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 he or she thinks the paper will be about or what he or she thinks 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 his or her 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 his or her 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.
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Short Story Ideas - Personal Creative Writing Challenges
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Set up a school writing club and boost children’s confidence
In the inspiring environment of a well-run writing group, children’s literacy skills will flourish – so why not set up your own?
Lynda set up a lunchtime writing club, ‘Buzzwords’, in her primary school. She began with Year 6 and, after a while, opened the club to children across KS2. Children were given notebooks and encouraged to ‘loosen their writing muscles’ with a range of word hunts, lists and short writing exercises. She found oral anecdotes and memories powerful ways of engaging less confident writers.
She always read aloud a piece of writing to broaden the children’s vocabulary, ideas and structures, and to increase their literary knowledge. A collection of simple writing prompts also proved effective – pictures, maps, word collections, opening lines and headlines. Children were happy to find their own materials and spaces, under desks as well as at them, and to write for 20 minutes. Lynda established an atmosphere of respectful attention so children who wanted to would read out their work. They were always keen to know their peers’ responses and became fond of each other’s distinctive humour.
In Lynda’s view, children’s increased ease with writing was the club’s greatest success. This was especially the case for children with learning difficulties who had previously under-achieved because of low self-esteem, and for able writers hampered by the limitation of prescribed or over-structured writing tasks.
You may have heard of the National Writing Project UK (NWP UK). Perhaps you have attended one of its growing networks of ‘writing clubs’, which since 2009 have been bringing teachers together to write, share their work and enhance their practice. But have you considered setting up your own for your school’s children? As the example above illustrates, the results can be well worth the effort…
Setting up a writing club
On your own:
Firstly, start writing today! Fix a regular time when you can sit quietly, and aim to write for at least 20 minutes. Sometimes this will be easy, at others hard, but you need to gain confidence to write even when you’re not feeling like it. Try out the ideas you plan to use with the writing group.
Once you’ve done this for a week or so, you’ll be ready to start. You don’t have to share any of this with your club or class, but it really helps to write alongside pupils, using the same prompts, and to be prepared to show, share and discuss some of the evidence.
With the children:
Sound out your individuals and classes. Identify your keen writers. Discuss the idea with them. Establish a convenient time (lunchtime or afterschool), so that you can meet once a week for at least half a term before you review or change anything. Engage your enthusiasts by word of mouth, and advertise.
In a primary school assembly with about 300 children, one teacher announced the start of her Year 5 and 6 writing club with these words: “I will be doing this in Mrs X’s classroom at lunchtime. If you would like to come along, we’re going to be writing things that we want to write and, you know, it’s for fun, basically.” Seventeen children came to the first session and twenty-five to the second. The club is still running after two years.
Get them engaged
Your club should be fun and stress-free, with a range of quick writing games and short challenges. Meet in a quiet place. Give each writer a notebook and pen, or encourage them to buy a nice one. Establish ground rules about privacy, experimentation, practice, sharing and reflection. Write alongside the children. Get to know and value the different voices. Celebrate diversity and withhold judgement. Be prepared for the membership to change over time, but keep the invitations personal and positive, and keep repeating them.
Quick writing exercises:
You need something easy to break the ice and ‘loosen up the writing muscles’ – and “If it’s a lunchtime club you have to have an activity … that they can do while they eat their sandwiches…” noted one group’s leader! The following list may provide some inspiration:
Titles, newspaper headlines, opening lines … closing lines Dilemmas Lists of words, word tiles to arrange A simple stem-structure such as “I like…”, “I hate…” A ‘scavenger hunt’ of the place you are in Freewriting for five minutes without shopping
Agree beforehand
whether this writing will be shared or not. It’s often good to have a shared and a private piece – that way children can get into the habit of trusting themselves to have a go, and of letting other, more considered, writing ‘brew’ inside them for a while.
Main writing activities:
After a while this is best left to individuals to decide, but at first, some children may appreciate some guidance. Try:
extending your writing from one of the first exercises (take a word, idea or phrase as a starting point);
writing in voices or from a particular perspective – what the woman in the picture was really thinking; how the artefact came to be here; what the tree remembers;
using snatches of overheard conversations or ‘found’ phrases to launch you into your own writing;
finding an object/picture/view that interests you and write about it twice, moving your writing position/perspective to do so – once from one point of view, once from another.
Again, agree beforehand how you will share the writing that takes place. Establish ground rules, for example, listening to each other attentively and not being afraid just to say thank you. It’s useful to model how to respond to the writing process, rather than the product:
Where did you get your ideas from? Which words/parts came easily and where did you struggle? What would you like to do next with your writing?
When children are ready to share, model attentive listening to tone and content (it helps to hear the writing before you see it). This process may be better in pairs at first, but where possible it’s fascinating to read around the group and hear what different writing has emerged during the session from similar stimuli.
Taking it further
You might like to enhance your group by writing together online. Most schools have a VLE with separate forums that can be closed except to those who are password approved. This enables all children to see each others’ writing and give feedback. A teacher of one Year 6 class said that the biggest boost to children’s writing confidence came from appreciation and suggestions from their peer group.
Writing resources
The following items will help keep your children inspired for hours…
Small boxes and envelopes, plain and coloured paper, card A range of writing implements Collections of postcards, pictures, quotations A book box with novels, picture books and poetry Magazines and newspapers to cut up CD/DVDs: music, short films or clips Ephemeral texts – newsletters, tickets brochures, catalogues and packaging A props box, hats and scarves, glasses, glove puppets A collection of objects – buttons, fir cones, jewellery, toys, bric-abrac, shells, stones Once the group is established, it’s good to ask children to bring and add ideas, texts, objects, pictures, DVDs of their own.
This article is an edited extract of Introducing Teachers’ Writing Groups by Jenifer Smith and Simon Wrigley (Routledge), which is available now. It explains the importance of said groups and offers guidance on setting up your own. Visit routledge.com/education. For a full list of NWP UK writing clubs, visit nwp.org.uk
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How to Start a Creative Writing Club
Last Updated: October 25, 2022 References
This article was co-authored by Ashley Pritchard, MA . Ashley Pritchard is an Academic and School Counselor at Delaware Valley Regional High School in Frenchtown, New Jersey. Ashley has over 3 years of high school, college, and career counseling experience. She has an MA in School Counseling with a specialization in Mental Health from Caldwell University and is certified as an Independent Education Consultant through the University of California, Irvine. This article has been viewed 29,995 times.
