119 Best Creative Writing Exercises for Authors in 2025

A talk show is scripted to promote the guest and discuss topics with which the guest is comfortable. Imagine your protagonist on the Ellen Degeneres Show (or The Late Show With Stephen Colbert - whichever show you're familiar with). What questions would be asked of your protagonist? What funny anecdotes would your protagonist share? Write down the reactions of both your protagonist and the host.

Write a description of the room you are in from the point-of-view of a character in your work-in-progress. If the character is from another time or place, so much the better. What would the character notice first? What would she find odd? What would she love about the room? What would she dislike? Go beyond describing the physical space and capture her attitude about what she sees. Let her be snarky or wax poetical. Whatever captures her emotions about the space.

How do you start a story - or get a story back on track? If you're feeling lost or blocked, try templating to get your plot on course.Here's what to do: bullet point your initiating incident, your rising action, your crisis, and your resolution for both your main plot and subplots. Make a table to see events running parallel, remembering subplots exist to enhance, complicate _ ultimately, compliment _ your main action. Listing like this highlights any irrelevancies, keeping your tale on track, and makes all you write intertwined and significant to your protagonist's journey. Plan out using this framework as your reference.

Write an advertisement putting your 12-foot long crocodile on the market. Then write the story behind why you had to sell your pet crocodile in the first place.

Humans are highly resistant to change - for a character to believably undergo a personal journey that substantially alters them, something HUGE and specific must happen to them. This event doesn't have to happen in your story, but once you can identify your character's limits, you can determine what is required to create a potential change in their fundamental nature.For this exercise, determine what this catalyst for change might be by considering situations or attributes that feel counterintuitive. For instance, if your character is a Good Samaritan, it is unlikely they would commit a crime. What would have to be at stake for this unlikely situation to happen - and for a core part of your character to change?

What can be more basic than the simple who, what, why, when and where formula? This common sense plan has proved over and over again that it is not only one of the fastest ways to begin a story, but also an easy creative writing exercise to use when you only have a small chunk of time available.If you want this formula to work for you, then the best way to approach it is to answer those questions quickly. Forget about thinking, analyzing, and worrying until later. For now, let's just start writing. Here's an example to show you how easy it is to start.

• WHO? Sally _ an eco activist/policewoman
• WHAT? Having affair with a married politician so she can blackmail and manipulate him.
• WHEN? Now
• WHERE? In contemporary Ireland
• HOW? Recording his every move, generally spying on him in order to destroy him.

Write a pivotal scene in your novel from a different character's POV. For instance: at a funeral, you may have written the grieving widow's thoughts and feelings. Write about that funeral from the deceased husband's POV, the eldest son's, or the step-sister's.

What is your story's hook? Analyze your opening scene and identify the implicit but specific question it encourages readers to ask. Is this question in the first paragraph or, better yet, the first line? How can you strengthen it?

Describe your house - or the dream house you hope to get some day.

Open a dictionary, close your eyes, pick a random word, and write about it. Go on, see how much you can write about one word in thirty seconds. It doesn't matter if you think it's great or silly or you think it's a beautiful word that everyone should use in every conversation. Write it!