Fiction Writing Exercises: Step Out of Your Shoes

One of the most exciting and challenging aspects of being a writer is creating characters. It is an opportunity to step outside of your own reality and take on a completely different persona.

Unless you’re an actor, an undercover agent, or just plain crazy, you don’t get many chances in life to do that.

With fiction writing exercises that focus on character creation, you can start building skills that allow you get under your character’s skin and get inside his head. These types of fiction writing exercises will take you beyond writing character sketches and descriptions and will truly help you understand your characters and all their deep complexities.

Realistic Characters

For characters to truly resonate with readers, they must be vibrant and stir the audience. Readers have to become attached to the characters, feel sympathy, compassion, even love (or hate) them. It’s not easy to fabricate people (or other beings) that don’t really exist, have never existed, and yet make them real. But it can be done.

So how do writers achieve this great feat?

Well, much credence has been given to the old adage write what you know. Base a character on a friend or family member, or yourself. But what fun is that? If you’re an accountant by day, do you really want to play an accountant in your fantasy world too? Probably not. And when you create a character, that’s pretty much what you’re doing, playing a role. You have to get into the character’s mind, live the life, absorb the environment in which the character lives. You have to be your character.

Character Writing Exercises

So, here’s a challenge: write a character you know nothing about. If you grew up in the big city, write as a farm hand. If you grew up on a farm or small town all your life, write about an army brat who was raised living in dozens of towns, going to different schools each year. Are you a stay-at-home, married mom? Write as a single woman making it big in the big apple. If you’re a successful businessman, write as a prison inmate who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks.

The idea is to get outside your comfort zone, and explore a different life than the one you know. Even if this is not the type of character you’d normally create, fiction writing exercises like this one will help you when you have to come up with a secondary character who’s not from the world with which you’re familiar. It will also expand the types of characters you’ll feel comfortable bringing into your stories.

This is not a character sketch. It’s more like a monologue. Write a one-page essay in first person from the perspective of a character you’ve created who is totally outside your realm of experience. Think about your wildest dreams or the most incredible adventure you’d like to have, and be that character. Or, if you’re really brave, try something that intimidates you. If you have a fear of flying, write as an airline pilot. Fear of drowning? Write as a SCUBA diver. Does math make you squirm? Write as a mathematics professor at university.

Fiction Writing Exercises for Fun and Focus

It’s just one page and one character, so this shouldn’t take too long. If it sticks and you get really into it, write several pages, or try doing this exercise with different characters. You might unveil a new side to yourself that you didn’t know about before. You might find it completely uncomfortable and decide to go back to writing what you know, but at least you will have tried something new.

Remember, fiction writing exercises are supposed to be fun, but their purpose is to challenge you to try new things and think in new ways, so be sure to focus on your character and make a conscious effort to get inside the character’s head as you work your way through this exercise.

Feel free to post comments about your character, or post the whole page. Who or what will you become? What shoes are you going to step into when you step out of your own?

Good luck and have a great weekend! Keep on writing!

If you have any fiction writing exercises to share, feel free to post them in the comments.

Sensible Writing Exercises

Ah, the senses: sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. How do these things relate at all to writing exercises?

We delight in the pleasures of the senses, but infusing writing with sensory stimulation is not an easy task. It takes a deft and creative writer to forge written images that trigger a reader’s senses.

So, why bother? Why attempt writing exercises that involve sensual triggers?

Well, when you engage your readers’ senses, your work becomes more compelling and more memorable. Some scientists say that smell is the strongest of the senses in terms of memorability. So, if you get your readers to experience scents, you’ll have them hooked.

These writing exercises are designed to help you write with more sense. Below, you’ll find a series of short writing exercises that culminate with creating a written piece that is peppered with sensory stimuli:

Prepare

• Start with a sheet of paper divided into five columns. If you prefer to do writing exercises like this on your computer, you can use Excel or Word or some other program.
• Label the columns: eyes, ears, mouth, hands, and nose.
• Spend a few minutes populating the columns with words and phrases that reflect the correlating senses. For example, in the smell column, you might write chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven, a blooming rose, or the cat’s litter box. Be as descriptive as possible and avoid using only stimuli that please or entice; add a few that are unpleasant for balance.