Do you have a passion for creative writing that you want to take to the next level? A great way to grow your writing skills is to start a creative writing club, where you can share your work with others who are invested in cultivating the same craft. Working with people who share similar interests to you is both fun and incredibly rewarding!
Things You Should Know
- If you’re a student, talk to your favorite English teacher and ask them to sponsor the club; the odds are extremely high that they’ll be thrilled by the idea!
- If you’re running the club, remember that different members are likely there for unique reasons—include a variety of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and screenwriting activities.
- For a younger crowd, include a writing activity with every meeting and encourage members to share their work—be super supportive!
- Make sure that if you’re doing any workshop-style discussions that the members understand that critiquing someone’s work does not mean criticizing them as people.
- Clubs with older members will likely attract a good number of experienced writers, so you may want to start meetings by asking members if they’ve been working on anything they’d like feedback on before going into activities, lectures, or discussions.
Forming Your Club
- Possible locations include your house, public park, an open classroom, or anywhere else you can meet and converse without disturbing others.
- Word of mouth: Invite friends and acquaintances, and ask them to spread the word and bring their friends! Talk openly and excitedly about your club: your enthusiasm will help draw the interest of others. It’s a good idea to invite very broadly to begin with: the people who are truly invested in your club will show up and stick around.
- Posters and fliers: Design a cool flier and post it around school or your workplace! This is a nice way to draw attention to your club.
- Social media: For example, you can create a Facebook Event for the first meeting and share it widely with your friends!
- If you do decide to ask someone to be your advisor, be considerate of their time and respectful when making your request. Sending them an introductory email explaining your plans (in as much detail as you can) will allow them to make an informed decision. It is also courteous to offer to meet in person or talk over the phone/Skype so that they can ask any questions they might have before they make their decision.
- Advisors can be involved in a variety of ways, and this should be a conversation that you have directly with your potential advisor. Will they attend meetings? Will they offer guidance from afar? These are questions that are best to ask early on.
- This is related to possibly need an advisor: some schools require an advisor's signature on club registration forms. Once again, just be sure to research your school, university, or organization's requirements.
Holding for Your First Meeting
- You can choose an icebreaker that is relevant to the theme (if applicable) of your club, or you choose something entirely random. The point of this activity is to lighten the mood and help your members get to know each other and feel more comfortable opening up and sharing their work. Classic icebreakers like " Two Truths and Lie " (where everyone shares two true facts and a lie about themselves, and others guess the fabrication) and the "Name Game" (where each person has to find an adjective to describe themselves that starts with the same letter as their name) can be great simple options. [2] X Research source
- Write about an animal of your choice.
- Open up a dictionary, pick a word, and write what it means to you.
- Create a poem or story that starts with "Hello."
- Write a piece that's inspired by a conversation you've recently overheard.
- Write about something you dread or fear.
- If voting proves too messy (this might be the case, especially if you have many members), an easy and neutral online tool that may help you decide when to hold meetings is doodle.com (or other similar scheduling applications).
- Is your main goal as a group to spark new writing ideas together and actually practice writing during the meetings, or to critique and improve one another's written works? Alternatively, you may want to operate as more of a social/support group for writers, where you talk about your craft and hold one another accountable for your personal writing goals. Decide your focus together, and build that into your mission. [4] X Research source
- Bringing a large sheet of paper and pens (or whiteboard markers if your location has a whiteboard) can be a nice way of involving members in this process. Members can take turns suggesting and writing ideas. You can keep this piece of paper as a reminder for future meetings, or you can take it, type it up, and print it and share copies (or a combination).
Keeping Your Club Going
- It is helpful to bring a notebook to meetings so that new members can share their e-mails and/or phone numbers, and so that you can then add them to any groups or lists.
- It's a good idea to start an e-mail list, a Facebook group, and maybe a group chat so that you can add members and keep them informed and up to date on club meetings and activities. It's all up to you, but clear communication will help your club flourish.
- If you do choose to have writing partnerships be a part of your club structure, you may want to consider assigning writing partners randomly as well as have people change partners periodically. It's a good idea to try to prevent cliques from forming for many reasons: so that no one feels left out, so that members are receiving feedback on their work from multiple perspectives, and so that people are establishing many connections with many different members of different style, backgrounds, and personalities.
- Give members ideas of how to connect with their writing partner. Suggest accessible practices such as, "After you've written your piece, share it with your partner via Google Docs so that you can read each other's work. Then, coordinate a time to meet and discuss one your work in person." Encourage members to do whatever feels most comfortable to them.
- One way to do this is creating and sharing the link to a standing Google Form that is specifically designed for feedback. Creating an anonymous Google Form (or whatever type of digital survey works best for you) will encourage members to voice their opinions. It's good to establish protocol for how this feedback will be dealt with, early on: will you (as the leader) check the responses regularly, and will suggestions be discussed at meetings?
- Another way to gather feedback is to designate an allotted amount of time during meetings to open up the discussion for feedback and suggestions.
- If you and your members do decide that you want to discuss feedback weekly (however you choose to gather it, whether electronically or during meetings), you may also want to discuss the format of this discussion. Will it be an informal discussion? Will people vote? Will it depend on the feedback? These are good points to consider early on when determining club guidelines.
- Let members know what they should bring to the next meeting (i.e. laptop, notebooks, pens, etc.).
- Ideally, set at least a loose agenda for your next meeting, before you wrap up your first one. Your goal should be to get right down to writing and club discussions in your subsequent meetings, now that you've set some ground rules and expectations. [6] X Trustworthy Source University of North Carolina Writing Center UNC's on-campus and online instructional service that provides assistance to students, faculty, and others during the writing process Go to source
Community Q&A
- Bringing snacks can be a fun addition to any meeting. But be sure to communicate any allergens (nuts, dairy, etc.)! This will help incentivize people to come to the meetings, and—particularly if your club is hosted during lunch or after school—makes sure that no one is hungry entirely. ⧼thumbs_response⧽ Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
- Bringing some extra notebooks and pens to the first meeting (or first few meetings) is always a good idea, just in case someone forgets their own. ⧼thumbs_response⧽ Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
- Try this fun activity: Pass sheets of paper around so everyone has one. Have everyone write the beginning of a story, pass the sheet to the person on their right, and have them continue the story (then folding the sheet over so the next person can only see the most recently added sentence, not any of the previous sentences). It's sort of like the game "telephone," and you can theme it around a particular topic! ⧼thumbs_response⧽ Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
You Might Also Like
- ↑ http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/7-questions-to-ask-yourself-before-starting-a-writers-group
- ↑ https://icebreakerideas.com/quick-icebreakers/
- ↑ http://thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts
- ↑ https://www.inkedvoices.com/writing/types/
- ↑ http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/writing-groups/writing-group-starter-kit/
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42 Creative Writing Exercises
This page contains a selection of fun creative writing exercises that can be completed solo, or with a group. Some are prompts to help inspire you to come up with story ideas, others focus on learning specific writing skills.
