Our youngest, Daughter #4, who grew up to be the wonderful writer Sara Marian, and I lerrrrrrvvvv writing exercises!
Whenever we’ve done a two-person mini-retreat or have roomed together at a writing workshop, we’ve done exercises. More often than not, we’ve ended up with stories, books, or ideas to file away for later.
Here are some of our favorites:
- Open a book, magazine, or newspaper at random and point to a sentence. Use that sentence as the first line of your story. That’s what I did for the picture above.
- Describe the same static scene or landscape from the point of view of two very different characters. They’ll notice different things, or different things will appear differently to them or they’ll describe them differently.
- Grab a random word and free-write for five minutes. Just write whatever comes into your head. If you go off on a tangent, go.
- Set a story in a place you’ve recently been: a museum, the grocery, the back yard. Wherever you are, that’s a place. That’s a setting. It’s specific. Specifics are important.
- Pick a sense, particularly a sense you don’t reference much in your writing, and make it an important part of a scene. Overdo it, if you want to — this is just an exercise, meant to stretch muscles.
Trust me, throwing yourself into a writing exercise can be refreshing and liberating. It’s a way to do an end-run around your inner critic and open your creativity.
A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: See above.
MA
Dan
December 28, 2015 at 7:17amSounds like some interesting ways to get the juices flowing.
Marian Allen
December 28, 2015 at 8:34amThey work a treat, Dan. “Lonnie, Me and the Hound of Hell” started out as an exercise. It’s my mother’s favorite story of mine. 🙂
Jane
December 28, 2015 at 9:51amHound of hell is possibly MY favorite story of yours. (But I do love the wild cow opus!) AND SAGE!!!
Anyway, write on!
Marian Allen
December 28, 2015 at 2:11pmYOU write on! YOU write! I’m waiting for the next Callie London Vampire Adventure! I already read When Push Comes To Shove twice, maybe three times!
Jane
December 29, 2015 at 8:55amI’m flabbergasted! As you know, no one can say a sweeter thing to a writer than, “I’ve read your book a bunch of times!”
And, yes, my head is getting busy again. Soon the notebook!
Marian Allen
December 29, 2015 at 5:37pmNotebook! Yay!
Rasheed Hooda
December 28, 2015 at 11:21amWonderful fun ideas. I’ve used some before and I’ll try the others.
Marian Allen
December 28, 2015 at 2:12pmHope you enjoy them as much as I do, Rasheed! 🙂
Bradley Preston
December 30, 2015 at 9:18pmWonderful way to encourage writing.
Even, my son is 5 years old. I often do almost similar stuff. Open a book and give him a random topic from it to write on.
Marian Allen
December 31, 2015 at 1:50pmThat’s great! I expect to read one of his books one of these days. Good job, Dad!