writing assignment a day at the games

Pirates reinstate OF Andrew McCutchen from injured list. 5-time All-Star hurt knee running bases

Pittsburgh Pirates' Andrew McCutchen crosses the plate after hitting his second two-run home run of the game in the eighth inning during a baseball game against the Los Angeles Dodgers Sunday, Aug. 11, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jayne-Kamin-Oncea)[ASSOCIATED PRESS/Jayne Kamin-Oncea]

CLEVELAND (AP) — The Pittsburgh Pirates reinstated outfielder Andrew McCutchen from the 10-day injured list on Friday after he had been out with left knee inflammation. The club made several moves before opening a three-game series against AL Central-leading Cleveland. Pittsburgh also placed reliever Ben Heller on the 15-day injured list with right shoulder inflammation, and right-hander Daulton Jefferies, who is on the 60-day injured list, will begin a rehab assignment at Triple-A Indianapolis. The 37-year-old McCutchen got hurt while running the bases against Seattle on Aug. 16. The five-time All-Star is batting .235 with 16 homers and 40 RBIs in 101 games this season.

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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55 Creative Writing Activities and Exercises

Have you ever heard these questions or statements from your students?

• I don’t know where to begin.
• How can I make my story interesting?
• I’m just not creative.
• What should my story be about?

If so, you won’t want to miss these creative writing activities. 

What Are Creative Writing Activities?

Activities that teach creative writing serve as drills to exercise your student’s writing muscle. When used effectively, they help reluctant writers get past that intimidating blank paper and encourage the words to flow. 

When I think of creative writing exercises , writing prompts immediately come to mind. And, yes, writing from a prompt is certainly an example of a creative writing activity (a highly effective one). 

However, writing prompts are only one way to teach creative writing. Other types of activities include games, collaboration with others, sensory activities, and comic strip creation to name a few.

Unlike writing assignments, creative writing activities aren’t necessarily meant to create a perfectly polished finished project. 

Instead, they serve as more of a warmup and imagination boost.

Picture-based writing exercises are especially fun. You can download one for free below!

get this picture prompt printable for free!

How to use creative writing exercises effectively.

When teaching creative writing , the most effective exercises inspire and engage the student. 

Remember that worn-out prompt your teacher probably hauled out every year? 

“What I Did This Summer…” 

Cue the groaning. 

Instead of presenting your student with lackluster topics like that one, let’s talk about ways to engage and excite them. 

For Kids or Beginners

Early writers tend to possess misconceptions about writing. Many picture sitting down for hours straight, polishing a story from beginning to end. 

Even for experienced writers, this is next-to-impossible to do. It’s preconceived ideas like these that overwhelm and discourage students before they’ve even started. 

Instead of assigning an essay to complete, start with simple, short writing exercises for elementary students such as:

• Creating comic strips using a template
• Talking out loud about a recent dream
• Writing a poem using rhyming words you provide
• Creating an acrostic from a special word

Creative writing exercises don’t have to end in a finished piece of work. If the exercise encouraged creative thinking and helped the student put pen to paper, it’s done its job. 

For Middle School

Creative writing activities for middle school can be a little more inventive. They now have the fundamental reading and writing skills to wield their words properly. 

Here are some ideas for middle school writing exercises you can try at home:

• Creating Mad Lib-style stories by changing out nouns, verbs, and adjectives in their favorite tales
• Storyboarding a short film
• Writing a family newsletter
• Creating crossword puzzles

For High School 

Your high school student may be starting to prepare for college essays and other important creative writing assignments. 

It’s more critical than ever for her to exercise her writing skills on a regular basis. 

One great way to keep your high schooler’s mind thinking creatively is to have her make “listicles” of tips or facts about something she’s interested in already. 

Another fun and effective creative writing exercise for high school is to have your student retell classic stories with a twist. 

List of 55 Creative Writing Activities for Students of All Ages

No matter what age range your students may be, I think you’ll find something that suits their personality and interests in this list of creative writing ideas. Enjoy! 

• Using only the sense of hearing, describe your surroundings. 
• Write a paragraph from your shoes’ point of view. How do they view the world? What does a “day in the life of a shoe” look like?
• Imagine what the world will be like in 200 years. Describe it. 
• Write a letter to someone you know who moved away. What has he or she missed? Should he or she move back? Why? 
• Make up an imaginary friend. What does he or she look like? What does he or she like to do?
• Create a story about a person you know. Use as many details as possible.
• Write a poem that describes a place you have been.
• Soak up the season you’re in with seasonal creative writing prompts. Here are some ideas for fall and winter .
• Write a song where each line starts with the next letter in the alphabet. 
• Create a list of words related to something you love.
• Write a short story based on a true event in your life.
• Rewrite a chapter of your favorite book from the antagonist’s point of view. 
• Write a letter to your future self. What do you want to make sure you remember?
• Go on a five-senses scavenger hunt. Find three items for each sense. Create a story using the items you found. 
• Create a story around an interesting picture ( try these fun picture writing prompts! )
• Find an ad in a magazine or elsewhere and rewrite the description to convince people NOT to buy the advertised item.
• Write a story using the last word of each sentence as the first word of the next.
• Describe everything you’re sensing right now, using all five senses.
• Write a list of animals A to Z with a one-sentence description of each one. Feel free to include imaginary animals.
• Design your dream room in detail.
• Write a script of yourself interviewing a famous person. Include his or her answers.
• Describe what high school would be like if you lived on the moon. What would you be learning about? How would you be learning it?
• Describe a day in the life of a famous person in history. Include both mundane and exciting details of things they may have experienced on a normal day.
• Pick up something on a bookshelf or end table nearby. Now write a commercial script for it to convince your audience that they absolutely must own this thing.
• Plan a birthday party for your best friend. Describe the decorations, food, and everything else.
• Write a very short story about three siblings fighting over a toy. Now rewrite it twice, each time from a different character’s perspective.
• Tell a story from the point of view of a pigeon on a city street.
• Create a menu for a deli you’ll be opening soon. Name each sandwich after something or someone in real life and list the fillings and type of bread.
• Pretend you just became famous for something. Write 3 exciting newspaper headlines about the topic or reason behind your newfound fame.
• Keep a one-line-a-day journal. Every day, write down one thought or sentence about something that happened that day or how you felt about the day.
• Have you ever had a nightmare? Write what happened but with a new ending where everything turns out okay (perhaps the monster was your dad in a costume, preparing to surprise you at your birthday party).
• Write a “tweet” about something that happened to you recently, using only 140 characters. 
• Take an important event in your life or the life of someone in your family. Write one sentence answering each of the 6 journalistic questions: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How.
• Set a timer for 5 minutes and write nonstop, starting with the words “I remember.” If you get stuck, write “I remember” again until you get unstuck.
• Pick something you use often (a toothbrush, your desk, etc). Then tell the story of how it was invented. If you don’t know, make something up.
• Choose a princess or hero and write a one-paragraph story about him or her traveling to a distant land.
• Pretend you are a tour guide for a local attraction. It can be a library, a park, or a museum, but it could also be a place that wouldn’t normally hold tours (such as an arcade). Write a speech about what you tell your tour group as you walk around the attraction.
• Create a marketing brochure for your favorite activity or fun place to go.
• Make a list of 10 future story settings. Write one sentence describing each. For example, “ in the dark, musty cellar of my grandmother’s house, surrounded by dried-up jars of canned peaches… ”
• Make a list of foods included in a dinner party catered by the world’s worst cook, describing how each course looks, smells, and tastes. Include your reactions while eating it.
• Write out your own version of instructions for playing your favorite game.
• Pretend you’ve lost your sight for one night. Describe going out to eat at a restaurant, using smells, textures, and sounds to tell your story.
• Write a script for an interesting phone conversation in which the reader can only hear one side. 
• Tell the story of an object someone threw away from the perspective of the person who tossed it out. Then tell the story of that same object from the perspective of a person who finds it and deems it a treasure.
• List your 3 least favorite chores. Pick one and write a one paragraph detailing why you can’t possibly complete that chore ever again.
• Write an excerpt from your dog’s diary (pretend he keeps one).
• Write the script for a movie trailer—real or imagined.
• Create an acrostic for a holiday of your choice. 
• Pretend you’re the master of a role-playing game, describing a sticky situation in which the other players now find themselves. Describe the scenario in writing.
• Compose a funny or dramatic caption for a photo.
• Parents, place a textured object in a box without letting your student see it. Have him or her reach in, touch the object, and then describe how it feels.
• Write lyrics for a parody of a song.
• Make a list of 10-20 songs that would be played if a movie was made about your life.
• Describe the sounds, smells, sights, and textures you’d experience if you went to the beach for the day.
• Write an election speech with ludicrous and impossible campaign promises.

One of the best ways to encourage students to write regularly is by providing fun creative writing activities . 

They serve to encourage both the habit and mindset of writing with imagination. If you need extra help with that, check out Creative Freewriting Adventure :

bring excitement into your student’s writing – no prep required!

About the author.

Jordan Mitchell

• Writing Activities

105 Creative Writing Exercises To Get You Writing Again

You know that feeling when you just don’t feel like writing? Sometimes you can’t even get a word down on paper. It’s the most frustrating thing ever to a writer, especially when you’re working towards a deadline. The good news is that we have a list of 105 creative writing exercises to help you get motivated and start writing again!

What are creative writing exercises?

Creative writing exercises are short writing activities (normally around 10 minutes) designed to get you writing. The goal of these exercises is to give you the motivation to put words onto a blank paper. These words don’t need to be logical or meaningful, neither do they need to be grammatically correct or spelt correctly. The whole idea is to just get you writing something, anything. The end result of these quick creative writing exercises is normally a series of notes, bullet points or ramblings that you can, later on, use as inspiration for a bigger piece of writing such as a story or a poem. 