The sections are as follows:
A note on running exercises remotely
A letter from your character to you, the opening sentence, make your protagonist act, overcoming writer's block, character arc, giving feedback to authors, the five senses, show don't tell, world building.
- Easy gossiping exercise
Degrees of Emotion Game
Three birds, one line, blind date on valentine's day (exercise for adults), a success (works best for online groups), your dream holiday, writing a haiku, writing a limerick, time travel - child, adult, senior, focus on faces.
- Onomatopeai, rhyme and alliteration
The alphabet story - creating a story as a group
A question or two, murder mystery game, the obscure movie exercise, how to hint at romantic feelings, a novel idea, creative writing prompts, creative story cards / dice, alternative christmas story, murder mystery mind map.
- New Year's resolutions for a fictional character
- Stephen King - Using verbs & nouns in fiction
- It's the end of the world
Other Content:
- 7 Editing exercises (for your first draft)
How to run the writing exercises
While you can enjoy the exercises solo, a lot of writing groups have gone online during the coronavirus pandemic and are using Zoom, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or Skype to keep in touch with other writers during this time.
If you're running such a group and following a ' Shut Up and Write ' structure, I recommend connecting on WhatsApp (for example) first, doing the exercise together, with participants sending each other their writing samples where necessary as part of the exercise, then disconnecting to write in silence for an hour and a half, before reconnecting for a brief informal chat at the end. This works well with small remote groups and is a great way to gain some online support and stay productive!
If you have a larger group, it's worth looking into Zoom, as this has a feature called Breakout Rooms . Breakout Rooms let you split different writers into separate rooms, which is great for group activities. The free version of Zoom has a 40 minute limit, which can be restrictive, but Zoom Pro is well worth it if you're going to use it on a regular basis. In my experience, Zoom has a better connection than Skype or WhatsApp.
I hope you remain healthy and creative throughout this difficult time for us all.
I run a Creative Writing Meetup for adults and teens in Montpellier every week where we start with a 5 to 20 minute exercise, followed by an hour and a half of silent writing, where we each work on our own project. Each of these exercises has been used with the group and works well. Where the exercises below specify a number of people, if you have a larger group, simply split everyone up into smaller groups as appropriate.
The solo exercises are ideal if you’re working by yourself to help stimulate your mind before working on a larger project or to overcome writer’s block, or can be used with a larger group, where you simply ask everyone to share what they’ve written in groups of 3 or 4 people afterwards. Looking for something quick to fire your imagination? Check out these creative writing prompts for adults .
If your goal is to write a complete work of fiction, whether it be a novel, a play or a movie script, you will one day need to write to an agent or publisher to ask them to publish your work.
In this exercise, we turn this around and ask you to instead spend 10 minutes writing a letter from a character in your novel to you , the author, explaining why you should write about them! This serves three purposes:
If you're doing this exercise with a group of teens or adults, and some of the group haven't already started working on their masterpiece, they can instead choose any fictional novel that they love and imagine that a character within it wrote to the author in the first place to ask them to write their story. What did that letter look like?
- As you write, it helps you get into the mindset of the character. Ask yourself how they would language this letter and what they would consider important to include.
- It's motivating to know that your character wants you to write about them.
- It's good practice for when you will need to send a letter to an agent or publisher.
The opening sentence has to grab the reader's attention and make them want to keep reading. Many authors achieve this by starting with an action scene and avoid starting with someone waking up, or a description of the weather. In this exercise the task is to write an opening sentence either to a book you're currently writing, or simply for an imaginary piece of literature. Here are some of my favourite opening sentences to get you going:
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
George Orwell , 1984
The Golem's life began in the hold of a steamship.
Helene Wecker , The Golem and the Djinni
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Leo Tolstoy , Anna Karenina
It wasn't a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance.
Diana Gabaldon , Outlander
You better not never tell nobody but God.
Alice Walker , The Color Purple
The cage was finished.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez , Balthazar’s Marvelous Afternoon
Imagine that you are living your life out of order: Lunch before breakfast, marriage before your first kiss.
Audrey Niffenegger , The Time Traveler's Wife
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Douglas Adams , The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
There are a plethora of ways that you can start a book, however two ways that help engage the reader immediately are:
Spend 5 minutes working on your own opening sentence, then share it with the other participants.
- Set the scene in as few words as possible, so that the reader immediately knows what's happening and wants to know what happens next. The scene must be original and create a vivid image in the reader's mind.
- Surprise the reader with an unusual event or usual point of view.
Exercise for 2 writers, or can be done solo.
According to John Gardner:
"Failure to recognise that the central character must act, not simply be acted upon, is the single most common mistake in the fiction of beginners."
Spend 5 minutes writing a scene where the protagonist is passive in a conversation with one other character. It could be that the other character says something dramatic, and the protagonist just listens, or it could be anything else of your choice!
Once the 5 minutes is up, swap papers with another writer. If you're using Zoom, or working online, send it to each other in a private chat. Now the other person spends 8 minutes rewriting the scene to make the protagonist as active as possible. This might include:
Read both scenes together. Which makes you want to keep on reading?
If you're doing this as a solo writing exercise, simply complete both parts yourself.
- Showing the emotion this evokes.
- Getting them to disagree with the other character.
- Showing how they respond physically (whether it's as a physical manifestation of how they feel, or a dramatic gesture to make a point).
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Are you staring at a blank page or stuck for any story ideas? This exercise will help anyone who's experiencing writer's block with a particular piece of writing. If this isn't you, that's great, others will value your input!
