group creative writing activities

50 fun group writing exercises

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

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

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

The group writing exercises

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

Contest prompt

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

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

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

Writing exercises featuring scene-setting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Group writing exercises featuring conflict

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Writing exercises using dialogue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Writing exercises using simile and metaphor

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

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

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

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

Describing emotions Fear is a__ with a__.

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

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

Writing exercises using different POVs

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

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

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

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

Writing exercise using different moods of the verb

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

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

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

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

Writing exercises from creating blanks in books

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Find daily writing prompts plus literary device definitions and terms.

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

Related Posts:

• How to find a writing group plus 7 pros of workshops
• Writing exercises: 10 fun tense workouts
• 6 creative writing exercises for rich character
• Tags writing groups , writing inspiration , writing prompts

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

6 replies on “50 fun group writing exercises”

These exercises look like fun!

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

Thank you, Jordan.

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

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

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

Thankyou Jordan for these great points.

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

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43 Creative writing exercises

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

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

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

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

Writing Retreat in South France

A note on running exercises remotely

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

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

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

A Letter From Your Character To You

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

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

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

The Opening Sentence

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

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

George Orwell , 1984

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

Helene Wecker , The Golem and the Djinni

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

Leo Tolstoy , Anna Karenina

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

Diana Gabaldon , Outlander

You better not never tell nobody but God.

Alice Walker , The Color Purple

The cage was finished.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez ,  Balthazar’s Marvelous Afternoon

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

Audrey Niffenegger ,  The Time Traveler's Wife

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

Douglas Adams ,  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

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

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

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

Make your protagonist act!

Exercise for 2 writers, or can be done solo.

According to John Gardner:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Overcoming writer's block

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

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

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

Writing Character Arcs

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

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

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

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

Sewing Seeds in Your Writing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Giving feedback to authors

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

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

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

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

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

The Five Senses

Painting by Giovanni Battista Manerius -  The Five Senses

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

Hearing  Taste Smell Touch

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

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

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

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

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

Show don't tell

2 or 3 people

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

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

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

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

World building

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

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

Click the above image for a close-up.

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

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

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

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

Answer the questions:

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

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

Degrees of Emotion Game

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

Ask everyone to write the following 4 emotions:

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

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

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

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

Everyone shares their scene with the other course participants.

Three birds, one line

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Iain M. Banks ,  Excession  

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

George R.R. Martin ,  A Game of Thrones

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

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

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

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

Now spend 10 minutes discussing what happens next!

A Success (Works best for online groups)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your dream holiday

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

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

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

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

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

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

A couple of examples:

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

And one of mine:

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

Martin Woods

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

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

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

Here are a couple of examples:

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

Dixon Lanier Merritt, 1910

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

Arthur Henry Reginald Buller in  Punch,  1923

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

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

Spend 10 minutes writing a limerick.

Time Travel - Child, Adult, Senior

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

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

Focus on faces

Solo exercise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Onomatopeai, rhyme and alliteration

Today's session is all about sound.

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

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

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

Alliterations

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

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

Onomatopoeias

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

The alphabet story - creating a story as a group

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

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

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

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

Here’s an example of an alphabet story:

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

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

A question or two

Small or large groups

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

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

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

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

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

Here are some random examples you might ask:

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

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

Murder Mystery Game

Groups of 3 or 4

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

Phase 1 (3 minutes)

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

Phase 2 (10 minutes)

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

Write the following:

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

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

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

Phase 3 (5 minutes)

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

See more ideas on  creating murder mystery party games

The obscure movie exercise

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

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

How to hint at romantic feelings

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

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

Some tips for hinting at romantic feelings:

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

A novel idea

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

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

This whole exercise takes around 15 minutes.

Creative writing prompts

Exercise for groups of 3-5

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

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

For this exercise:

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

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

Take turns reading out your stories to each other.

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

Creative story cards / dice

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

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

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

Alternative Christmas Story

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

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

Group writing exercise

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

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

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

Murder Mystery Mind Map

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

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

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

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

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

New Year’s resolutions for a fictional character

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

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

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

Verb Noun Fiction Exercise (Inspired by Stephen King)

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

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

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

It’s the end of the world

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

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

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

7 Editing Exercises

For use after your first draft

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

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

Terry Pratchett

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

Neil Gaiman

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

The First Sentence

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

Consistency

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

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

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

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

Show Don’t Tell One

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

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

Show Don’t Tell Two

Search for the following words in your book:

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

After The Action

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

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

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

Eliminating the Fluff

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

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

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

Chapter Endings

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

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

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

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

How to run the writing exercises

The editing exercises are designed to be completed individually.

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

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

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

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

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

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Engaging Writing Exercises for a Group Setting

by Amelia Winters | Oct 16, 2019 | Useful Resources | 2 comments

Group writing exercises can help get us writers out of our own heads and bring our creative energy into a social situation, which I think we all need sometimes (even introverts like me). So, here are some writing exercises I learned from the Thin Air writers’ festival to help get your creative mind flowing in a group setting.

The Two Lies and a Truth Exercise

In a group, everyone takes a moment to write down two lies and a truth about themselves. Once everyone’s done, each member takes a turn to read their three statements aloud. My three statements were:

I have a pet dog named Dobby.

I grew up overseas in Qatar.

I broke my finger riding a swing when I was a kid.

After reading the statements aloud, everyone votes on which statement they think is the truth. After the person reveals the truth, the group takes some time to discuss why they thought a statement sounded truer than the others. This is a great exercise for exploring what characteristics make for a convincing detail.

The Bad Writing Exercise

This is a fun one. In this exercise, everyone takes a moment to write an intentionally bad description. It’s based on the idea that good writers know when their writing is bad. Without that critical self-awareness, it’s really hard to self-edit and improve your writing. (The psych major in me wants to let you know that this is a legitimate, studied concept: amateurs in a field tend to be unaware of their weaknesses and believe that they are more skilled than they are, whereas experts have the self-awareness to know where the gaps in their skills and knowledge are.)