Good creative writing exercises are short, quick and easy to complete. You shouldn’t need to think too much about your style of writing or how imaginative your notes are. Just write anything that comes to mind, and you’ll be on the road to improving your creative writing skills and beating writer’s block . 

Use the generator below to get a random creative writing exercise idea:

List of 105+ Creative Writing Exercises

Here are over 105 creative writing exercises to give your brain a workout and help those creative juices flow again:

• Set a timer for 60 seconds. Now write down as many words or phrases that come to mind at that moment.
• Pick any colour you like. Now start your sentence with this colour. For example, Orange, the colour of my favourite top. 
• Open a book or dictionary on a random page. Pick a random word. You can close your eyes and slowly move your finger across the page. Now, write a paragraph with this random word in it. You can even use an online dictionary to get random words:

• Create your own alphabet picture book or list. It can be A to Z of animals, food, monsters or anything else you like!
• Using only the sense of smell, describe where you are right now.
• Take a snack break. While eating your snack write down the exact taste of that food. The goal of this creative writing exercise is to make your readers savour this food as well.
• Pick a random object in your room and write a short paragraph from its point of view. For example, how does your pencil feel? What if your lamp had feelings?
• Describe your dream house. Where would you live one day? Is it huge or tiny? 
• Pick two different TV shows, movies or books that you like. Now swap the main character. What if Supergirl was in Twilight? What if SpongeBob SquarePants was in The Flash? Write a short scene using this character swap as inspiration.
• What’s your favourite video game? Write at least 10 tips for playing this game.
• Pick your favourite hobby or sport. Now pretend an alien has just landed on Earth and you need to teach it this hobby or sport. Write at least ten tips on how you would teach this alien.
• Use a random image generator and write a paragraph about the first picture you see.

• Write a letter to your favourite celebrity or character. What inspires you most about them? Can you think of a memorable moment where this person’s life affected yours? We have this helpful guide on writing a letter to your best friend for extra inspiration.
• Write down at least 10 benefits of writing. This can help motivate you and beat writer’s block.
• Complete this sentence in 10 different ways: Patrick waited for the school bus and…
• Pick up a random book from your bookshelf and go to page 9. Find the ninth sentence on that page. Use this sentence as a story starter.
• Create a character profile based on all the traits that you hate. It might help to list down all the traits first and then work on describing the character.
• What is the scariest or most dangerous situation you have ever been in? Why was this situation scary? How did you cope at that moment?
• Pretend that you’re a chat show host and you’re interviewing your favourite celebrity. Write down the script for this conversation.
• Using extreme detail, write down what you have been doing for the past one hour today. Think about your thoughts, feelings and actions during this time.
• Make a list of potential character names for your next story. You can use a fantasy name generator to help you.
• Describe a futuristic setting. What do you think the world would look like in 100 years time?
• Think about a recent argument you had with someone. Would you change anything about it? How would you resolve an argument in the future?
• Describe a fantasy world. What kind of creatures live in this world? What is the climate like? What everyday challenges would a typical citizen of this world face? You can use this fantasy world name generator for inspiration.
• At the flip of a switch, you turn into a dragon. What kind of dragon would you be? Describe your appearance, special abilities, likes and dislikes. You can use a dragon name generator to give yourself a cool dragon name.
• Pick your favourite book or a famous story. Now change the point of view. For example, you could rewrite the fairytale , Cinderella. This time around, Prince Charming could be the main character. What do you think Prince Charming was doing, while Cinderella was cleaning the floors and getting ready for the ball?
• Pick a random writing prompt and use it to write a short story. Check out this collection of over 300 writing prompts for kids to inspire you. 
• Write a shopping list for a famous character in history. Imagine if you were Albert Einstein’s assistant, what kind of things would he shop for on a weekly basis?
• Create a fake advertisement poster for a random object that is near you right now. Your goal is to convince the reader to buy this object from you.
• What is the worst (or most annoying) sound that you can imagine? Describe this sound in great detail, so your reader can understand the pain you feel when hearing this sound.
• What is your favourite song at the moment? Pick one line from this song and describe a moment in your life that relates to this line.
•  You’re hosting an imaginary dinner party at your house. Create a list of people you would invite, and some party invites. Think about the theme of the dinner party, the food you will serve and entertainment for the evening. 
• You are waiting to see your dentist in the waiting room. Write down every thought you are having at this moment in time. 
• Make a list of your greatest fears. Try to think of at least three fears. Now write a short story about a character who is forced to confront one of these fears. 
• Create a ‘Wanted’ poster for a famous villain of your choice. Think about the crimes they have committed, and the reward you will give for having them caught. 
• Imagine you are a journalist for the ‘Imagine Forest Times’ newspaper. Your task is to get an exclusive interview with the most famous villain of all time. Pick a villain of your choice and interview them for your newspaper article. What questions would you ask them, and what would their responses be?
•  In a school playground, you see the school bully hurting a new kid. Write three short stories, one from each perspective in this scenario (The bully, the witness and the kid getting bullied).
• You just won $10 million dollars. What would you spend this money on?
• Pick a random animal, and research at least five interesting facts about this animal. Write a short story centred around one of these interesting facts. 
• Pick a global issue that you are passionate about. This could be climate change, black lives matters, women’s rights etc. Now create a campaign poster for this global issue. 
• Write an acrostic poem about an object near you right now (or even your own name). You could use a poetry idea generator to inspire you.
• Imagine you are the head chef of a 5-star restaurant. Recently the business has slowed down. Your task is to come up with a brand-new menu to excite customers. Watch this video prompt on YouTube to inspire you.
• What is your favourite food of all time? Imagine if this piece of food was alive, what would it say to you?
• If life was one big musical, what would you be singing about right now? Write the lyrics of your song. 
• Create and describe the most ultimate villain of all time. What would their traits be? What would their past look like? Will they have any positive traits?
• Complete this sentence in at least 10 different ways: Every time I look out of the window, I…
• You have just made it into the local newspaper, but what for? Write down at least five potential newspaper headlines . Here’s an example, Local Boy Survives a Deadly Illness.
• If you were a witch or a wizard, what would your specialist area be and why? You might want to use a Harry Potter name generator or a witch name generator for inspiration.
• What is your favourite thing to do on a Saturday night? Write a short story centred around this activity. 
• Your main character has just received the following items: A highlighter, a red cap, a teddy bear and a fork. What would your character do with these items? Can you write a story using these items? 
• Create a timeline of your own life, from birth to this current moment. Think about the key events in your life, such as birthdays, graduations, weddings and so on. After you have done this, you can pick one key event from your life to write a story about. 
• Think of a famous book or movie you like. Rewrite a scene from this book or movie, where the main character is an outsider. They watch the key events play out, but have no role in the story. What would their actions be? How would they react?
• Three very different characters have just won the lottery. Write a script for each character, as they reveal the big news to their best friend.  
• Write a day in the life story of three different characters. How does each character start their day? What do they do throughout the day? And how does their day end?
•  Write about the worst experience in your life so far. Think about a time when you were most upset or angry and describe it. 
• Imagine you’ve found a time machine in your house. What year would you travel to and why?
• Describe your own superhero. Think about their appearance, special abilities and their superhero name. Will they have a secret identity? Who is their number one enemy?
• What is your favourite country in the world? Research five fun facts about this country and use one to write a short story. 
• Set yourself at least three writing goals. This could be a good way to motivate yourself to write every day. For example, one goal might be to write at least 150 words a day. 
• Create a character description based on the one fact, three fiction rule. Think about one fact or truth about yourself. And then add in three fictional or fantasy elements. For example, your character could be the same age as you in real life, this is your one fact. And the three fictional elements could be they have the ability to fly, talk in over 100 different languages and have green skin. 
• Describe the perfect person. What traits would they have? Think about their appearance, their interests and their dislikes. 
• Keep a daily journal or diary. This is a great way to keep writing every day. There are lots of things you can write about in your journal, such as you can write about the ‘highs’ and ‘lows’ of your day. Think about anything that inspired you or anything that upset you, or just write anything that comes to mind at the moment. 
• Write a book review or a movie review. If you’re lost for inspiration, just watch a random movie or read any book that you can find. Then write a critical review on it. Think about the best parts of the book/movie and the worst parts. How would you improve the book or movie?
• Write down a conversation between yourself. You can imagine talking to your younger self or future self (i.e. in 10 years’ time). What would you tell them? Are there any lessons you learned or warnings you need to give? Maybe you could talk about what your life is like now and compare it to their life?
• Try writing some quick flash fiction stories . Flash fiction is normally around 500 words long, so try to stay within this limit.
• Write a six-word story about something that happened to you today or yesterday. A six-word story is basically an entire story told in just six words. Take for example: “Another football game ruined by me.” or “A dog’s painting sold for millions.” – Six-word stories are similar to writing newspaper headlines. The goal is to summarise your story in just six words. 
• The most common monsters or creatures used in stories include vampires, werewolves , dragons, the bigfoot, sirens and the loch-ness monster. In a battle of intelligence, who do you think will win and why?
• Think about an important event in your life that has happened so far, such as a birthday or the birth of a new sibling. Now using the 5 W’s and 1 H technique describe this event in great detail. The 5 W’s include: What, Who, Where, Why, When and the 1 H is: How. Ask yourself questions about the event, such as what exactly happened on that day? Who was there? Why was this event important? When and where did it happen? And finally, how did it make you feel?
• Pretend to be someone else. Think about someone important in your life. Now put yourself into their shoes, and write a day in the life story about being them. What do you think they do on a daily basis? What situations would they encounter? How would they feel?
• Complete this sentence in at least 10 different ways: I remember…
• Write about your dream holiday. Where would you go? Who would you go with? And what kind of activities would you do?
• Which one item in your house do you use the most? Is it the television, computer, mobile phone, the sofa or the microwave? Now write a story of how this item was invented. You might want to do some research online and use these ideas to build up your story. 
• In exactly 100 words, describe your bedroom. Try not to go over or under this word limit.
• Make a top ten list of your favourite animals. Based on this list create your own animal fact file, where you provide fun facts about each animal in your list.
• What is your favourite scene from a book or a movie? Write down this scene. Now rewrite the scene in a different genre, such as horror, comedy, drama etc.
•  Change the main character of a story you recently read into a villain. For example, you could take a popular fairytale such as Jack and the Beanstalk, but this time re-write the story to make Jack the villain of the tale.
• Complete the following sentence in at least 10 different ways: Do you ever wonder…
• What does your name mean? Research the meaning of your own name, or a name that interests you. Then use this as inspiration for your next story. For example, the name ‘Marty’ means “Servant Of Mars, God Of War”. This could make a good concept for a sci-fi story.
• Make a list of three different types of heroes (or main characters) for potential future stories.
• If someone gave you $10 dollars, what would you spend it on and why?
• Describe the world’s most boring character in at least 100 words. 
• What is the biggest problem in the world today, and how can you help fix this issue?
• Create your own travel brochure for your hometown. Think about why tourists might want to visit your hometown. What is your town’s history? What kind of activities can you do? You could even research some interesting facts. 
• Make a list of all your favourite moments or memories in your life. Now pick one to write a short story about.
• Describe the scariest and ugliest monster you can imagine. You could even draw a picture of this monster with your description.
• Write seven haikus, one for each colour of the rainbow. That’s red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. 
• Imagine you are at the supermarket. Write down at least three funny scenarios that could happen to you at the supermarket. Use one for your next short story. 
• Imagine your main character is at home staring at a photograph. Write the saddest scene possible. Your goal is to make your reader cry when reading this scene. 
• What is happiness? In at least 150 words describe the feeling of happiness. You could use examples from your own life of when you felt happy.
• Think of a recent nightmare you had and write down everything you can remember. Use this nightmare as inspiration for your next story.
• Keep a dream journal. Every time you wake up in the middle of the night or early in the morning you can quickly jot down things that you remember from your dreams. These notes can then be used as inspiration for a short story. 
• Your main character is having a really bad day. Describe this bad day and the series of events they experience. What’s the worst thing that could happen to your character?
• You find a box on your doorstep. You open this box and see the most amazing thing ever. Describe this amazing thing to your readers.
• Make a list of at least five possible settings or locations for future stories. Remember to describe each setting in detail.
• Think of something new you recently learned. Write this down. Now write a short story where your main character also learns the same thing.
• Describe the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen in your whole life. Your goal is to amaze your readers with its beauty. 
• Make a list of things that make you happy or cheer you up. Try to think of at least five ideas. Now imagine living in a world where all these things were banned or against the law. Use this as inspiration for your next story.
• Would you rather be rich and alone or poor and very popular? Write a story based on the lives of these two characters. 
• Imagine your main character is a Librarian. Write down at least three dark secrets they might have. Remember, the best secrets are always unexpected.
• There’s a history behind everything. Describe the history of your house. How and when was your house built? Think about the land it was built on and the people that may have lived here long before you.
• Imagine that you are the king or queen of a beautiful kingdom. Describe your kingdom in great detail. What kind of rules would you have? Would you be a kind ruler or an evil ruler of the kingdom?
• Make a wish list of at least three objects you wish you owned right now. Now use these three items in your next story. At least one of them must be the main prop in the story.
• Using nothing but the sense of taste, describe a nice Sunday afternoon at your house. Remember you can’t use your other senses (i.e see, hear, smell or touch) in this description. 
• What’s the worst pain you felt in your life? Describe this pain in great detail, so your readers can also feel it.
• If you were lost on a deserted island in the middle of nowhere, what three must-have things would you pack and why?
• Particpate in online writing challenges or contests. Here at Imagine Forest, we offer daily writing challenges with a new prompt added every day to inspire you. Check out our challenges section in the menu.

