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The Best Creative Writing Activities for Engaging Your Learners
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Great creative writing teachers are very passionate about literature, and because of them many of their students will continue to pursue creative writing outside of school. Those teachers also impact learners because of the great creative writing activities they use to get the students' imaginations to run free.
Here are some creative writing activities and prompts that will honor your students’ imaginations. Let them free their muses to soar.
Creative Writing Activities to Explore
This terrific list of activities come from Marcus Roskilly in the UK:
- Free Writing —5 minutes to write on a “spark word” determined by the teacher. Then pair and share.
- Flying Balls —Bouncy Castle balls with an opening sentence written on each. Toss a random one to a student who continues the “ball rolling” with a further thought or another sentence on the first. The ball is then tossed to another student who does the same.
- Modelling —Show them examples of good, interesting writing. Key in on students’ interests.
- Character —Show random pictures of people from the Internet. Develop a character from the image using prompt questions provided by the teacher.
- Skills Lessons —Teach writer’s craft elements in chunks and focus on specific ones at a time. Examples are dialogue, developing setting, conflict, narrative point of view, etc.
- Music —Play low-volume atmospheric instrumental background music while students are working.
- Learning Outcome and Success Criteria —Helping them know and understand the goal or outcome they are striving for and where they are going allows them to stay focused.
Other Engaging Approaches
Here are some select creative writing activities from Caroline Swicegood :
- Life is Not Like a Box of Chocolates: Use the prompt: “Life is like a box of…” You fill in the blank and go from there.
- No-Send Letters: If you know you’ll never send a letter to someone of your choice, what would you write on it?
- Raising Voices: Teacher creates character names, ages, and occupations, and assigns one character to each student. They create a monologue for that character.
- Mixing Up Metaphors: Brainstorm overused metaphor phrases. Replace the last word of each metaphor with something creative and unexpected.
- Found Poetry: Camera scavenger hunt around the campus—locate signs, labels, notes, words and snap pictures. Compile pictures in class and compose poetry (or create a collage) using only those words.
Creative Writing Prompts
Some prompts from Buzzfeed’s 23 Of The Most Creative College Essay Prompts From 2014–2015
- “You’ve just reached your one millionth hit on your YouTube video. What is the video about?”
- “If you were to write the story of your life until now, what would you title it and why?”
- “What’s a question that has changed how you understand the world? What changed?”
- “Design your own three-and-a-half week course and describe what you would do.”
- “A good story starts with a good beginning. Get us hooked in the first 150 words.”
- “What one invention would you uninvent if you could, and why?”
Teachers who display an infectious passion for great creative writing can inspire us to great heights. They will know how to tap into students’ genius. It might take a simple interesting prompt that spurs their imagination.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
Originally published Mar 30, 2018, updated September 19, 2021
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20 Creative Writing Activities for Elementary Students
March 29, 2022 // by Milka Kariuki
Writing activities have an emotional toll on young learners, given the sheer volume of letters to learn by heart, words to spell, and sounds to remember. Your students will be more excited doing tasks they consider easier, such as character description. Perhaps it’s time you considered introducing fun activities to help the learners in their writing. Here are 20 of our go-to fun activities for creative writing skills among elementary kids.
1. Writing a Comic Strip
Create a comic book idea, leaving the speech bubbles around the characters empty for the students to fill. Alternatively, you can source the comic from your favorite magazine or author and rub out the dialogue between the characters for the learners to complete.
Learn more: My Cup Runs Over
2. Mad Libs
Have the students copy a few paragraphs from a famous book. Ask them to erase words they wish to remove and replace them with a blank line. Under the space, the students should give a hint to indicate the required type of phrase or word.
3. Vocabulary Challenge
Select a new word for the learners and explain its meaning to them. Ask them to create a sentence using the new term. Tell them to practice writing an entire story based on this word.
Learn more: First Cry Parenting
4. Using an I-Spy Jar
Ask a reluctant writer to practice writing their names by fetching and arranging all the letters that make it. For an older writer, ask them to pick an object from the jar, redraw it and give a brief description of what it is or the scene.
Learn more: Imagination Tree
5. Identifying Objects
This reading and writing game is suitable for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten-aged students. Ask them to color the object highlighted in the descriptive sentence. It enhances their fine motor skills, memories, and emotion.