If anyone has a particular scene that they're stuck with (a pool of blood on the floor that they have no explanation for, a reason why the rich lady just walked into a particular pub, etc.) then at the start of the exercise everyone briefly describes their scenes (if working online with a large group, typing it into the chat might be best). Everyone then chooses one scene to use as a writing prompt to write a short story for 10-15 minutes.
Afterwards, split into small groups if necessary, and read out how you completed someone else's writing prompt. As everyone listens to everyone else's ideas, this can be a wonderful source of inspiration and also improves your writing. As an alternative solo exercise, try free writing. With free writing, simply write as quickly as you can on the topic without editing or censoring yourself - just let your creative juices flow. If you're not sure what happens next, brainstorm options on the page, jot down story ideas, or just put, "I don't know what happens next." Keep going and ideas will come.
There are several different types of character arc in a novel, the 3 most common being:
- Positive - Where a character develops and grows during the novel, perhaps starting unhappy or weak and ending happy or powerful.
- Negative - Where a character gets worse during a novel, perhaps becoming ill or giving in to evil tendencies as the novel progresses.
- Flat - In a flat character arc the character themself doesn't change much, however the world around them does. This could be overthrowing a great injustice, for example.
For this exercise choose either a positive or negative character arc and spend 8 minutes writing a scene from the start of a novel, then 8 minutes writing a scene towards the end of a novel showing how the character has developed between the two points (obviously, we will have to imagine how this change has occurred).
The point here is to capture the essence of a character, as they will be the same, but show their development.
This is a fun writing activity for a small group. You’ve found a magic potion labelled ‘Cat Chat’ and when you drink it, you turn into whichever animal you’re thinking about; but there’s a problem, it also picks up on the brainwaves of other people near you!
Everyone writes down an animal in secret and then reveals it to the other writers. The spell will turn you into a creature that combines elements of all the animals. Each person then spends 5 minutes writing down what happens when they drink the potion.
After the 5 minutes is up, everyone shares their story with the other participants.
If you enjoy this exercise, then you may also want to check out our Fantasy and Sci-Fi writing prompts full of world building, magic, and character development prompts..
Joe Brainard wrote a novel called: I Remember It contains a collection of paragraphs all starting with “I remember”. This is the inspiration for this exercise, and if you’re stuck for what to write, is a great way to get the mental gears turning. Simply write “I remember” and continue with the first thing that pops into your head.
Spend 5 minutes writing a short collection of “I remember” stories.
Here are a couple of examples from Joe Brainard’s novel:
“I remember not understanding why people on the other side of the world didn't fall off.”
“I remember waking up somewhere once and there was a horse staring me in the face.”
If you're running a workshop for more experienced adult authors and have at least half an hour, then this is a good one to use (this is the longest exercise on this page, but I felt it important enough to include).
Give each member the option to bring a piece of their own work that should be double spaced and a maximum of 3 pages long. If you're running a workshop where not everyone is likely to bring a manuscript, then ask everyone who wants to bring one to print two copies each (If someone forgets but has a laptop with them, the reader can always use their laptop).
Print out a few copies and hand them around to everyone in the workshop of the guide on: 'How to give constructive feedback to writers'
Each author who brought a sample with them then gives them to one other person to review. They write their name on the manuscript in a certain colour pen, then add any comments to it before passing it to a second person who does the same (commenting on the comments if they agree or disagree).
Then allow 5 minutes for everyone to discuss the feedback they've received, ensuring that they are giving constructive feedback.
Painting by Giovanni Battista Manerius - The Five Senses
Choose a scene and write it for 5 minutes focusing on one sense, NOT sight. Choose between:
Hearing Taste Smell Touch
This can be internal as well as external (I heard my heartbeat thudding in my ears, or I smelt my own adrenaline).
After the 5 minutes stop and everyone reads it out loud to each other. Now write for another 5 minutes and continue the other person's story, but do NOT use sight OR the sense they used.
You can use any sense to communicate the essentials, just focus on creating emotions and conveying the story with the specific sense(s).
If you need some writing prompts, here are possible scenes that involve several senses:
- Climbing through an exotic jungle
- Having an argument that becomes a fight
- A cat's morning
- Talking to someone you're attracted to
2 or 3 people
A lot of writing guides will advise you to, "Show, don't tell," but what does this actually mean?
If you want to evoke an emotional reaction from your reader, then showing them what is happening is a great way to do so. You can do this in several ways:
Split up into pairs and each person writes down a short scene from a story where they "tell" it. After this, pass the description of the scene to your partner and they then have 5 minutes to rewrite it to "show" what happened. If there are an odd number of participants, make one group of three, with each person passing their scene clockwise, so everyone has a new scene to show. After the 5 minutes, for small groups everyone reads their new description to everyone else, or for large groups, each person just reads their new scene to their partner.
- Avoid internal dialogue (thinking), instead have your protagonist interact with other people, or have a physical reaction to something that shows how s/he feels. Does their heart beat faster? Do they notice the smell of their own adrenaline? Do they step backwards, or lean forwards?
- Instead of using an adjective like creepy, e.g. "Mary entered the creepy house", show why the house is creepy through description and in the way the protagonist responds - "The light streamed through the filthy skylight, highlighting the decomposing body of a rat resting on top of it. As Mary stepped instead, she felt a gust of freezing air brush past her, she turned, but there was nothing there..."
World building is the art of conveying the magic of living in a different world, whether it's a spaceship, a medieval castle, a boat, or simply someone's living room. To master world building, it's not necessary to know every intricate detail, rather to convey the experience of what it would be like to live there.
Choose one of the above images as a prompt and spend 10 minutes writing a scene from the perspective of someone who is seeing it for the first time. Now, move your character six months forward and imagine that they've spent the last six months living or working there. Write another scene (perhaps with an additional character) using the image as a background, with the events of the scene as the main action.
Click the above image for a close-up.
Gossiping about a character as if they're a friend.
Judy Blume says that she tells her family about her characters as if they’re real people.
Chris Claremont said, "For me, writing the 'X-Men' was easy - is easy. I know these people, they're my friends."
Today’s exercise has 2 parts. First, spend 5 minutes jotting down some facts about a character you’ve invented that might come up if you were telling your friends about them. Either choose a character in something you’ve already written, or invent one from scratch now.
Answer the questions:
What are they up to? How are they? What would you say if you were gossiping about them?
