel paralyzed by these questions, now is not the time to push them. Ignore the questions completely and have them simply focus on the picture.

It could be a good idea to write a few short stories yourself based on a single picture to show demonstrate how there are no wrong answers in this exercise—only endless possibilities.

70 Picture for Story Writing with Guiding Questions

• Whose cat is this? What is he looking at? Where is he?

2. What is the owl thinking about? Is he alone? What does he hope to eat for dinner?

3. Who are these frogs? What is their relationship with each other? Why are they taking photos?

4. How did the dog get a phone? Why is he taking selfies? What is he doing with the pictures he takes?

5. This cat doesn’t look too happy. What’s bugging him? Did he get too many phone calls or is he waiting on an important call that’s taking too long to come?

6. What do these chicks think of the dog? What does the dog think of the chicks? Do you think they can communicate with each other? If so, what would they say?

7. Where do these lemurs live? What are they looking at? What is something unusual that might happen to them?

8. What is this fox doing? Is he yawning and stretching or is he trying to scare someone away? What kind of mischief does he like to get up to?

9. Is this wolf alone? If not, who is with him? What is he planning to do? Does he have a family to feed or protect?

10. What is this child doing on the laptop? Can he actually read and type or is he just playing? If he can read and type, how did he learn that at such a young age? What other cool things can he do?

11. Where is this woman? Is she lost? How did she get to this street? What interesting things might she discover as she explores this new city?

12. Why is the dog wearing glasses? Can he see through them? What are he and the girl doing? How does he feel about it?

13. Who are these two little boys? What is their relationship with each other? What is the teddy bear’s story?

14. Who are these children? Why are they running? Is it a race or are they playing a game? Who’s going to win?

15. Whose horse is this? Does the little boy own it or does he just visit it? Can the horse talk? How does the boy feel when he’s with the horse?

16. What is this boy reading? Does the book have a magical power? Does the boy? Do the stories in the book become real or does something else special happen?

17. Where is this man? How did he get there? What is he looking for?

18. Who is walking over the bridge? What’s on the other side? Is it worth the risk?

19. What are these people doing on the elephant? Where are they? Are they tourists or is the elephant their pet? What would life with an elephant be like?

20. Who made this map? It looks old. Has it been hidden away for a long time? Who discovered it and how? What does it lead to?

21. Whose typewriter is this? What important or secretive thing might they be working on? What could happen if the wrong person finds their work?

22. Who are these three stuffed animals? Are they living? What is their story?

23. Whose ukulele is this? Why did they leave it here? Who might find it?

24. Where is the owner of the bike? Where does this path lead? What if the bike’s not there when the owner returns?

25. Whose shoes are these? Why did they leave them here? Why are they so dirty?

26. Who was reading the newspaper? What was the most interesting thing they read? Where have they disappeared to?

27. Who put this sign on the old truck? What do you think of it? How did the truck end up in its current condition and location?

28. Who set the table? Who are they expecting? What special occasion are they celebrating? What could go wrong?

29. Whose birthday cake is this? Are they having a party? Who is there? Who did they want to have there that didn’t show up?

30. Who lives here? How do they access their home? What is their life like?

31. Who built the igloo? Where is it? How does it feel to spend the night inside it?

32. What is the history of this castle? Who lives in it now? Does it have any special or magical features?

33. Is this barn abandoned or do people live on the property? What kind of animals might live here? How do they keep themselves entertained?

34. What is it like living on a houseboat? What kind of community do you think forms among the neighbors? Imagine you live on one of these boats and think about how your daily life might change. What interesting things could you do if you lived here? What would you miss the most?

35. Where is this hut? Who lives here? What mystery might unfold if a stranger came knocking at their door?

36. What is this lighthouse called? Who runs it? How often do they leave? What is the most memorable experience they’ve had as a lighthouse operator?

37. How did this house get here? Does anyone live in it? What would life be like here?

38. Where is this festive street? Are the people there celebrating something? Where is everybody?

39. Who lives here? How did they build this house? Are they hiding from something? What does it look like inside?

40. Whose notebook is this? Why did they leave it here? What’s written in it and how might it change the life of the person who finds it?

41. What are these women doing? What are they supposed to be doing? Will they be in trouble if they get caught?

42. Who might be represented in this statue? Why is she being pulled by lions? What amazing things might she have done to deserve a statue in this prominent place?

43. Where is this? Who is riding in the hot air balloons? Where are they going and why?

44. How old is this large tree? Where is it? What are some of the most fascinating stories it could tell?

45. Where is this carousel? Who is riding it? Can you think of a special or strange story about how it came to exist in this particular place?

