5.5 Creative Writing Exercises to Strenghten your Writing

For new writers, the creative process could be daunting. Especially when you’ve tried and failed many times and now you just feel like giving up. You sit at your computer in an attempt to create the best piece of content the world has ever known and you just end up pouring out garbage. I know the feeling, I’ve been there.

If you’re new to writing you might think that it should come naturally.

I mean why not? You’re brilliant, right?

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Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. You have to train your brain to think like a writer and exercise those creative muscles regularly.

Writing exercises are activities that can strengthen your writing. They make you a better and more efficient writer. This means you complete projects faster and don’t get stuck in a Shiny New Object loop.

These tips I’m about to share with you can help to strengthen your writing if you’re struggling to enter into a creative flow. Number 5.5 is a writing exercise but not really, but I still thought it was important to put it here, you’ll see why.

Now because I write mostly books, screenplays and stageplays I’ll be talking about activities to strengthen your fiction writing, but I believe these exercises can help refine poetry and non-fiction works as well.

So let’s get into it, shall we?

Here are my 5.5 writing exercises to strengthen your writing:

Number one: Write a letter that you will never send.

Let’s say there’s a person that really grinds your gears or maybe you have a secret crush. Chances are you wouldn’t want to share those inner feelings of hurt or love to the person so a great way to get it off your chest is to write it down.

Getting your raw emotions and feelings out on pages is a great writing exercise because it’s very easy to enter into a flow state of writing, besides it’s also really good therapy. Another version of this is to write a letter to your younger self.

Number Two: Use writing prompts

This one is a classic. It’s like when you were in school and your teacher gave you an essay to write. You know the ones…like write a story about your summer vacation or start a story with the line ‘It was a dark and stormy night’. We all loved those, right?

Luckily for us, there are some really good writing prompts on the internet. A great place to look for writing prompts is on Pinterest. I also found this great list of 75 realistic writing prompts over at https://authority.pub/realistic-fiction-writing-prompts/.

Number three: Journaling

Journaling is a great way to get those creative juices flowing. I’ve been journaling ever since I was a child but I hated it at first. I only did it because my mother forced me to (I know weird thing to instil in a child).

If you don’t know what journaling is, it’s basically writing down the events that have taken place in the day. Of course when I was a teenager the only thing I wrote down was excruciating details about all of my crushes but these days I write down more general thoughts and ideas, like how I feel about my current writing project or something funny or interesting about the day.

I don’t do it every day but it’s a good writing exercise to do if you wan tot continue sharpening your writing skills.

Number four: People watch

People do the darndest things, honestly. I love to people-watch. Wait, no that came out wrong. What I meant to say is I love to watch people. I know it sounds kinda weird but just observing the mannerisms, clothing and walk styles of people in your environment can give you a lot of ideas of how to describe your characters.

Sometimes I like to go to the park or to a coffee house and just observe how people interact with each other. Sometimes I up come with fun back stories in my head, then write them down.

You can do this anywhere, maybe next time you’re on a bus on in a taxi resist the urge to scroll through your socials and just observe people instead, you might be surprised by what you find.

Number five: Describe your surroundings

I wouldn’t lie to you, one of the biggest struggles I encountered while writing my debut novel ‘Where Sarah Gone?’ was writing descriptions. I hated writing descriptive essays in primary school and I still hate it. But if you want to be a good writer you have to be able to immerse your readers in the world of your story.

So one of the ways I try to strengthen my descriptive writing is by taking the time to write a paragraph or two about my surroundings. When doing this exercise I try to include all five senses.

And point five point five

This isn’t really a creative writing exercise but can be very helpful to any writer. Keep a list of cool or interesting words. Because I mean, who wouldn’t like to flabbergast adjacent homo-sapiens with their astronomical vernacular?

And that’s it! I hope these exercises help. If you have any activities that have helped you, I’d love to hear them in the comments.

Thanks for reading and remember,

Tell Your Story,

Niques.