The exercise is also based on the idea that the line between good and bad writing is very thin. You need to be unafraid of approaching that line so you can be free to experiment and simply write. If you know you can catch bad sentences, you don’t need to wake up each morning afraid that you’ll write one.

You can do this exercise on your own, but I find it much more useful (and entertaining) when you get to hear other people’s sentences too. Once you read the sentences aloud, the group then discusses why the descriptions are bad and how to avoid such cringe-worthy prose. The purpose is to develop your ear for bad writing, even in your own work. (It’s also an inadvertent lesson on the nature of being comically bad.)

Here are some types of bad sentences you could practice writing in a group:

The Terrible Metaphor : My love for you is an eagle flying silently into a purple blot in the sky.

Implausible Emotions : After his divorce, he decided not to be sad, and so he was happy.

Oddly Vague Statements : He was nice and I liked him, but it would be better if he didn’t do that thing.

See what other types you can come up with and discuss what makes them bad descriptions.

The Character Interview Exercise

I’ve saved the best for last. This is my favorite writing exercise from the festival. Fair warning though: this one requires some role-playing. I enjoy acting and guided improvisation, but not everyone does. If you want to try the exercise, make sure everyone in your group is okay doing a bit of acting before you start.

Good dialogue sounds realistic and character-specific, it reveals the character’s personality, and it serves to develop the plot. Doing all those things at once, and doing them well, is really challenging! This is an exercise that uses role-playing to explore what realistic, character-specific dialogue sounds like.

The exercise starts with everyone thinking about a scene from their writing where the protagonist needs to convey something important to another character. Everyone writes down the following:

• the protagonist’s name,
• in first person, what the character’s goal and message is (“I am going to convince my grandma to move out of her house because . . . ”),
• the main statement the protagonist wants to say to the other character (“It’s not safe here anymore. Please come stay with us in town.”),
• and the other character’s name.

Once everyone is done writing, all the group members get comfortable in their chairs, close their eyes, and imagine their character looking at them across a field. They imagine the general details of what the character looks like and as the character walks closer, more specific details become apparent (what necklace she’s wearing, the shape of his nose, the smell of her perfume). Then the group imagines that they are actually looking at themselves in a mirror. Everyone opens their eyes.

Note that this previous step can be done as a mindfulness exercise. If anyone in the group is uncomfortable with that or no one wants to lead the exercise, then keep this step simple. Just tell everyone to imagine what their character looks like and imagine that they are their character.

Once everyone is in the mindset of their character, the actual dialogue can start. One at a time, someone sits at the front of the group facing everyone else in a semi-circle. The group starts interviewing the person who responds as if he is his character. The group usually starts with the basics:

What’s your name?

How old are you?

What’s your occupation?

Where are you from?

The interviewers can then dive into more personal questions:

What is your biggest fear?

Are you happy with your marriage?

What do you need to feel fulfillment?

And be sure to ask about the character’s current situation:

Who are you going to meet?

What do you want to tell them?

Why is this person important to you?

What do you stand to lose if this goes wrong?

Then once the group has a sense of the scene and who the other character is, another group member volunteers to role-play as the other character. The two then go through the scene and improvise what happens.

This is such a great way to study how your character talks and really visualize what it’s like from their mind as they talk with the other character. I recommend making an audio recording of the interview and transcribing the good parts of it later. That way, you can see what your character’s spoken words could look like on the page. Maybe your improvisation skills weren’t that great, but even then, it’s still useful to examine how regular speech transitions to the page.

What do you think of these group writing exercises? Any you’d want to try? Or do you have another good one you’d like to share? We can keep the conversation going in the comments below!

About the Author

I’m Amelia Winters, a professional fiction editor, language nerd, and story aficionado. By night, I chase stories and explore distant worlds through books, role-playing games, and sewing my own historical garments. By day, I journey with authors to help them hone their story craft, elevate their voice, and polish their prose.

To learn more about my editing services, click here .

I made an addition to the bad writing exercise. After each person in my writers group wrote a bad sentence, we then traded sentences and the assignment became: follow the other person’s bad sentence for 10 minutes with writing that attempts to provide a pathway for the bad sentence to become, retroactively, a good sentence.

Nice! That’s a good idea ?.

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50 Fantastic Creative Writing Exercises

Good question.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Characters:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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34 comments

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

This is a great list! Thanks!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where can I get the answers for these?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

These are interesting exercises for writing.

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

creative and inspiring, thank you

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

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

Start the conversation: submit one of yours.

I think I can use these to inspire my students.

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

What’s wrong with the number 42?

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

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

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

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

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Activities for Writing Groups

Touching base.

Mutual support can be one of the most important functions of a writing group. Sometimes encouragement and the knowledge that others are interested in and committed to your work and your progress as a writer can be just as helpful as feedback. To that end, your writing group may want to reserve some time in each session to “touch base” or “check in” with one another. During this time you could:

• Describe your writing activities since the last group meeting in terms of pages written, parts of a project completed, or hurdles overcome.
• If you haven’t written much since the last meeting, you could talk about the kinds of pre-writing activities you have undertaken (research, reading, editing previous work, meeting with a professor or advisor, etc.). Or you could talk about the obstacles to writing that have hindered your progress (writer’s block, having a big exam this week, needing to gather more data before you can write, etc.).
• Explain how work that was discussed during the last meeting is now evolving in response to group comments. You might explain which comments you chose to act on, or tell how a section of the piece has been reorganized or rethought in response to the group’s feedback.
• Share your writing plans for the coming week or two so that your group members will know what kinds of writing they will see and so that you can help one another stick to your goals.
• Decide, as a group, on a theme for the next meeting—brainstorming, drafting, proofreading, style, writer’s block, etc. Choosing a writing issue to tackle together will help you understand the challenges each member is facing at the moment and enable you to plan meetings that will help group members meet those challenges.