Learn more: Kids Learning with Mom
6. Picture Dictionary
The goal of picture dictionaries will help early learners who are struggling with creative writing exercises and reading skills. Ask children to match the words provided at the top to the activities being performed in the pictures. This reading and writing activity can be developed for individuals, families, or the classroom.
Learn more: Childrensbooks
7. Journal writing
Journal writing works for learners who excel in creative stories or drawing. Have your students engaged in daily writing tasks. For instance, what food did they eat for lunch or a boring character in a favorite piece of writing?
8. Roll a Story
Roll a story will have the learners enjoy rolling dice to discover the character or scene they will be exploring in their writing. Examples of a scene they can get include casino, school, or ancient pyramid.
Learn more: Teachers Pay Teachers
9. Copy-writing
On a drawing paper, make a word entry and ask the pupils to highlight it with a paintbrush or crayon. These creative writing exercises' goal is to enhance the learner’s artistic, emotional, and fine motor skills .
Learn more: Little Learners
10. Pass-it-on Story Writing
This writing game engages the language input of creative writing classes. Write the first scene of a story on a piece of paper. Have the learners come up with a sentence that continues the story. The paper is then passed on to the next child until every student has written something.
Learn more: Minds in Bloom
11. Sentence Scramble Writing
This writing activity's goal is to help children to improve their writing and sentence-building abilities. Ask the child to cut out the words at the bottom of the paper and rearrange them correctly to form a sentence.
Learn more: Twinkl
12. Picture Writing Prompts
Creative writing prompts activities test not only imagination but also a learner’s ability to make conversation on behalf of characters. Provide an entry with a picture accompanied by 3-4 writing prompts to guide them in exploring the scene. A sample question for the scene above will be, “Do the lambs feel safe with the lion?”
Learn more: Homeschool Adventure
13. Cut Out My Name
Help your kindergarten students in writing their names with this fun writing activity. Print out the learner’s name. Next, print the letters of the pupil’s name and mix them with a few random characters. Cut them apart and ask them to sort out the letters in their name.
Learn more: Simply Kinder
Writing cards helps students to engage in purposeful moments. Provide the learners with blank holiday or birthday cards. Ask them to draw or write something to the card’s receiver. Alternatively, students can design their cards and write down the desired message.
Learn more: Learn with Homer
15. Grocery List
Sit down with the child and help them write a list of healthy food items or other household objects you require. In the grocery store, have them cross out the items as they are added to the shopping cart.
Learn more: Kids Night in Box
16. Label a Diagram
Engage your child’s reading and writing abilities by printing out a diagram of simple objects such as flowers, insects, or external human body parts. Provide a list of the answers to the parts and ask them to write the word that matches each in the blank space.
Learn more: Classroom Freebies Too
17. Disappearing Words
On a chalkboard, write down a word. Ask the learners to erase the word with a wet sponge. This way, the learners will learn how to design the letters of the alphabet. Although this writing activity is the opposite of copywriting, they both serve the same purpose.
18. Write a Story Based on the Ending
Test your student’s creativity by providing them with writing prompts that focus on an entire book, a song, or a famous story. For instance, ask students to write a story based on the ending, “And they lived happily ever after."
Learn more: Kid Pillar
19. Found Poetry
Collect words or a group of words from a favorite story or song. You can either write them on a piece of paper or cut them out of a printed page. The overall goal is to rearrange the words differently to make an interesting poem with a unique writing style or genre.
Learn more: Homeschooling Ideas
20. Sticky Notes Story
Learners may have much to say in conversation prompts but get stuck when doing the actual writing. Sticky notes will help them in aspects of writing. A student can write anything ranging from a favorite author, a favorite food, or fantasy elements.
Learn more: Teaching Made Practical
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Purdue Online Writing Lab College of Liberal Arts
Activities for Remote Creative Writing Classrooms
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While remote instruction allows instruction to continue in situations where in-person meetings are impossible, some aspects of in-person instruction are difficult or impossible to replicate. Thus, ideally, exercises in asynchronous or remote creative writing classes should not aim to produce completed creative work, nor should they attempt to recreate every component of an in-person class. Rather, they should prompt students to generate ideas that can later be built upon to produce more fully realized art.