Then split up into groups of 4 to 6 writers. 2 volunteers from each group then role-play talking about their character as if they were a friend (perhaps another character in the story). The other participants will role-play a group of friends gossiping about the character behind their back and ask questions. If you don’t know the answer, invent it!
This is based on an acting game, to help actors understand how to perform with different degrees of emotion.
Ask everyone to write the following 4 emotions:
For groups of 5 or less, write down numbers starting with 1 and going up until everyone has a number, then give them out in order. For groups of 6 or more, divide groups into 3's, 4's or 5's.
Each person has to write a scene where the protagonist is alone and is only allowed to say a single word, e.g. "Banana". The writer with number 1 should write the scene with a very low level of the emotion (e.g. happiness), number 2 increases the intensity a bit and the highest number writes a scene with the most intense emotion you can possibly imagine.
Once each writer has written about happiness, rotate the numbers one or two spaces, then move onto anger, then fear, then sadness.
It can help to give everyone numbers showing the intensity of the emotions to write about at the start of the exercise, in which case you may wish to print either the Word or PDF file, then use the ones corresponding to 3, 4 or 5 writers.
Everyone shares their scene with the other course participants.
The first paragraph of a surprising number of best-selling novels serves multiple purposes. These are to:
- Establish a goal
- Set the scene
- Develop a character
Nearly every chapter in a novel also serves all three purposes. Instead of establishing a goal though, the protagonist either moves towards it, or encounters an obstacle that hinders them from achieving it.
Some books manage to meet all three purposes with their opening lines, for example:
Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.
J.K. Rowling , Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
A little more than one hundred days into the fortieth year of her confinement, Dajeil Gelian was visited in her lonely tower overlooking the sea by an avatar of the great ship that was her home.
Iain M. Banks , Excession
"We should start back," Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them.
George R.R. Martin , A Game of Thrones
For this exercise write a sentence or short paragraph that serves all three purposes. If you're already writing a novel, then see if you can do this for the first line in a chapter. If not, choose any combination from the following table:
In pairs one writer spends a minute or two describing a character they're writing about, or alternatively they can describe a celebrity or someone from a work of fiction. The next writer then describes their character.
The story is that these 2 characters (or in my case, person and alien, as I'm writing a sci-fi) have accidentally ended up on a blind date with each other, perhaps the waiter seated them in the wrong location, perhaps it's an actual blind date, or perhaps they met in some other fashion that the writers can determine.
Now spend 10 minutes discussing what happens next!
This exercise works best for online groups, via Zoom, for example. The instructions to give are:
"In a few words describe a success in your life and what it felt like to achieve it. It can be a small victory or a large one."
Share a personal example of your own (mine was watching my homeschooled sons sing in an opera together).
"Once you have one (small or large), write it in the chat.
The writing exercise is then to choose someone else's victory to write about for 10 minutes, as if it was the end of your own book.
If you want to write for longer, now imagine how that book would start, and write the first part of the book with the ending in mind."
In this difficult time, this is great for reminding people of a success in their lives, and also helps everyone connect and discover something about each other.
You’re going on a dream holiday together, but can’t stand conflict, so rather than discuss what you want to do, you’ve decided that each of you will choose a different aspect of the holiday as follows:
Decide who gets to choose what at random, then each of you write down your dream holiday destination/activity/travel/food & clothes in secret. Next spend 5 minutes discussing your dream holiday and add any other details you’d like to include, particularly if you’re passionate about doing something in real life.
Finally, everyone spends another 5 minutes writing down a description of the holiday, then shares it with the others.
- Choose where you’ll be going – your favourite holiday destination.
- Choose what your main fun activity will be on the holiday.
- Decide what mode of travel you’ll use to get there.
- If there’s a 4 th person, choose what you’ll eat on the holiday and what you’ll be wearing.
A haiku is a traditional Japanese form of non-rhyming poetry whose short form makes it ideal for a simple writing exercise.
They traditionally are structured in 3 lines, where the first line is 5 syllables, the second line is 7 syllables, and the third line is 5 syllables again and tend to focus on themes of nature and deep concepts that can be expressed simply.
A couple of examples:
A summer river being crossed how pleasing with sandals in my hands! Yosa Buson , a haiku master poet from the 18 th Century.
And one of mine:
When night-time arrives Stars come out, breaking the dark You can see the most
Martin Woods
Spend up to 10 minutes writing a haiku. If you get stuck with the 5-7-5 syllable rule, then don’t worry, the overall concept is more important!
See How to write a haiku for more details and examples.
Unlike a haiku, which is profound and sombre, a limerick is a light-hearted, fun rhyming verse.
Here are a couple of examples:
A wonderful bird is the pelican. His bill can hold more than his beli-can He can take in his beak Food enough for a week But I'm damned if I see how the heli-can.
Dixon Lanier Merritt, 1910
There was a young lady named Bright, Whose speed was far faster than light; She started one day In a relative way, And returned on the previous night.
Arthur Henry Reginald Buller in Punch, 1923
The 1 st , 2 nd and 5 th line all rhyme, as do the 3 rd and 4 th line. The overall number of syllables isn’t important, but the 3 rd and 4 th lines should be shorter than the others.
Typically, the 1 st line introduces the character, often with “There was”, or “There once was” and the rest of the verse tells their story.
Spend 10 minutes writing a limerick.
Imagine that your future self as an old man/woman travels back in time to meet you, the adult you are today. Alternatively, you as a child travels forward in time to meet yourself as an adult. Or perhaps both happen, so that the child you, adult you, and senior you are all together at the same time. In story form write down what happens next.
Participants then share their story with other writers either in small groups, or to the whole group.
Solo exercise
One challenge writers face is describing a character and a common mistake is to focus too much on the physical features, e.g. "She had brown eyes, curly brown hair and was five foot six inches tall."
The problem with this is that it doesn't reveal anything about the character's personality, or about the relationship between your protagonist and the character and your reader is therefore likely to quickly forget what someone looks like. When describing characters, it's therefore best to:
Here are 3 examples of character descriptions that leave no doubt how the protagonist feels.
“If girls could spit venom, it'd be through their eyes.” S.D. Lawendowski, Snapped
"And Ronan was everything that was left: molten eyes and a smile made for war." Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves
"His mouth was such a post office of a mouth that he had a mechanical appearance of smiling." Charles Dickens
Spend 5 minutes writing a character introduction that is animated, uses metaphors or similes and involves your protagonist.