Systems for sharing work

Some writing groups ask members to distribute their work in advance of the group meeting, particularly if the piece of writing in question is lengthy. Internet-based file-sharing platforms make it easy to share files, and groups can choose a platform that will offer their members the appropriate level of access and security. Standardized file-naming conventions will help members locate documents easily, e.g., consistently naming folders by Date_Name of writer (11.14.20_Maria or Nov. 14 Maria).

Responding to work that you read outside of the group

The following ideas might help you respond to work that has been distributed beforehand:

• Group members could write comments and suggest editorial changes on their copies of the paper and give those to the writer during the group meeting.
• Group members could prepare a written response to the paper in the form of a letter to the writer, a paragraph, a written discussion of the work’s strengths and weaknesses, or on a form developed by the group. See the Responding to Other People’s Writing worksheet in this packet for a helpful model.
• Group members could respond verbally to the piece, each offering a personal, overall reaction to writing before opening the discussion to a broader give-and-take.
• You could go through the piece paragraph-by-paragraph or section-by-section, with each reader offering comments and suggestions for improvement.
• The author could come prepared with a list of questions for the group and lead a discussion based on those questions.
• One group member, either the author or (perhaps preferably) a different member of the group, could keep careful notes on key reactions and suggestions for the author’s future reference.

Responding to writing presented during the group meeting

Some groups prefer to bring writing, particularly shorter pieces, to the group meeting for immediate discussion. You might bring a draft of an entire paper, a section of a paper, or just a sentence or two that you can’t seem to get “just right.” Many of the above ideas will work just as well for writing that has been presented during the meeting of the writing group. However, since writing presented during the meeting will be new to everyone except the author, you might try these additional strategies:

• Read the paper aloud to the group before launching discussion. The author could read, or another member of the group could read while the author notes things that sound like they might need revision. You could either read the entire text or break it into chunks, discussing each after it is read.
• Group members could also read silently, making notes to themselves, before launching the discussion.
• Read the first paragraph or first section aloud and have everyone in the group briefly write down what they think the paper will be about or what they think the thesis of the paper is. Share those responses in discussion.

Sharing writing without the anticipation of feedback

Sometimes, especially with new writing or writers needing a boost of confidence, it can be helpful to share writing without anticipating feedback. This kind of sharing can help writers get over fears about distributing their work or being judged:

• For writers undertaking long projects, sharing a piece can serve to show the rest of the group the progress made since the last meeting, even if the author doesn’t need feedback right now.
• Sharing a piece of writing without expecting feedback can provide the writer with a deadline to work toward without generating anxieties over whether or not the piece is “good enough” to share.
• Sharing writing early in a writing group’s work together can be a no-pressure way to get to know one another’s projects and writing styles.

Brainstorming as part of the group process

Writing groups can provide not only feedback and a forum in which to share work, but also creative problem-solving for your writing troubles. Your group might try some of these brainstorming ideas:

• Have one group member identify a writing problem that needs to be solved. Ask each group member to free-write possible solutions.
• Cut up a copy of a paper that needs organizational changes so that each section, main idea, or paragraph is on its own slip of paper. As a group, move the pieces of paper around and discuss possible options for reorganizing the work.
• After reading a piece, generate a list of items that the group might like to know more about. Organize these questions into categories for the author to consider.

Writing during writing group meetings

Your writing group may choose to write during some of its meetings. Here are some ideas for what to write:

• If everyone in the group has a major deadline approaching, use one session as a working meeting. Meet in a computer lab or other location in which everyone can write and work independently, taking breaks periodically to assess your progress or ask questions.
• Use some writing group time to free-write about your writing project—new ideas, to-do lists, organizational strategies, problems, or sentences for your drafts would all be appropriate topics for free-writing.
• Free-write about the writing process (you could all write about “How I start to write” or “The writing environment that works for me” or “When I sit down to edit…”) and share your responses with one another.
• Write about the dynamics of the writing group as a way of getting everyone’s ideas out on paper. You could free-write about the kinds of feedback that help you, what you like about each other’s writing, your frustrations with the group, and your suggestions for improving the way the group works.
• Spend a few minutes of each meeting practicing a new writing or editing technique you would like to explore.
• See the Writing Exercises handout for more ideas.

Reading during writing group meetings

Just as writing during group meetings can prove beneficial, reading can sometimes help writing groups work together better:

• Pick a book on writing such as Bird by Bird, Writing with Power, Writing Down the Bones, Writing Without Teachers, or Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day and assign yourselves sections to read for each meeting. Discuss the reading during some part of the group’s meeting each time.
• Read about a particular writing topic such as editing techniques or writer’s block during the group meeting, and then spend the session working on that aspect of one another’s writing.
• Bring a piece of writing (an article in your field, an article from a journal or magazine that you enjoyed, or a piece of fiction) that you think is especially well-written. Read over it as a group and talk about what the author did in the piece that made it so effective.
• Bring pieces of data or evidence that you are using in your writing and share them with the group. If the group becomes familiar with the things that you write about, they may be better able to help you write about them effectively.

Bring in a guest

Just as guest lecturers in courses sometimes spice up the classroom experience, guests in writing groups can enliven the discussion:

• Invite a friend’s writing group to have a joint meeting with yours. Share writing from all participants and also talk about writing group strategies that have worked for each group.
• Invite a faculty member or other guest writer to your group to talk about their writing process and to offer suggestions for improving your own.
• Bring in a friend who is working on a project related to the project of a group member. This may help your group member develop a network of people interested in their particular topic and may also show your friend how helpful a writing group could be.