Do you have any more fun creative writing exercises to share? Let us know in the comments below!

Marty the wizard is the master of Imagine Forest. When he's not reading a ton of books or writing some of his own tales, he loves to be surrounded by the magical creatures that live in Imagine Forest. While living in his tree house he has devoted his time to helping children around the world with their writing skills and creativity.

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10-Minute Writing Games to Play with Your Students

Jen Schneider Blog , Writing writing 1

Want some quick games to share with your students during transitions or as attention-getters. Play these fun games independently or with groups! Here are a few of my favorites 10-minute writing games to play with your students. This post uses some affiliate links. Purchases from these links result in a small commission to help sustain this site.

Word Association Game

Word association games are perfect for 10-minute writing games! Start by giving students a random word and ask them to write down the first word that comes to their mind when they hear it. Then, have them pass their paper to the person next to them and repeat the process with the new word. Set a timer for 10 minutes and see how far around the circle they can go, building off of each other’s words. This game is a blast for generating vocabulary words or words to use in future writing prompts or stories.

Writing Roulette

My students beg to play writing roulette! I give each student five different colored sticky notes (or use this FREE Jamboard template ).

Each sticky note has a different topic. For example, here are the literary elements I use for my students. You can change these up depending on your grade level.

• Yellow: character
• Blue: quotation
• Pink: setting
• Green: conflict
• Orange: theme

Have your students each generate one of the literary elements on each colored sticky note. Make sure they write only one idea per note. Mix up the sticky notes, then give the students five sticky notes (one on each topic) to generate their own story. We LOVE sharing these with the class. As a bonus, expand on the quick stories and create a published, polished piece.

Literary Jenga

Literally playing a game when writing is so much fun! Write creative writing prompts on the sides of Jenga blocks (such as “Write a story in which the main character is an animal” or “Describe a place you’ve never been”) and stack them up. Students take turns pulling a block and then writing for 2-3 minutes based on the prompt they see. The game continues until the tower falls, and then students can read aloud what they’ve written.

Finish the Story Writing Game

This game is also called story or paper pass. I remember playing this writing game in school. I loved it then as much as I love it as a teacher! First, give students the first line of a story and have them write for 2-3 minutes. Then, have them pass their paper to the person next to them and that person continues the story for 2-3 minutes. Continue this process until everyone has contributed, and see how the story turned out in the end.

Random Word Stories

Use this random word generator to pick a fun, unique word. Have your students write a story using that word as a focus. You can have each student select their own word or use a class word.

Descriptive Writing Game

Many ELA curriculums have descriptive writing as an assessment. Why not teach descriptive writing skills with a 10-minute writing game! First, ask students to close their eyes and imagine a scene you describe to them, such as a beach or a forest. Give them 10 minutes to write a detailed description of what they see in their mind’s eye. Encourage them to use sensory language and descriptive adjectives to really paint a picture with their words. Share the stories, and as a bonus, have students illustrate their writing. You can also adapt this and share a picture as a writing prompt starter. Show students a picture or image and give them 10 minutes to write a story or poem based on what they see. Encourage them to be creative and use their imagination to build a story around the picture.

Character Creation Game

Students love creating their own characters! Have students brainstorm a character by answering questions about them, such as their name, age, occupation, likes and dislikes, fears, etc. Then, set a timer for 10 minutes and have them write a short story or scene featuring that character. You can add to the fun by having two characters team up together to create a new story or have a conversation with one another based on their characters’ backgrounds.

Six-Word Stories

Challenge students to write a complete story in just six words, such as “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Set a timer for 10 minutes and see how many six-word stories they can create.

Mad Libs Game

The old Mad Libs games are so much fun! I remember having paper Mad Libs books that my siblings and I giggled over with delight. Online Mad Libs games let students work independently to create funny stories. I love using Mad Libs online !

Fan Fiction

My students absolutely love writing fan fiction. This gives them a chance to explore stories on a deeper level, and change the outcomes to what they really wanted to happen in the book! Have students choose a favorite book or movie character and write a short story featuring that character in a new adventure or scenario. Set a timer for 10 minutes and see how well they can capture the voice and personality of the character in their writing.

Story Cubes

Use storytelling dice or story cubes with pictures on each side, and have students roll the dice to create a story. Set a timer for 10 minutes and challenge students to create a story that includes all of the pictures they rolled. Share the stories in small groups or with the full class.

Writing Prompts

Using writing prompts in the classroom is an effective way to encourage a love for writing in students. Here are five ways to inspire and engage middle school students:

Daily writing prompts

Start the day with a short 10-minute writing exercise that covers various genres and themes. Use this list of 25 daily prompts to get started.

Structured writing prompts

Use prompts as a starting point for more structured writing assignments such as essays or research papers. This encourages students to think critically and provides specific guidelines for the writing task. Use this list of 10 structured prompts to get started.

Group brainstorming

Encourage students to work together in small groups to generate their own writing prompts. This fosters collaboration and creativity.

Writing prompt dares

Students can create their own writing prompt dares or use these 15 writing prompt dare examples to get started. These are great for group brainstorming prompts.

Try out this 52 writing prompt workbook . You even get an editable Canva link to add your own unique prompts!

Get ready for 10-minute writing games to use in your classroom! These games can be scaffolded and differentiated for all grade levels. What writing games do you use in your classroom!

Creative writing games: A great way to unleash your creative side @

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100 Writing Practice Lessons & Exercises

by Joe Bunting | 50 comments

Start Your Story TODAY! We’re teaching a new LIVE workshop this week to help you start your next book. Learn more and sign up here.

Want to become a better writer? How much time do you spend on your writing practice? Perhaps you want to write novels, or maybe you just want to get better grades in your essay writing assignments , or maybe you'd like to start a popular blog .

