A Few Great Writing Exercises – Resources

 

In my search for this week’s writing prompts, I started thinking about my writing exercises post from a couple of weeks back. This post had a lot of positive feedback, so I wanted to follow up and give you another couple of good resources for writing exercises. Recently, I have been favouring a few in particular; the Writer’s Digest website, The Write Practice, and the website, Quora.

 

Advice For This Week:

This week, as well as tackling a writing prompt each day  (I’m sure you can come up with your own:) – or check out one of my previous writing prompts posts), try your hand on one of the exercises from the following sources. They have a range of good exercises, and I’ll give you the links, instead of just repeating everything they have.

 

1.

Try something from Writer’s Digest list: A 12-Day Plan of Simple Writing Exercises by Brian A. Klems.

 

This list includes great ideas such as:

“Write 10 potential book titles of books you’d like to write.”

and

“Select a book on your shelf and pick two chapters at random. Take the first line of one chapter and the last line of the other chapter and write a short story (no more than 1000 words) using those as bookends to your story.”

 

2.

Why not try something fun but challenging? Joe Bunting wrote a great article on a playful writing exercise, so if you’re into poetry and even if you’re not; check this one out on how to create your own fun modernist poetry. This is heaps of fun to get your creative juices moving.

 

3.

Another great exercise resource I’ve found is using the Question & Answer site, Quora. I found a great question (What Are Some Fun Creative Writing Exercises?) and a list of awesome answers, with some very good exercises, including references to the Benjamin Franklin Method, which is a form of copy practice, and usually more suited to non-fiction.

 

 3.a

The Benjamin Franklin Method  can be applied to fiction too, however, by:

1. Reading a favourite passage of prose
2. Make notes of each sentence, including keywords that seem the most impressionistic to you
3. Make shorter notes of your notes, reducing it down to only a few words
4. Let it sit for a few days
5. Reconstruct using only your notes
6. Compare to the original prose. Why is it different to yours? How could you make yours better?

 

 

 3.b

Another exercise I found, and source to Virginia Kettles, and noted on Quora, is called the “Pick A Book Cover” exercise and involves picking a vertical photograph or image, possibly from a vertical blog such as Tumbler,  and pick out an interesting picture.

 

For example:

 

 

Imagine the book has just been published, then ask yourself:

 

1. What could the title of this book be?
2. What is the book about? Think about the possible story behind this photo, what could be a loose plot for the book, based on your title?
3. Then write the first few pages…

 

 

 3.c

And another exercise found on Quora:

 

Take a terrible sentence and make it better.  Practice the basics – find bad sentences and re-write them.

from Derek Jones.

 

 

 

I hope you find some inspiration from this weeks suggested writing exercises, and you check out Quora, or just Google “Writing Exercises” as you’ll find a wealth of exercise suggestions. If you have any questions or thoughts, please do not hesitate to leave me a comment below. I will reply as soon as I can!

 

 

Happy Writing,

 

Erica

 

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