If working with a group, then form small groups of 3 or 4 and share your description with the rest of the group.
- Animate them - it's rare that someone's sitting for a portrait when your protagonist first meets them and whether they're talking or walking, it's likely that they're moving in some way.
- Use metaphors or similes - comparing physical features to emotionally charged items conjures both an image and a sense of who someone is.
- Involve your protagonist - if your protagonist is interacting with a character, make it personal. How does your protagonist view this person? Incorporate the description as part of the description.
- Only give information your protagonist knows - they may know if someone is an adult, or a teenager, but they won't know that someone is 37 years old, for example.
Onomatopeai, rhyme and alliteration
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Today's session is all about sound.
Several authors recommend reading your writing out loud after you've written it to be sure it sounds natural. Philip Pullman even goes as far as to say:
"When I’m writing, I’m more conscious of the sound, actually, than the meaning. I know what the rhythm of the sentence is going to be before I know what the words are going to be in it."
For today's exercise, choose the name of a song and write for 10 minutes as if that's the title for a short story. Focus on how your writing sounds and aim to include at least one onomatopoeia, rhyme or alliteration. At the end of the 10 minutes, read it out loud to yourself, or to the group.
Alliterations
An alliteration example from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, The furrow followed free; We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea.
Onomatopoeias
Buzz, woof, quack, baa, crash, purr, beep, belch,...
This is a novel way to write a story as a group, one word at a time. The first person starts the story that begins with any word starting with “A”, the next person continues the story with a word starting with “B”, and so on.
Keep going round until you have completed the alphabet. Ideally it will all be one sentence, but if you get stuck, start a new sentence. Don’t worry if it doesn’t make complete sense!
It can be tricky to remember the alphabet when under pressure, so you may wish to print it out a couple of times, so the storytellers can see it if they need to, this is particularly helpful if you have dyslexics in the group.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Here’s an example of an alphabet story:
A Band Can Dance Each Friday, Ghostly Hauntings In Jail Kill Lucky Men, Nobody Or Perhaps Quiet Rats, Still That Unifies Villains Who X-Ray Your Zebras.
As I mentioned, it doesn’t need to make sense!
Small or large groups
The standard format in our group is a short writing exercise followed by an hour and a half of silent writing on our projects.
At one point I felt like we'd done a lot of small group exercises, and wanted to gain an insight into what everyone was working on, so we did the following exercise instead:
Go round the table and ask everyone to briefly talk about their writing. Each person then asks one or two yes/no questions.
Everyone responds either by raising their hand for 'yes' or shaking their heads for 'no'. You can also leap up and down to indicate a very strong 'yes'.
Questions can be about anything, and you can use them either to help guide your writing or to help find other people in the group who have similar interests.
Here are some random examples you might ask:
This works best when you give participants some advance notice, so they have time to think of a question.
- I want to write a romance novel and am considering setting it in Paris, a traditional romantic setting, or Liverpool which is a less obvious setting. Who thinks Liverpool would be best?
- I need to know more about the life of a farmer. Has anyone got farming experience who I can interview in exchange for a drink?
- My character gets fired and that night goes back to his office and steals 35 computers. Does that sound realistic as the premise of a story?
Groups of 3 or 4
This exercise takes 20-30 minutes and allows participants to create a murder mystery outline together.
Phase 1 (3 minutes)
Phase 2 (10 minutes).
Each person then writes a police report as if they are either describing the scene of the crime, or recording the notes from their interview with a single suspect:
Write the following:
Write the following (from the perspective of the investigator):
Phase 3 (5 minutes)
See more ideas on creating murder mystery party games
- Split into groups of 3 or 4.
- Decide as a group where the murder occurs (e.g. the opera house, a bar, a casino).
- Decide one person who will write the details of the victim and the murder itself. Everyone else writes the details of one suspect each.
- The ‘victim author’ then invents a few extra details about the scene of the crime, who the victim was (a teenage punk, an adult opera singer, etc.) and the murder weapon and summarises this to the others.
- 1 line description of the victim.
- When they were last seen by a group of witnesses (and what they were doing).
- How the murder occurred in more detail based on the evidence available.
- 1 line description of the suspect.
- What they said during the interview (including what they claim to have doing when the murder occurs).
- A possible motivation (as determined by the police from other witnesses).
- Each person reads out their police reports to the other members of their small group.
- As a group, decide who the murderer was and what actually happened.
Pick a famous movie and spend 5 minutes writing a scene from it from an unusual perspective. Your aim is to achieve a balance between being too obscure and making it too obvious. Feel free to add internal dialogue.
At the end of the 5 minutes, everyone reads their movie scene to the others and all the other participants see if they can guess what the movie is.
Write a scene with 2 people in a group, where you hint that one is romantically interested in the other, but the feelings aren’t reciprocated.
The goal of this exercise is to practice subtlety. Imagine you are setting a scene for the future where the characters feelings will become more important. Choose a situation like a work conference, meeting with a group of friends, etc. How do you indicate how the characters feel without them saying it in words?
Some tips for hinting at romantic feelings:
- Make the characters nervous and shy.
- Your protagonist leans forward.
- Asks deeper questions and listens intently.
- Finds ways to be close together.
- Mirrors their gestures.
- Gives lots of compliments.
- Makes eye contact, then looks away.
- Other people seem invisible to your protagonist.
Take it in turns to tell everyone else about a current project that you’re working on (a book, screenplay, short story, etc.)
The other writers then brainstorm ideas for related stories you could write, or directions your project could take. There are no right or wrong suggestions and the intention is to focus on big concepts, not little details.
This whole exercise takes around 15 minutes.
Exercise for groups of 3-5
If you're in larger group, split up into groups of 3 or 4 people.
Everyone writes the first line of a story in the Zoom chat, or on paper. Other people can then choose this line as a writing prompt.
For this exercise:
Once everyone's written a prompt, everyone chooses a prompt (preferably someone eles's, but it can be your own if you feel really inspired by it.) Then write for 10 minutes using this prompt. See if you can reveal who the protagonist is, what their motivation is (it can be a small motivation for a particular scene, it doesn't have to be a huge life goal), and introduce at least one new character.
Take turns reading out your stories to each other.
- Write in the first person.
- Have the protagonist interacting with an object or something in nature.