46. What are these people thinking about? What’s at stake for them? What happens if one of them sneezes?

47. Where are these penguins? What are they talking about? Which one of them is the leader?

48. What is this place? Was it designed to be open like this or was it once part of someone’s home or a public building? How have people’s opinions of this place changed over time?

49. Who are these kids? Is this what they’re supposed to be doing? What happens when their teacher sees them?

50. Who is supposed to ride in this boat? Where are they going? Will they make it there?

51. Is this plane special to someone? What did they have to do to get it/build it? Where will they fly to in it?

52. Who decorated this train car? Which passengers will fill it up? What will they talk about?

53. Whose skis are these? Why are they sticking out of the snow? How did their owner get down the mountain without them?

54. Where does this gondola go? Who rides it? How does it feel to ride it?

55. Who’s driving the monster truck? Why is it at the beach? What is it going to crush? Who is watching?

56. Where is the boat going? Who is on it? What is their mission?

57. What city is the helicopter flying over? Why? Is the driver looking for something specific or do they have a special delivery?

58. What’s the little boy doing in the boat? Is he alone or is someone with him? Where is he trying to go?

59. Who is in the sub? What’s it like inside? What are they doing?

60. Whose book is this? What’s it about? What’s happening to it?

61. How did that piece of land with the house on it break off from the rest of the world? Why? Where is it going? Is anyone in the house?

62. Who is this girl? Where is she? Who is she shooting at?

63. Where does this scene take place? Is the lizard/dragon good or bad? What is its relationship with the girl?

64. What do these books represent? What kind of world is this? What (or who) is inside the books?

65. What are these dinosaurs discussing? Where are they? What do they do for fun?

66. Whose cottage is this? Do they still live there? If not, where have they gone? If so, what do they do there?

67. What is the moth thinking about? Is it alone? What’s the biggest challenge it faces in this moment?

68. Who is the owl looking at? Has it read these books? What is its greatest talent?

69. Where are these trees? Why are they pink? Do they have any special powers or features?

70. What are these best friends thinking about? Do they have something to hide? What adventures do they go on together?

What do you think? Which kind of pictures do you like best for creative writing prompts ? Let us know in the comments.

Thursday 9th of May 2024

I love this website because I was using it with my kindergartners and it work so so so well!!!!

Monday 20th of May 2024

That's wonderful. Thanks for sharing!

Tuesday 5th of March 2024

I LOVE these! My daughter has always struggled with written story prompts and an internet search this week convinced me of the value of picture prompts for reluctant readers/writers (https://youcanjournal.com/journal-picture-prompts/ if you're interested!). I'll definitely be using these to help improve her writing skills. Thanks so much!

Tuesday 26th of December 2023

I think the idea of using picture prompts is a great idea. It initiates oral language thus building vocabulary. It allows lends itself to students working in small groups to stimulate new ideas. The prompts engage the students and gives the teacher the opportunity to focus on specific writing skills.

luke elford

Wednesday 13th of December 2023

cloey mckay

Tuesday 17th of October 2023

I tried this with myself and my 6th-grade students, and they love it. it gives room for so much creativity.

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Teach Creative Writing In High School With 10 Fun Activities

Creative writing is a meaningful aspect of literature that mandates you to utilize your expertise, ingenuity, and story to depict a critical message, emotion, or plot. It defies the traditional bounds of other forms of writing and is completely subjective to our preferences and experiences. In creative writing, it’s all about imaginativeness!

Using creative imagination and originality to convey feelings and concepts in a unique way is at the heart of creative writing. Simply stated, it’s about infusing your own ‘flair’ into your writing, moving beyond academic or other technical kinds of literature. 

In this post, we will explore the various activities which would be advantageous for a high schooler who wishes to indulge in creative writing!

What Happens When Creative Writing Is Put To Use?

Creative writing is any form of writing that deviates from traditional professional, investigative journalism, educational, or technological forms of literature. It is typically distinguished by emphasizing narrative craft, character development, literary tropes, or various poetic traditions.

Here are the few ways how high schoolers can benefit from creative writing –

1. Imagination

When you write creatively, you expand your imagination by creating new environments, scenarios, and characters. This way, you are also boosting and stretching your imagination, as well as “thinking out of the box.” This allows you to concentrate your energy on many other things and improve your ability to find fresh ideas and alternatives to problems you’re having. Whether you’re a researcher or a businessman, creative writing will increase your imagination and help you think more creatively, and push the boundaries.