If you want to write better, you need practice. But what does a writing practice actually look like? In this post, I'm going to give you everything you need to kick off your writing practice and become a better writer faster.

What Is Writing Practice?

Writing practice is a method of becoming a better writer that usually involves reading lessons about the writing process, using writing prompts, doing creative writing exercises , or finishing writing pieces, like essays, short stories , novels , or books . The best writing practice is deliberate, timed, and involves feedback.

How Do You Practice Writing?

This was the question I had when I first started The Write Practice in 2011. I knew how to practice a sport and how to practice playing an instrument. But for some reason, even after studying it in college, I wasn't sure how to practice writing.

I set out to create the best writing practice I could. The Write Practice is the result.

I found that the best writing practice has three aspects:

Deliberate . Writing whatever you feel like may be cathartic, but it's not an effective way to become a better writer or build your writing skills. You'll get better faster by practicing a specific technique or aspect of the writing process each time you sit down to write.

This is why we have a new lesson about the writing process each day on The Write Practice, followed by a practice prompt at the end so you can put what you learned to use immediately.

Timed . It's no secret writers struggle with focus. There are just too many interesting distractions—Facebook, email, Kim Kardashian's Instagram feed (just kidding about that last one, sort of)—and writing is just too hard sometimes.

Setting a timer, even for just fifteen minutes, is an easy and effective way to stay focused on what's important.

This is why in our writing practice prompt at the end of each post we have a time limit, usually with a link to an online tool egg timer , so you can focus on deliberate practice without getting distracted.

Feedback . Getting feedback is one of the requirements to deliberately practice writing or any other craft. Feedback can look like listening to the reactions of your readers or asking for constructive criticism from editors and other writers.

This is why we ask you to post your writing practice after each lesson, so that you can get feedback from other writers in The Write Practice community. It's also why we set up The Write Practice Pro community , to provide critique groups for writers to get feedback on each finished piece of writing.

Our 100+ Best Creative Writing Practice Exercises and Lessons

Now that you know how we practice writing at The Write Practice, here are our best writing practice lessons to jumpstart your writing skills with some daily writing exercises, for beginner writers to even the most expert writers:

All-Time, Top 10 Writing Lessons and Exercises

These ten posts are our most viewed articles to boost your writing practice:

1. What is Plot? The 6 Elements of Plot and How to Use Them . Great stories use similar elements in wildly different ways to build page-turning stories. Click here to read what they are and learn how to start using them !

2. Top 100 Short Story Ideas . Here are over a hundred writing prompts in a variety of genres. If you need ideas for your next story, check this out!

3. How To Use Neither, Nor, Or, and Nor Correctly . Even good writers struggle figuring out when to use neither/nor and either/or. In this post, our copy-queen Liz Bureman settles the confusion once and for all. Click to continue to the writing exercise

4. Ten Secrets To Write Better Stories . How does Pixar manage to create such great stories, year after year? And how do you write a good story? In this post, I distill everything I've learned about how to write a good story into ten tips. Click to continue to the writing exercise

5. 35 Questions To Ask Your Characters From Marcel Proust . To get to know my characters better, I use a list of questions known as the Proust Questionnaire, made famous by French author, Marcel Proust. Click to continue to the writing exercise

6. How a Scene List Can Change Your Novel-Writing Life . Creating a scene list changed my novel-writing life, and doing the same will change yours too. Includes examples of the scene lists from famous authors. Click to continue to the writing exercise

7. Why You Need to be Using the Oxford Comma . Most people I've met have no idea what the Oxford comma is, but it's probably something that you have used frequently in your writing. Click to continue to the writing exercise

8. Six Surprising Ways to Write Better Interview Questions.  The interview is the most-used tool in a journalist's bag. But that doesn't mean novelists, bloggers, and even students can't and don't interview people. Here's how to conduct a great interview. Click to continue to the writing exercise

9. Why You Should Try Writing in Second Person . You've probably used first person and third person point-of-view already. But what about second person? This post explains three reasons why you should try writing from this point-of-view. Click to continue to the writing exercise

10. The Secret to Show, Don't Tell . You've heard the classic writing rule, “Show. Don't Tell.” Every writing blog ever has talked about it, and for good reason. Showing, for some reason, is really difficult. Click to continue to the writing exercise.

12 Exercises and Lessons To Become a Better Writer

How do you become a better writer? These posts share our best advice:

• Want to Be a Better Writer? Cut These 7 Words
• What I Mean When I Say I Am A Writer
• How to Become a Writer: 3 Simple Steps
• 72% of Writers Struggle With THIS
• 7 Lies About Becoming a Writer That You Probably Believe
• 10 Questions to Find Your Unique Writing Voice
• The Best Writing Book I’ve Ever Read
• The Best Way to Become a Better Writer
• The Creative Writer’s Toolkit: 6 Tools You Can’t Write Without
• Should You Write More or Write Better: Quantity vs Quality
• How to Become a Better Writer in One, Simple Step
• 11 Writing Tips That Will Change Your Life

6 Lessons and Exercises from Great Writers

If you want to be a writer, learn from the great writers who have gone before you:

• 23 Essential Quotes from Ernest Hemingway About Writing
• 29 Quotes that Explain How to Become a Better Writer
• 10 Lessons Dr. Seuss Can Teach Writers
• 10 Writing Tips from Ursula Le Guin
• Once Upon a Time: Pixar Prompt
• All the Pretty Words: Writing In the Style of Cormac McCarthy

12 Genre and Format Specific Writing Lessons and Exercises

Here are our best writing lessons for specific types of writing, including essays, screenplays, memoir, short stories, children's books, and humor writing:

• Writing an Essay? Here Are 10 Effective Tips
• How To Write a Screenplay: The 5 Step Process
• How to Write a Great Memoir: a Complete Guide
• How to Write a Short Story from Start to Finish
• How to Write a Thriller Novel
• How to Write a Children's Book
• How to Write a Love Story
• How to Write a Coming of Age Story or Book
• How to Write an Adventure Book
• 5 Key Elements for Successful Short Stories
• 4 Tips to Write a Novel That Will Be Adapted Into a Movie
• Humor Writing for People Who Aren’t Funny

14 Characterization Lessons and Exercises

Good characters are the foundation of good fiction. Here are our best lessons to create better characters:

• Character Development: How to Create Characters Audiences Will Love
• Writing Villains: 9 Evil Examples of the Villain Archetype
• How NOT to Introduce a New Character
• The Strongest Form of Characterization
• The Most Important Character Archetype
• How Do You Build A Strong Character In Your Writing?
• 75+ Antihero Examples and How to Use Them
• How to Explore Your Characters’ Motivations
• 8 Tips for Naming Characters
• The Protagonist: How to Center Your Story
• Heroes vs. Anti-Heroes: Which Is Right For Your Story?
• The Weakest Form of Characterization
• How to Write With an Accent
• How To Create a Character Sketch Using Scrivener

15 Grammar Lessons and Exercises

I talk to so many writers, some of whom are published authors, who struggle with grammar. Here are our best writing lessons on grammar:

• Is It Okay To End A Sentence With A Preposition?
• Contractions List: When To Use and When To Avoid
• Good vs. Well
• Connotation vs. Denotation
• Per Se vs. Per Say
• When You SHOULD Use Passive Voice
• When Do You Use “Quotation Marks”
• Polysyndeton and Asyndeton: Definition and Examples
• The Case Against Twilight
• Affect Versus Effect
• Stop Saying “Literally”
• What Is a Comma Splice? And Why Do Editors Hate Them?
• Intra vs. Inter: Why No One Plays Intermural Sports
• Alright and Alot: Words That Are Not Words
• The Poor, Misunderstood Semicolon

5 Journalism Lessons and Exercises

Want to be a journalist? Or even use techniques from journalism to improve your novel, essay, or screenplay? Here are our best writing lessons on journalism:

• Six Ways to Ask Better Questions In Interviews
• How to Conduct an Author Interview
• Interview In Person or Via Email?  
• What If They Don’t Want to Talk to You?
• Eleven Habits of a Highly Effective Interviewers

16 Plot and Structure Lessons and Exercises

Want to write a good story? Our top plot and structure lessons will help:

• The Nine Types of Story and How to Master Them
• Points of a Story: 6 Plot Points Every Story Needs
• How to Shape a Story: The 6 Arcs
• 7 Keys To Write the Perfect First Line of a Novel
• The Secret to Creating Conflict
• 4 Tips to Avoid Having Your Short Story Rejected by a Literary Magazine
• 7 Steps to Creating Suspense
• 5 Elements of Storytelling
• 3 Important Rules for Writing Endings
• A Writer’s Cheatsheet to Plot and Structure
• Overcoming the Monster
• How to Satisfy Your Reader With a Great Ending
• Pow! Boom! Ka-Pow! 5 Tips to Write Fight Scenes
• The Dramatic Question and Suspense in Fiction
• How to Write a Memorable Beginning and Ending
• How to Write the Perfect First Page

6 Lessons and Exercises to Beat Writer's Block

Writer's block is real, and it can completely derail your writing. Here are six lessons to get writing again:

• How To Write Whether You Feel Like it Or Not
• This Fun Creative Writing Exercise Will Change Your Life
• When You Should Be Writing But Can't…
• What to do When Your Word Count is Too Low
• 7 Tricks to Write More with Less Willpower
• When You Don’t Know What to Write, Write About Your Insecurities

7 Literary Technique Lessons and Exercises

These writing and storytelling techniques will teach you a few tricks of the trade you may not have discovered before:

• 3 Tips to “Show, Don’t Tell” Emotions and Moods
• 3 Reasons to Write Stream of Consciousness Narrative
• 16 Observations About Real Dialogue
• Intertextuality As A Literary Device
• Why You Should Use Symbolism In Your Writing
• 6 Ways to Evoke Emotion in Poetry and Prose
• 3 Tips To Write Modern Allegorical Novels
• Symbol vs. Motif: What’s the Difference

3 Inspirational Writing Lessons and Exercises

Need some inspiration? Here are three of our most inspiring posts:

• Why We Write: Four Reasons
• You Must Remember Every Scar
• 17 Reasons to Write Something NOW

3 Publishing Blogging Lessons and Exercises

If you want to get published, these three lessons will help:

• The Secret to Writing On Your Blog Every Day
• How to Publish Your Book and Sell Your First 1,000 Copies
• How to Submit a Short Story for Publication

11 Writing Prompts

Need inspiration or just a kick in the pants to write. Try one of our top writing prompts :

• Grandfathers [writing prompt]
• Out of Place [writing prompt]
• Sleepless [writing prompt]
• Longing [writing prompt]
• Write About Yourself [writing prompt]
• 3 Reasons You Should Write Ghost Stories
• Road Trip [writing prompt]
• Morning [writing prompt]
• The Beach [writing prompt]
• Fall Writing Prompts
• How to Use Six-Word Stories As Writing Prompts

Is It Time To Begin Your Writing Practice?

