36 Creative Writing Exercises to Become a Better Writer

The best writing exercises help you discover what you need to write. You might try your hand at a new approach to writing and then stumble into your next great poem, story, or essay. So, whether you’re looking to strengthen your skills as a writer or find new generative prompts, you’re sure to keep your pen moving with these writing exercises for adults.

Make these writing exercises part of your daily writing practice, or just try something you haven’t tried before! Here are 24 creative writing exercises for writers of all genres.

36 Creative Writing Exercises for Adults

These creative writing exercises have helped writers of all backgrounds strengthen their craft and develop new work. Don’t feel pressured to try them all, but you might be surprised by what happens when you write outside of your comfort zone.

6 Writing Exercises for Writing With Limitations

Writing with self-imposed limitations can help you create inventive and unexpected pieces. These writing exercises will help you think closely about the words you use and how you use them.

Write a story in which…

1. You write without using a specific common letter.

Can you write a complete poem or story without a letter like “i” or “s”? The point of this writing exercise is to pay closer attention to your word choice, as well as to the musicality of language, which becomes more apparent the more restricted it is.And yes, it’s entirely possible to do this. Ernest Vincent Wright wrote an entire novel, Gadsby, without using the letter “e”.

2. A specific part of speech—like adverbs or adjectives—never appears in the writing.

Stephen King advises never to use adverbs. We’re not quite so strict about parts of speech, but you might find your writing becomes more vibrant or immediate by eliding an entire part of speech.

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3. No character is able to say what they think or feel—but they are constantly trying to approximate their thoughts and feelings.

If someone in your writing says “I’m afraid,” “I hate you,” or “I want money,” rewrite it. What will your characters say and do if they can’t say or do what they think or feel?

4. The entire piece of writing is only one sentence.

Use any other punctuation and strategy for prolonging the writing, but do not end the sentence until you have no other choice. Try to fill at least a page!

5. Every sentence ends on a surprising and unexpected word or phrase.

This literary device is called a paraprosdokian. But the point isn’t to be literary, it’s to force yourself to write against expectations. Instead of “she was eating a sandwich,” where “sandwich” is a predictable noun, perhaps she was eating: the sunlight; her childhood dreams; the morning mist; her yesterdays.

6. You only use words of 6 letters or shorter.

You may think this limits your vocab too much, but short words can still create rich, knotty work.

Writing with limitations like these will challenge your mind to think about language productively. By forcing yourself to use unconventional language—or to use language unconventionally—these writing exercises will make you stumble into new, revealing, and surprising work.

6 Writing Exercises for Practicing Literary Devices

A literary device is any artful use of language to convey, enhance, or challenge meaning. These writing exercises will help you create new work by starting with figurative language.

3 Literary Device Exercises

7. Tell a story entirely through a catalog of images.

Imagery is essential to successful writing. Write a story or poem that only uses concrete images. You can use verbs, but they must be active and concrete, too. How can you convey a narrative just through the curation and arrangement of images?

8. Write a story or poem in which every sentence has a sense of irony.

Irony is a device in which the meaning of a sentence is at odds with the literal meaning of the words. For example, “that double cheeseburger deluxe looks so healthy” is obviously ironic, because we know this food probably isn’t clearing any arteries. Irony does not have to be sarcastic or mean; the point is to use language that is meant to communicate the opposite of what the words themselves mean.

9. Juxtapose unalike things.

Juxtaposition is a fancy word for the placement of ideas or images next to one another. Write a story or poem based on the premise of juxtaposing unalike things. What happens when orange juice and toothpaste mix, or blood and lemonade?

3 Metaphor Exercises

The following three writing exercises are based on the premise of a metaphor list.

Metaphors are direct comparisons of things. If I say “love is a battlefield,” I am conveying something literal: that the concept of love is itself a kind of war zone.

A metaphor list is simple. On a notebook, create two columns. In one column, write down only concrete nouns. Things like a pillow, a tree, a cat, a cloud, and anything that can be perceived with one of the five senses.

In the other list, write down only abstract ideas. Things like love, hate, war, peace, justice, closure, and reconciliation—anything that is conceptual and cannot be directly perceived.