2. Empathy and Communications skills

When you create characters, you’ll be constructing emotions, personalities, behaviors, and world views that are distinct from your own. Writers must conceive personalities, emotions, places, and walks of life outside of their own lives while creating universes with fictional characters and settings.

This can give children a good dose of empathy and understanding for those who aren’t like them, who don’t live where they do or go through the same things they do daily. Writers are better equipped to communicate when they have a greater understanding of other points of view. They can come up with creative ways to explain and debate subjects from multiple perspectives. This ability is crucial in both professional and personal situations. 

3. Clarification of Thoughts 

Creating structures in creative writing allows you to organize your impressions and emotions into a logical procedure. You may express both your thoughts and your sentiments through creative writing. For example, if you’re a marketing executive, you could create a short tale in which your clientele reads your promotional emails. You can guess what they’re up to, where they’re seated, what’s around them, and so on.

This enables you to focus on the language and strategies you employ. Alternatively, if you’re a technical writer writing on a new desktop platform, you could create a creative scenario in which a user encounters a problem. 

4. Broadens Vocabulary and gets a better understanding of reading and writing

You’ll learn a larger vocabulary and a better understanding of the mechanics of reading and writing as you begin to practice writing exercises regularly. Even if you’re writing a budget report, you’ll know when rigid grammar standards work and when they don’t, and you’ll know what will make your writing flow better for your readers. Exploring different ways of expressing yourself when writing creatively allows you to extend your vocabulary.

You’ll notice a change in your use and range of language as you improve your writing over time, which will be useful in any professional route and social scenario. You’ll be able to bend and break the rules when you need to, to utilize your voice and make what you’re writing engaging without coming off as an amateur, dull, or inauthentic once you’ve grasped the fundamentals of writing professionally and creatively.

5. Building Self-Belief 

When you write creatively, you’re actively involved in an activity that allows you to fully develop your voice and point of view without being constrained. You have a better chance to investigate and express your feelings about various issues, opinions, ideas, and characters. And you’ll feel more at ease and secure stating your thoughts and perspectives in other things you write as a result of this.

Writers who don’t write creatively may be concerned about appearing authoritative or trustworthy. They accidentally lose their voice and sound like drones spouting statistics by omitting to include their perspective on the topics they’re writing about. As a result, they miss out on using their distinct voice and presenting themselves as an expert with real-world expertise.

Creative Writing Activities That Will Strengthen Your Writing Skills  

Short spurts of spontaneous writing make up creative writing activities. These writing exercises push a writer to tackle a familiar topic in a new way, ranging from one line to a lengthy tale. Short, spontaneous projects are common in creative writing programs, but any writer should make them a regular practice to extend their abilities and learn new tactics to approach a series of stories.

These activities must be performed for ten minutes at a time, several times a week – by creative writers. They’re designed to help you improve your writing abilities, generate fresh story ideas, and become a better writer.

1. Free Writing

Writing is the first and foremost activity that is going to give your creative writing a boost. Start with a blank page and let your stream of thoughts and emotions flow. Then simply begin writing. Don’t pause to think or alter what you’re expressing. This is known as “free writing.” This writing activity is referred to as “morning pages” by Julia Cameron, the author of ‘The Artist’s Way.’ She recommends that authors do this every day when they first wake up. Stream of consciousness writing can provide some intriguing concepts.

Allow your intellect to take the lead as your fingers type. Or write a letter to your younger self.  Consider a topic you’d like to discuss, such as a noteworthy event, and write it down. Give guidance or convey a message that you wish you had heard as a youngster or a young adult.

2. Modify a Storyline – Read

Most of us like to read. However, just reading won’t really help augment your creative writing skills. While reading bestows insight into the deeper meanings of numerous things, you need a more concrete approach to better your aptitude. To do this, you can modify any storyline. Take an episode from a chapter, if you’re feeling brave—from one of your favorite books and recreate it. Write it from the perspective of a different character. Swap out the main character in this exercise to examine how the story may be conveyed differently.

Take Percy Jackson’s thrilling conclusion, for instance, and rework it with Annabeth as the primary character. Another way to approach this creative activity is to keep the primary character but switch viewpoints. Rewrite a scene in the third person if the writer has told a story in the first person. 

3. Add Creative Writing Prompts or Create Flash Fiction

Use writing prompts, often known as narrative starters, to produce writing ideas. A writing prompt is a sentence or short excerpt that a writer uses to start composing a story on the spot. You can look up writing prompts online, pick a sentence out of a magazine at random, or use a brilliant line from a well-known work as the start of your short scene.