Review

• Review your list carefully, testing each item on your list to see how it affects you. When you read something like throbbing base coming from the car in the next lane, can you feel the boom?
• As you go through your list, cross out anything that doesn’t engage your senses.
• Highlight those items that really affect you – when you can feel the soft slick fabric of silk or hear the sound of a quiet breeze rustling dried and fallen leaves, you’re being affected.

The Writing Exercises

• Try writing one sentence for each of the five senses. Make sure it’s a complete sentence, and try to generate a sentence that evokes a scene. In other words “The roses smell nice,” won’t cut it. Try for something like: “She bent down slowly, beckoned by the rose’s sweet perfume and dazzling red hue.”
• Next, try to do what I did in the sample sentence above. Combine two or more senses into a single, complete sentence. When you read it back, does your nose tingle? Do you see bright colors in your mind? Can you hear the sound that you tried to evoke?
• Finally, write a brief essay, poem, or short story in 500 words or less, and be sure to stimulate each of the five senses in the piece. As a bonus, you can work in the sixth sense as well.

Tips

• Need some ideas? Start by choosing a setting, such as an event, where it’s likely all fives senses would be stimulated. For example, at a wedding, there will be the scent of fresh flowers, the taste of a wedding cake, and the sound of “Here Comes the Bride.” Other likely events include concerts, parties, meetings, vacations, and – try this one – cleaning day.
• If you get stuck, refer to your brainstorm list or practice sentences and use that material for inspiration.
• Try not to make it too obvious. A reader shouldn’t be able to notice that you’re triggering all their senses, so be sure it flows naturally.

The purpose of writing exercises is to have fun while challenging yourself. If you try these, feel free to post what you’ve written in the comments.

If you have any favorite writing exercises of your own, feel free to share them in the comments.

And keep on writing sensibly!

Poetry Writing Exercises for the Senses

When you engage your readers’ senses by exploring taste, touch, sound, sight, and smell in your writing, you create a visceral image and give your readers something they can connect with on a physical level.

Have you ever read a passage that described a delicious meal and suddenly realized you were hungrily salivating?

Our senses are even more powerful than our cognitive memories. Mention the smell of someone smoking a pipe, the scent of freshly baked cookies, or the odor of a barnyard, and suddenly these aromas magically fill the air.

You can use the phenomena of the senses to make your poetry come alive.

Writing Poetry that Captivates

Great poetry pulls a reader out of his or her current reality and takes them to another place – even if only for an instant. A well-written poem creates a snapshot of a scene, event, or situation and draws the reader inside.

One of the first things that novice poets learn is the power of imagery. Once you can create compelling images in your poetry, you need to find a way to get your readers to step inside those images. Music does this by coupling storytelling with sound. Surely, you’ve gotten lost inside a song – completely swept away by the melody and cadence. Poetry can do the same thing, but without instruments, poets must use language to engage the senses and lure a reader into the scene.

The five senses are:

• Sight
• Touch
• Taste
• Sound
• Smell

Three Sensory Poetry Writing Exercises

The following poetry writing exercises start with the simple task of bringing sensory perception into your poetry writing, but then become more challenging by asking you to go beyond images that provoke the senses. You’ll actually step inside the senses themselves, and the results will be far more dynamic.

Each of the poetry writing exercises below can be completed for each of the five sentences. Try one or try them all. Have fun with this exercise, and be sure to check out the tips at the end for some extra insight.

1. Engage the Senses

Write a poem that uses one or more of the senses to captivate the reader. Choose phrases and images that are highly descriptive and have extremely strong references to the senses. As a bonus challenge, try to include all five senses in a single poem.

2. Dancing Around the Senses

Write a poem that evokes the sensations of one or more of the five senses without using nouns or verbs that are directly related to the senses themselves. Think about how the word “boom” tickles your ears just a little bit and you’ll get the idea. Examples of words to avoid: smell, scent, aroma, odor, taste, touch, feel, sight, see, view, hear, listen, etc.

3. Be Sensible

Write as the sense itself. In other words, you are sound. What do you have to say to the world? You can personify the senses or think of them as a metaphor for something else so that you can step into their characters. This one is difficult, so you might try being simple and specific to start with. For example, instead of writing from the perspective of sound, write as if you are music.