- The challenge is to create intrigue that makes the reader want to know more with just a single line.
- Say who the protagonist is.
- Reveal their motivation.
- Introduce any other characters
Cut up a piece of paper and write one word on each of the pieces of paper, as follows:
Give each participant a couple of pieces of paper at random. The first person says the first sentence of a story and they must use their first word as part of that sentence. The second person then continues the story and must include their word in it, and so on. Go round the group twice to complete the story.
You can also do this creative writing exercise with story dice, your own choice of words, or by asking participants to write random words down themselves, then shuffling all the cards together.
Every Christmas adults tell kids stories about Santa Claus. In this exercise you write a Christmas story from an alternative dimension.
What if every Christmas Santa didn't fly around the world delivering presents on his sleigh pulled by reindeer? What if gnomes or aliens delivered the presents? Or perhaps it was the gnomes who are trying to emulate the humans? Or some other Christmas tradition entirely that we humans have never heard of!
Group writing exercise
If you're working with a group, then give everyone a couple of minutes to write 2 possible themes for the new Christmas story. Each theme should be 5 words or less.
Then simply shuffle the paper and distribute them at random (or everyone types the themes into a Zoom or group chat, if you're working online). Everyone then spends 10 minutes writing a short story for children based on one of the two themes, or their own theme if they really want to.
If working alone, choose your own theme and spend 15 minutes writing a short story on it. See if you can create the magic of Christmas from another world!
In a murder mystery story or courtroom drama, there's often conflicting information and lots of links between characters and a mind map is an ideal way to illustrate how everything ties together.
Split into groups of 3 or 4 people each and place a blank piece of A3 paper (double the size of A4) in the middle of each group. Discuss between you who the victim is and write their name in the middle of the piece of paper. Then brainstorm information about the murder, for example:
Feel free to expand out from any of these, e.g. to include more information on the different characters involved.
The idea is that everyone writes at the same time! Obviously, you can discuss ideas, but anyone can dive in and write their ideas on the mind map.
- Who was the victim? (job, appearance, hobbies, etc.)
- Who did the victim know?
- What were their possible motivations?
- What was the murder weapon?
- What locations are significant to the plot?
New Year’s resolutions for a fictional character
If you’re writing a piece of fiction, asking yourself how your protagonist would react to an everyday situation might help you to gain a deeper insight into who they are.
One way to do this is to imagine what their New Year’s resolutions would be!
If completing this exercise with a group, limit it to 3 to 5 resolutions per person and if some participants are non-fiction writers, they can instead pick a celebrity and either write what their resolutions will be, or what their resolutions should be, their choice.
Verb Noun Fiction Exercise (Inspired by Stephen King)
Stephen King said, "I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops."
He also said, "Take any noun, put it with any verb, and you have a sentence. It never fails. Rocks explode. Jane transmits. Mountains float. These are all perfect sentences. Many such thoughts make little rational sense, but even the stranger ones (Plums deify!) have a kind of poetic weight that’s nice."
In this fiction writing exercise, start by brainstorming (either individually or collectively) seven verbs on seven different pieces of paper. Put those aside for later. Now brainstorm seven nouns. Randomly match the nouns and verbs so you have seven pairs. Choose a pair and write a piece of fiction for ten minutes. Avoid using any adverbs.
It’s the end of the world
It’s the end of the world! For 5 minutes either:
If working as a team, then after the 5 minutes is up each writer reads their description out to the other participants.
- Describe how the world’s going to end, creating evocative images using similes or metaphors as you wish and tell the story from a global perspective, or
- Describe how you spend your final day before the world is destroyed. Combine emotion and action to engage the reader.
7 Editing Exercises
For use after your first draft
I’ve listened to a lot of masterclasses on writing by successful authors and they all say variants of your first draft won’t be good and that’s fine. Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman summarise it the best:
“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”
Terry Pratchett
“For me, it’s always been a process of trying to convince myself that what I’m doing in a first draft isn’t important. One way you get through the wall is by convincing yourself that it doesn’t matter. No one is ever going to see your first draft. Nobody cares about your first draft. And that’s the thing that you may be agonising over, but honestly, whatever you’re doing can be fixed… For now, just get the words out. Get the story down however you can get it down, then fix it.”
Neil Gaiman
Once you’ve written your first draft, it will need editing to develop the plot, enhance the characters, and improve each scene in a myriad of ways – small and large. These seven creative editing exercises are designed to help with this stage of the process.
The First Sentence
Read the first paragraph of the novel, in particular the first sentence. Does it launch the reader straight into the action? According to On Writing and Worldbuilding by Timothy Hickson, “The most persuasive opening lines are succinct, and not superfluous. To do this, it is often effective to limit it to a single central idea… This does not need to be the most important element, but it should be a central element that is interesting.” Ask yourself what element your opening sentence encapsulates and whether it’s the best one to capture your readers’ attention.
Consistency
Consistency is crucial in creative writing, whether it’s in relation to location, objects, or people.
It’s also crucial for personality, emotions and motivation.
Look at scenes where your protagonist makes an important decision. Are their motivations clear? Do any scenes force them to choose between two conflicting morals? If so, do you explore this? Do their emotions fit with what’s happened in previous scenes?
As you edit your manuscript, keep the characters’ personality, emotions and motivation in mind. If their behaviour is inconsistent, either edit it for consistency, or have someone comment on their strange behaviour or be surprised by it. Inconsistent behaviour can reveal that a character is keeping a secret, or is under stress, so characters don’t always need to be consistent. But when they’re not, there has to be a reason.
Show Don’t Tell One
This exercise is the first in The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass. It’s a writing guide with a plethora of editing exercises designed to help you reenergize your writing by thinking of what your character is feeling, and giving you the tools to make your reader feel something.
- Select a moment in your story when your protagonist is moved, unsettled, or disturbed… Write down all the emotions inherent in this moment, both obvious and hidden.
- Next, considering what he is feeling, write down how your protagonist can act out. What is the biggest thing your protagonist can do? What would be explosive, out of bounds, or offensive? What would be symbolic? … Go sideways, underneath, or ahead. How can your protagonist show us a feeling we don’t expect to see?
- Finally, go back and delete all the emotions you wrote down at the beginning of this exercise. Let actions and spoken words do the work. Do they feel too big, dangerous, or over-the-top? Use them anyway. Others will tell you if you’ve gone too far, but more likely, you haven’t gone far enough.