It's clear that if you want to become a writer, you need to practice writing. We've created a proven process to practice your writing at The Write Practice, but even if you don't join our community, I hope you'll start practicing in some way today.

Personally, I waited  far  too long to start practicing and it set my writing back years.

How about you? Do you think practicing writing is important?  Let me know in the comments section .

Choose one of the writing practice posts above. Then, read the lesson and participate in the writing exercise, posting your work in the Pro Practice Workshop . And if you post, please give feedback to your fellow writers who also posted their practices.

Have fun and happy practicing!

Joe Bunting

Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris , a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).

Want best-seller coaching? Book Joe here.

Work with Joe Bunting?

WSJ Bestselling author, founder of The Write Practice, and book coach with 14+ years experience. Joe Bunting specializes in working with Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, How To, Literary Fiction, Memoir, Mystery, Nonfiction, Science Fiction, and Self Help books. Sound like a good fit for you?

50 Comments

You have THE BEST content for writing on this blog!!

Thank you, Kristen. This made my morning. 🙂

Thanks Mitch. 🙂

I can’t remember when I started following this website. I have to look in my notebooks because that’s where I did these practices. I didn’t have access to a computer when I did them, so I wrote them out, setting the time limit. But even when I do get to a computer, I have my reservations about putting my practices on the page. even though it’s practice, I want them to be the best, almost perfect. But I know it won’t be. I’ve gotten feedback before that says so. It still gets to me that I didn’t put something together that not everyone liked. I need to get over it. After all, that is what these practices are about: to learn and improve on our craft.

I don’t know either, George, but it’s been several years. Perfectionism is something so many of us face, and it’s made worse when you don’t have a critique community as warm and encouraging as ours is. I hope you and everyone here are always willing to try something new, even if it comes out a little messed up, because you know we’ll support you and try to make you better.

What a great share! Thanks so much!

You’re so welcome, Elizabeth. Thank you for commenting.

when I ran writing classes I wrote. when I am “a member of writing classes” the teacher/leader/facilitator is NOT MY AUDIENCE and so I don’t write as well/as much. I don’t get the feedback I need from fellow students because most of them have never run their own writing projects/workshops. So many people expect you to write their story for them. I’ve actually got quite a few stories of me own. I have finally decided I like owning them. 😉

It sounds like you need a new critique group, Patience! Hope you can find a place where you get the feedback you need.

Wow! Terrific round-up of resources. 🙂

Thanks Stephanie. 🙂

Practice is necessary, period. It doesn’t matter what you want to learn. If you want to improve, practice is vital.

It’s odd. I’ve known and applied that principle for years on a variety of things. Painting. Drawing. Blogging. Gardening. Laundry.

But never writing.

Like you, I had the notion that just writing every day was all it took to improve. Why not the same level of dedication to writing?

Perhaps it’s time to change that!

I can relate, Carrie. It’s easy to confuse the craft of writing with journaling, thinking that you can just write whatever you feel like and you’ll get better, write something worth reading. The truth is that writing interesting things to read is a skill, but the good news is that you can get better at it with practice. Thanks for practicing with us! 🙂

I love these suggestions , and have set Writing Practice as my homepage so the first 15 minutes of my day is spent writing, whether its a practice or exercise here or another that is sprinkled through out this site, Thank you for all you do everyone here at The Write Practice

This is great Debra. I want to write the first 15 minutes of my day too!

I agree with Joe, Do it. Could be your to do list… ( that could lead to something else story wse later)

I love that, Debra. Such a good way to start your day.

Thanks Joe!

The best! Thank you so much for this.

You’re very welcome!

I simply LOVE all the tips and suggestions given on this blog. They are super helpful!

THANK you. We love sharing them with you. 🙂

Hi! You forgot the link to How to Write a Story a Week: A Day-by-Day Guide.

Thanks a lot for your work! This post is amazing.

It’s a great post Thiago. Definitely one of our most shared. Thanks for mentioning it! BTW here’s the link:

https://thewritepractice.com/a-story-a-week/

Wow!! There are so many exercises…. I just love it..! I am gonna really enjoy it..!

Awesome! Thank you for reading and practicing with us. 🙂

I only read halfway , My tootie is jumping all over me, and typing this is a struggle when a 3yr old wants his Toy Story movie on Youtube in this computer. Thank you for this article, will come back later to finish reading.

I know the feeling! Good luck!

Can’t wait to get stuck in with this! 🙂

Very helpful! Thank you!

I’ve just bookmarked this page. Thanks for this wonderful list.

This is awesome! So many helpful tips. I will be coming back to this often. Thanks for posting this!

Wow, so many goodies! Thank you for always providing such amazing content!!

I have enjoyed all these articles. Thank you for the help an inspiration to get my writing on its way. My creativity is boosting with confidence. Tootle loo.

Amazing contents for beginners like me Joe. I am highly inspired by your commitment. Thank you.

Hey, thanks!

Although I have only read half of thisc article, the practice exercises are excellent. Some of them are exactly what a beginning writer like myself needs. I am committing to at least try ALL of them. Thanks Joe!!

very helpful! thank you..

Amazing articles! Thanks so much for sharing!

My god this article made me love this site . You know it’s kinda hard for a beginner writer, who don’t know where to start and fixing goals, even samll ones give us a direction . A place to go , an aim for our creativity so thanks you , this community and this site. Love you all . At your pens ! 😉

Wow. This is great. I find all your posts informative, but this one is the best for me to use as a guide to get my self starting to write….Thank you.

I’m an old lady who wants to publish one more book before I die — have published several, all non-fiction, and done two under contract to a major publisher (reference books). So help me, the BIGGEST problem I have all along, is keeping track of the damned paper work and research that goes into a book!!! Yet I never ever see articles on something as simple as “How to file” — Oh I know, there’s wonderful software these days so probably I will never find a way to get paper organized — everybody will use software and do it on the computer. I’m too old for that — just one look at the learning curve for software, even putting the damned stuff into computer files is even MORE frustrating than paper!! Oh well, somehow I managed in the past to get books published, I may be able to do it one more time.

you enjoy writing more than anything else and you do indeed care to help others write. I love writing but translation from Arabic into English and English into Arabic is taking all of my time from the early hours of the morning till the evening. I will soon get all of your books in order to read them as soon as possible. One thing I am sure of. You know what you are doing very well. Hamzah

Excellent! Many useful tips. Many thanks!

Liz and Joe, I have only looked at a few exercises. Already, I am convinced that your site is one of the best sites out there. Thank your for sharing your wisdom.

Wow, these are the best lessons and exercises for writing. Actually i’m participating in a compitition this wendsday. so, i’m quite nervous and exited. this helped me a lot

Magnificent post ever I have read. This article will help me a lot to write a right way. Thank you.

i need your help to improve to become a better writer please. i think i usually commit moist of these errors and i don;t pay attention to many advices too.

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20 Creative Writing Activities for Elementary Students

By andy minshew.

• November 23, 2021

Did you know that November is National Novel Writing Month? While your young learners are probably not ready to write an entire book, this month is a great time to practice creative writing skills with your students. Not only can creative writing be helpful for teaching vocabulary and sentence structure, but it can also encourage students to use imaginative thinkin g —and even find a genuine love of writing!

All of these 20 creative writing activities can be used with elementary school students to practice reading and writing skills. We’ve included options for both early elementary students, who may still be learning to write, and elementary students in upper grades who are ready to work on projects of their choosing.

1. Join the NaNoWriMo organization’s Young Writers Program (YWP) ! Together, your students can work on all sorts of age-appropriate writing challenges and activities throughout the year—including a project of their choice in November!

2. To practice pre-writing skills and collaborating on a project, try these shared writing project activities .

3. If you have any budding cartoonists in your class, this Finish the Comic activity from author Jarrett Lerner can be a great way for younger students to practice writing dialogue.

4. Teach your students about adjectives and writing descriptions with this Popcorn Adjectives activity .

5. Students can learn about creative writing by studying imagery and poetry by established authors. Using this writing worksheet , kids can write out their thoughts about a poem and draw images that stand out to them.

6. To teach creative thinking skills with kindergarteners and early elementary students, try this Mystery Seed writing activity .

7. Get families involved, too! Share these fun home writing activities with your student’s families to help them practice at home.

8. Print out and put together a Writing Jar with tons of creative writing prompts to inspire your students.

9. Check out this resource for even more writing prompts focused on imaginative thinking.

10. Try blackout poetry , an activity that encourages students to make their own beautiful art from a work that already exists.