Bonus Poetry Writing Tips

The poetry exercises above will help you build a piece that goes beyond imagery. You’ll create a scene, complete with all the sensations of reality. Here are a few extra tips to keep in mind as you work through these poetry writing exercises:

• Avoid clichés or any phrases that feel overused. No fresh scents, delicious tastes, or soft touches. Try to come up with ideas and images that are original.
• Show, don’t tell. This reinforces the use of imagery. Don’t say “the dog’s barking makes my ears hurt.” Instead, say “The dog shrieks.”
• Use a thesaurus to find adjectives and adverbs that are compelling and uncommon. Better yet, forgo adjectives and adverbs in exchange for more descriptive nouns and verbs. Instead of “bad smell” use “stink.” Trade phrases like “listening carefully” for words like “enthralled.”

If you try any of these poetry writing exercises, then post yours in the comments, especially if your poem is fairly short. If you publish one of these on your blog or website, be sure to leave a link in the comments.

If you have any great poetry writing exercises of your own, share them by commenting or sending in a guest post.

Have a great weekend and keep on writing!

Fiction Writing Exercises: Change the Tail

Fiction writing exercises will help improve your writing by challenging you, providing you with new ideas, and forcing you to approach your fiction writing from new angles.

This is a flexible writing exercise that could also be called Changing the Tale. But in this exercise, we’re going to change the tale by changing the tail.

The idea is to take an existing plot and change the ending to something completely different. This will help you understand the basics of story structure, particularly the part where you bring the story to a close.

Take the tail end off a story, right after the climax, and change it to something completely different. Choose a story from a book, magazine or journal, film, or even world events, and change the ending!

Changing the Tails on Tales

Gone with the Wind - What if Rhett Butler hadn’t walked away?

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - Without the lobotomy?

Titanic (movie) – What if the opposite characters had lived and died?

Try this with any of the Star Wars movies (I dare you!), or a Shakespeare play. Try it with a Dr. Suess book or try it with War and Peace. Try it with world history. What would life be like if World War II had gone the other way? What if a different candidate had won a major election (i.e. what if we’d had a different U.S. president in 2001?)?

Or just try it with the last book you read.

Change the Tail Fiction Writing Exercises (Variations)

You can flesh out a completely new ending for your story by writing a polished piece, or you can simply jot down some notes or an outline that explain how your new ending will differ from the original.

You can also write a few sentences about how your new ending might affect the integrity of the piece. Would Romeo and Juliet be the classic that it is today if the two lovelorn teens had lived? How would that have changed our culture, the literary canon, or the way the most compelling and moving stories throughout history have been viewed and received?

Which story ending will you change? You can pick one that you didn’t like much or one that you loved — just to see what a different outcome would have been like.

Fiction writing exercises are supposed to be fun and challenging, so tackle this with a light heart and a focused mind. And keep on writing!

If you have any fiction writing exercises to share, feel free to post them in the comments or send them in as a guest post.

Writing Exercises in Rhythm

Have you ever read a poem, story, or article that lacked rhythm? If a piece is lifeless, despite the fact that it uses vivid imagery, clear and expressive language, and a sympathetic voice, there’s a good chance that it’s off-beat in terms of musicality.

A well-written piece in any genre has cadence. This means the sentences vary in length as do the individual words. To achieve musicality in a written work, a writer must be aware of syllables and stresses. The overall result is a written piece that sings, and makes the reader’s imagination dance.

Today’s writing exercises encourage you to pay closer attention to the rhythm in your writing. If you can infuse your work with a bit of musicality, you can make your readers want to dance through your pages.

Writing Exercises in Rhythm for Readability

These two writing exercises will help you generate written material that has rhythm. Try these and you’ll find that your work becomes more readable when it has a beat backing it up.

The first exercise is systematic, and asks you to go through a piece of writing intentionally checking it for rhythm. The second approach is a bit looser, and only requires that you listen to your writing and try to determine its musicality by ear.

Complete both of these writing exercises or just try one.

The Systematic Approach

Select a short piece or an excerpt from something you’ve written, or are working on (under 250 words). This could be a couple of paragraphs from your novel in progress, or a short story you wrote for school. It can be an essay, a poem, news or magazine article, even straight copy from your website.

Draw a line down the center of a sheet of paper. Label the right side WORDS and the left side SENTENCES. The words column will show the number of syllables for each word and the sentences column will show the number of syllables for each sentence.