Another thing you can do to accentuate your writing is to create flash fiction. Sit down at your desktop or pick up a pen and paper and write a 500-word story on the spur of the moment. This isn’t the same as just writing whatever comes to mind. With no fixed guidelines, free writing generates a stream of consciousness. All of the basic components of a story arc, such as plot, conflict, and character development, are required in flash fiction, albeit in a shortened form.

4. Create a Fictitious Advertisement

Pick a random word from a nearby book or newspaper and create a fictitious commercial for it. Write one ad in a formal, abbreviated newspaper classified format to require you to pay special attention to your word choice to sell the item. Then write one for an online marketplace that allows for longer, more casual text, such as Craigslist. Describe the item and persuade the reader to purchase it in each one.

5. Engage in Conversations 

Engaging in conversations with your friends/family – or simply communicating can help brush up your writing skills. Talk to your loved ones about their hobbies, career, views on societal issues – any suitable topic for that matter. This helps implement others’ points of view and expands your mental ability. Another useful thing that you can do is – make another person’s tale and create it by implementing your own thoughts. Then talk about it in an impeccable manner. Also, talk in complete sentences. This goes to show your Linguistic intelligence proficiency – and helps augment your creative writing skills.

6. Create Your Own Website/Blog

Start your search for blogging. There are a million writing suggestions out there, but they all boil down to the same thing: write. Blogging is excellent writing practice because it gives you a place to write regularly.

To keep your fingers and mind nimble, write a post every day. Like most bloggers, you’ll want to restrict your subject—perhaps you’ll focus on parenting or start a how-to site where you can tell stories from your point of view.

7. Participate in Debates/Extempores  

Participating in debates, extempores – anchoring for your school function, giving a speech, all of these activities help boost your creative spirit. These group events make you understand what other people are envisioning, which in turn helps you generate new ideas, approaches, and methods. Not only do they improve your articulation and research skills, but they also develop critical thinking and emotional control abilities. All of these promote a better creative writing aptitude.

8. Start a YouTube Channel or Podcast 

Starting a YouTube channel or podcast will definitely level up your creative game. YouTube is a never-ending platform, covering myriads of topics. Choose a particular niche for your channel.

Then do your topic research, create content, manage SEO, approach brands, talk to clients and influencers – do all the good stuff. Communicating with other influencers and creating content will take your creative writing skills to another level. Starting a podcast will have a similar impact. 

9. Love them? Say it with your words!

We have many festivals, occasions, birthdays, parties, anniversaries and whatnot! You can employ these special days and boost your creative writing skills. You can make a token of love for them – writing about your feelings. You can also make gift cards, birthday cards, dinner menus, and so on. So let’s say, it’s your mother’s birthday, you can write her a token of love, elucidating your feelings and letting her know what all she’s done for you and that you’re grateful. Do this for all your near and dear ones. This not only spreads positivity and love but helps you develop your creative aptitude.

10. The What-if Game

The What-If game is an incredible way to upgrade your creative abilities. You can play this game with your friends, cousins, relatives, or solo. Here, you need to find links to many interesting hypothetical questions. For instance, what if the sun doesn’t rise for a week? What if there’s no oxygen for one minute? Play it with your peeps, or ask these questions to yourself. It can be anything random but concrete. If you don’t know the answers to the questions, look them up on Google. This way, you’re training your mind to learn new concepts all the while enhancing your visualization process. 

We can conclude that creative writing encourages students to think creatively, use their imaginations, imply alternatives, expand their thinking processes, and improve their problem-solving skills. It also allows the child to express themselves and grow their voice. Besides, it enhances reasoning abilities. The principle behind the creative writing concept is that everyone can gain the qualities that are needed to become a successful writer or, rather become good at writing. Creative writing is all about using language in new and innovative ways.

Sananda Bhattacharya, Chief Editor of TheHighSchooler, is dedicated to enhancing operations and growth. With degrees in Literature and Asian Studies from Presidency University, Kolkata, she leverages her educational and innovative background to shape TheHighSchooler into a pivotal resource hub. Providing valuable insights, practical activities, and guidance on school life, graduation, scholarships, and more, Sananda’s leadership enriches the journey of high school students.

Explore a plethora of invaluable resources and insights tailored for high schoolers at TheHighSchooler, under the guidance of Sananda Bhattacharya’s expertise. You can follow her on Linkedin

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11+ creative writing guide with 50 example topics and prompts

by Hayley | Nov 17, 2022 | Exams , Writing | 0 comments

The 11+ exam is a school entrance exam taken in the academic year that a child in the UK turns eleven.

