I want to improve my writing skills! 12 creative writing exercises

There’s an open Word file in front of you. Or maybe a blank piece of paper if you are one of the more traditional types. You have a warm cup of coffee, and the desk is completely clear. You should start writing, but…

If you’ve read everything there’s available on how to overcome a writer’s block and your mind is still blank, don’t worry—this article will help you get a little inspiration. Sometimes, all we need is a few writing exercises to help us get started.

Maybe what comes out of these exercises makes it to the final version, or maybe it only serves to set your writing free. Either way, these exercises can give you writing ideas, and they are interesting (and fun!) writing activities to have on hand.

1 – Exercises of potential literature

Most of the potential writing exercises were created by an experimental literary group named Oulipo. What do these exercises imply? They are constrained writing exercises: according to the theory, if you limit your possibilities when writing, you activate other parts of your creativity and you unlock other possible paths. Hence the potentiality of these exercises. 

Potential writing exercises are very playful; the first rule is not to judge what you are producing. When you finish, you’ll surely find jewels that will give you great ideas to write stories. 

Let’s look at some exercises: 

• Exercise 1: The alphabet. Write a text in which the first word starts with “a,” the second with “b,” the third with “c” and so on. The result should be a text of 26 words: you can’t add words in the middle nor omit letters. 

For example:

A bumblebee came dancing, entering from green hackberries…

Adam bakes cakes daily. Emma, frankly, goes home immediately.

• Exercise 2: The line stretcher. Write two sentences: a first sentence (A) and a last sentence (B). Then write another sentence (C) between A and B, trying not to change the meaning of the text. Then, add a fourth sentence D between A and C, and a fifth sentence E between C and B. Continue adding as many sentences as possible in this way, without changing the meaning of the text.

For example:

John went to visit Mary. When he arrived, she wasn’t there. 

John went to visit Mary. He was afraid he’d be late. When he arrived, she wasn’t there. 

John went to visit Mary. He left his house with little time. He was afraid he’d be late. He really wanted to see her. When he arrived, she wasn’t there. 

2 – Exercises of automatic writing 

Writing without thinking is a great exercise. Many times, our mind plays tricks on us, and filters potentially good ideas. Therefore, many authors use this technique to start when they don’t know what to write: they let the words out without giving the brain time to decide if something is right or not.

When doing these exercises, you shouldn’t stop to read what you’ve written. Ideally, you can set a time (for example, 5 minutes) in which you won’t stop writing.

Let’s look at some examples of automatic writing:

• Exercise 3: Writing everything perceived through the senses. Without stopping to think, make a list of all the things that are happening in front of your eyes, what you smell, what you hear, how you feel.

For example:

In the construction site across the street they are hammering on something metallic. There’s a hint of toasted bread in the air. The cat is lying down on the balcony. There’s a wine bottle on the table and there are lots of books on the desk. I should put them away. One of those books belongs to my sister. When will I give it back to her? When will I see her? I miss her.

• Exercise 4: Creating a text based on random words. You need someone to say unrelated words every few seconds. The exercise consists in listening to those words and including them in a text that should be coherent.

In the following paragraph, the underlined words are the ones said out loud randomly:

In the park, there are children playing. The woman watches them through the window, but she’s not paying attention to them. She’s thinking about the day before. At the construction site, she saw the sunset and took some photos. Then, she edited them on her computer and invited a friend to see them with her. 

 3 – Ideas to write: Dreams 

A good place to get images for creative writing is our dreams. They tend to be full of strange images and unconventional situations. In addition, dreams say a lot about us. All of this can help you write an original and creative text. 

Writing down your dreams can be a therapeutic writing exercise, but you can also get many ideas for a novel, a short story or a poem. Let’s look at some exercises: 

• Exercise 5: Writing down a dream with lots of detail. Try to remember as much as possible: settings, textures, landscapes, people. Once it’s written, you can add or remove things, pick up some ideas, change names and/or develop the situations that are interesting to you. 

And here’s a tip for you: always have a notebook on your bedside table. Writing down dreams as soon as we wake up (even at dawn!) is key to remembering everything.

• Exercise 6: Asking a friend to tell you about their dream. It can be a beautiful dream or a nightmare. Since it’s not your subconscious you’ll be delving into, the distance will allow you to explore other meanings and ideas for stories.