11. Creative writing isn’t limited to fiction. This narrative writing activity can teach students to write events clearly and in sequence from their real life.

12. For a creative writing project that’s just plain fun, try this Roll a Story activity.

13. This nonfiction project helps children learn to write a letter as they write to a loved one of their choice.

14. If you want to give your students some freedom in choosing a writing assignment, hang up this Writing Prompt Choice Board in your classroom and let them answer whichever prompt they’d like!

15. Encourage students to keep their own journal throughout the year. You could even give them time each morning to respond to a journal prompt .

16. Use this journal page template to help students structure and compile journal entries.

17. These printable Mad Libs can teach children different parts of a sentence while they use their imaginations to create a story.

18. Use this What? So What? Now What? exercise (#6 at the link) to help students structure their creative writing projects.

19. To teach children how to create descriptive sentences, play this Show, Don’t Tell writing activity .

20. If you’d like to hold a month-long creative writing activity, try this 30-Day Writing Challenge for kids .

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Grade 5 Writing Activities

8 fun grade 5 writing activities.

By Grade 5, children are expected to be able to write creatively and independently. Help them to achieve this with these fun writing activities!

1. The Story Relay

A wonderful place to start writing with your fifth-grade child is within the story genre. They are sure to have the most reference in this area as they will have read lots of narratives and seen a great many movies. A fun way to begin with stories is by telling them verbally before then moving into the physical act of writing. A story relay is a great activity that works both verbally and in writing. Here’s how to play:

• Step 1: Generate a selection of story starters. Single sentences work well.
• Step 2: Gather a group of children to play the game and give each child a position in the story (first, second, third etc…). This will give them an idea of when it will be their turn to contribute.
• Step 3: Select one child to pick out the opening sentence from your selection of story starters. Read aloud the opening and then it is time for the children to contribute.
• Step 4: Move around the group in the assigned order, asking each child to continue the story on from what they have just heard.

*You can record the audio of your story so that you can listen back to it later.

This format works exactly the same in written format as the children pass around the story until it is complete, when it is then read aloud for the whole group to enjoy at the end.

2. A Day in the Future

This is a great activity to do with your child as it can kick start their thought process about what career they might like to pursue in the future. Explain that they have been transported 20 years into the future and they need to write a diary entry about what happened to them that day. You can allow children the freedom to write in their own format, or you could provide them with these key questions:

• What did you do in the morning, afternoon and evening?
• Where did you spend your time and why?
• Who did you spend your day with?
• How did you feel throughout the day?

3. Collaborative Playwriting

Arranging your children into teams and challenging them to write together can be a wonderful way to freshen up the writing process. This idea can be very fun for children as they get to write their own parts for a play they then go onto perform.

Begin the activity by arranging children into groups of no more than 4 (more than this and they can find the activity difficult to manage). Then provide each team with a real-world scenario that they can write about. It is best to start with something familiar to the children, such as something that may happen at school or at home. It is important to assign a narrator role so that one child has the job of setting the scene and writing stage directions, whilst the other three children write the lines that they will deliver.

4. The Ultimate Robot

By asking your child to produce their own artwork or design drawings can lead to a wonderful written piece as a follow-up activity. One such example of this format is to challenge children to design their own ultimate robot. You can supply children with the written brief below and then ask them to begin their own design process.

Design a robot to help you complete your daily tasks. This new robot should help you optimize your daily routine and save you time in the process. Think carefully about the features it will need to help achieve this brief.

Once the design is complete, your children can write the instruction manual for the robot, explaining all of their most interesting and useful features.

5. ‘What If’ Writing

What if… humans had wings and could fly? What if… penguins could talk? What if…an alien landed in your back garden? What if… babies could program computers?

Writing prompts beginning with ‘what if’ can spark the wonderful imaginations that children have. These prompts can inspire excellent creative writing and you might be surprised by what they come up with and how good their writing is whilst they are drafting their ideas. Give it a try and see for yourself!

6. Speed Writing

This is a very simple idea and one that encourages your child to get creative, and not worry too much about grammar and spelling accuracy. It is all about having fun with writing and getting some of their most interesting ideas down on paper or screen.

Simply set up an alarm or timer to go off in 15 minutes. Then display a writing prompt for the whole group to see (here are some text prompts and some picture prompts ). Now challenge your child to write as much as possible on the topic before the time runs out. Remind your child that for this activity, it is about them displaying their creativity rather than their accuracy!

7. A Day In the Life

Writing from the point of view of someone else can prove a challenging exercise for children. However, it is one that is useful to practice and it can often prove one of the most enjoyable writing experiences for young authors.

To begin with, you’ll need to compile a list of popular job titles (e.g. President, Doctor, Teacher, Police Officer, Fire Fighter etc.). Then challenge your child to select one of the professions and put themselves in the shoes of someone employed in that area. They must then try to write a short diary about a day in the life of that person. They should try to imagine the main tasks that they complete during the day.

8. Night Zookeeper

Night Zookeeper makes writing fantastically fun for children aged six to twelve.

Our writing program for kids turns learning into a game , to keep your child engaged and entertained while they develop skills such as spelling , grammar , and punctuation .

Sign up today to get a 7-day FREE trial!

More writing activities & prompts

• Grade 5 Picture Writing Prompts
• Grade 5 Writing Prompts
• Elementary Writing Prompts
• Elementary Writing Activities

Related content

• Elementary Writing Curriculum
• Elementary Language Arts
• Language Arts Resources

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• Over 1,000 different learning games and activities

A Big, Bold List of Creative Writing Activities

by Melissa Donovan | Jan 4, 2024 | Creative Writing | 24 comments

Try some of these creative writing activities.

Are you looking for writing motivation, inspiration, or ideas that will give your latest project an extra boost?

Below you’ll find a massive list of creative writing activities. Some of these activities will keep you writing when you’re in need of ideas and inspiration. Others will improve your writing skills and techniques through practice. Some will give you experience with forms and genres you haven’t tried. And others will help you promote your writing once it’s published.

Pick any activity and use it as a creative outlet. Bring a few activities to your writing group or do one with your kids. Use these creative writing activities in any way you want.

Start a Journal

Journaling is an excellent way to maintain a steady writing practice, and there are lots of different journals you can write: gratitude journals, dream journals, media journals, poetry journals, and idea journals, to name a few.

Image Prompts

Flip through some images on Instagram or Pinterest and see what sparks an idea. Don’t place limitations on your writing—just let the words flow.

Character Letters

Writing letters in your characters’ voices can help you get inside their heads and understand them better so you can write them with more depth and realism. Create an ongoing correspondence to explore character relationships and group dynamics within your cast.

Write Your Bio

Write a series of short bios for your social media accounts and a longer one for your author website. Don’t forget to make a bio for your press kit and another to include in your books.

Rhyme and Meter Exercises

Set your inner musician free by composing lines and couplets in metrical patterns with rhymes. Establish the parameters before you start writing, or just let the words flow and note the meter and rhyme afterward.

Memory Prompts

Grab an old photo album or flip through the photos on your phone—or use recall to bring forth memories that you can write about. Use this as an exercise in writing description or crafting a narrative about something you experienced or witnessed—ideal if you’re interested in writing a memoir.

Writing Exercises

Writing exercises keep your skills sharp and your creativity flowing even when inspiration is fleeting. They are excellent for keeping up your writing practice between projects. Pick up a book of creative writing exercises so you’ll have plenty to choose from.

What-if List

Create a repository of ideas by writing a list of what-if questions that could spark characters, plots, and settings for your future works of fiction or provide ideas you can explore in poetry and nonfiction writing projects.

Newsletters

A mailing list is one of the best ways for an author to connect with a readership. Start planning yours now. You can fill your newsletter with behind-the-scenes material from your books or excerpts from your work in progress. Or write a poem or piece of flash fiction for your newsletter.

Character Diary

The best characters feel like real people, which means the writer has fully gotten into their heads and hearts. One way to do that is to keep a diary in your character’s voice, which will help you establish their innermost thoughts and feelings. And who knows? Maybe a character diary will turn into a novel written in first person!

Your Future Self

Jump at least ten years into the future and write a letter from your current self to your future self, write a letter from your future self to your current self, or write a diary entry as your future self.

Try Writing for Comics

Comics are often partnerships between artists and writers. Give the writing side of comics a try. If you don’t want to draw, just make notes about what the illustrations will depict. Focus on character, plot, and dialogue. Flip through a few comics if you need examples to guide you.

Dream Vacation

Write a few pages describing your dream vacation. Where will you go? How long will you stay? What will you do there? If you’ve already experienced a dream vacation, write about that instead.

Blurb Your Favorite Books

A book blurb is a short statement endorsing a book, often written by another author. Choose a few of your favorite titles and write blurbs for them.

Focus on dialogue by writing a script. It could be a script for a play, a TV series, or a movie, or it can simply be an exercise in practicing or exploring dialogue.

Imagined World History

Create a fictional history for a fantastical or sci-fi story world. What were the origins of the civilization? What are their customs and traditions? Their laws and beliefs?

Write a Recipe

Start with an introduction that makes the reader’s mouth water, and then deliver the recipe, complete with an ingredient list and cooking instructions.

Propose an Adaptation of Your Favorite Book

Do you have a favorite book that’s never been made into a film or television series? Put together a two-page pitch convincing studio executives that this story needs to be seen on a screen.

Write a Letter You’ll Never Send

Write a letter to someone who’s gone, someone who’s upset you, or someone you admire from afar.

Find Poetry

Found poetry is when we use words and phrases from source material to create a poem. This is most often seen as a page of printed text with various words and phrases circled, or all text blacked out except the portions that make up the found poem.