These exams are highly competitive, with multiple students battling for each school place awarded.

The 11 plus exam isn’t ‘one thing’, it varies in its structure and composition across the country. A creative writing task is included in nearly all of the 11 plus exams, and parents are often confused about what’s being tested.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that the plot of your child’s writing task is important. It is not.

The real aim of the 11+ creative writing task is to showcase your child’s writing skills and techniques.

And that’s why preparation is so important.

This guide begins by answering all the FAQs that parents have about the 11+ creative writing task.

At the end of the article I give my best tips & strategies for preparing your child for the 11+ creative writing task , along with 50 fiction and non-fiction creative writing prompts from past papers you can use to help your child prepare. You’ll also want to check out my 11+ reading list , because great readers turn into great writers.

Do all 11+ exams include a writing task?

Not every 11+ exam includes a short story component, but many do. Usually 3 to 5 different prompts are given for the child to choose between and they are not always ‘creative’ (fiction) pieces. One or more non-fiction options might be given for children who prefer writing non-fiction to fiction.

Timings and marking vary from test to test. For example, the Kent 11+ Test gives students 10 minutes for planning followed by 30 minutes for writing. The Medway 11+ Test gives 60 minutes for writing with ‘space allowed’ on the answer booklet for planning.

Tasks vary too. In the Kent Test a handful of stimuli are given, whereas 11+ students in Essex are asked to produce two individually set paragraphs. The Consortium of Selective Schools in Essex (CCSE) includes 2 creative writing paragraphs inside a 60-minute English exam.

Throughout the UK each 11+ exam has a different set of timings and papers based around the same themes. Before launching into any exam preparation it is essential to know the content and timing of your child’s particular writing task.

However varied and different these writing tasks might seem, there is one key element that binds them.

The mark scheme.

Although we can lean on previous examples to assess how likely a short story or a non-fiction tasks will be set, it would be naïve to rely completely on the content of past papers. Contemporary 11+ exams are designed to be ‘tutor-proof’ – meaning that the exam boards like to be unpredictable.

In my online writing club for kids , we teach a different task each week (following a spiral learning structure based on 10 set tasks). One task per week is perfected as the student moves through the programme of content, and one-to-one expert feedback ensures progression. This equips our writing club members to ‘write effectively for a range of purposes’ as stated in the English schools’ teacher assessment framework.

This approach ensures that students approaching a highly competitive entrance exam will be confident of the mark scheme (and able to meet its demands) for any task set.

Will my child have a choice of prompts to write from or do they have to respond to a single prompt, without a choice?

This varies. In the Kent Test there are usually 5 options given. The purpose is to gather a writing sample from each child in case of a headteacher appeal. A range of options should allow every child to showcase what they can do.

In Essex, two prescriptive paragraphs are set as part of an hour-long English paper that includes comprehension and vocabulary work. In Essex, there is no option to choose the subject matter.

The Medway Test just offers a single prompt for a whole hour of writing. Sometimes it is a creative piece. Recently it was a marketing leaflet.

The framework for teaching writing in English schools demands that in order to ‘exceed expectations’ or better, achieve ‘greater depth’, students need to be confident writing for a multitude of different purposes.

In what circumstances is a child’s creative writing task assessed?

In Essex (east of the UK) the two prescriptive writing tasks are found inside the English exam paper. They are integral to the exam and are assessed as part of this.

In Medway (east Kent in the South East) the writing task is marked and given a raw score. This is then adjusted for age and double counted. Thus, the paper is crucial to a pass.

In the west of the county of Kent there is a different system. The Kent Test has a writing task that is only marked in appeal cases. If a child dips below the passmark their school is allowed to put together a ‘headteacher’s appeal’. At this point – before the score is communicated to the parent (and probably under cover of darkness) the writing sample is pulled out of a drawer and assessed.

I’ve been running 11+ tutor clubs for years. Usually about 1% of my students passed at headteacher’s appeal.

Since starting the writing club, however, the number of students passing at appeal has gone up considerably. In recent years it’s been more like 5% of students passing on the strength of their writing sample.

What are the examiners looking for when they’re marking a student’s creative writing?

In England, the government has set out a framework for marking creative writing. There are specific ‘pupil can’ statements to assess whether a student is ‘working towards the expected standard,’ ‘working at the expected standard’ or ‘working at greater depth’.

