Writing Exercises To Get Your Creativity Flowing

 Writing Exercises To Get Your Creativity Flowing

Hello my fellow writers! This blogpost is about some ways to get your creativity flowing onto the page, either for a project you’re working on or for a quick warm-up. There will be three sections: Fast Write, Description & Scenery, and Character.

Fast Write

This section is the broadest of them all. A fast write is: writing for a short amount of time(around 5 minutes) with a simple prompt. It’s a very easy way to engage your brain in a spitfire round of writing before getting to the main session.

Of course, I’ve used fast writes in several different ways, ranging from a random prompt to working on a story I already have. It all depends on what you are aiming to do with a fast write.

Since fast writes are about, well, being fast, I would recommend using this as a warm-up instead of a lead-in. It takes the pressure off of producing some great or the beginning of the 28th chapter in your story, and instead focusing your writing on getting your mind working and your fingers moving.

I’ll give you some prompt ideas for an example: Write about an adventure in the view of a household object, or write about what your character would do if they got a pet, or write a story in the perspective of an eagle. 

All the prompts need to be simple, maybe a little funny, and boom! You’re off to the races.

Description & Scenery

This section is pretty fun if you like describing things. If you’re not the greatest at exposition and writing how your world looks, then this is great practice for you! Essentially, this type of warm-up can range from super specific to very broad, depending on your prompt. Since it’s about describing the scene, or a place on earth, or even your own story's world, all you need is your senses.

Here, let me give you an example. For one of my projects, I decided to describe a character’s room. (The character’s name is Lancelot, and he is not the main character, but I like him.)

“The room is big and furnished with plush red carpets and gold-framed paintings, with a four-poster bed adorned by silken, dark burgundy sheets, feather-filled pillows arranged meticulously. But everything else in the room is chaos. Shelves overflowing with well-worn books and blueprints scattered across an oaken desk, half-forgotten inventions strewn across the floor, nestled among tools and spare parts.” 

Now, you don’t have to do a character’s room, you could do how a cuisine native to only your world tastes, or how the feathers of a griffin feels. You could also describe the smell of the forest after it rained. All these prompts are ways to get you in tune with your writing, since a story would be pretty boring if we didn’t get description!

I will say, as a side note, I would recommend doing prompts that incorporate more than one sense, as that helps with tying your world together through several different ways.

Character

Oh, character prompts are always so much fun! There are several different facets of ways you can explore a character through a prompt, probably even more so than what you can do with Description & Scenery.

There are a lot of subcategories within Character: Past, Thoughts, & Actions, to name a few. Now, the amount of subcategories makes sense, given that it’s about a rather broad subject.

For Past, a writing prompt would be something similar to: What is your character’s favorite childhood memory? Or what is one thing that your character has done, but never admitted to doing? You are trying to build your character through the current, yes, but to enhance them, you need to know their past.

For Thoughts, a writing prompt would be something along the lines of: Write a journal entry for your character? Or what are your character’s thoughts on supernaturals? These are basically ways to get inside of your character’s head and become them. The easiest way to get to know someone is to walk a mile in their shoes.

For Actions, a writing prompt would include things like this: If they had to pick whether to save a young child or an elderly person, who would they choose? Or, what have they witnessed and/or done that they—in hindsight—would have done differently? Determining what your character will do is vital for making sure that they stay true to how you made them.

Thank you guys for reading this post about Writing Exercises! I hope this helps your guys get your creativity flowing. If you would, please comment and share my blog with other writers or readers like you!

Have a good day!