Thus, the following prompts are general writing exercises designed to spur creative writing output, but not necessarily to replace major course projects. These projects can (and should) be tweaked as necessary to fit your course. You might, for instance, modify them to make them specific to the texts used in your course, or you might modify them to fit certain genres of interest.
Write a scene with two characters in which each character’s perspective is explored.
- While this exercise usually involves two characters from a student writer's own work, it's also possible to modify the exercise to have students re-write a scene in an existing work from a different character's point of view.
Imitate the writing style of a favorite author.
- If students do not have their own stories to use for this exercise, you might consider providing an excerpt from a well-known story for your students to rewrite in another author's style.
Describe a conventional object in a non-conventional way.
- Here is an example of how this project might proceed. First, think of a common object (e.g., an apple). Now, think of three adjectives that describe that object (e.g., red, juicy, and round). Finally, free-write a description of that object without using any of the three adjectives initially used to describe that object.
- Note that this can student responses can be either prose or poetry.
Experiment with using unusual sentence structures in writing.
- For example, you might have students write a short, 500-word scene using only simple sentences containing a single clause. Then, you could have them write the same scene using only compound sentences. Afterward, you could have students reflect on how the rhythm and musicality of the language changes when the structure of the sentences changes.
Free-write around a made-up word.
- Have students invent a completely fictitious word that sounds like it could mean something, like “Snordricioius,” for instance. Have students then write a short poem, or short scene, that uses that word. Instruct them not to define their word explicitly in their writing. Instead, they should try to make their writing connote the definition and “feel” of the word via context.
Write two versions of a mini-fairy tale.
- This exercise can be modified to use a variety of endings. Feel free to use a different ending than the one we've suggested here.
Take a character from a pre-existing book, movie, or television show and drop them into a haunted house.
- Students should write short (e.g., 500 word) responses to this prompt. What would this character do in this situation? Where would they go? What would their strategy? This exercise can get students to consider characters' personalities, backstories, and motivations, which are important considerations when actually creating an original character. Moreover, this exercise can illustrate how “character drives plot,” and not the other way around.
Do a memory write.
- This activity asks students to write about an aspect of a recent reading that stuck in their memory. They should write “I don’t know why I remember...” and then continue writing for fifteen minutes, or however long feels necessary. Writing about one's own memories can sometimes spark creativity in ways that students may not realize, as memory is a key impetus for creative work, regardless of genre.
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5 Fun Creative Writing Activities
We’ve gathered five fun creative writing activities you can assign to spark a love for writing. Our hope is that these activities will create a workshop-like environment that fosters feedback and collaboration in your writing classroom.
You’ll notice that none of the activities focuses on the technical aspects of writing. Instead, the activities encourage creativity, reflection, and self-expression—hallmarks of meaningful writing.
Minilesson 1: InstaMemory
- Imagine a favorite memory as a cellphone picture.
- Finish this sentence starter: My memory snapshot shows . . .
- Keep writing until you’ve described your memory snapshot in full. Make sure to include who is in it, what is happening, where it is happening, and when it is happening. Note colors, emotions, facial expressions, and other visual details about the moment.
- Read your memory snapshot. Does your writing create a clear picture?
View Minilesson for Classroom Presentation
Minilesson 2: Back-and-Forth Stories
Writing back-and-forth stories takes a little creativity and a lot of flexibility. How long can you and a partner keep this story going?
An abandoned home sat at the top of the hill. Matt and Brianna knew the rumors about it, but they had to see it for themselves. They tiptoed their way up the steps, and when they reached the door, it swung open. Inside . . .
- Continue the story. Write for two minutes.
- Pass the story to a writing partner.
- The partner continues the story where you left off and writes for two minutes before passing the story back.
- Continue writing and passing the story every two minutes.
- How long can you keep the story going? What happens inside the house?
Minilesson 3: Four-Star Food Review
- List the food items that would make up your ideal fall meal. Include one main dish, one side dish, one dessert, and one drink.
- Describe the looks, smells, and tastes associated with the meal.
- Finish this sentence: My meal reminds me of fall, because . . .
- Use the details you’ve collected to write a review of your meal in one or two paragraphs. Exchange your review with a partner to see how your meals compare.
