More Creative Writing Exercises

1) Write a story where the following 3 words appear somewhere in it: leaves, interesting, effort.

2) Pick up whatever book you are reading. Rewrite the first sentence and use it to start your own story.

3) I’m sure you have all kinds of ideas for stories. Pick one and write a paragraph about it using no adjectives or adverbs. Now you can go back and add the descriptive words only where absolutely needed. Strive to make your nouns and verbs so strong and descriptive themselves that the need for adjectives and adverbs is not as great.

4) Once again, pick up a book you are reading. Copy down a paragraph from it, then mark out all of the adjectives and adverbs. How does the removal of the descriptive words change the meaning of the paragraph? Now try to make the nouns and verbs stronger so that the sentences don't need any added descriptive words.

5) An author, like an architect, is a builder. An author builds stories just as an architect builds houses. Draw out a house plan. You decide how many rooms it is going to have depending on how many parts there are to your story. It must have at least 3 rooms - a beginning, middle and end. The story could start in the basement with your back-story. Or it could begin at the beginning - say in the kitchen on the first floor. The climax could take place in the attic.

Once you have decided all the parts of your story, make sure that no questions are left unanswered and all loose ends are wrapped up so that your house, whether it is mansion or a single-family home, is complete and ready for occupancy by your characters.

6) Pull out a story that you wrote some time ago. Now that it is no longer fresh in your memory and you have distanced yourself from a bit, read the story and take notice of where it needs improvement. Rewrite the story.

7) Brainstorm - Write a word you want to brainstorm at the top of a page. Now write down any words, phrases or ideas connected with this word down on the page as well. Some of the words that come into your mind may seem a little off the wall, but go ahead and write them down. Do this alone or with a partner. Keep going until the words quit coming to you.

Cluster - This is kind of like brainstorming, but just a little different. Write down your word in the middle of the page. I will use ‘night’ as an example. Any other word connected with night that comes to mind, write it down close to night and connect the 2 words with a line. You can even circle the words, if you wish. Night brings to mind darkness, fear, and storms. Okay, storms bring a whole new set of words to mind. So storms would be connected to the words it brings to mind - winds, thunder, lightning -with a new set of lines.

You can also just write down your word at the top of the page and list beneath it anything that comes to mind. Brainstorming, clustering and listing are 3 different techniques to practice that will bring all kinds of story ideas to mind.