Now, go through the piece and count the syllables. In the left hand column enter a number for each word, representing the syllables. In the right hand column, enter the number of syllables for each sentence. When you’re done, the left hand column should be considerably longer.

Example

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

WORDS | SENTENCES
1 ………………11
1
1
1
1
2
1
2
1

Not a very rhythmic sentence. When working with several sentence, you want to see great variations in the sentence syllables. Within each sentence, the syllabic count of the words should also vary between one and four syllables.

This is a very systematic approach to evaluating the rhythm of your writing.

The Creative Approach

If you’d rather not deal with numbers, then try this:

Read a piece aloud, tapping along as you do so. You can tap your pen against the surface of your desk, or you can get really fancy and pull out an instrument such as a tambourine or bongo drum. You could even improvise with a wooden spoon and a couple of pots and pans. Bang out the syllables as you read the piece aloud, hitting harder on syllables that warrant greater emphasis.

Example

The quick brown fox jumps o-ver the la-zy dog. (Emphasis on bold syllables)

That’s how I read it anyway. By reading your piece aloud in this manner, you’ll notice quickly where your it is lacking in terms of rhythm.

How Did it Work for You?

If you decide to give one or both of these writing exercises a shot, come back and discuss what you learned. Or, try writing a piece from scratch that is rhythmic and melodic. Share an excerpt or share your thoughts in the comments.

If you have writing exercises to share, feel free to post them in the comments or send them in as a guest post.

A Blitz of Poetry Writing Exercises

Does all this talk about poetry have you itching to give it a try?

If you’ve written poetry in the past but drifted away from it, then it probably doesn’t take much to trigger your taste for writing verse.

Even though I’m busy with writing projects for my clients and don’t have much time to engage in writing for my own pleasure, poetic images and phrases have been dancing around in my head all month long. I think some of them may have even seeped into my client work and blog posts.

And that’s great for my clients and for everyone who reads this blog, because poetry has a unique way of sticking. Using language tricks and vivid imagery, poetry skips past the conscious mind and communicates directly with the subconscious. Okay, so not all poems achieve this. But poetry does it better than any other writing form.

But where to start? What to write about? To rhyme or not to rhyme?

Poetry Writing Exercises

Over time, Writing Forward has published a number of poetry writing exercises.

If you’d like to dip your toes into poetry writing, give freewriting a try. Or, skip the freewrite and just start writing poems using these five poetry prompts.

Would you prefer to work with existing materials and just piece a poem together from old, discarded parts? Check out this text collage project.

Maybe you want to make poems that rhyme. Rhyme is heavily associated with poetry, even though not all poems rhyme. Find out how to get your mind on rhyme for poetry writing.

If you just want some general tips and advice on writing and poetry, then here are five tips for better poetry writing.

Remember, poetry writing exercises are supposed to be fun and challenging, so enjoy working your way through these, and feel free to share your poems by posting comments.

If you have any poetry writing exercises to share, feel free to post them in the comments or send them in as a guest post.

Fiction Writing Exercises: A Dangerous Situation

Fiction Writing Exercises Aren’t Usually This Dangerous

It’s not easy to thrust your characters into a dangerous situation, especially one in which they are likely to get killed.

As we develop and nurture our characters, we become attached to them, and as if they were our children, we’d rather protect them than shove them into the face of danger.

But that’s not good storytelling.

Fiction writing exercises can help you break the chains that are holding you back from your own fears and inhibitions. This one focuses on placing your characters in great peril. You can use existing characters, or come up with new ones, just for the purpose of this writing exercise. You might even use some of these ideas in one of the stories you’re currently working on. Just remember, every great tale involves great obstacles; the greater the obstacle, the greater the suspense.

The Characters

First, choose your protagonist. Since we’re using fiction writing exercises, you can use a character from some other exercise that you’ve completed. Or, use one of your own characters. You can even borrow one from a novel or a movie. You can also develop a brand new character just for this purpose. Consider it a crash test dummy and have fun with it.

You can also use more than one character. Often, our protagonist is loyally attended by one or more sidekicks or helpers. When you increase the number of characters in danger, you increase the chances of one of them succumbing to the threat. Multiple characters also increase tension and complexity, so don’t be afraid to try this with a group of characters.