Minilesson 4: Now how do I get out of this one?
- List ten chores or tasks you hate doing. Cleaning my room is an example of a chore you might not like.
- Select four tasks from your list and write a creative excuse explaining why you can’t or haven’t completed each one. Make your excuses as original and wild as possible.
- When you’ve finished, exchange your work with a classmate. Read and discuss each other’s excuses.
Minilesson 5: Diary of a Famous Figure
- List three famous people or characters you like or admire.
- Imagine you are one of the famous figures from your list.
- As that person, think of what you would do on a summer day.
- Write a diary entry (or blog post) about your special day as the famous person.
- Then write additional entries as you so choose.
Want more creative writing ideas? Check out these creative activities.
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- 110.5.b.12.A
- LAFS.3.W.1.3
- 110.5.b.11.B.i
- 110.5.b.11.B.ii
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- 110.6.b.12.A
- LAFS.4.W.1.3
- 110.6.b.11.B.i
- 110.6.b.11.B.ii
- 110.7.b.12.A
- LAFS.5.W.1.3
- 110.7.b.11.B.i
- 110.7.b.11.B.ii
- 110.22.b.10
- 110.22.b.11.A
- LAFS.6.W.1.3
- 110.22.b.10.A
- 110.22.b.10.B.i
- 110.23.b.10
- 110.23.b.11.A
- LAFS.7.W.1.3
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- 110.24.b.11.A
- LAFS.8.W.1.3
- 110.24.b.10.B.i
- 110.24.b.10.B.ii
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Ideas, Inspiration, and Giveaways for Teachers
We Are Teachers
10 Creative Writing Activities That Help Students Tell Their Stories
Lower the stakes and help them get started.
The Adobe Education Exchange is the free learning platform and community, with workshops, classes, and resources, all designed by educators for educators, to ignite creativity in the classroom. Learn More .
“I don’t have a story. There’s nothing interesting about my life!” Sound familiar? I don’t know a teacher who hasn’t heard students say this. When we ask our students to write about themselves, they get stuck. We know how important it is for them to tell their own stories. It’s how we explore our identities and keep our histories and cultures alive. It can even be dangerous when we don’t tell our stories (check out this Ted Talk given by novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and share it with your students for more on that). Storytelling is essential for every subject, not just English Language Arts; students dive deeper and engage when they practice thinking about how their own stories intersect with historical events, civic engagement, and the real-world implications of STEM. These 10 creative writing activities can work in every subject you teach:
Here are 10 of our favorite story telling activities that inspire students:
1. write an “i am from” poem.
Students read the poem “I am From” by George Ella Lyon. Then, they draft a poem about their own identity in the same format Lyon used. Finally, students create a video to publish their poems. We love this one because the mentor text gives a clear structure and example that students can follow. But the end result is truly unique, just like their story.
2. Design a social media post to share an important memory
How can you use your unique perspective to tell a story? We want our students to learn that they are truly unique and have stories that only they can tell that other people want to hear or could relate to or learn from. In this activity, students watch two Pixar-in-a-Box videos on Khan Academy to learn about storytelling and perspective. Then, they identify an interesting or poignant memory and design a social media post.
3. Create an image using a line to chart an emotional journey
How do you show emotion using a single line? In this activity, students watch a Pixar in a Box video on Khan Academy to learn about how lines communicate character, emotion, and tension. Then they experiment with these aspects as they write their story. We love using this for pre-writing and to help students explore their story arc. Also, for students who love to draw or learn visually, this can help them get started telling their story and show them that there are many different ways to tell a story.
4. Tell the story behind your name
Sharing the story behind our name is a way to tell a story about ourselves, our culture, and our family history. And if there isn’t a story behind it, we can talk about how we feel about it and describe what it sounds like. In this activity, students use video to introduce themselves to their classmates by discussing the origin of their name. This project asks students to connect their names (and identities) to their personal and familial histories and to larger historical forces. If you’re looking for a mentor text that pairs well with this one, try “My Name” by Sandra Cisneros .
5. Develop a visual character sketch
Give students the time to create a character sketch of themselves. This will help them see how they fit into their story. In this lesson, students create a visual character sketch. They’ll treat themselves like a character and learn to see themselves objectively.