Members of the headteacher panel assessing the writing task are given a considerable number of samples to assess at one time. These expert teachers have a clear understanding of the framework for marking, but will not be considering or discussing every detail of the writing sample as you might expect.

Schools are provided with a report after the samples have been assessed. This is very brief indeed. Often it will simply say ‘lack of precise vocabulary’ or ‘confused paragraphing.’

So there is no mark scheme as such. They won’t be totting up your child’s score to see if they have reached a given target. They are on the panel because of their experience, and they have a short time to make an instant judgement.

Does handwriting matter?

Handwriting is assessed in primary schools. Thus it is an element of the assessment framework the panel uses as a basis for their decision.

If the exam is very soon, then don’t worry if your child is not producing immaculate, cursive handwriting. The focus should simply be on making it well-formed and legible. Every element of the assessment framework does not need to be met and legible writing will allow the panel to read the content with ease.

Improve presentation quickly by offering a smooth rollerball pen instead of a pencil. Focus on fixing individual letters and praising your child for any hint of effort. The two samples below are from the same boy a few months apart. Small changes have transformed the look and feel:

Sample 1: First piece of work when joining the writing club

Sample 2: This is the same boy’s improved presentation and content

How long should the short story be.

First, it is not a short story as such—it is a writing sample. Your child needs to showcase their skills but there are no extra marks for finishing (or marks deducted for a half-finished piece).

For a half hour task, you should prepare your child to produce up to 4 paragraphs of beautifully crafted work. Correct spelling and proper English grammar is just the beginning. Each paragraph should have a different purpose to showcase the breadth and depth of their ability. A longer – 60 minute – task might have 5 paragraphs but rushing is to be discouraged. Considered and interesting paragraphs are so valuable, a shorter piece would be scored more highly than a rushed and dull longer piece.

I speak from experience. A while ago now I was a marker for Key Stage 2 English SATs Papers (taken in Year 6 at 11 years old). Hundreds of scripts were deposited on my doorstep each morning by DHL. There was so much work for me to get through that I came to dread long, rambling creative pieces. Some children can write pages and pages of repetitive nothingness. Ever since then, I have looked for crafted quality and am wary of children judging their own success by the number of lines competed.

Take a look at the piece of writing below. It’s an excellent example of a well-crafted piece.

Each paragraph is short, but the writer is skilful.

He used rich and precisely chosen vocabulary, he’s broken the text into natural paragraphs, and in the second paragraph he is beginning to vary his sentence openings. There is a sense of control to the sentences – the sentence structure varies with shorter and longer examples to manage tension. It is exciting to read, with a clear awareness of his audience. Punctuation is accurate and appropriate.

11+ creative writing example story

How important is it to revise for a creative writing task.

It is important.

Every student should go into their 11+ writing task with a clear paragraph plan secured. As each paragraph has a separate purpose – to showcase a specific skill – the plan should reflect this. Built into the plan is a means of flexing it, to alter the order of the paragraphs if the task demands it. There’s no point having a Beginning – Middle – End approach, as there’s nothing useful there to guide the student to the mark scheme.

Beyond this, my own students have created 3 – 5 stories that fit the same tight plan. However, the setting, mood and action are all completely different. This way a bank of rich vocabulary has already been explored and a technique or two of their own that fits the piece beautifully. These can be drawn upon on the day to boost confidence and give a greater sense of depth and consideration to their timed sample.

Preparation, rather than revision in its classic form, is the best approach. Over time, even weeks or months before the exam itself, contrasting stories are written, improved upon, typed up and then tweaked further as better ideas come to mind. Each of these meets the demands of the mark scheme (paragraphing, varied sentence openings, rich vocabulary choices, considered imagery, punctuation to enhance meaning, development of mood etc).

To ensure your child can write confidently at and above the level expected of them, drop them into my weekly weekly online writing club for the 11+ age group . The club marking will transform their writing, and quickly.

What is the relationship between the English paper and the creative writing task?

Writing is usually marked separately from any comprehension or grammar exercises in your child’s particular 11+ exam. Each exam board (by area/school) adapts the arrangement to suit their needs. Some have a separate writing test, others build it in as an element of their English paper (usually alongside a comprehension, punctuation and spelling exercise).

Although there is no creative writing task in the ISEB Common Pre-test, those who are not offered an immediate place at their chosen English public school are often invited back to complete a writing task at a later date. Our ISEB Common Pre-test students join the writing club in the months before the exam, first to tidy up the detail and second to extend the content.

What if my child has a specific learning difficulty (dyslexia, ADD/ADHD, ASD)?

