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What's the best writing exercise you've ever done?

under the moon

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Yeah, observational exercises can be very helpful. Just being out in the world and watching as things transpire can spark/deepen an idea. I was just walking around and saw a notebook once, lying on the sidewalk after a rain. It was windy and the pages were blowing open, and they were all empty, and it gave me a great idea. I guess that's a normal thing that happens a lot to people. Intentional observation is more focused and pointed. But the exercise that really helped was bringing a regular story down to a flash fiction word count. Much like someone above who said they used to hate poetry (me too!) until they read some and then applied it to their writing. Having to boil my story down to its most essential ingredients was a challenge to my psyche and my writing habits. And it worked out pretty well, I think.
 
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CL Polk

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Oh, I like the people watching and the things in their pockets exercise. i find the urge to make story always comes out when I do that.

When I get stuck on a scene, even though I know what happens, i interview the characters about that scene from the perspective of 5 years later. it's surprising how well this works to get unstuck.
 

ItsRachelConnor

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For me it wasn't so much a writing exercise, but learning how to adjust my attitude to writing. I would constantly seize up when in the 1st draft stage, or even just writing stream of consciousness stuff. My inner critic would get to its nasty work and I'd just lose all will to write and drift off. I think in situations like that, the anticipation of meeting the inner critic again is what puts people off writing, rather than the writing itself.

'Bird by Bird' by Anne Lamott helped me to accept and embrace my shitty first drafts as the cleaning of the writing bowels you need to do to get to the the actual story you're birthing into existence. The Artists Way by Julia Cameron helped me recapture my sense of play.
 
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Drachen Jager

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This is one I developed for myself.

Take all of your characters who will be working together and place them individually in blank white rooms. They just wake up there with no explanation. There's no escaping the room, but what do they do? Do they try to escape? How?

Now, put the characters who will be working together in the same white room together. Is the result interesting? Is there conflict and good interpersonal interaction among them? Does anyone fade into the background? Does anyone take over the scene?

In both cases, if the result isn't interesting, I think of it a problem that needs solving. Good characters should leap off the page, even without anything tangible to fight.
 
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I came up with a fun writing exercise long ago. I'll create a random personality by picking three random traits--one positive, one negative, and one neutral--and then I'll create a second personality who's the mirror opposite. The exercise consists of writing a conversation between them.

Example:


John is: jovial, easy-going, disrespectful
Martha is: depressed, strict, respectful


(Setup) John and Martha are a married couple. John wants to buy an RV and travel across the country. Martha wants to use the money to fix up the house. They're sitting at the kitchen table arguing about it.

Turn their conversation into a 500-word passage, making sure that their words and actions are guided only by their three traits!

(This is a fun way to come up with story ideas, btw.)
 
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For me it wasn't so much a writing exercise, but learning how to adjust my attitude to writing. I would constantly seize up when in the 1st draft stage, or even just writing stream of consciousness stuff. My inner critic would get to its nasty work and I'd just lose all will to write and drift off. I think in situations like that, the anticipation of meeting the inner critic again is what puts people off writing, rather than the writing itself.

'Bird by Bird' by Anne Lamott helped me to accept and embrace my shitty first drafts as the cleaning of the writing bowels you need to do to get to the the actual story you're birthing into existence. The Artists Way by Julia Cameron helped me recapture my sense of play.

That's interesting imagery. I visualize a rough draft as deformed muscle surrounded by fat, and the rewriting as strengthening the muscle and shaving off the fat.
 

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Write 500 words of a genre which you find discomforting.

For me, that was Romance, specifically Period Romance. Forcing myself outside the comfort zone was a huge challenge, but it at least helped me get a better grasp of atmosphere and mood.
 
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Leeland

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Personally, I fine Brian Kitely's exercises to be helpful. I've been referencing his book, The 3 AM Epiphany, on and off for years. I can't speak for The 4 AM Breakthrough because I've yet to get my hands on it.

I struggle with structure, so I find it helpful that his exercises provide a basic structure while letting me flesh out the universe. Also his exercises are of a length where I can use them to develop idea for a current project, or have a free-for-all and turn them into flash fiction pieces.

