Creative Writing Editing Exercises

[Yahaira Petrov]

Creativewriting exercises for adults are not designed to lead the writer into crafting a full story, but are only designed to help them improve as a writer in a narrow, specific category of writing skills.

3. Pick a line from one of your favorite songs, and identify the main emotion. Now write a character who is feeling that emotion and hears the song. Try to describe the type of music in such a beautiful way that you will make the reader yearn to hear the song as well.

4. Have a character dine at a blind restaurant, a restaurant in pitch blackness where all the servers are blind, and describe for a full paragraph how the tablecloth, their clothing, and the hand of their dining partner feels different in the darkness.

7. Describe two characters having a wordless conversation, communicating only through gestures. Try to see how long you can keep the conversation going without any words spoken, but end it with one of them saying a single word, and the other one repeating the same word.

11. Pick an object that is ugly, and create a character who finds it very beautiful. Have the character describe the object in a way that convinces the reader of its beauty. Now write a second version where you convince the reader (through describing the object alone) that the character is mentally unstable.

15. Go to an art-based Pinterest page and find your favorite piece of art. Now imagine a living room inspired by that flavor of artwork, and show the room after a husband and wife have had the worst fight of their marriage.

27. Have a couple fight while playing a board game. Have the fight be about something related to the board game: fighting about money, have them play monopoly. Fighting about politics, let them play chess.

34. Write a scene where a stranger stops your main character, saying that they know them, and insisting your main character is someone they are not. Describe exactly how this case of mistaken identity makes your character feel.

37. Give your character an extremely unusual response to a national tragedy like a terrorist attack or natural disaster. Maybe have them be aware their response is unusual, and try to cloak it from others, or have them be completely unaware and display it without any self-consciousness.

38. Have one of your main characters come up with an idea for a comic book, and tell a close friend about the idea. What about this idea would surprise the friend, upsetting what he thought he knew about your main character? Also, what would the main character learn about himself from the comic book idea?

46. For the next week, watch strangers carefully and take notes in your phone about any peculiar gestures or body language. Combine the three most interesting ones to describe a character as she goes grocery shopping.

49. Imagine if your character met for the first time his or her long-lost identical twin. What personality traits would they share and which ones would have changed because of their unique experiences?

What a lovely list! I am working on the final draft of my very first novel, and am constantly working at improving the final product. Your exercises are just what I need to kickstart my writing day. Thank you so very much.

I suppose I better have good punctuation, seeing this is about Writing.

Thank you for this great list. I am the Chair of our small Writing group in Otorohanga and we start again last week of Feb.

I have sent out a homework email, to write a A4 page of something exciting that has happened over the holiday break and they must read it out to the group with passion and excitement in their voices.

That will get them out of their comfort zone!

A formidable yet inspiring list. Thank you very much for this. This is really very helpful. I am from India, and very new to writing and have started my first project, which I want to make it into a Novel. This has been very helpful and is very challenging too. Prompts look sissy when compared to this, frankly speaking. Thank you very much again.

I have always loved writing exercises and these are perfect practice for my competition. I have tried lots of different things that other websites have told me to try, but this by far is the most descriptive and helpful site that i have seen so far.

I always wanted to have an exercise where a friend and I each wrote a random sentence and sent it to each other to write a short story from that beginning sentence, then exchange the stories for reading and/or critique. Maybe both writers start with the same sentence and see how different the stories turn out.

I'm sure this never happens to you, but there are times when I don't feel very creative. A few years ago we'd just had a new baby (our second), bought a house (our first), and were busy managing a thousand new details. I felt like I had nothing to give to my writing. And life hasn't slowed down any since then. All the busywork and bill paying leaves me feeling like all the creative juices are dried up.

Sometimes, writers don't even allow themselves to go through this kind of painful monologue. Instead, they put off writing altogether, procrastinating until the very last minute, then whipping something together that may not be very good but at least it's done!

