Image Credits: Images were created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. Screenshots were taken by me, Allison Symes.
I love writing exercises as I’ve shared before in previous posts (see Related Posts below). Writing exercises encourage lateral thinking. I’ve had far more story ideas thanks to using these.
You can get used to thinking in certain ways for your next idea (especially for short form writing where you need to constantly invent things) so it can be easy to become “bored” or to run out of inspiration. You don’t want it to be a case of same old, same old here.
So mixing up how you approach writing stories is a good idea. It keeps you on your creative toes as well which is never a bad thing.
Thinking In Different Ways
Using writing exercises makes you think in different ways – no chance of being bored here, especially if you mix up the types you use. I also find them fun. I’ve not yet met a writing exercise I’ve given up on.
Okay sometimes the results from an exercise are not as good as others. Those are the stories I don’t submit anywhere. But even these are useful as they act as a warm up writing exercise (which is useful in itself) and I can figure out what didn’t work out so well here. That too is useful in the grand scheme of things. It can flag up weaknesses I can avoid for other stories. There’s nothing to lose here.
So I thought I would share my top five writing exercises and a little about what I love about them. I’ve used these for workshops I run as well as using them myself.
The vast majority of stories I write are down to what I produce for these exercises. Most get submitted somewhere. Many are published, others are rejected, but that is the writing life. No one exercise is going to suit every writer but there will be something out there which will. It’s fun finding out which work for you though! I highly recommend giving each of these five a go.
My Top Five Writing Exercises
My top five exercises are:-
1. Opening Lines
If I had to pick one favourite, it would be this. Having a starting point is a useful trigger for my stories. What I do here is jot down different possibilities to come from that opening line and then go with what I like best. It will be the one which has the most impact on me (as I figure a reader would react the same way).
I also ask what kind of character would come out with this line or be a good subject for it. Working that out first saves time later. I like to know my characters whether I write to an exercise or not. I can figure out motivations, actions, and reactions from knowing the character well enough. But when I’ve got the opening line, it is like having an extra bit of the jigsaw puzzle filled in, which is why this is a great exercise.
2. Closing Lines
Naturally there has to be an exercise set at the opposite end of the story! The great thing with this exercise is you can work out what could lead to the closing line and then, again, go with the scenario which pleases you most. You are creating a “backwards” structure here.
Stories fail without a structure. Readers expect, rightly so, a beginning, a middle, and an end to every story. I find it helpful, knowing what the ending is with this exercise, to work out what could be the mid point and from there what could be the beginning to get me to that mid point and then on to the end. I “fill in the gaps”.
3. Random Numbers
It may seem odd to use numbers for prose work but I’ve used the random numbers generator to create different tales. I have used the number as part of an address where the action of the story takes place. I’ve also turned the number into a time (minutes and seconds) and used it as a countdown.
How about using the number, if it is an apt one, as the age of your character? Equally if the number is a large one such as 150, what could that number mean to your character? Does a loved one live 150 miles away? What led them to be separated? So you see ideas are already being triggered here.
The lovely thing with all of the random generators is you can set parameters for what you want to generate (e.g. how many at a time) and by changing that, you will get even more possibilities to play with.
4. Pictures
Again I use a random generator here. I like to use landscapes because I can use that to create a setting for my story and then work out who would live there, what would threaten the peace of that setting and so on. I’ve occasionally used pictures of people but I prefer ones where you don’t see the face.
One I’ve used shows someone walking so I see their back only. I can then work out what they’re walking to or walking away from and why. There’s my story structure because my someone will have a powerful motivation for their walking to/from here. The whole story will hinge about why they’re doing this.
If readers understand the motivation, they will follow your story. Note they don’t have to agree with the motivation. I dislike some of what my characters get up to but they have understandable reasons for behaving the way they are.
5. Random Words including Grammatical “Bits and Pieces”
The idea behind this is to place the word generated somewhere in the story. Some writing competitions will specify a word they give you has to be at the beginning, or somewhere in the middle, or towards the end. With the generators, I like to trigger two or three different words and put all of them in a story, sometimes in the order they were generated, sometimes not. I’m giving myself more options here.
As for grammatical “bits and pieces”, there are random verb/adjective/adverb/noun generators and again the idea is to use these somewhere in your tale. Again you can trigger however many you want.
Top Tips
I’ve found it useful to limit how much I generate at the time when I use the random generators (which are algorithms when all is said and done). Why? Because limits make you think more creatively. You must make the most of what you have got to “play with”. You are also not overwhelmed.
Flash fiction, with its upper word count limit, makes me focus on keeping to the point and limiting what you generate with the algorithms can do the same thing.
Mix up which generators you use. It helps you find a way of writing a story to different prompts. It’s useful practice for competitions given some have set themes and others are open ones. By using the generators at all, you will know you can write to a set theme because you’ve become used to generating set themes for yourself.
I also love the random question generator and often use it to give me titles and/or themes. For example, the first question I generated using this algorithm for this post was What have you learned in the last week? Now you can apply that to your character (and I have done this).
You have your theme. You also have your structure here because you will have to show what your character learned. Okay, they may not like what they learned but that is the fun of creative writing – you make your characters and drop them right in it and see what happens!
Conclusion
Best news of all? All of these exercises can be applied to non-fiction writing as well. For example, I generated the line In the crowded marketplace, the pickpocket’s hand moved swiftly.
Now that can obviously be used for fiction but for non-fiction, how about using it as an opening line for how pickpockets operated, what was done to stop them, the punishments for stealing, how the police came into being and so on.
I see the random generators as the modern equivalent of the story cubes (and I use those too). Don’t forget there are books of prompts too. I’ve had the privilege of contributing to some of the Bridge House Publishing ones.
But I find mixing up what I use is such a wonderful trigger for creativity. I hope you have fun with any/all of the above for your own writing.
As a final thought, you can combine the exercises too. That gives even more possibilities.
Related Posts:-
Read interviews with Chandler’s Ford writer Allison Symes: Part 1 and Part 2.
Read blog posts by Allison Symes published on Chandler’s Ford Today.
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