Might not work for everyone, but they have really helped me!
 

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Actually, the one that comes to mind for me was when I was in the 7th grade. The teacher wanted us to write a short story only using dialogue from one of the character's perspective. All the quotes by the other characters had to be shown through the one character's statements. I was the only one in the class to do it correctly. The other students couldn't grasp what the teacher wanted. Some understood, but they would change from one character to another. Looking back, it was an interesting exercise.
 
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aus10phile

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Lots of fun ideas in this thread!

I took a workshop with a writer named Mary Caroll Moore once, who suggested this exercise for revision. Take a scene you've written and highlight it in three colors, one for sensory detail, one for action, and one for "concept," meaning internal monologue, narrative summary/exposition. It's a quick way to see how much you weight a scene toward one thing or another. If you're weak in one area, try rewriting the scene using only that type of material.
 

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I found my best exercise on here some years ago. It was a first line thread. the very first line of a story or book should have a ton of information without being a run on. weather it is a personal description or an action. it was fun and came away with some very funny opening lines. I have a 40,000 word novella sitting in a file from one of these first lines, in a genre I had never tried before. When I am done with the project I am working on, I will work on lengthening and polishing it.
 

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If I'm writing a scene in third person, and I get stuck, I'll rewrite it in first person using each of the main characters. I often get a new perspective from this.
 
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LouiseStanley

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I know a lot of people here have taken creative writing courses or found writing exercises elsewhere. Have you ever done a really good one? Maybe even one that changed your relationship with the written word? I'm looking for a few good ones to try out. Thanks.

I hang around some of the writing forums on Reddit and enter the writing challenges I find. I look for ones with actual deadlines and word limits - there was one on the worldbuilding subreddit where they had a simple prompt (your world's take on ...Justice ...Con Artists ...Religion ...Branding, plus a handful of images) and a 500 word limit. Some people just wrote about their world, but a few of us would submit actual flash fiction. I won one out of about 20, but in writing all the mini-stories I got used to focusing my craft down to meet the guidelines. Plus the deadline would fix me on writing it to order.

However, then worldbuilding stopped updating the prompts for about 18 months, and because I'd trained myself to write to order...my discipline didn't have anywhere to go. That's the downside :(. I did get enough of these, as well as a handful from the fantasywriters challenges to put a collection of shorts on Wattpad, however, and a couple of the other subreddits have started up challenges again. Personally, I need the concrete deadline part to get myself going, but that's just me. Finding a list of challenges from an archive somewhere might help if you're a bit more pro-active.
 
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Chris P

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I always liked the story prompts, such as writing a story that contains three particular objects or where one of the characters uses a certain sentence. This helped me develop and ability to write "on order" which comes in handy when I get stuck. I simply come up with a writing prompt for the scene I'm stuck on and I get through it, usually with quite satisfying results.
 

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Try Fiction Writer’s Workshop by Josip Novakovich. Lots of great writing exercises!

Writing prompts usually tend to be more inspiring than I initially think they'll be. I was in a creative writing group - actually, I was the Co-President. not a big deal or anything. just the greatest thing that ever happened to that school - and we had a prompt to write about our favorite food. I looked at that prompt in disgust until the lightbulb moment came. I wrote from the perspective of a character, and it ended up this sad but inspiring snippet that I may use for a novel idea I have. ;)

YA author Susan Dennard has begun freewriting every day, and she says it's her favorite part of the day. Freewriting/writing to prompts can really help get the creative juices flowing, at least in my experience.

My favorite writing exercise so far has been from Fiction Writer’s Workshop - writing a vivid description of a garden for three different types of stories. One a childhood story, another a love story, and another a mystery. I swapped out "garden" for a barn (because I'm not much of a garden person) and man, those first two descriptions of setting turned into two pieces of (incredibly brilliant) flash fiction.

I've always been a bit of a skeptic when it comes to writing exercises, but I'm totally in favor of them now. 10/10. Would recommend.
 