6. Create a webpage to outline the story of your movie
Building a story spine is a great way to show students how to put the parts of their story in an order that makes sense. It’s an exercise in making choices about structure. We like this activity because it gives students a chance to see different examples of structure in storytelling. Then, they consider the question: how can you use structure to set your story up for success? Finally, they design and illustrate an outline for their story.
7. Respond to a variety of writing prompts
Sometimes our students get stuck because they aren’t inspired or need a different entry point into telling their story. Give them a lot of writing prompts that they can choose from. Pass out paper and pencils. Set a timer for fifteen minutes. Then, write 3-4 writing prompts on the board. Encourage students to free-write and not worry about whether their ideas are good or right. Some of our favorite prompts to encourage students to tell their story are:
- I don’t know why I remember…
- What’s your favorite place and why?
- What objects tell the story of your life?
- What might surprise someone to learn about you?
8. Create a self-portrait exploring identity and self-expression
Part of what makes writing your own story so difficult for students is that they are just building their identity. In this activity, students explore how they and others define their identity. What role does identity play in determining how they are perceived and treated by others? What remains hidden and what is shown publicly?
9. Film a video to share an important story from your life
Encourage students to think about how to tell the story of a day they faced their fears. Students consider the question: How can you use different shot types to tell your story? They watch a video from Pixar in a Box on Khan Academy to learn about different camera shots and their use in storytelling. Then, they use Adobe Spark Post or Photoshop and choose three moments from their story to make into shots. We love using this to help students think about pace and perspective. Sometimes what we leave out of our story is just as important as what we include.
10. Try wild writing
Laurie Powers created a process where you read a poem and then select two lines from it. Students start their own writing with one of those lines. Anytime that they get stuck, they repeat their jump-off line again. This is a standalone activity or a daily writing warm-up, and it works with any poem. We love how it lowers the stakes. Can’t think of anything to write? Repeat the jump-off line and start again. Here are some of our favorite jump-off lines:
- The truth is…
- Some people say…
- Here’s what I forgot to tell you…
- Some questions have no answers…
- Here’s what I’m afraid to write about…
Julie Mason is a Senior Editor at WeAreTeachers. She taught middle and high school English, and is a blended and personalized learning instructional coach. She loves reading a book in one sitting, good coffee, and spending time with her husband and sons.
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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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30 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’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?
I just make this list a part of my teaching in Creative Writing Classes. Very good list of ideas!
Every writer NEEDS this book.
It’s a guide to writing the pivotal moments of your novel.
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- 42 Creative Writing Exercises
This page contains 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.
The sections are as follows:
A note on running exercises remotely
A letter from your character to you, the opening sentence, make your protagonist act, overcoming writer's block, character arc, giving feedback to authors, the five senses, show don't tell, world building.
- Easy gossiping exercise
Degrees of Emotion Game
Three birds, one line, blind date on valentine's day (exercise for adults), a success (works best for online groups), your dream holiday, writing a haiku, writing a limerick, time travel - child, adult, senior, focus on faces.
- Onomatopeai, rhyme and alliteration
The alphabet story - creating a story as a group
A question or two, murder mystery game, the obscure movie exercise, how to hint at romantic feelings, a novel idea, creative writing prompts, creative story cards / dice, alternative christmas story, murder mystery mind map.
- New Year's resolutions for a fictional character
- Stephen King - Using verbs & nouns in fiction
- It's the end of the world
Other Content:
- 7 Editing exercises (for your first draft)
How to run the writing exercises
While you can enjoy the exercises solo, a lot of writing groups have gone online during the coronavirus pandemic and are using Zoom, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or Skype to keep in touch with other writers during this time.
If you're running such a group and following a ' Shut Up and Write ' structure, I recommend connecting on WhatsApp (for example) first, doing the exercise together, with participants sending each other their writing samples where necessary as part of the exercise, then disconnecting to write in silence for an hour and a half, before reconnecting for a brief informal chat at the end. This works well with small remote groups and is a great way to gain some online support and stay productive!
If you have a larger 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 Skype or WhatsApp.
I hope you remain healthy and creative throughout this difficult time for us all.