4 – Writing from structure

Maybe you have a different kind of problem. Maybe you already have an idea to write a novel, or certain hypotheses you want to develop in your story, but you don’t know where to start. In this case, structure can be very helpful.

Yes, “structure” is a dirty word when talking about creative processes, but it often comes in handy. It allows you to organize ideas. It helps to distinguish what’s important and what’s not, and it guides you in putting the important ideas in order. Let’s look at some exercises: 

• Exercise 7: Answering 5 questions. You have to decide on a topic, a title (we have a few tips for choosing a good title for your book), characters (we also have tips for you to create the best characters!), the settings, and the objects that are going to be used. When all of this is clear, you can start writing. 

For example:

• What’s the topic? A young man doesn’t want to continue with the family business (a bakery).

• What’s the title? A tough decision
• Who are the characters? Martin (the young man), Sandra (Martin’s mother), Tobby (Martin’s boyfriend), Julie (Martin’s sister).
• Which are the settings? The family house, Toby’s house, the bakery.
• Which objects are relevant? A diploma, a ledger, a rolling pin, a camera.
  
• Exercise 8: Posing a question and proposing a hypothesis. The question will be the title of the text, which will develop the hypothesis as an answer. You can use characters and actions (to create a narrative text) or not (to create a more poetic text). But be careful! We are not talking about an argumentative text: it’s still a fictional text. You have to think how the characters will develop the hypothesis with their actions. 

For example:

• Question: What is love?
• Hypothesis: Love is what makes the world go round.
• Development: A story in which the characters’ main motivation is love. 

5 – Describing an object

Looking for an object and describing it is one of the most used ideas for creative writing. And it makes sense! The idea is to focus only on describing something, whether big or small, leaving out other issues of the story. Thus, you can create much deeper and more detailed descriptions.

Usually, these exercises are looking for “estrangement”: to show the reality around us in an estranged way. They are very useful to lose the fear of writing and to start playing with colors, smells, textures, shapes… Let’s see some examples. 

• Exercise 9: Acting like you’re from another planet. Take any everyday object and try to describe it as if you’ve never seen it before.

For example:

It is a rectangular element, of about 15 centimeters by 7 centimeters, almost flat. It has something plastic, soft, on the outside. Lights shine from one of the sides, and shapes are projected when I run my finger over it. Sounds and images come out of it.

• Exercise 10: Choosing a photo of an old painting. Once you choose it, you have to focus on some object or particularity that catches your eye (it’s better if you don’t know what it is). Then, describe the object using only the information from the painting. 

For example:

There’s a brown semicircle, with some holes on the left side. The semicircle has irregular, grip-like endings.

6 – The Deceleration Resource 

Deceleration is a widely used resource to write fiction. It looks similar to exercise 2 (the “line stretcher”), although this one has another goal. It’s about taking a very short moment and describing it in detail. It is also a very entertaining creative writing game!

It’s similar to the exercise of describing an object, but in this case, it’s the description of a particular fact. It generates a surprise, since the focus is not on the action or the general moment, but on the thousands of particles that make up each situation.

Let’s look at some exercises we can do to create a deceleration: 

• Exercise 11: Decomposing an everyday action as much as possible. It can be something as simple as brushing your teeth, as in the example below:

I go into the bathroom, I raise my hand, I grab the toothbrush, I open the tap, I put the toothbrush under the water, I close the tap, I grab the toothpaste, I open it, I bring it closer to the toothbrush, I squeeze the knob a little, I let a little paste fall on the brush, I close the toothpaste.

• Exercise 12: Taking a more general situation and breaking it down. Describing the feelings, the thoughts, the actions, the movements… The most famous example of deceleration is chapter 7 of Hopscotch, a novel by Julio Cortázar, in which the moment before a kiss is described in great detail.

Conclusion

All the creative writing exercises we’ve seen in this article have the objective of turning off your head a little and getting to writing, regardless of the result. Also, all writing exercises can be altered or adapted to fit your interests. For example, you can do a combination of the slowing down and the object description activities, or you can go to a very busy street to do the automatic writing exercise. There, you can take the words you hear from conversations and include them in your text.

In all cases, once you’ve finished the writing exercise, you have to do a rewriting job: see what’s interesting about what you’ve written, if anything. In the worst case, everything can go to the recycling bin, but at least it will serve as a warm up.

The important thing, in the end, is creating the habit of writing, because a routine is a great ally in the creative process (as we develop in this article on the routines of the great writers).

Now there are no excuses. It’s time to write!