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I sometimes spend some time in Tumblr, collecting pictures that catch my eye such as beautiful landscapes, people with interesting faces... and build up a story with all these elements, trying to describe the pictures as much as possible and mix them and letting the pictures to interact with each other.
The other method is very classic: I take a little notebook and seize the time I spend in public transport or outside to observe people, describe them and imagine what they could be thinking, where they could be going... It's like hunting personalities and collecting them with my pen.


This is one I developed for myself.

Take all of your characters who will be working together and place them individually in blank white rooms. They just wake up there with no explanation. There's no escaping the room, but what do they do? Do they try to escape? How?

Now, put the characters who will be working together in the same white room together. Is the result interesting? Is there conflict and good interpersonal interaction among them? Does anyone fade into the background? Does anyone take over the scene?

In both cases, if the result isn't interesting, I think of it a problem that needs solving. Good characters should leap off the page, even without anything tangible to fight.

This is very original. I want to try next time with some characters.
 

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Mine isn't fancy or anything. I based it off of something I learned in my high school writers craft class. There, we had a notebook and we had to write something in it every day, it didn't matter what.
So when I was looking to do some writing exercises, I knew I wanted to write every single day but I wanted to write about multiple different things, and still have room for some creativity about it. I wrote down lots of prompts, from things as basic as "popcorn" to "And out of the fog came..."
I think I had about fifty. Some would define a person, or a story element, anything.
I would draw one out everyday and write with it. Something as simple as the word popcorn had so many ways you could go about it. You could describe popcorn, or have a situation where someone is waiting for popcorn, really anything you wanted.
It's not professional or anything like that, but it helped me with getting into the habit of writing every day, having more focused writing and sentences, and a lot more.
 

Ozziezumi

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By far the most useful has been writing letters from characters (writing exercise advocated by David Mitchell). Write in the voice of the character, including tons of details that won't make it into the final story (favorite foods, favorite movie, etc). My character work jumped to the next level after I started doing that.
 
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SallyB

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The best I've experienced (and there's been a few) was opening my notebook everyday and writing until I was empty. Of course, I was in highschool and there was nothing to do this entire class, so I had time. But I'd just write out two stories or so, maybe a poem. Whatever came to mind, and eventually I'd hit this threshold where my body and mind felt like an empty husk (in a good way.)

It taught me creativity, knowing my own limits, and how it actually felt to have nothing left to write. (Giving me next too no excuse for writers block.) That's just my experience with it though.
 

Taylor Harbin

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Hm. I've taken enjoyment from writing random notes down by hand, in no particular order, and being able to mess up the page. However, the best is every time I pound out my frustrations if I'm in a bad mood. I exorcise those feelings and that makes me feel better, enough where I can resume work on a story.
 

Shalon

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I've taken hundreds of hours of creative writing classes, and done at least a hundred writing exercises.

By far the best was an exercise I did in an online Stanford writing course: take 300 words of your writing, edit the hell out of it until it's perfect, and then give it to five people and ask all of them to remove as many words as possible (but it still makes sense, has similar content and reads beautifully).

In other words, they will see all the crap that you didn't see. The small chunk makes it really easy to see the editing process in micro-detail.
 

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I found that I can recreate the format spark notes uses to fully digest a book. Spark notes really analyzes books to the very last detail, and it helps to follow the same format in digesting the material in my story, such as foreshadowing that happens, motifs, foils, climax, falling action, etc in my own story
 

nossmf

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I still remember my high school English teacher's rule: for every use of the word "and" you will lose one point off your grade. This forced us to find alternative ways to create lists or conjunctions. The goal back then was to limit "and" to no more than a single instance per written page; taken in context within AW, that would mean roughly one occurrence of the evil word for every 250 words of type. I still employ this directive today.
 

Taylor Kowalski

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I still remember my high school English teacher's rule: for every use of the word "and" you will lose one point off your grade. This forced us to find alternative ways to create lists or conjunctions. The goal back then was to limit "and" to no more than a single instance per written page; taken in context within AW, that would mean roughly one occurrence of the evil word for every 250 words of type. I still employ this directive today.
This probably reveals my bias toward polysyndeton, buuuut... what's the idea behind this? I've never heard of an exercise like that for creative writing.