Write a Speech

Write an award acceptance speech; a campaign speech, or a graduation or wedding speech.

Make an Outline

Create an outline for a large-scope project, such as a book or series of books.

This is Like That

Practice writing similes and metaphors. Similes are when one thing is like another (your smile is like sunshine) and metaphors are when one thing is another (your smile is sunshine).

Make a Chapbook

If you’ve written a lot of short pieces, like essays, poems, and short stories, collect them into a chapbook. Bring it to an open mic and take along copies you can sell or give away, or offer it on your blog, website, or social media as a free or premium download.

Create a Motivation Journal

Fill it with things that make you want to write — positive affirmations, favorite lines from poems, quotes of wisdom, and useful reminders. Crack it open whenever you catch yourself procrastinating when you should be writing.

Give Fan Fiction a Whirl

Write a few scenes in your favorite story world. Create new characters or use existing characters. Just remember — you don’t own the intellectual property, so you can’t commercially publish it.

Write a Critique

A critique should start by highlighting the strengths in a piece of writing, and then it should gently but constructively offer feedback that is meant to show the author how to make improvements. You can critique any work, but it would be ideal if you can find a writer friend to swap critiques with.

Write Log Lines for Your Favorite Stories

A log line is a sentence or two that summarizes a story and entices readers. If you’re working on a project, write a log line about it. Log lines are excellent for crystallizing your vision, and they’re also useful for pitching and selling written works.

Start a Legacy Book

A legacy book is a collection of writings and other materials (letters, photos, ephemera, etc.) that can be passed down as a family heirloom. Write about your family history and document significant or memorable family events.

Speculate the Future

What do you think the world will look like in twenty-five years? Fifty? A hundred? A thousand? Write an essay or short story, or create a world-building document for a futuristic civilization.

Write a Film Treatment

Written like a short story in present tense, a film treatment is an overview of an entire film; it’s usually written before the first draft and used for pitching film ideas throughout the industry.

Write a Blog Post

If you write nonfiction, this should be easy; just write a post about one of your usual topics. If you’re a poet or a fiction writer, write about the craft, the industry, or use subject matter from your written works.

Practice Description

Writing description is an important skill. Create a one-page description for a story setting, or describe a location you’ve visited, or write a description of a real person or a fictional character.

Turn Memories Into Magic

Memories can provide a wealth of ideas for any type of writing, from poetry to fiction and a variety of essays. Choose an early memory and write it as a story, essay, or poem.

Social media is ideal for people who can write snappy, witty, and entertaining or engaging vignettes. Social media is an excellent tool for writers to find readers and connect with one another, so mastering a couple of these social platforms is a good idea if you hope to build a career as a writer.

Rewrite What You Don’t Like

Dig through your old, discarded writings and find a piece that had some potential. Then rewrite it.

Analyze a Written Work

Choose a piece of writing (it can be a book, an article, an essay — anything) and then write an analysis of at least 2,000 words (or about four pages).

Read and Resemble

Read a handful of poems by a single poet and then attempt writing a poem in that poet’s voice. This is not an exercise in copying; it’s an exercising in studying the voice of a writer. If you’re feeling ambitious, try it with works of fiction and write a scene in an author’s voice.

Write a Review

Choose a book that you’ve read recently and write a detailed review of it. What worked? What didn’t work? What did you like? What didn’t you like? Remember, a review should help a book find its readers. Who is this book for, if not for you?

Get Busy with These Creative Writing Activities!

What are some of your favorite creative writing activities? Have you done any of the activities on this list? Which ones would you want to try? Can you think of any writing activities to add to this list? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment, and keep writing!

24 Comments

Thank you for all these wonderful ideas. After a very long hiatus from the writing world (mostly because of health) I am feeling a bit rusty. Using some of these ideas will certainly prime the pump! I really enjoy your blog and appreciate the basics of grammar, etc. I find that I have slipped into some old habits just in my everyday writing and your tips help me get back on track.

Thanks, Ann. I’m always touched by comments like yours. It keeps me going when people let me know this blog is helpful or inspiring. So thank you for taking the time. Best of luck and keep writing!

The character journal is a great idea!!!

The problem with the character journal is that it could be time consuming, but I love it as a way to get to know a character, and more specifically, to get inside a character’s head.

All of these ideas are wonderful. I’m especially attracted to the last two suggestions. Both of those activities are fun for me and certainly bound to be helpful concerning my writing skills.

When I must wait in the car (with a sleeping grandchild, for instance) I’m only happy if I can see folks as they come and go.

We play word games on a regular basis and have found it strengthens the writing skills of even those of us who do not call ourselves wordsmiths.

Keep up the excellent work.

Thanks so much for your kind words, Yvonnne. I’m looking forward to the day when the little ones in my family (niece and nephew) are old enough to play word and letter games.

Hi Melissa, Thanks for these wonderful ideas. I ‘m taking a couple of days off from writing my memoir, and will try them out.’Writing as one of my characters’ and ‘sitting in some heavily populated place for observations’ are intriguing.

Those are my two favorites as well. Good luck, Margaret, and enjoy your hiatus. I hope it refreshes you so you can return to your memoir.

Love the character journal idea! To keep my vocab going I choose pages out of the dictionary/thesaurus to keep my brain working. It also does wonders for my muse. 🙂 Thanks for sharing this list.

I write a lot of scenes and backstory for my characters, which are never included in the book. Exploring the characters outside of the narrative has proven to be very helpful in better understanding them.

Hi, Melissa!

Well, I’ve been absent for quite a long while. But I have been busy. A spec piece submitted to my local daily newspaper landed me a column. (Who couldda guessed?) I also write theater reviews for them; write what you know has never been more true.

Consequently, I find that my creative writing has slowed quite a bit. The sequel to my debut needs, maybe, two more chapters yet there it sits, though a production company asked for it. Even reading the preceding few chapters doesn’t help me get into the character’s heads in order to finish the thing.

Got any ideas?

Congrats on landing a column, Paul. That’s awesome. I’m not sure why you’ve been unable to finish your sequel, so I can’t offer any specific suggestions, but you can start by fguring out why you’re not finishing it (no time, lost interest, etc.), and then you can probably rectify the problem.

Wonderful! Thanks for sharing these great ideas.

You’re welcome. Thanks for commenting!

It’s so easy to get stuck in a rut. Every writer needs to step away.

I live near the University of Oregon. Every now and than I take a walk through campus. I try to time it during a busy school day. I wish I could bottle the youthful energy that is floating in the wind.

If any of you live near a school try it.

Thank you for the list. It helps a lot.

Yes, breaks are great refreshers for a creative mind. You’re lucky to live near a beautiful place for walks.

I don’t speek english so, sorry if i write wrong, but i need to tell you that your blog is amazing. Your write it’s soo good and make me wanna write. I have 15 years old and i love write, maybe I become a writter when I grew up, and I don’t know how to make my ideias go for the paper but your blog has helped me. Thank you!!

Hi Isabella. Thanks for sharing your passion for writing. I’m glad you’re enjoying this blog. Keep writing!

Thank you for your useful ideas! You have inspired me to try out new formats. I’m not a professional writer, it’s more my hobby. But still, I want to improve myself by writing texts and short stories.

You’re welcome. I’m glad this inspired you, and I’m thrilled that you’re working toward improvement. That’s wonderful!

Hi Melissa! I just wanted you to know that I recently bought some of your books and I absolutely love them and carry them around with me everywhere. Keep up the amazing work! Best wishes, Sandra Harris.

Wow, you just made my day, Sandra. That’s one of the nicest things anyone has said about my books. I’m so glad you like them. Keep writing!

Thank you for those amaing ideas. I’m not exactly stuck, as I know where my latest book is going, but I’m a bit lacking in motivation right now. Some of your suggestions might just get my juices flowing again.

Hi Vivienne. You’re welcome. I’m glad you found some motivation here. Keep writing!

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22 Writing Activities To Help Kids Hone Their Writing Skills

Written by Maria Kampen

• Prodigy English

• Fun writing activities
• Creative writing activities
• Academic writing activities
• At-home writing activities
• Daily writing activities
• Simple writing prompts for kids
• How writing activities can bring reluctant writers out of their shells
• Try some other educational activities

When kids start writing, they’re unlocking a whole new world of imagination to explore. It’s a great way for them to be creative, express themselves and practice key reading and writing skills. 

But as most kids — and adults — will tell you, writing is hard! It can be intimidating to put pen to paper for the first time, and sometimes the challenge of a blank page seems like too much to overcome. 

Writing shouldn’t be scary for kids. These 22 fun writing activities can help them:

• Use their imagination
• Think up new stories and ideas
• Share their writing with friends and family

Use them in your classroom or at home to get kids excited about writing!

Writing is supposed to be fun! Use these activities to help kids stretch their imagination and record their thoughts on paper in a fun, low-stress environment.

1. Try online ELA games like Prodigy English

Great for: Grades 1 to 6

Online games are a great way to engage students in the learning process — and Prodigy English is bringing the power of game-based learning to language and reading skill practice!

As students build and create, they’re always practicing key reading and language skills that help them write clearly and effectively. Every correct answer gives players more energy to gather resources, complete daily tasks and earn Wishcoins.

Plus, you can send questions about the topics you want them to practice and collect insights about their learning.

2. Poetry scavenger hunt

Great for: Middle and high school students

Words are all around us, so encourage your students to take inspiration from the real-life writing they see every day. Have students collect printed words and phrases from the world around them, including:

• Magazine ads
• Graphic novels
• Newspaper headlines
• Social media captions

Students can collect and arrange their words on a piece of paper to make a unique piece of poetry. Encourage them to find a key idea and expand on it in creative ways, then have students share their work with the class. 