Your writing group can also help you plan your writing schedule for the week:

• Discuss your writing goals, both broadly and for the immediate future. Ask your group if those goals seem realistic.
• Ask group members to e-mail you with reminders of deadlines and encouragement.
• Create a group calendar in which you all set goals and deadlines for your writing. This calendar could be for a week, a month, a semester, a year, or more. The Writing Center publishes a planning calendar each semester.
• Give each other writing “assignments” for the next meeting.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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A Big, Bold List of Creative Writing Activities

by Melissa Donovan | Jan 4, 2024 | Creative Writing | 24 comments

Try some of these creative writing activities.

Are you looking for writing motivation, inspiration, or ideas that will give your latest project an extra boost?

Below you’ll find a massive list of creative writing activities. Some of these activities will keep you writing when you’re in need of ideas and inspiration. Others will improve your writing skills and techniques through practice. Some will give you experience with forms and genres you haven’t tried. And others will help you promote your writing once it’s published.

Pick any activity and use it as a creative outlet. Bring a few activities to your writing group or do one with your kids. Use these creative writing activities in any way you want.

Start a Journal

Journaling is an excellent way to maintain a steady writing practice, and there are lots of different journals you can write: gratitude journals, dream journals, media journals, poetry journals, and idea journals, to name a few.

Image Prompts

Flip through some images on Instagram or Pinterest and see what sparks an idea. Don’t place limitations on your writing—just let the words flow.

Character Letters

Writing letters in your characters’ voices can help you get inside their heads and understand them better so you can write them with more depth and realism. Create an ongoing correspondence to explore character relationships and group dynamics within your cast.

Write Your Bio

Write a series of short bios for your social media accounts and a longer one for your author website. Don’t forget to make a bio for your press kit and another to include in your books.

Rhyme and Meter Exercises

Set your inner musician free by composing lines and couplets in metrical patterns with rhymes. Establish the parameters before you start writing, or just let the words flow and note the meter and rhyme afterward.

Memory Prompts

Grab an old photo album or flip through the photos on your phone—or use recall to bring forth memories that you can write about. Use this as an exercise in writing description or crafting a narrative about something you experienced or witnessed—ideal if you’re interested in writing a memoir.

Writing Exercises

Writing exercises keep your skills sharp and your creativity flowing even when inspiration is fleeting. They are excellent for keeping up your writing practice between projects. Pick up a book of creative writing exercises so you’ll have plenty to choose from.

What-if List

Create a repository of ideas by writing a list of what-if questions that could spark characters, plots, and settings for your future works of fiction or provide ideas you can explore in poetry and nonfiction writing projects.

Newsletters

A mailing list is one of the best ways for an author to connect with a readership. Start planning yours now. You can fill your newsletter with behind-the-scenes material from your books or excerpts from your work in progress. Or write a poem or piece of flash fiction for your newsletter.

Character Diary

The best characters feel like real people, which means the writer has fully gotten into their heads and hearts. One way to do that is to keep a diary in your character’s voice, which will help you establish their innermost thoughts and feelings. And who knows? Maybe a character diary will turn into a novel written in first person!

Your Future Self

Jump at least ten years into the future and write a letter from your current self to your future self, write a letter from your future self to your current self, or write a diary entry as your future self.

Try Writing for Comics

Comics are often partnerships between artists and writers. Give the writing side of comics a try. If you don’t want to draw, just make notes about what the illustrations will depict. Focus on character, plot, and dialogue. Flip through a few comics if you need examples to guide you.

Dream Vacation

Write a few pages describing your dream vacation. Where will you go? How long will you stay? What will you do there? If you’ve already experienced a dream vacation, write about that instead.

Blurb Your Favorite Books

A book blurb is a short statement endorsing a book, often written by another author. Choose a few of your favorite titles and write blurbs for them.

Focus on dialogue by writing a script. It could be a script for a play, a TV series, or a movie, or it can simply be an exercise in practicing or exploring dialogue.

Imagined World History

Create a fictional history for a fantastical or sci-fi story world. What were the origins of the civilization? What are their customs and traditions? Their laws and beliefs?

Write a Recipe

Start with an introduction that makes the reader’s mouth water, and then deliver the recipe, complete with an ingredient list and cooking instructions.

Propose an Adaptation of Your Favorite Book

Do you have a favorite book that’s never been made into a film or television series? Put together a two-page pitch convincing studio executives that this story needs to be seen on a screen.

Write a Letter You’ll Never Send

Write a letter to someone who’s gone, someone who’s upset you, or someone you admire from afar.

Find Poetry

Found poetry is when we use words and phrases from source material to create a poem. This is most often seen as a page of printed text with various words and phrases circled, or all text blacked out except the portions that make up the found poem.

Write a Speech

Write an award acceptance speech; a campaign speech, or a graduation or wedding speech.

Make an Outline

Create an outline for a large-scope project, such as a book or series of books.

This is Like That

Practice writing similes and metaphors. Similes are when one thing is like another (your smile is like sunshine) and metaphors are when one thing is another (your smile is sunshine).

Make a Chapbook

If you’ve written a lot of short pieces, like essays, poems, and short stories, collect them into a chapbook. Bring it to an open mic and take along copies you can sell or give away, or offer it on your blog, website, or social media as a free or premium download.

Create a Motivation Journal

Fill it with things that make you want to write — positive affirmations, favorite lines from poems, quotes of wisdom, and useful reminders. Crack it open whenever you catch yourself procrastinating when you should be writing.

Give Fan Fiction a Whirl

Write a few scenes in your favorite story world. Create new characters or use existing characters. Just remember — you don’t own the intellectual property, so you can’t commercially publish it.