If you’re really daring, you might even decide to kill off one of your characters or at least have one of them suffer an injury. With more than one character on the stage, you may find it easier to inflict harm on your characters, giving your story additional emotional grit.

The Situation

It’s not as hard as you might think to come up with a situation that involves great risk. You need look no further than your own bookshelf, DVD collection, or newspaper. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Trapped. There are innumerable ways that a person can get trapped, both literally and metaphorically. Coal mines and wells, along with oceans and rivers, make for great scenes in which your character can get stuck underground, or lodged beneath a large boulder, or even locked within the cabin of a sinking ship. Alternatively, your character could be stuck in a dangerous relationship, perhaps the victim of domestic abuse. Maybe your character has been kidnapped and is being held hostage, or is some type of innocent prisoner.
• Natural disaster. If you start out with a natural disaster, you can then generate any number of additional dangers that your character might have to overcome. Earthquakes can cause fires, hurricanes cause floods and tsunamis, and volcanoes come with a whole set of secondary problems. You can also use pandemics (diseases and viruses, such as the Plague).
• Wrong place, wrong time. Some people just walk blindly and accidentally into danger. Bank robberies are perfect for this approach, as are vehicular accidents, whether by automobile, train, or plane. Campers who are attacked by wild animals, and innocents who witness a murder will suddenly find their personal safety compromised just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• Victim or target. Someone’s after your character, but who? Does your character have a treasure that someone else wants? Is your character being stalked by an obsessively lustful fanatic? Maybe your character is in the public eye, a celebrity or world leader, and is being targeted by the enemy. Or, perhaps your character is being bullied on the playground. Many characters find themselves in danger in this manner. This is an especially effective obstacle, because it involves a relationship between a protagonist and an antagonist, which ups the human interest aspect of your story considerably.

Resolution

Herein lies the real challenge. Now that your character is in danger, you have some decisions to make. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• Who gets hurt?
• Does anyone die?
• Are there other characters who are concerned for the endangered characters’ safety?
• Do they come to the rescue, or do the endangered save themselves?

…and last, but not least,

• How does this situation get resolved (this is when you’ll complete the writing exercise)?

You have to determine how your characters get out of the sticky dilemma that you’ve stuck them with. This might involve survival skills, or technical know-how. Some characters get saved, others have to save themselves. A few succumb and are lost forever (they die). To wrap up a disaster, you, as the writer, must generate a resolution, and that means deciding on the outcome.

The Writing Exercise

Of course, the exercise itself is more than just coming up with ideas, though you could just think this one through, or jot down an outline. To get the most out of this exercise, write the scene. It could be a paragraph, or it could be 20 pages, as long as you include a sympathetic character, a dangerous situation, and a resolution, it will be complete and you can rest easy knowing that it’s okay and even beneficial to put your characters in harm’s way.

Good luck! I hope both you and your character(s) survive this and many other fiction writing exercises!

If you have any fiction writing exercises to share, feel free to post them in the comments or send them in as a guest post.

Writing Exercises: Freewriting

One of the most valuable writing exercises I learned in college was freewriting.

When you sit down with a pen and paper and let words flow freely, amazing things can happen.

At first, it’s a bit of a struggle, but if you stick with it, you will produce some gems. The trick is to get out of the way, and let your subconscious take over. Most writing exercises ask you to think. This one requires you do anything but that.

This is not like other writing exercises because freewriting is also a tool that you can use to generate written material for a variety of projects. It will also help you clear your head or tap into your deeper thoughts.

Writing Exercises and Train of Thought

The first few times I tried freewriting, I botched it. I would describe everything I’d done that day, or jot down my thoughts on a particular subject in a random, messy way. Finally, in one of my creative writing classes, I got to hear some examples of freewriting and something clicked. Freewriting is not about train of thought, it’s about stream of consciousness, and there’s a big difference.

Here is an example of one of my early attempts at freewriting, from January, 1999. This was just one of the many writing exercises I did in college under the creative writing program:

I set the microwave timer for 30 minutes so that I wouldn’t write for too long – although I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt if I did. Usually I do freewrites in a journal. I have a tendency to reflect on the current events of my personal life during a freewrite.