Most exam boards pride themselves on their inclusivity. They will expect you to have a formal report from a qualified professional at the point of registration for the test. This needs to be in place and the recommendations will be considered by a panel. If your child needs extra arrangements on the day they may be offered (it isn’t always the case). More importantly, if they drop below a pass on one or more papers you will have a strong case for appeal.

Children with a specific learning difficulty often struggle with low confidence in their work and low self-esteem. The preparations set out above, and a kids writing club membership will allow them to go into the exam feeling positive and empowered. If they don’t achieve a pass at first, the writing sample will add weight to their appeal.

Tips and strategies for writing a high-scoring creative writing paper

• Read widely for pleasure. Read aloud to your child if they are reluctant.
• Create a strong paragraph plan where each paragraph has a distinct purpose.
• Using the list of example questions below, discuss how each could be written in the form of your paragraph plan.
• Write 3-5 stories with contrasting settings and action – each one must follow your paragraph plan. Try to include examples of literary devices and figurative language (metaphor, simile) but avoid clichés.
• Tidy up your presentation. Write with a good rollerball pen on A4 lined paper with a printed margin. Cross out with a single horizontal line and banish doodling or scribbles.
• Join the writing club for a 20-minute Zoom task per week with no finishing off or homework. An expert English teacher will mark the work personally on video every Friday and your child’s writing will be quickly transformed.

Pressed for time? Here’s a paragraph plan to follow.

At Griffin Teaching we have an online writing club for students preparing for the 11 plus creative writing task . We’ve seen first-hand what a difference just one or two months of weekly practice can make.

That said, we know that a lot of people reading this page are up against a hard deadline with an 11+ exam date fast approaching.

If that’s you (or your child), what you need is a paragraph plan.

Here’s one tried-and-true paragraph plan that we teach in our clubs. Use this as you work your way through some of the example prompts below.

11+ creative writing paragraph plan

Paragraph 1—description.

Imagine standing in the location and describe what is above the main character, what is below their feet, what is to their left and right, and what is in the distance. Try to integrate frontend adverbials into this paragraph (frontend adverbials are words or phrases used at the beginning of a sentence to describe what follows—e.g. When the fog lifted, he saw… )

Paragraph 2—Conversation

Create two characters who have different roles (e.g. site manager and student, dog walker and lost man) and write a short dialogue between them. Use what we call the “sandwich layout,” where the first person says something and you describe what they are doing while they are saying it. Add in further descriptions (perhaps of the person’s clothing or expression) before starting a new line where the second character gives a simple answer and you provide details about what the second character is doing as they speak.

Paragraph 3—Change the mood

Write three to four sentences that change the mood of the writing sample from light to gloomy or foreboding. You could write about a change in the weather or a change in the lighting of the scene. Another approach is to mention how a character reacts to the change in mood, for example by pulling their coat collar up to their ears.

Paragraph 4—Shock your reader

A classic approach is to have your character die unexpectedly in the final sentence. Or maybe the ceiling falls?

11+ creative writing questions from real papers—fictional prompts

• The day the storm came
• The day the weather changed
• The snowstorm
• The rainy day
• A sunny day out
• A foggy (or misty) day
• A day trip to remember
• The first day
• The day everything changed
• The mountain
• The hillside
• The old house
• The balloon
• The old man
• The accident
• The unfamiliar sound
• A weekend away
• Moving house
• A family celebration
• An event you remember from when you were young
• An animal attack
• The school playground at night
• The lift pinged and the door opened. I could not believe what was inside…
• “Run!” he shouted as he thundered across the sand…
• It was getting late as I dug in my pocket for the key to the door. “Hurry up!” she shouted from inside.
• I know our back garden very well, but I was surprised how different it looked at midnight…
• The red button on the wall has a sign on it saying, ‘DO NOT TOUCH.’ My little sister leant forward and hit it hard with her hand. What happened next?
• Digging down into the soft earth, the spade hit something metal…
• Write a story which features the stopping of time.
• Write a story which features an unusual method of transport.
• The cry in the woods
• Write a story which features an escape

11+ creative writing questions from real papers—non-fiction prompts

• Write a thank you letter for a present you didn’t want.
• You are about to interview someone for a job. Write a list of questions you would like to ask the applicant.
• Write a letter to complain about the uniform at your school.
• Write a leaflet to advertise your home town.
• Write a thank you letter for a holiday you didn’t enjoy.
• Write a letter of complaint to the vet after an unfortunate incident in the waiting room.
• Write a set of instructions explaining how to make toast.
• Describe the room you are in.
• Describe a person who is important to you.
• Describe your pet or an animal you know well.