Write a Critique

A critique should start by highlighting the strengths in a piece of writing, and then it should gently but constructively offer feedback that is meant to show the author how to make improvements. You can critique any work, but it would be ideal if you can find a writer friend to swap critiques with.

Write Log Lines for Your Favorite Stories

A log line is a sentence or two that summarizes a story and entices readers. If you’re working on a project, write a log line about it. Log lines are excellent for crystallizing your vision, and they’re also useful for pitching and selling written works.

Start a Legacy Book

A legacy book is a collection of writings and other materials (letters, photos, ephemera, etc.) that can be passed down as a family heirloom. Write about your family history and document significant or memorable family events.

Speculate the Future

What do you think the world will look like in twenty-five years? Fifty? A hundred? A thousand? Write an essay or short story, or create a world-building document for a futuristic civilization.

Write a Film Treatment

Written like a short story in present tense, a film treatment is an overview of an entire film; it’s usually written before the first draft and used for pitching film ideas throughout the industry.

Write a Blog Post

If you write nonfiction, this should be easy; just write a post about one of your usual topics. If you’re a poet or a fiction writer, write about the craft, the industry, or use subject matter from your written works.

Practice Description

Writing description is an important skill. Create a one-page description for a story setting, or describe a location you’ve visited, or write a description of a real person or a fictional character.

Turn Memories Into Magic

Memories can provide a wealth of ideas for any type of writing, from poetry to fiction and a variety of essays. Choose an early memory and write it as a story, essay, or poem.

Social media is ideal for people who can write snappy, witty, and entertaining or engaging vignettes. Social media is an excellent tool for writers to find readers and connect with one another, so mastering a couple of these social platforms is a good idea if you hope to build a career as a writer.

Rewrite What You Don’t Like

Dig through your old, discarded writings and find a piece that had some potential. Then rewrite it.

Analyze a Written Work

Choose a piece of writing (it can be a book, an article, an essay — anything) and then write an analysis of at least 2,000 words (or about four pages).

Read and Resemble

Read a handful of poems by a single poet and then attempt writing a poem in that poet’s voice. This is not an exercise in copying; it’s an exercising in studying the voice of a writer. If you’re feeling ambitious, try it with works of fiction and write a scene in an author’s voice.

Write a Review

Choose a book that you’ve read recently and write a detailed review of it. What worked? What didn’t work? What did you like? What didn’t you like? Remember, a review should help a book find its readers. Who is this book for, if not for you?

Get Busy with These Creative Writing Activities!

What are some of your favorite creative writing activities? Have you done any of the activities on this list? Which ones would you want to try? Can you think of any writing activities to add to this list? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment, and keep writing!

24 Comments

Thank you for all these wonderful ideas. After a very long hiatus from the writing world (mostly because of health) I am feeling a bit rusty. Using some of these ideas will certainly prime the pump! I really enjoy your blog and appreciate the basics of grammar, etc. I find that I have slipped into some old habits just in my everyday writing and your tips help me get back on track.

Thanks, Ann. I’m always touched by comments like yours. It keeps me going when people let me know this blog is helpful or inspiring. So thank you for taking the time. Best of luck and keep writing!

The character journal is a great idea!!!

The problem with the character journal is that it could be time consuming, but I love it as a way to get to know a character, and more specifically, to get inside a character’s head.

All of these ideas are wonderful. I’m especially attracted to the last two suggestions. Both of those activities are fun for me and certainly bound to be helpful concerning my writing skills.

When I must wait in the car (with a sleeping grandchild, for instance) I’m only happy if I can see folks as they come and go.

We play word games on a regular basis and have found it strengthens the writing skills of even those of us who do not call ourselves wordsmiths.

Keep up the excellent work.

Thanks so much for your kind words, Yvonnne. I’m looking forward to the day when the little ones in my family (niece and nephew) are old enough to play word and letter games.

Hi Melissa, Thanks for these wonderful ideas. I ‘m taking a couple of days off from writing my memoir, and will try them out.’Writing as one of my characters’ and ‘sitting in some heavily populated place for observations’ are intriguing.

Those are my two favorites as well. Good luck, Margaret, and enjoy your hiatus. I hope it refreshes you so you can return to your memoir.

Love the character journal idea! To keep my vocab going I choose pages out of the dictionary/thesaurus to keep my brain working. It also does wonders for my muse. 🙂 Thanks for sharing this list.

I write a lot of scenes and backstory for my characters, which are never included in the book. Exploring the characters outside of the narrative has proven to be very helpful in better understanding them.

Hi, Melissa!

Well, I’ve been absent for quite a long while. But I have been busy. A spec piece submitted to my local daily newspaper landed me a column. (Who couldda guessed?) I also write theater reviews for them; write what you know has never been more true.

Consequently, I find that my creative writing has slowed quite a bit. The sequel to my debut needs, maybe, two more chapters yet there it sits, though a production company asked for it. Even reading the preceding few chapters doesn’t help me get into the character’s heads in order to finish the thing.

Got any ideas?

Congrats on landing a column, Paul. That’s awesome. I’m not sure why you’ve been unable to finish your sequel, so I can’t offer any specific suggestions, but you can start by fguring out why you’re not finishing it (no time, lost interest, etc.), and then you can probably rectify the problem.

Wonderful! Thanks for sharing these great ideas.

You’re welcome. Thanks for commenting!

It’s so easy to get stuck in a rut. Every writer needs to step away.

I live near the University of Oregon. Every now and than I take a walk through campus. I try to time it during a busy school day. I wish I could bottle the youthful energy that is floating in the wind.

If any of you live near a school try it.

Thank you for the list. It helps a lot.

Yes, breaks are great refreshers for a creative mind. You’re lucky to live near a beautiful place for walks.