Train of thought writing exercises are pretty coherent. For the most part, it makes sense, as you can see in the example above. The technique involves writing on a particular subject, or working with a concrete topic. This can be useful in many ways, but it won’t tap into your deeper creativity the way freewriting will.

I use train of thought for clearing my mind, or to prepare for writing a nonfiction piece as a brainstorming method to churn out all the information I have in my head. But when I’m looking for poetic images or vivid characters, freewriting will do a much better job.

Writing Exercises and Stream of Consciousness

By February, 1999, I had a much better grasp on freewriting:

in moonshine eyelet lace a rhapsody of liquors dancing off light reflected in the cut glass spoons stirring iced candy meltdown of hopes washed out memories of faded photographs and standing in line at a supermarket eyeing the magazines their eyes watching you like cats high up in trees crying for freedom but afraid to come down

The key to stream of consciousness writing exercises is to relax your thinking mind and let the images of your subconscious take over. For some people, it takes a little practice but once you get it down, it becomes a neat trick. So what can you do with it?

Applications for Freewriting

Once you’ve built up a nice collection of freewrites, you have created a repository of images and lines, sentences, and paragraphs. You can now go through and harvest the material for your various writing projects. As you can imagine, the fruits of freewriting lend themselves particularly well to poetry.

When I’m writing poetry, I often go through my freewrites with a highlighter, marking words and phrases that pop or strike me as especially meaningful or aesthetically pleasing to the ear. Then, I pull these from the freewrite and use them to compose a poem.

Freewrites can also be used to bring creative, colorful language into fiction and prose. Strong images and rich language generates work that is more literary in nature and if done well, it’s a lot more fun to read. It will help you create words that show rather than tell and make your story or essay come alive more easily in a reader’s mind.

Have you ever tried freewriting? Do you tend toward train of thought or stream of consciousness? Are there any other writing exercises you recommend for creating more vivid prose or poetry? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

And keep on writing.

If you have any writing exercises to share, feel free to post them in the comments.

Rock and Rhyme (Poetry Writing Exercises)

Rhyming poetry goes in and out of vogue all the time, except when it comes to children’s poetry, which must always and absolutely be packed with fun and clever rhymes.

Some poets take to rhyming like it’s nothing, and sound-a-like words roll off their tongues like butter. But others struggle, dancing through the alphabet and flipping through rhyming dictionaries just to find a rhyme as simple as bat and cat.

Poems that rhyme may be a challenge for some, but they’re still fun to write, and a blast to read – especially to read out loud. Even when rhyming is not popular among poets, it’s still good practice for exploring language and having fun with word play.

When I first started writing poetry, I was all about the rhyme and I enjoyed the challenge of trying to come up with interesting and unusual rhymes to end my lines. I was fairly good at it, even without a handy rhyming dictionary.

In honor of the tradition of rhyming poems, are some poetry writing exercises designed to help you get your rhyme on — especially fun because we get to play with music.

We’ll start with the core exercise. I like to call it Rock and Rhyme. Then, we’ll move on to a few variations that you can try.

Rock and Rhyme

All you need is a song. A good song, rhythmic and rhyme-y, but not with a lot of fancy runs. You’ll want a relatively simple tune. Go for an old Beatles song, or just about anything from the eighties. Disco could work, if you’re into that kind of thing, but forget about classical music because most of it doesn’t have words, and what we’re doing requires words. We’re writers, right?

You might want to start with a short, simple three-chord pop song. If you can do that, graduate yourself to longer and more complex tunes.

If you know all the lyrics to your song, that will be immensely helpful. If not, Google the song title with the word “lyrics” and you’ll find it in three seconds flat. Take those lyrics, and rewrite them, trying to match as many rhymes in the song as possible, and not just the end rhymes. Make an effort to match the internal rhymes too. Your rhymes can be as strict or as loose as you want.

If you do just a few of these, pretty soon rhyming will start to feel more natural, and your rhymes will flow with ease.

See How I Roll?

Here’s my attempt with the first chorus from 80s one hit wonder 99 Red Balloons by Nena.

The Original Verse
You and I in a little toy shop
Buy a bag of balloons with the money we’ve got
Set them free at the break of dawn
Till one by one they were gone
Back at base, bugs in the software
Flash the message: something’s out there
Floating in the summer sky
Ninety-nine red balloons go by

My Attempt to Catch the Rhyme
Shoes untied at a little bus stop
Sigh and whistle a tune ’cause it’s all that you’ve got
Set your feet on the fake green lawn
Tie your shoes and then you yawn
Flash the mace, thugs on the make here
Cash is precious: buy a cold beer
Waiting till the bus comes by
Mighty fine greasy spoon — let’s dine!