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Creative Writing in the Early Elementary Grades

A project that incorporates both standard and creative elements of storytelling can help young learners strengthen their literacy skills.

What can creative writing look, feel, and sound like in a first grade classroom? How can creative writing become a joyful and meaningful learning experience, and how can we educators facilitate the creative process and allow young writers to use their imagination when writing?

Graphic organizers, mind maps, and storyboards are certainly great tools for narrative building and planning, but they do not necessarily scaffold the creative process that story writing requires. In reality, they might even restrict students’ creativity while they “box” ideas in predetermined templates. This year, in my class, going play-based and hands-on has turned out to be a tremendous success.

Examining Elements of Creative Writing in First Grade 

For this particular unit, my first grade students were examining literature and storytelling. After they had enjoyed several read-alouds, explored story elements, and studied the story mountain (beginning, rising action, conflict, resolution, and ending) as a team, it was time for them to write their very own stories. 

They kicked off by creating their main character and decided on the character’s appearance, personality, likes, and dislikes. They also had the choice to play the main character role in the story. In both cases, while still brainstorming, it was time for action: They drew and decorated their characters with markers and pencils, cut them out, and used a Popsicle stick to make a puppet.

They became even more motivated to continue as they saw their characters come to life. My students spontaneously started interacting with each other and their puppets—creating stories and being imaginative—they went right into storytelling mode. This created the perfect opportunity for me to step back and observe my students’ initiative, creativity, and social and communication skills, not to mention their sense of accomplishment and joy. 

Adding Artful Components to the Story

After they had engaged with their characters and interacted with others, it was time for the young writers to further develop their stories and think of a scenario leading to the rising action and resolution. This was the point when loose parts played a crucial role in the storytelling process. Counters, pipe cleaners, bits of paper, pebbles, dice, and buttons became houses, trees, magic wands, you name it. These bits and bobs from around the classroom became a valuable, zero-cost resource. 

While students actively arranged and rearranged their chosen loose parts, they wondered about what would happen next in their stories. Unexpectedly, some students chose to collaborate and co-created stories by joining their imagination and characters in one story. In this step of the creative process, the use of loose parts was truly empowering: Before jotting anything down in their notebooks, my students physically, mentally, and verbally constructed their narratives and shared them with their partners. 

Turning Ideas Into Words

With the mental representation of their narratives ready, it was all a matter of scribing their ideas. For that, we followed our usual class routines and resources such as word banks, sentence starters, and buddy support. All my students were engaged and confident, and when struggling with ideas, they resorted to loose parts again. As my first grade is a multicultural classroom, some of my students needed language support . However, with all of them hooked on their stories, supporting those who needed help with vocabulary, sentence construction, and spelling was simplified. 

I conferred with students individually and in small groups to understand their thinking and offered feedback on paragraphing and some word choice. Instead of using notebooks for their first drafts, they chose to use mini-boards, which motivated them even more and supported them to make quick adjustments to their narratives. Finally, after receiving feedback, they moved on to writing their final drafts and designing their covers in order to turn their stories into books. Each student took their book home to share it with their family after reading it with the class.

Sharing Stories and Making Memorable Learning Experiences

What good is a book if it isn’t read and enjoyed? Buddy reading was the last step of the process but certainly not the least exciting. My students read aloud to each other, commenting on their favorite bits of the story and appreciating the illustrations. The whole project, from getting their characters ready to publishing and reading their books, took around five hours divided into five days. 

When reflecting on the writing process, my students said that what they appreciated the most was the making of their puppets and illustrating their stories, highlighting the importance of integrating arts and writing. When asked about what was challenging, they replied that it was creating all the parts of the story mountain. However, they all said that using loose parts was a helpful strategy that they would use again—which they spontaneously have done in subsequent writing engagements. Lastly, when asked how they felt, some of the words they used were “proud,” “good,” and “joyful!”

A recent UNESCO report on the importance of happiness in learning refers to neuroscience research that proves our affective and cognitive domains are interconnected and interdependent. Therefore, emotions do affect learning! Joy is not a trade-off for academic achievement. Creating positive learning experiences makes learning stick.

Very often, students fear and avoid writing as a consequence of previous negative writing experiences. Combining art and a play-based approach to creative writing in first grade can set students on a path to success by building on their confidence, creativity, imagination, and sense of accomplishment. I have witnessed that the integration of art and writing has helped my students discover how writing can be a joyful and memorable experience where they can all be amazing storytellers and writers.