I don’t speek english so, sorry if i write wrong, but i need to tell you that your blog is amazing. Your write it’s soo good and make me wanna write. I have 15 years old and i love write, maybe I become a writter when I grew up, and I don’t know how to make my ideias go for the paper but your blog has helped me. Thank you!!

Hi Isabella. Thanks for sharing your passion for writing. I’m glad you’re enjoying this blog. Keep writing!

Thank you for your useful ideas! You have inspired me to try out new formats. I’m not a professional writer, it’s more my hobby. But still, I want to improve myself by writing texts and short stories.

You’re welcome. I’m glad this inspired you, and I’m thrilled that you’re working toward improvement. That’s wonderful!

Hi Melissa! I just wanted you to know that I recently bought some of your books and I absolutely love them and carry them around with me everywhere. Keep up the amazing work! Best wishes, Sandra Harris.

Wow, you just made my day, Sandra. That’s one of the nicest things anyone has said about my books. I’m so glad you like them. Keep writing!

Thank you for those amaing ideas. I’m not exactly stuck, as I know where my latest book is going, but I’m a bit lacking in motivation right now. Some of your suggestions might just get my juices flowing again.

Hi Vivienne. You’re welcome. I’m glad you found some motivation here. Keep writing!

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• Writing Activities

18+ Creative Writing Activities To Make Writing Fun

Make writing less boring with these 12 fun creative writing activities for kids. 

When most children think of writing, they think of lined paper with thousands of words written on it, line by line with the occasional spacing for paragraphs. But writing doesn’t need to be that boring and gloomy. Today we bring you12 creative writing activities to make writing fun and colourful!

How to Make Writing Fun

It is important to show your kids that there’s more to writing than just homework and long essays. Writing can be fun and it doesn’t always involve writing thousands of words in a formal structure. It’s time to stop worrying about sentence structure, grammar and spelling mistakes. Instead, encourage your kids to explore their creativity and write down their thoughts as they come in any format they like. Here are 12 fun creative writing activities that will boost your child’s creativity, imagination and encourage them to write for fun.

18+ Fun Creative Writing Activities

Use story maps.

Story maps are a great way to unleash your child’s imagination. You can either create your own or print out one of these free story map templates . To create your own story map, you’ll first need a location. This could be anywhere, a planet , an island , the woods or even your hometown. Don’t worry, you don’t actually need to leave your home to enjoy this activity. 

Next draw out a simple map of the location. The map must have a starting point and an endpoint. Here is an example of our treasure island story map:

You can see that we marked the starting point with a star. And the end point with a red cross. Once this is done, you need to put loads of obstacles, challenges and interesting things on the map for your child to explore and engage with in their imagination. This could be a giant octopus monster, a lava lake, a cunning princess or even some secret symbols or lettering. 

Once you have completed creating your action-packed story map (or printed out one of our free templates) – It’s time for the real adventure to begin. Give the map to your child and together you can pretend that you have landed in a whole new location. 

Start from your bedroom (or your imaginary pirate ship) and make your way through the obstacles to find the secret treasure located in a mysterious cave (or the shed in your backyard). As you go through the map, think about the characters you might encounter, items you might find and even challenges you could face.

After your little adventure, your child will be inspired and ready to write about the adventure they just experienced! Go ahead and check out these free story map templates to get you started:

• Forest Story Map
• Island Story map

Create Some Paper Finger Puppets

Puppets and toys are a great way to stimulate imaginative play. In particular, creating your own paper finger puppets is a brilliant creative activity to boost your child’s imagination and make story-telling more fun. When creating your own finger puppets, your child can create any character they like. If they love football , try creating some famous football players, and if they love Harry Potter , get them to create some wizard themed characters. Whatever your child’s interest, combine it with story-telling, and make storytime extra fun.

To get you started, you can download our free paper finger puppet templates by signing up to Imagine Forest:

Create your own paper characters, props and background. Then let the role-playing begin!

Would You Rather Game

Kids love playing games. The Would You Rather game is a great way to boost logical thinking and communication skills. Print out our free Would You Rather game cards pack, to get a mix of funny, gross and Disney themed questions. Then get at least three players in a team to begin the game. The purpose of the game is to convince the whole team that your answer to the question is the best one and to get other players to agree with you. This game is guaranteed to get your kids laughing and thinking logically about the answers they pick. 

Telephone Pictionary Game

Another brilliant creative writing activity is the Telephone Pictionary Game . The basic idea behind this game is to write a story collaboratively with your team using drawings and phrases. Together as team members take turns to write/draw something down. They’ll be improving skills such as creativity, teamwork and communication skills. And when the game is over, they’ll have a really funny story to read!

Create Some Shape Poetry

Poetry is a quick and short writing activity to get kids engaged in creative writing. But writing a typical haiku or limerick can get boring over time. To add a little more excitement gets your kids to write poems in the shape of something. For example, your child could write a poem about cats , in the shape of a cat:

Not only are these poems great to read, but they also make wonderful pieces of artwork. For more inspirations, check out our Alice in Wonderland inspired shape poetry .

Finish The Story Game

The finish the story game is the simplest creative writing activity in our list. In a team of at least 2 players, each player takes turns completing a story. Start off with a random story starter and then each player takes turns to continue this story. Which way will the story go? No-one knows. And that’s the real beauty of this game. Let your child explore their imagination and come up with wild ideas to keep the story interesting. And by the end of the game, you’ll have a really unique and funny story to read. 

Use Image Prompts

Image prompts are a great source of inspiration. And can be used in a number of ways to encourage your child to write. For instance, you can ask your child to write a quick snappy slogan for a random image or photograph. Alternatively, you could play a whole game centred around a single image, such as the Round Robin Tournament game explained in our post on storytelling games using image prompts .