So while you can still use daily journal writing or creative writing prompts to jump start your writing process, the creative writing exercise I'm going to talk about in this post is designed specifically to combat that kind of perfectionism.

To give you a sense of how your poems might look, and to hopefully give you much room to improve upon, here are two of my worst attempts at this exercise (for humor's sake, it's best to read these aloud in the sincerest voice you can muster):

About the authorRelated Posts Joe Bunting WebsiteJoe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris, a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).

Chinese bells tassels scarlet swaying winds on horseback in Mongolia

Leather gauntlet falcons grip with strong talons

Cheese drip curds steaming face bent good and hot

On a cold winter night on the mountains

Snow-covered steppes step back front door and look out to the horizon horses drive towards the mud and centre of our camp

Girls wrestle in embroidered helmets on

Lacquered heads black as silk satin and moth wings

Thanks, this is my piece:

boom clap boom boom pow fowl fowler

spoiler lier spelling error rubbish gibberish

nonsense random blank space getting better

improve dance fun run hike trial fire hire never

say never Justin Bieber tin dean jean man

motivational speaker fooler fuller occupational

redeem receipt resit deceive deceit damn realm

delve elf power grip rip drip dip sip nim numb

rum wine alcohol dollar dine sky high fly fry

rye nice buy fine nine mine fine right cents

sense make fake bake aiks ache cite poetry

poem focus circus amazing Britney Spears songs

This is harder than it seems

trees shoot out light beams

its rays cause puss to ooze from ears and eyes

multicolored tears soon begin to fall

easy to say not to do

brain filters raise defeat and letters emerge from holes galore

I get to Barnes and Nobles and realize that there most likely will not be a prompt today from Joe, new baby and all. So I said why not do Fridays again. So I did. I have no idea what this is but it was fun, which I think is the whole point.

Forever embraced by the hallow deeds

Of raspberries filled with scornful melodies

Inside their core, their bitterness stings

My tongue with a sourness overcome

By vicious melodies bombarding my

Mind so listlessly.

Let me be the one who lets you into the

Coasting plight of this miracle dancing

Before us.

For the captor is none of than the waves

Crashing upon our heads when disease

Of the soul echoes on in the realms of the dead.

Fickle beans tasty trophy

Force winds and rings tomorrow

Gentle sabbath soaring greenly

Froth and spirits sending dreams of chairs and inspiration

Karma subtle and sorcery bright as foggy lenses

Crime and candy dabble in forts of cheesecloth and dandelions

Bear crawls for when it has none

I was really skeptical for some reason when starting this exercise. I was doubting myself and the process, but something happened to me once I got going and this is what I came up with. There are definitely some crap lines, but true to what Joe claims, there are also some keepers!

Me foolish window was astonished

Right poster under my keyboard tried to be sympathy

Pen afterward might seek another coaster

Hello if my chair help me to kick the wire off

vegetable sicks coal sky

She was standing over there , chewing her gum , when the old man stumbled on his face on a rainy day , and she sarcastically started to laugh louder, louder and louder , and merly she was trying to help him , what a sorrow to be such sarcastic and regretful at the same time , the man was barley looking at her with eyes full of shame .

Kitten Birmingham fossils share

Brimming torture fairly there

Wither so the bees dew frown

Spinning fruit from wayward cow

socks and parrots collide until

Fevers surging writing well

Cancel pain from yonder square

Fancy prancy all the daywear

In a dark forest far far away from the truth. A deadly husband waits alone for his wife. Alone, and drunk in despair, dream terrors at night are his companions. And now the end is coming soon. Everything he wanted for his life was to receive some love, but now it is too late, all too late, all is doomed.

Ive told that little girl before

When you grow up this will be no more

But here I am yet again

Drowning Swimming oops..Suffering

I promised her on many nights

Those thieves would never steal her light

I need to fix this make it right

I promised her we would always fight.

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