I run a Creative Writing Meetup for adults and teens in Montpellier every week where we start with a 5 to 20 minute exercise, followed by an hour and a half of silent writing, where we each work on our own project. Each of these exercises has been used with the group and works well. Where the exercises below 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 if you’re working by yourself to help stimulate your mind before working on a larger project or to overcome writer’s block, or can be used with a larger group, where you simply ask everyone to share what they’ve written in groups of 3 or 4 people afterwards. Looking for something quick to fire your imagination? Check out these creative writing prompts for adults .
If your goal is to write a complete work of fiction, whether it be a novel, a play or a movie script, you will one day need to write to an agent or publisher to ask them to publish your work.
In this exercise, we turn this around and ask you to instead spend 10 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:
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 that they love and imagine that a character within it wrote to the author in the first place to ask them to write their story. What did that letter look like?
- 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 to include.
- It's motivating to know that your character wants you to write about them.
- It's good practice for when you will need to send a letter to an agent or publisher.
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 and 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 that you can start a book, however two ways that help engage the reader immediately are:
Spend 5 minutes working on your own opening sentence, then share it with the other participants.
- Set the scene in as few words as possible, so that 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.
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).
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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 that they're stuck with (a pool of blood on the floor that 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.
There are several different types of character arc in a novel, the 3 most common being:
- Positive - Where a character develops and grows during the novel, perhaps starting unhappy or weak and ending happy or powerful.
- Negative - Where a character gets worse during a novel, perhaps becoming ill or giving 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.
For this exercise choose either a positive or negative character arc and 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 (obviously, we will have to imagine how this change has occurred).
The point here is to capture the essence of a character, as they will be the same, but show their development.
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.”
If you're running a workshop for more experienced adult authors and have at least half an hour, then 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 member the option to bring a piece of their own work that 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, then 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 that they are giving constructive feedback.
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
2 or 3 people
A lot of writing guides will advise you to, "Show, don't tell," but what does this actually mean?
If you want to evoke an emotional reaction from your reader, then showing them what is happening is a great way to do so. You can do 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 instead, she felt a gust of freezing air brush past her, she turned, but there was nothing there..."
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 that 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!
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.
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:
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 that the writers can determine.
Now spend 10 minutes discussing what happens next!
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, now imagine how that book would start, and write the first part of the book with the ending in mind."
In this difficult time, this is great for reminding people of a success in their lives, and also helps everyone connect and discover something about each other.
You’re going on a dream holiday together, but can’t stand conflict, so 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:
Decide who gets to choose what at random, then each of you write 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.
- 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.
A haiku is a traditional Japanese form of non-rhyming poetry whose short form makes it ideal for a simple writing exercise.
They traditionally are 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 and 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” and the rest of the verse tells their story.
Spend 10 minutes writing a limerick.
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 that 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.
Solo exercise
One challenge writers face is describing a character and 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 that it doesn't reveal anything about the character's personality, or about the relationship between your protagonist and the character and your reader is therefore likely to quickly forget what someone looks like. When describing characters, it's therefore best to:
Here are 3 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.
- 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.
Onomatopeai, rhyme and alliteration
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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,...
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!
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:
This works best when you give participants some advance notice, so they have time to think of a question.
- 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?
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)
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:
Write the following (from the perspective of the investigator):
Phase 3 (5 minutes)
See more ideas on creating murder mystery party games
- 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.
- 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.
- 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).
- 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.
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.
Write a scene with 2 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.
Take it in turns to tell everyone else about a current project that 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.
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:
Once everyone's written a prompt, everyone 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.
- Say who the protagonist is.
- Reveal their motivation.
- Introduce any other characters
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.
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, then give everyone a couple of minutes to write 2 possible themes for the new Christmas story. Each theme should be 5 words or less.
Then simply shuffle the paper and distribute them at random (or everyone types the themes into a Zoom or group chat, if you're working online). Everyone 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!
In a murder mystery story or courtroom drama, there's often conflicting information and lots of links between characters and 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, asking yourself how your protagonist would react to an everyday situation might 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 and if some participants are non-fiction writers, they can 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?
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.
Creative writing games
Writing prompts for adults
Fantasy and sci-fi prompts
Create a murder mystery game
Murder mystery riddles
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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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