Writing exercises
 

I'll be moving this to 'writing discussion and story help' a subforum of the lit spot. :3

My version of drabble-writing is based on 15 min ficlets which is kinda like your #1. There is an lj community (now no longer active, but still visible) where every week they posted a random word behind an cut. The point being that you see the word and then have 15 minutes to write something based on that word.

15 minutes is a lot more time than you realize...

It's hard to find a pool of people willing to do that within an already established population. I think part of the reason that 15minficlets worked so well was because the people interested would all pool of their own free will.

Ahahahaha... I fail at NaNo. I've actively tried.. once. Got 400 words in and then school ate me. The second time I tried I had a story idea and then it never got written down.

That last exercise of yours sounds really nice, I'd love to give that a try!

my favorite writing exercise is to write a short story without using the words: am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been.

It's really not as hard as it sounds, and it gets you writing with active verbs :)

Mwah ha ha! Writing exercises, what are those? I'm need no exercises for my writing! (<-- 'tis over embellished sarcasm)

No, really I'm just too lazy to bother with any but the second one sounds really really fun. I might mention it to my Creative Writing teacher, if you don't mind me borrowing the idea. Personally, I've found that my best stories come when I just plop down at the computer with a character name and a loose idea in my mind then start typing away. Of course, the first chapter typically takes a good bit of editing but in the end it works itself out. My current such project is already 25,000 words in length at least and getting close to reaching the climax.

The only thing close to writing exercises that I do would be role playing, which I find is a great way to flex my creative muscles. Whether or not your testing out a character, the task of writing a lot of stuff about a short time span always helps one to write better novels. ^^

My idea of writing exercise: write continuously.

I'm always doing multiple projects, and while usually only one or two are what I'd call serious, the ones that aren't keep me in constant practice. But I think that only works because I take the practice seriously in it's way... that is, even if it's something I won't acknowledge as good art (something with things in it I'd never let myself get away with ordinarily), taking it seriously otherwise poses the additional challenge of making something respectable (or remotely so) out of something that simply isn't. In this way, even my ridiculous works end up being not only humorous or fun to write, but also good experience. And sometimes I discover that I've made something that's actually not half bad in the process.

Anyhow, I have to laugh sometimes. :sarcasm:

A writing excercise that is more for poerty but can be great if you need a prophesy or a poem within the story is this. You read or listen to a poem in a lanugage that you don't know. Like I know some japanese so I don't use it. I tend to use Korean or some random language. Write a poem based on the foreign language poem. Similar sounds or flows or just feelings.

We did this excerse at a work shop. Me and a freind know a bit of japanse, like most fangirls do, so the japanese one was annoying. The french and germen ones were too. It really works best if you have no idea what it means at all.

I recommend putting your characters in a random scenario, even if it doesn't work with your actually story at first. Try it with one character and then with two *so on*. Examples: in a sex shop, family picnic, carnival, movie theatre, forced to put on a play, in a cass room, teaching, going to a gym, and anything else you can think of in day to day life and fantasy. What if they met dragons, what if they met santa,etc.