Pretty bad, I know, but it’s the best I could do in just a few minutes.

More Rhyming Poetry Writing Exercises

Here are a few variations that you can use for this exercise:

• Try it with nursery rhymes. Hey diddle diddle.
• Try it with a famous poem. Shakespeare anyone?
• Try it using a song without lyrics. You’re on your own!

As always, the most important thing is to have fun and challenge yourself. Try to do it on your own first, but if you’re really struggling, hit up a rhyming dictionary or a thesaurus to give yourself a boost.

Are You Ready to Get Down?

Try it for yourself and post a verse or a chorus in the comments! If you’re looking for a song lyric resource, then check out 99 Red Balloons and 100 Other All-Time Great One-Hit Wonders, which is packed with awesome songs that are ideal for this exercise.

Do you have any poetry writing exercises or rhymes to share? If so, we’d love to hear from you so leave a comment or use the form on the contact page.

And have a great weekend! Don’t forget to write!

Do you have any favorite poetry writing exercises to share? Did you give this one a try? Share your thoughts and ideas by leaving a comment.

Fiction Writing Exercises: Become Your Nemesis

This is one of those fiction writing exercises that will benefit both fiction and nonfiction writers.

It’s designed to help fiction writers gain a better understanding of antagonistic or elusive characters, and it will help nonfiction writers relate to contradictory or opposing viewpoints.

The idea is to try and view the world from a completely different perspective, and to get inside the head of someone who is not like you.

Fiction Writing Exercises

Fiction writing exercises are a great way to work your writing muscles, especially when you’re feeling uninspired. And while this exercise doesn’t exactly deal with politics, it sure is good practice for political and advocacy writers, as it will help with making predictions about an opponents’ arguments and addressing them in advance.

And like all fiction writing exercises, this one is great for aspiring novelists and folks who enjoy penning short stories. Characters are the heart and soul of any story, and to make them real and vivid, you have to be able to get inside their heads. And that’s a challenge.

Never underestimate the power of a challenge. For example, can you put yourself in someone else’s shoes? Someone who is completely your opposite, even if that person is a fictional character.

Step into My Shoes – I Dare You!

By stepping into another person’s shoes, or writing from a viewpoint that contradicts our own, we can generate characters that are more realistic, and we can craft stronger arguments. For this writing exercise, you will select a person, position, or belief with which you are at odds. Do you have a neighbor who argues that he should not pay his share for the fencing on your shared property line? Are you for or against the death penalty? Do you adhere to the Ten Commandments?

Here are some ideas to get you started:

People

Think of a person that constantly has you gritting your teeth. It could be someone close to you, perhaps a relative. Or it could be someone in the media’s limelight — a politician, celebrity, or sports star. It could even be a character from a book or movie. It needs to be someone with whom you feel inner conflict, and who possibly makes you uncomfortable.

When you sit down to write, you will write as if you are this individual. Write an essay, in first person, from this individual’s perspective, and make a special effort to address those things that bother you.

Positions

Many of us have very strong positions on various issues. Some are serious and others aren’t very important in the grand scheme of things. Do you eat meat or are you a vegetarian? Are you a conservative or a liberal? Do you support stem cell research? Are you for or against the war in Iraq? Look at some of the top news stories this week for more ideas. Or, for a more lighthearted approach, look to lifestyle differences. Do people outside the mainstream intrigue or offend you? How important are table manners? Mac or PC?

Whatever your own stance is, write as if you held the exact opposite position. Argue against your own arguments and discover what the other side is thinking. This can build empathy and lead to discovery and insight.

Beliefs

What religion or philosophy do you adhere to? Chances are, whatever it is you believe with regard to ethics and spirituality, there are a whole bunch of someones out there who see things in quite a different light. Are you an atheist? Write as a Catholic. Do you believe in evolution or creation and intelligent design?

Use this exercise to better understand the similarities and differences between contrary ways of thinking and believing.

