- Draw, imagine or gather objects that remind you of your 3 favorite memories. Choose one or all of them as inspiration for a story. A few examples: you can retell the events as an autobiography, change some of the details and turn it into a fiction piece, choose one part of the memory and create something completely new from it...
- Imagine you've received a mystery package in the mail. You go up to your room to open it in private and...
- You've just learned that there's a society of people (or creatures...) living underneath your house. Write the story describing how they live, who they are, how you found out...
- Write a letter to someone younger than you with some advice about important things you've learned about life
- Describe your favorite food and an experience of you eating it in as much detail as you can. Try to use all of your senses as well as describing emotions
- Bring one of your favorite possessions to life: Imagine that it can think and talk. What would it say? What is its perspective of the world it shares with you?
- Imagine you're a film critic. Write your opinion of the last movie you saw, whether you recommend it to others and why or why not.
- Re-write a scene from your life so it turns out a new way: an argument you could have avoided, something you missed because you were sick, a choice you would have made differently...
- Cross out the words in newspaper comic strips, comic books or children's picture books and write your own dialogue. Gocomics has a lot of free comic strips online that you can use. I suggest experimenting with the difference in how your writing comes out if you read the original dialogue before crossing it out or not.
- The next 3 exercises are adapted from a book I really like called, The Write-Brain Workbook by Bonnie Neubauer. (If you decide to get the book- Some of the prompts are targeted towards older people, but it's possible to change around some of the details so you can relate to them better.)
-- Get 2 pencils or pens and practice writing with both hands at the same time. To make it a little easier, you can start with the same phrase and write the same words with both hands. You can write about anything you like, or try something that starts with, "When I heard them call my name, I..."
-- Write a story or other piece of writing that starts with, "Like a fish, I spent my summer..." without using any of these words: water, waves, pool, pond, ocean, liquid, wet, swim, lake, stream, drink, float
-- Weird Words: Use the words kalon, widdershins and schoenbatist WITHOUT looking up what they mean first, in a fantasy story where at least one of the characters has magic powers. (After you finish your story, check out the definitions of the words and lots of other cool, obscure words at luciferous logolepsy)
- Do you ever have trouble writing what you really want to write and how you want to write it? If you've ever gone to school or have had to write something for someone else, sometimes it can be hard to access writing using your true voice (the voice that's exactly how you want it to be). Whenever I notice this happening to me or with students I work with, I use an exercise that often really helps:
Close your eyes, take a couple of breaths to clear your mind and then answer the question, Who in you life do you feel like you can most be yourself with? Whoever first popped into your mind, write to them. Write him/her a letter describing a story you want to write, your day, or anything at all. Chances are, the voice you use to write to this person will reflect an example of writing in your 'true voice'. Remember this voice and write from there!
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