Story Cubes To Inspire

Inspiration is key in making writing fun for kids. That’s where story cubes come in handy. You either buy ready-made story cubes or make your own story cubes at home. If you’re interested in making your own story cubes, check out these 9 free story cube templates for ideas. Once you have a bunch of story cubes, you can simply roll them like dice and then challenge your kids to write a story based on the images they get. For game ideas using story cubes, check out this post on how to use story cubes . 

Create A Comic Strip

If your kids hate writing but love drawing, then comic strips are a great creative activity to sneak in some minor writing with huge levels of imagination. Pick a topic, any topic you like. This could be related to your child’s interest and then ask them to create a short comic strip about that topic. For example, if you child loves dinosaurs, ask them to create their own comic strip about dinosaurs. For more inspiration and ideas, check out this post on how to create your own comic strip and comic books at home. 

Make Your Own Pop-up Book

Another fun way to get your kids to write more is by creating your own pop-book books. Pop-up books seem really complicated to create, but in reality, they are really easy to make at home. All you need is some paper, scissors and glue. Check out this super easy tutorial on how to create your own pop-book at home for quick step-by-step instructions. Similar to comic strips, pop-up books are a great way of combining drawing with writing to get your kids writing more in a quick and fun way. 

Create Mini Booklets

Turn your child’s story into a real book! You can buy blank books from Amazon or create your own mini paper book, using this easy mini notebook tutorial . With this tutorial you can create a fully customisable book, with your own cover, back page and you can even draw your own illustrations inside! This is a really fun and cute way to gets your kids writing in their spare time.

Write A Letter With a Fun Twist

Forgot ordinary boring letters! Check out our Paper craft animal envelopes to encourage your kids to write letters to their friends, family, heroes, aliens, anyone they like! Inside the child can write any message they like, such as “how were your holidays…” or “We’re having a party this weekend…” And on the outside they can create any animal or creature they like as envelopes. 

Describe a Monster

Ask your child to draw their own monster or character and describe it. – What are its strengths, and weaknesses, where does it live, what does it like doing and so on? This creative writing activity is quick, simple and full of imagination! And you could even take this a step further by creating your own monster flip books !

Use Story Starters

Use story starters to inspire reluctant writers. These can be simple sentences, such as “It was Timmy’s first day at school and he was excited…” and your child can continue writing the rest of the story. Or you could use photos and your child’s drawings to inspire story-writing by asking the child to describe what’s happening in this image. Take a look at this post on 60+ first-line prompts to inspire you or you could view our mega list of over 300 writing prompts for kids .

Create Your Own Greeting Cards

Get your child to create their own Christmas cards , greeting cards or get well cards to send to someone they know. They can write their own personal message inside and draw a picture on the outside. Quick activities like this are a great way to sneak in some writing with some arts and crafts. 

Create Your Own Newspaper

Ask your child to write their own newspaper article or create their own newspaper about the daily events that happen at home or at school. Remember the use of the 5 W’s and 1 H when writing newspaper articles. Our newspaper challenge online activity is great for creating fun newspaper articles.

Make A Shopping List

Get the kids involved in the weekly grocery shopping! Ask them to write the shopping list with drawings. If the grocery shopping list is too boring, then get them to create a wish list of items they dream of owning or even a list of goals they want to accomplish. You can buy some really pretty shopping list pads from Amazon , which could be a great way to encourage your kids to get writing!

Re-tell some fairytales

Fairytales have been around for centuries and by now they need a modern twist. Challenge your child to update an old classic. And you could even use this free ‘Retell a fairy tale pack ’ to help you. Re-telling a fairytale is a lot easier than creating a whole new one – Simply ask your child to change one or two key elements in the story and see how it changes the entire fairytale. For example, what if Cinderella was the villain? Alternatively, you could go wacky and add a whole new character to a classic fairytale, such as Spiderman making an appearance in Jack and the Beanstalk. The possibilities really are endless!

Write Your Own Movie Script

Ask your child to write their own short movie script, they can create a cast list and give all the different characters different things to say. You can find a free script and cast list template here ! Think about the conversation between the characters, what problems would they encounter, who is the villain in this story? We also think these free finger puppets printable could be great for story-telling.

Hand-written Blogs

Ask your child to keep a simple hand-written blog about their hobbies and interests. This can be done in a journal or notebook. Ask them the following questions: What do they like doing in their spare time and why do they enjoy this. Maybe ask them to provide instructions on how someone else can also be good at this hobby. They can update their hand-written blog everyday with new tips and interesting pieces of information on their hobby.

Wanted Posters

Create a ‘Wanted’ poster for famous villains in storybooks, such as Miss Trunchbull from Matilda or Cinderella’s Stepmother. You can find a free blank template here . Alternatively try out the Most Wanted online activity on Imagine Forest, to create your own wanted posters online:

Storyboarding

Writing a whole story down can be cumbersome. That’s why storyboarding can make a really good creative writing activity. Instead of asking a child to write a whole story down, get them to think about the key events in the story and plan it out using a storyboard template . Planning their story out beforehand could even encourage your child to write a complete story down afterwards. The first step is always planning out what you are going to write, and this could give your child the confidence to keep going. 

Know anymore fun writing activities for kids? Tell us your ideas 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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• How to write a story
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• Dramatic writing
• How to write a memoir
• How to write a mystery
• Creative journaling
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• For teachers

Creative Writing Activities and Games

1) free-writing:, 2) group stories:, 3) found poetry treasure hunt:, 4) class blog:, 5) criticism-free sharing:, more resources.

• You’ll find additional teaching ideas and creative writing activities in Linda Leopold Strauss’s book, Drop Everything and Write! An Easy, Breezy Guide for Kids Who Want to Write a Story.
• You'll find a complete creative writing syllabus with lesson plans you can use on the main Teaching Resources page .