Now, choose a random noun and a random concept, and create a metaphor with your pair. Delve into the metaphor and explain the comparison. For example, you might say “Love is like a pillow—it can comfort, or it can smother.”

Once you’ve mastered the metaphor list, you can try the following ideas to challenge yourself:

10. Create a coherent poem out of your metaphor list, in which all of your metaphors make sense.

11. Turn your metaphor list into a short story: in what world or narrative do your comparisons all make sense?

12. Write a story or poem using only one of your metaphors. Each line or sentence must add to and extend the metaphor until it becomes something more like a conceit.

6 Freewriting Exercises

Freewriting, also known as “stream of consciousness writing,” involves writing your thoughts down the moment they come. There’s no filtering what you write, and no controlling what you think: topicality, style, and continuity are wholly unnecessary in the freewriting process.

While the idea of freewriting seems easy, it’s much harder than you think – examining your thoughts without controlling them takes a while to master, and the impulse to control what you write isn’t easy to tame.

These writing exercises all involve freewriting. I encourage you to make this a daily practice: the more you do it, the freer your language will be.

Do a freewrite…

13. Every day, and every day force yourself to freewrite for a little bit longer and yesterday.

Freewrite for 2 minutes on Monday, 3 minutes on Tuesday, 4 minutes on Wednesday, etc. Work your way up to 15 minutes.

14. Every morning.

Inspiration for this idea comes from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, which encourages serious artists to write “morning pages”—or morning freewrites with no purpose other than getting your language brain moving.

15. Right before bed.

How might your writing be different in the morning versus at night? The point of this writing exercise is mostly just to see what happens when you set the day’s dross down before heading to sleep. (Perhaps your dreams will change, too?)

16. After meditating.

Meditation helps center the mind’s attention and suspend the inner critic. Marc Olmsted offers some useful tips on mindful writing here.

17. After reading for at least 30 minutes.

We unconsciously absorb new ideas for writing and thinking simply by reading. The point here is not to plagiarize, it’s to see how your own approach to language changes after being immersed in the word choice of another author.

18. In the voice of someone that isn’t you.

Adopting a persona is a fun, if challenging, writing exercise, because you have to keep your pen moving while embodying your associations and assumptions about a different character’s voice. How, for example, would Daffy Duck sound if he was doing his morning pages?

6 Writing Exercises Through Finding Inspiration

Art inspires art. While plagiarism is off the table, you can really develop your voice by, as Austin Kleon calls it, stealing like an artist.

What we would call it in the literary world is “reading like a writer.”
Reading like a writer means paying attention to the craft elements that make an excellent piece of literature work. Good writing requires different writing styles, figurative language, story structures, and/or poetry forms, as well as a close attention to word choice.

When you notice these craft elements, you can go ahead and emulate them in your own work. As a fiction writer, you might be drawn to the way Haruki Murakami weaves folklore into his stories, and decide to write a story like that yourself. Or, as a poet, you might be inspired by Terrance Hayes’ Golden Shovel form—enough so that you write a Golden Shovel yourself.

Here are 6 writing exercises that find inspiration in literature and art.

19. Write an “after” poem or story.

An “after” poem is a poem that expands upon, replies to, finds inspiration in, or contradicts an existing poem. The point of this writing exercise is to be moved by the language and construction of a poem, then write an original poem in response. You can do the same thing with stories and essays, too.

20. Write a blackout / erasure poem.

A blackout poem is a poem constructed by taking an existing text and crossing out words on the page until a poem forms. This writing exercise is inherently metatextual, making the blackout poet react to the text that is being blacked out while also relying on the language of the original author.

21. Start a piece with the same sentence as a piece you admire.

Find a poem or piece of writing you love. Start your story or poem with the same first line or sentence. How can you create a wholly original piece that begins from the same base?

22. Write through anti-inspiration.

Write the opposite of something you either love or hate. Be creative with how you interpret the word “opposite.”