Show Don’t Tell Two
Search for the following words in your book:
Whenever these words occur, ask yourself if you can demonstrate how your characters feel, rather than simply stating it. For each occasion, can you use physiological descriptors (a racing heart), actions (taking a step backwards) or dialogue to express what’s just happened instead? Will this enhance the scene and engage the reader more?
After The Action
Find a scene where your characters disagree – in particular a scene where your protagonist argues with friends or allies. What happens next?
It can be tempting to wrap up the action with a quick resolution. But what if a resentment lingers and mistrust builds? This creates a more interesting story arc and means a resolution can occur later, giving the character development a real dynamic.
Review how you resolve the action and see if you can stretch out the emotions for a more satisfying read.
Eliminating the Fluff
Ensure that the words used don’t detract from the enormity of the events your character is going through. Can you delete words like, “Quite”, “Little”, or “Rather”?
Of “Very” Florence King once wrote: “ 'Very' is the most useless word in the English language and can always come out. More than useless, it is treacherous because it invariably weakens what it is intended to strengthen .” Delete it, or replace the word after it with a stronger word, which makes “Very” redundant.
“That,” is another common word used in creative writing which can often be deleted. Read a sentence as is, then reread it as if you deleted, “That”. If the meaning is the same, delete it.
Chapter Endings
When talking about chapter endings, James Patterson said, “At the end, something has to propel you into the next chapter.”
Read how each of your chapters finish and ask yourself does it either:
- End on a cliff hanger? (R.L. Stine likes to finish every chapter in this method).
- End on a natural pause (for example, you’re changing point of view or location).
Review how you wrap up each of your chapters. Do you end at the best point in your story? Can you add anticipation to cliff hangers? Will you leave your readers wanting more?
The editing exercises are designed to be completed individually.
With the others, I've always run them as part of a creative writing group, where there's no teacher and we're all equal participants, therefore I keep any 'teaching' aspect to a minimum, preferring them to be prompts to generate ideas before everyone settles down to do the silent writing. We've recently gone online and if you run a group yourself, whether online or in person, you're welcome to use these exercises for free!
The times given are suggestions only and I normally get a feel for how everyone's doing when time's up and if it's obvious that everyone's still in the middle of a discussion, then I give them longer. Where one group's in the middle of a discussion, but everyone else has finished, I sometimes have a 'soft start' to the silent writing, and say, "We're about to start the hour and a half of silent writing now, but if you're in the middle of a discussion, feel free to finish it first".
This way everyone gets to complete the discussion, but no-one's waiting for ages. It's also important to emphasise that there's no wrong answers when being creative.
Still looking for more? Check out these creative writing prompts , or our dedicated Sci-Fi and Fantasy creative writing prompts .
If you've enjoyed these creative writing exercises, please share them on social media, or link to them from your blog.
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The Best Creative Writing Activities for Engaging Your Learners
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Great creative writing teachers are very passionate about literature, and because of them many of their students will continue to pursue creative writing outside of school. Those teachers also impact learners because of the great creative writing activities they use to get the students' imaginations to run free.
Here are some creative writing activities and prompts that will honor your students’ imaginations. Let them free their muses to soar.
Creative Writing Activities to Explore
This terrific list of activities come from Marcus Roskilly in the UK:
- Free Writing —5 minutes to write on a “spark word” determined by the teacher. Then pair and share.
- Flying Balls —Bouncy Castle balls with an opening sentence written on each. Toss a random one to a student who continues the “ball rolling” with a further thought or another sentence on the first. The ball is then tossed to another student who does the same.
- Modelling —Show them examples of good, interesting writing. Key in on students’ interests.
- Character —Show random pictures of people from the Internet. Develop a character from the image using prompt questions provided by the teacher.
- Skills Lessons —Teach writer’s craft elements in chunks and focus on specific ones at a time. Examples are dialogue, developing setting, conflict, narrative point of view, etc.
- Music —Play low-volume atmospheric instrumental background music while students are working.
- Learning Outcome and Success Criteria —Helping them know and understand the goal or outcome they are striving for and where they are going allows them to stay focused.
Other Engaging Approaches
Here are some select creative writing activities from Caroline Swicegood :
- Life is Not Like a Box of Chocolates: Use the prompt: “Life is like a box of…” You fill in the blank and go from there.
- No-Send Letters: If you know you’ll never send a letter to someone of your choice, what would you write on it?
- Raising Voices: Teacher creates character names, ages, and occupations, and assigns one character to each student. They create a monologue for that character.
- Mixing Up Metaphors: Brainstorm overused metaphor phrases. Replace the last word of each metaphor with something creative and unexpected.
- Found Poetry: Camera scavenger hunt around the campus—locate signs, labels, notes, words and snap pictures. Compile pictures in class and compose poetry (or create a collage) using only those words.
Creative Writing Prompts
Some prompts from Buzzfeed’s 23 Of The Most Creative College Essay Prompts From 2014–2015
- “You’ve just reached your one millionth hit on your YouTube video. What is the video about?”
- “If you were to write the story of your life until now, what would you title it and why?”
- “What’s a question that has changed how you understand the world? What changed?”
- “Design your own three-and-a-half week course and describe what you would do.”
- “A good story starts with a good beginning. Get us hooked in the first 150 words.”
- “What one invention would you uninvent if you could, and why?”
Teachers who display an infectious passion for great creative writing can inspire us to great heights. They will know how to tap into students’ genius. It might take a simple interesting prompt that spurs their imagination.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
Originally published Mar 30, 2018, updated September 19, 2021
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Writing Prompts · Story Chains · Tell Me a Story Inspiration Packs · Descriptive Writing Activities · Story Settings Activities · Short-burst Writing
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Creative Writing Activities and Games · 1) Free-writing: Free-writing is good as a warm-up exercise and as a strategy for overcoming fear or writer's block. · 2)
The following list may provide some inspiration: Titles, newspaper headlines, opening lines … closing lines; Dilemmas; Lists of words, word tiles to arrange; A
Classic icebreakers like "Two Truths and Lie" (where everyone shares two true facts and a lie about themselves, and others guess the fabrication) and the "Name
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Creative Writing Activities to Explore · Free Writing—5 minutes to write on a “spark word” determined by the teacher. · Flying Balls—Bouncy Castle