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Homework in Russian Education Facilities: Key Facts and Types

1 Comment · Posted by Alex Smirnov in Education

What is homework in the first place? In a nutshell, it is one of the forms of educational activities performed by students outside the classroom or in extracurricular time. This form of activity can pursue a number of goals:

• To help students assimilate and retain the material presented in the class better;
• To let students self-study certain topics or concepts that don’t require clarification from the teacher;
• To assess how well students have grasped the material. Also, to understand how well they can apply the obtained knowledge and skills for finding solutions to certain problems;
• To identify gaps in knowledge.

For decades, homework of all shapes and kinds has been an integral part of the educational process. This type of activity is used by pretty much all education facilities, regardless of the level, and all across the world. However, the essence and types of homework can vary from country to country.

Namely, due to a significant difference in the overall education system in Russia, the types of homework assigned to students in this country can be somewhat different. For example, it will be different from homework types assigned, say, in the US. As we know, here, the largest academic challenge facing students is writing, which can be delegated to make my essay service professionals. But, the situation in Russian education facilities is different.

In this article, we are going to take a closer look at the homework in Russia and discover what types of this extracurricular activity are there.

Basic Requirements for the Content and Volume of Homework

In Russia, both the volume and content of homework are regulated by law. The Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation sets very specific sanitary and epidemiological norms for the conditions and organization of training in educational institutions and closely monitors their compliance.

According to these regulations, the organization of home schoolwork has to be an integral part of the general problem of improving the educational process at school. The content, nature, and functions of homework cannot be considered in isolation from the content, nature, and methods of teaching applied in the classroom. It is during the lessons that teachers must create the right conditions for the successful completion of homework.

Many components and stages of the lesson are directly related to the subsequent completion of homework: checking homework, assigning homework lessons, students’ independent work in the lesson, etc. The combination of these components should be such that in the lesson, the student would get fully prepared for the homework and so that the lesson and subsequent independent work are a uniform process.

Currently, there are the following basic requirements for homework in Russia:

• The overall volume of the homework should not exceed 30% of the total amount of work performed in the classroom.
• The total time spent by students on homework should not exceed: 1.5 hours for 2 through 3 grade; 2 hours for 4 through 5 grade; 2.5 hours for 6 through 8 grade; and 3.5 for 9 through 11 grade.

According to stats, Russia is among the countries where students spend the most time on homework – on average, they are dealing with 9.7 hours of homework per week.

Types and Forms of Homework in Russia

Schools and higher education facilities in Russia use different types of homework assignments to ensure the integrity and efficiency of the learning process. Namely, we can distinguish the following types of assignments:

• Individual;
• Differentiated;
• One for the whole class;
• Compiling homework for a deskmate.

Now, let’s look at each type in detail.

As you can easily guess, individual homework is usually assigned to individual students and is tailored to their specific needs, the current level of knowledge, existing gaps, and other individual factors. This form of homework makes it easy for the teacher to check the level of knowledge of a particular student. Such work can be done on cards or using printed workbooks.

Group homework is also a pretty common activity. It implies that the class is being divided into smaller groups of students, and each of the groups is assigned to work on a specific task that is part of the overall classroom assignment.

Differentiated homework is shaped based on the concept of differentiated instruction, which implies distinguishing students’ differences and using them to boost the effectiveness of learning. For example, this type of homework can be characterized by the following features:

• The assignment is the same for everyone, but the method of its completion varies depending on each student’s differences.
• There can be several options in the assignment, giving students the right to choose any of them independently.

Compiling homework for a deskmate is the most innovative approach to assigning homework. It implies that students will formulate the homework tasks for their peers themselves, based on the tasks that have been performed in the classroom.

Creative assignments include academic writing, personal projects, research, etc. They are typically assigned less frequently, and teachers give students more time to complete them. For example, a typical homework can have a deadline in just a day, whereas students should be given at least a week to complete a creative assignment.

Finally, the last and the most common type of homework in Russia is one assignment for the whole class. This can include different types of activities, including reading, writing, problem-solving, testing, etc. Typically, this is the form of the task students in Russia are dealing with daily.

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THE 10 BEST Arkhangelsk Points of Interest & Landmarks

Points of interest & landmarks in arkhangelsk.

• Monuments & Statues
• Points of Interest & Landmarks
• Churches & Cathedrals
• Historic Sites
• 5.0 of 5 bubbles
• 4.0 of 5 bubbles & up
• Budget-friendly
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• Honeymoon spot
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• Adventurous
• Hidden Gems
• Good for Adrenaline Seekers
• Things to do ranked using Tripadvisor data including reviews, ratings, number of page views, and user location.

1. Monument To the Seal - the Savior of Citizens of Arkhangelsk and Leningrad

2. Pedestrian Chumbarova-Luchinskogo Avenue

3. Monument to Sena Malina

4. Holy Trinity Antony of Siya Monastery

5. Zero Verst

6. Victory War Monument 1941—1945 and Eternal Flame

7. Monument to Russian Wifes - Savers of Family Hearth

8. Dormition of the Mother of God

9. Stela Cape Pur Navolok

10. British Tank Mark V

11. Marfin House

12. City of Military Glory Stela

13. Peter The Great Monument

14. Northern (Arctic) University named after M.V. Lomonosov

15. Novodvinskaya Fortress

16. Monument to General Kuznetsov

17. Chapel Matrona of Moscow

18. Obelisk of the North

19. Bani Makarova 1900-1904

20. Kilometre Zero

21. Monument to Victims of Political Repression

22. Monument to Plane YAK-18T

23. Space Station Orbita

24. Monument Victory Tank IS-3

25. Cinematograph Edison - Cinema Sever

26. Surskoye Town Church

27. Church of the Nativity

28. Memorial to 23rd Guards Division

29. Bishops House 1819-1898

30. Chapel of the Holy Artemiy Verkolskiy

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