23. Write a hermit crab piece.

Hermit crabs take the form of the shell they occupy. A hermit crab poem or story, thus, takes the form of texts that currently exist. Think: emails, memos, Craigslist ads, Instagram captions, recipe books, etc. Write a poem, essay, or story that takes the form of an existing type of text.

24. Writing by ekphrasis.

Ekphrastic poetry is poetry that takes its inspiration from a visual or sonic art. Write a poem or story whose form, language, and topicality are informed by a piece of art.

6 Perspective Exercises

The conventional advice given to writers is to “write what you know.” We couldn’t disagree with that statement more.

The best creative work forces both the writer and the reader to consider new perspectives and learn something new. Writing from a new point-of-view makes for a great exercise in expanding your creative limits.

Try these ideas as writing exercises in poetry or prose:

25. Write a character whose colloquial and vernacular speech are from a completely different geographical region than you.

For example, I am not from the American South. So, if I write a character or narrator whose dialogue includes “y’all,” “bless your heart,” and “over yonder,” I will inevitably need to do my research to understand more about how American Southerners live and think, and how to represent them honestly.

26. Write a story with the same plot, but with two or more perspectives.

For example, you could write a lover’s quarrel from two different view points.

27. Write from the point-of-view of a famous historical figure.

What would Cleopatra have to say about her own time period? Alternately, what would Cleopatra say about the 21st century?

28. Write a story or poem from the perspective of an object: a statue, a doll, a roomba, etc.

Assign your object a personality that makes sense for its weight, size, and shape. Or, go with a personality that makes no sense at all—until it does. Fatimah Asghar’s “Pluto Shits on the Universe” is a favorite example of mine.

29. Write from the perspective of a person you dislike.

Use your poem or story to empathize with this person. Often, the best villains are those whose morals and feelings we understand, because it sucks when horrible people are still human (as, of course, we all are). Alternately, write an anti-hero narrative.

Patricia Smith’s poem “Skinhead,” for example, is a persona piece written from the perspective of a white nationalist, but the poem clearly condemns the speaker’s beliefs.

30. Write a persona poem.

Persona poetry is a poem in which the speaker is explicitly someone other than the author. As a result, you have to think about how your persona would use line breaks and metaphors, not how you would.

6 Daily Writing Exercises

Of course, the best way to improve your creative writing skills is simply to write every day. Keeping a daily journal is a great way to exercise your writing mind. By sitting down with your personal observations and writing without an agenda or audience, a daily writing practice
emains one of the best writing exercises, regardless of your genre or level of expertise.

Consider these ideas for your daily journal:

31. Track your mood and emotions throughout the day. Bonus: write those emotions in metaphor—and avoid commonplace adjectives and nouns.

32. Write about your day from the second- or third-person perspective.

33. Write about your day as though someone else was observing you. Create a voice and persona out of this “someone else,” or write in the voice of someone you know well and who might know about your day intimately.

34. Journal your day in verse. How can your day take the shape of a poem?

35. Write about your day backwards. Start at the end: your present moment, right now.

36. Write about your day using Freytag’s pyramid. Build up to a meaningful climax, even if nothing significant seemed to happen today.

Learn more about keeping a journal here:

https://writers.com/how-to-start-journaling-practical-advice-on-how-to-journal-daily

Writing Prompts for Further Inspiration

Not sure what to write about? Pair our writing exercises with the prompts at these websites and articles.

• 46 spiritual journal prompts
• NaPoWriMo Prompts for National Poetry Month
• 100 Poetry Prompts for New Poem Ideas
• Poemancer: A Card Game for Writing Poetry
• Writer’s Digest
• Poets & Writers
• Nosebleed Club’s monthly short prompts
• Poetry Foundation’s Learning Prompts
• Reedsy’s archive of writing prompts.

Find More Writing Exercises at Writers.com

Many of these writing exercises might feel difficult at first—and that’s a good thing! You will unlock new ideas and develop your writing strengths by struggling through these creative challenges. The main point is to have fun with them, expand your creativity, and ignore your inner critic.

For more writing exercises, prompts, and inspiration (as well as feedback!), check out our upcoming creative writing courses and put your new writing skills to practice.