The Nemesis

Write at least 1000 words as your own nemesis. The piece can take the form of a letter (especially useful if you choose a person), an opinion editorial, personal essay, or memoir. Don’t be afraid to get creative! Try writing a poem (great approach if you’ve chosen to write about beliefs) or flash fiction.

This is a great writing exercise to revisit, especially if you get stuck with one of your fictional characters. Can’t figure out what your villain would do next? Write a short piece in first person as your villain.

Remember, you’re not mimicking the other side, you are stepping into it. Try to relate to the way your opposite thinks and feels, and remember that each of us is shaped by our life experiences.

Good luck and try to have fun with this and other fiction writing exercises!

And keep on writing!

If you have any fiction writing exercises to share, feel free to post them in the comments.

3 Writing Exercises of Great Length

Here are some writing exercises based on an assignment I had to do in college, which has always stuck with me.

It sounds pretty easy (write a 100-word sentence), but once you sit down and actually attempt it, you’ll find out just how challenging it is.

In fact, at first glance, you might think that you can run off lengthy writing exercises such as this in just a few minutes. But you’ll soon find out that it probably requires a greater time investment than that.

Still, you can probably finish it in ten to thirty minutes.

The Writing Exercises:

1. Write one sentence that is at least one hundred words long.

That’s it, but trust me, it’s harder than you think. It has to be a good sentence. You can’t use unnecessary, superfluous adjectives and adverbs. It has to make sense, and sound right when you read it out loud. It can be about anything, but it has to meet the word count.

2. Complete the first exercise, then rewrite the sentence in ten words or less.

You have to say the same thing using a fraction of the words. Don’t leave out any important details!

2. Here’s the combo: Write two sentences – one must be 150 words long and the other exactly seven words. Oh and they have to comprise a paragraph.

The challenge here is in contrast. You go from writing an extremely long sentence to a relatively short one, and they have to be related so they can exist in the same paragraph.

Are You Up for the Challenge?

If you decide to tackle any of these writing exercises, post your sentences in the comments section.

Good luck, and keep on writing.

Do you have any favorite writing exercises that you’d like to share? Leave a comment!

Poetry Writing Exercises: The Text Collage

Most poetry writing exercises are designed to help you focus on one particular area – rhyme, alliteration, etc. But this one works on several levels.

First, this exercise provides a nice, zen-like break from your daily routine because it involves more than sitting down and writing.

Second, it’s a great alternative to recycling those growing stacks of old magazines that are sitting around collecting dust.

Plus, you can come back to this again and again and create a collection of text clippings for future poetry writing exercises.

You’ll need some supplies, a bit of time. Try to set aside an hour or two – and note that you can break it up over several days or even longer.

What You’ll Need (Supplies)

• Old printed material: magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, ads, photocopies, junk mail, etc.
• A small box, basket, jar, or other container
• A pair of scissors
• A glue stick or a roll of clear tape
• Highlighter (optional)

The Writing Exercise

Step One

Go through old magazines, pamphlets, printouts, and photocopies. Any printed material will do. Scan through the text to find words and phrases that are interesting and capture your attention and imagination. You can highlight the text that you like, or move straight ahead to step two.

Step Two

Cut out the phrases you’ve chosen and place them in your container.

Step Three

When you have a nice pile of clippings, pull some out and spread them across a flat work surface. Start sifting through the words, pairing different clippings together to see how the phrasing sounds. Place the ones you like best on a piece of paper, and use glue or tape to adhere them.

Alternative Poetry Writing Exercises (Variations)

• You can pen or pencil in additional language as you put your poem together.
• Instead of writing a poem, you can use this exercise to come up with descriptions or other inspirations for other forms of writing.
• Clip some images while you’re at it, and use them as part of your poetry writing exercises by creating a poetry collage that is also a piece of art.

When you’re all done, save the clippings so you can repeat this exercise again when the mood strikes. Just for fun, here’s a poem I crafted from this very exercise:

your name is on

your invitation would be disastrous
but keep something inside, forged
out of hard work
for this precious sweat and discontent
you have no choice
each time you take me
where the desert heat and the kick

disturb you

Come Back and Share

Feel free to come back and share the results if you decide to give this, or any other poetry writing exercises a try.

Have a great weekend and keep on writing!

If you have any poetry writing exercises to share, feel free to post them in the comments or send them in as a guest post.

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