Image Credit: Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. Screenshots were taken by me, Allison Symes.
I’m regularly on both sides of the writing exercise equation as I do them often and set them too. I run a monthly flash fiction group on Zoom for the Association of Christian Writers which is great fun and I set exercises as part of the topic for the evening.
I also have been to many workshops and courses and continue to do so (especially The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick, which I’m looking forward to going to again this year). Inevitably writing exercises are set in these things.
There is a huge variety of writing exercises to try. I’ve developed some firm favourites which I often use to inspire ideas for stories I submit to places such as Friday Flash Fiction, where I have a 100 word story published most weeks.
Advantages to Writing Exercises
Exercises are a great discipline for writers, even if you never intend to write in the shorter forms. Why? Because they can take you out of your writing comfort zone and make you come up with ideas you would not have had any other way. Also you never know when an idea started this way will take off and become a much longer piece of work.
Also, there is nothing to stop you using a writing exercise simply as a warm up to your main work. The great thing here is you can come back and polish those pieces up and submit them. The advent of flash fiction competitions and markets give you an outlet here given you won’t be writing more than a couple of hundred words or thereabouts for a writing exercise.
Another advantage of doing that is when you do come to submit longer works to publishers/agents, if you have a track record of having shorter pieces published it demonstrates to them your commitment to writing and it has to look good on your writing CV. It also shows them someone else thought your work was worthy of being published.
If you’re short on time you may well have enough time to have a go at an exercise rather than write a few thousand more words to your novel. I have found the more I write the more ideas come to me. Those could prove useful whatever type of writing you do. I also find writing regularly exercises my imagination more, which is why I would say if you’re pushed for time, write something just to keep your hand in. An exercise gives you a targeted way of writing something short.
I also believe if you get used to writing exercises, it may help you write the dreaded blurb and synopsis for longer works. Why? Simply because exercises are never very long and you gain invaluable experience in writing to a short word count, which both those things need.
If you’re stuck as to what you want to write next, why not try a couple of exercises and see where they lead you.
There are many types of exercise, as I mentioned above, so there is bound to be something to suit your style. Talking of which…
Types of Writing Exercise
The types of writing exercise you are likely to come across include (but are definitely not limited) to the following:-
- Opening line.
- Closing line.
- Using a specific word in the story (and sometimes it has to be in the title too).
- Writing to a specific word count.
- Free writing to a specific time limit (often five minutes).
- Using any of the senses (and often a combination of them. Occasionally you may come across an exercise where one sense is “banned”).
- Dialogue only stories.
- When given a question, your story has to answer it.
- When given a theme, your story has to reflect it.
There are many others, of course.
Setting Your Own Writing Exercises
I effectively do this whenever I use a prompt, whether they’re produced by a random generator, or I’ve used story cubes or a book of prompts. I’ve contributed to some of these books which were brought out by Bridge House Publishing. I am responding in writing to a prompt set by someone else. So why not do the same? I deliberately mix up the type of random generator I use (e.g. I will use the words one, the picture ones and so on) but I will also change the parameters I use for each because that gives me even more variety.
I also use those odd pockets of time we all get (waiting to see the doctor etc) to jot down ideas on my notes app on my phone and two of my favourites here are to jot down possible opening lines and/or titles. I just brainstorm. Later, I will look back through the ideas. Many will be discarded but some will still appeal after a break away from them so I write those ideas up. But in just brainstorming ideas like that I am creating my own prompts to respond to in more detail at a later date.
How about picking a photo of yours from your phone gallery and writing a story around that? You’re creating your own random picture prompt here. I find landscapes rather than people work best for this. Or pick out an object which is in the background of your photo and work that into a story. What meaning would it have for your character? Where did the object come from? How would your character react if it was broken or went missing?
Ideas and Imagination Workouts
I’ve found writing exercises to be great for giving my imagination a good workout on a regular basis. They stretch me. They are also good practice for writing competitions (open ones or those with a set theme).
If you are used to writing exercises, you will be less fazed by the thought of entering a competition because (a) you may already have some material to work up for it thanks to doing said exercises, it will be a question of finding some material with the right theme; and (b) for an open competition, you can again pick a writing exercise you’ve already done and polish it up to suit.
Also you are already used to the thought of “writing to command”, which effectively is what a writing exercise does – you are told write to this prompt and you do so. The thought of writing to a competition prompt is more of the same here.
I can think of several of my published stories which started life as a writing exercise. Indeed, I’ve recently had another one published on CafeLit. My story, Freedom, started life in response to a Flash NANO prompt (2024).
A recent story of mine on Friday Flash Fiction, Best Advice, began life as a theme generated from a random generator. I then applied the thought of best advice to characters.
Conclusion
Writing exercises can make a great way into getting on with your main writing work. They literally warm your imagination up a bit first. They can help train your brain to think more creatively (and you will always find a use for that). They’re fun.
You can submit the finished results for competitions and markets. They can add another writing string to your bow.
When you’re pushed for time, as we all so often are, they can be a great way of getting some short, targeted writing done. I say targeted because you have a mini structure laid out here. You’ve got your exercise. It’s just a question of completing it.
I hope you have fun with the writing exercises you do. I also hope you can end up with some of the resulting work published. Good luck!
Oh and as a final note how about having a go at this exercise which I set recently?
Writing Exercise by Allison Symes – using the word “new”
Spend five minutes jotting down opening lines using the word new.
Spend another five minutes jotting down closing lines using the word new.
And it is fine if you find some of your lines could work either way.
I hope you have fun with that one.
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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