Exercises to Add Spark to Your Creative Writing

This is the last of the creative writing exercises articles for this month. I hope these articles have challenged your writing and improved it. I urge you to continue exercising your writing ability each and every possible moment.

1) I’m pretty sure you’ve heard the story about the 3 blind men who encountered an elephant. Each man described what a specific part of the elephant felt like to him, but none of them knew it was an elephant. Their descriptions seemed to be of something totally different.

Look at a shadow. At night, we can feel them all around us. On sunny days or in bright light, we can see the shadows we create on walls, on sidewalks, on grass. Look closely at a shadow. Write a description of the shadow, without naming what it is a shadow of. Now give what you wrote to someone to read. See if they can name what made the shadow by your description.

2) Viewpoints - it really does make a difference from which viewpoint a story is told. Pick one of the stories you have written and rewrite part or all of it from a different viewpoint. Is your story now better or worse? If it is , better written from another viewpoint, rewrite the entire story.

3) Strong verbs are essential to a good story. Take a story you have written. Go through it, take a pair of scissors (real or imaginary) and cut out all of the wimpy verbs, verbs that show no life. Replace dull and boring state-of-being verbs with action verbs, if possible. Drag out your dictionary and thesaurus (www.dictionary.com and www.thesaurus.com are two great online reference sites) to help you come up with appropriate, active replacements for them. When you are done, read your story again. Stronger verbs will make your story sizzle and add life to what was once stale and boring.

Now go back through and take special notice of any adverbs and adjectives that were used. How many of them are necessary and how many of them are just adding to the word count? Use only the ones that are necessary, the ones that add color to your tale.

4) Write a short story, but use words that have only one syllable. This is relatively easy if you write a story for small children. Challenge yourself to write a story of one syllable words for adults.

5) This exercise requires it own notebook or MS Word folder. In it you need to write about a subject that you know extremely well - your life. Everyday, or as often as you can, take about 15 or 20 minutes and write down details concerning specific events in your life. For instance, write about all the different places you have lived and the various events that happened there. Write about the diverse members of your family. Write about any dreams, especially recurring ones, that you have had the pleasure (or displeasure) of viewing. What about experiences that have deeply motivated you or changed your life.

The list goes on and on. This isn’t something you need to devote entire days to. Just 15 or 20 minutes a day is plenty. Before long, you will have an entire notebook or folder full of reference material.