3. Create your own comic strip

Great for: Grades 4 to 10

Students learn in all sorts of ways. For visual learners, creating a comic strip to accompany their story can help them express themselves in a visual medium. 

Give students a set number of panels and challenge them to come up with a quick story — just a few sentences. Then, they can illustrate their scene in the style of comic books. 

Remind students the point isn’t to be the best artist — it’s to write a story that’s short and exciting. 

4. Create your own Madlib

Great for: Elementary and middle school students

Give students vocabulary practice and help them write a silly story at the same time!

Fill a sheet with the outline of the story, then remove key words like:

For younger students, add a word bank to get them started. As students fill in words, they’ll craft a unique story filled with unexpected twists and turns.

Once students start getting in the habit of writing, these creative writing activities can pull new ideas out of their heads and encourage them to experiment with different genres. 

5. Acrostics

Great for: Grades 3 to 8

Acrostic poems are a great way to introduce your students to poetry! Start with a meaningful word or name and use it as a theme for the poem. 

Writing the word vertically, students can go down the letters and write a short word or phrase that starts with each letter. Acrostic poems help students write within a structure and theme, so it’s easier for them to get started. 

6. A letter to your future self

Great for: Middle school and high school

Where do your students see themselves in a year? Five years? Ten years?

A letter to their future selves is a great way for students to explore their own story, and brainstorm what they want to achieve. Not only can students practice their letter-writing skills, they can use their imaginations to develop a growth mindset . 

For extra nostalgia, store the letters for students and mail them out once the right amount of time has passed. 

7. Write a “Choose your own adventure” story

Great for: Grades 5 and up

Whether it’s a fairy tale, detective story or drama, chances are you’ve had a student tell you they don’t know how their story is supposed to end. 

A “Choose-your-own-adventure” story lets students brainstorm different storylines and endings. Once they’re done, encourage them to share their stories with the class so their peers can go on the adventure too.

8. Write a fake advertisement

Great for: Grades 6 and up

Good writing doesn’t just happen in books — it’s all around us!

Whether students are writing advertisements on their own or as part of a project-based learning assignment , this activity helps them build key media literacy skills and practice their snappy storytelling. 

Have students make up a new product and advertisement, or encourage them to re-imagine an ad for something they love. It’s also a great way to bring media literacy and interdisciplinary learning to your classroom. 

9. Make a story map

Great for: Grades 2 to 8

Not every student is going to be comfortable putting pen to paper right away. Story maps can help students brainstorm details like plot, characters and setting in a way that makes sense for visual learners. 

Have students use charts to set out the beginning, middle and end of their stories. Mind maps can also help them plot out details about their characters or setting. 

Encourage students to present their story map as a finished product or use it to start writing!

Writing isn’t all fairy tales and short stories — it’s also an important part of learning in middle school, high school and college. Use these academic writing activities to help students understand proper essay structure, grammar and more. 

10. Story chains

Great for: Grades 4 to 8

Stories are better when they’re enjoyed with friends and classmates. And story chains encourage every student to get involved!

Put students in small groups of three to six. Give each student a blank piece of paper and have them write the beginning of a story. Then, pass it to the next student in the group so they can write what happens next. 

For extra educational value, have students work together to summarize a story from your lesson or an important historical event. 

11. Persuasive essays

Sometimes writing is about more than just telling a story. It’s about convincing your readers of your point of view. 

Have older students practice their debate skills with persuasive essays. Start with a prompt, then let students make their case. Some of our favorite prompts for this writing assignment include:

• Is it more important to be right or to not hurt someone else’s feelings?
• What important historical figure do you think belongs on the ten-dollar bill and why?
• Do you think you’re born with your personality traits, or do you gain them as you grow up?

Most importantly, make sure students back up their opinions with solid facts and arguments that convince readers to care. 

12. Solve a real-world problem

Great for: Grade 6 and up

Climate change, litter, bullying, bad cafeteria food — no matter what students pick, there are lots of real-world problems for them to solve. 

Challenge students with a writing assignment that addresses a problem they see in their world. How would they fix it? Whether it’s a short paragraph or a longer essay, encourage them to find something they’re passionate about. After all, that’s where good writing comes from!

13. Vocabulary challenge

Great for: Elementary school students

Vocabulary challenges combine vocabulary strategies with student writing to make your next language arts lesson plan even more engaging. 

Give students a new word (or two or three). Once you’re done practicing it and they know what it means, challenge them to use it in a story as creatively as possible. 

14. Teach citations

Great for: Grades 1 to 12

Footnotes, endnotes and bibliographies are the least exciting part of writing, but they’re essential skills. As students write more complex research papers, they need to know how to give credit where credit is due. Thankfully, there are lots of online resources to help!

The Purdue Online Writing Lab offers teachers and students resources for all stages of the writing process, including citations. To practice, students can write an annotated bibliography as part of a project-based learning assignment or the first step in writing a longer research paper. 

Writing isn’t just something happening in the classroom. These at-home writing ideas can help you support your child as they experiment with prose and poetry.

15. Write letters to a pen pal

Great for: Grades 3 and up

Everyone likes getting mail! Got a friend with kids in a different part of the country, or far-away family members? A pen pal can be a great way for kids to build friendships and practice their writing skills at the same time. 

16. Bring a home object to life

“It’s as big as a mountain!”

“That’s the fluffiest thing I’ve ever felt!”

The ways kids describe things can crack us up sometimes. Full of wonder and hyperbole, it’s the perfect spark for creative writing, too.

Encourage kids to practice their figurative language skills with a description of something in your home. Let them pack as much alliteration and exaggeration into the description as they can, then do a dramatic reading out loud.  

17. Write reading reactions

If you want to boost reading comprehension and writing skills at the same time, this is the perfect activity. After your child is done reading, encourage them to write a few sentences about what they just read. 

Did they like it? What do they think happens next? Which character was their favorite and why? Learning how to express opinions in writing is a valuable skill. 

18. Document family stories

Great for: Grades 4 and up

Every family has a unique story, including yours. Make memories with your child when you share stories about important family events or your childhood. 

Kids can even interview grandparents, aunts and uncles to record their memories. When you’re done, store them in a shared space so everyone can go back and reminisce.

Writing is a muscle, and you have to flex it every day to get stronger. Use these daily writing activities to make writing part of your everyday routine. 

19. Journaling

Great for: Everyone

Sometimes, you’ve just gotta write it out. 

Whether you’re trying to make sense of life or just need a place to organize your thoughts, journaling is a great way to unwind, practice mindfulness and build social emotional skills . 

All kids need to get started is a notebook and a pen. Let them know you’re not going to read it, but they’re welcome to come to you if there’s something they want to talk about. 

20. Blog about your interests

Great for: High school and up

Everyone’s passionate about something. Whatever your students love, encourage them to share it with the world! Blogging is an accessible and fun way to express themselves, nerd out about the things that bring them joy and share their opinions with the world. 

Sites like WordPress and Wix offer free website builders to help students get started. This is a great way for kids to build computer skills and digital literacy .

21. Free writing

Write, write, write and don’t stop. That’s the premise behind free writing, a writing practice that can help unlock creativity, discover new ideas and take the pressure out of a blank page. 

Give students a five-minute timer and challenge them to write continuously, without worrying about formatting, spelling or grammar. They can write about whatever they want, but there’s only one rule: don’t stop. 

22. Answer daily writing prompts

Make time to exercise your brain with daily writing prompts! At the start of the day or as a quick brain break , set aside time for students to respond to a quick daily writing prompt. 

Students should have a dedicated journal or binder to make it a seamless part of your lessons. Whether or not you choose to read their writing is up to you, but it’s important to build good daily habits. 

A blank page can be a scary sight for a student who doesn’t know what to write about. 

Use writing prompts to:

• Kickstart a student’s imagination
• Start your lesson with a fun writing activity
• Give students a topic to debate in writing

Some of our favorite simple writing prompts include:

• Write a story about a wooden door, a can of soda and a blue shoe. 
• If you met a monster looking for new friends, what would you do?
• What’s your favorite season? What makes it the best?
• If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?
• Describe your dream birthday cake. 
• Write a story about being cold without using the word “cold.”
• If you could decorate your bedroom any way you wanted, what would it look like?
• Is it better to have lots of friends or just a few really good friends?
• Write a story in 10 words or less.
• Write a story about the best surprise you’ve ever received. 

For more writing prompts you can use in and out of the classroom, check out our full list of 225 writing prompts for kids .

Writing activities can bring reluctant writers out of their shells

Writing is hard and can be intimidating for a lot of students. 

But even the quietest and most reluctant students have lots of stories to tell! You just have to encourage them to get their words out. 

Writing activities help remove some of the pressure and give students:

• A fun way to approach writing 
• A starting point for their stories
• Chances to share their writing with students

No two stories are the same, just like your students. Every story can start in a different way, and that’s the beauty of writing prompts.

Whether it’s writing activities or math problems, there are lots of ways to get reluctant learners excited about your lessons with educational activities. 

Here are some of our favorites:

• 37 Quick & Easy Brain Breaks for Kids
• 30 Virtual School Activities Students & Educators Love  
• 27 Best Educational Games for Kids to Play Sorted by Subject  
• 15 Geometry Activities to Engage Students Across Grade Levels
• 36 Fun Word Games for Kids To Help with Vocabulary & Literacy
• 15 Fun, Free & Effective Multiplication Games For Your Classroom
• 20 Exciting Math Games for Kids to Skyrocket New Math Skills On-The-Go
• 21 Classroom Games to Boost Teacher Effectiveness and Student Learning
• 25 Social Emotional Learning Activities & How They Promote Student Well-Being

Which ones can you use in your next lesson?

Prodigy English is a brand-new game-based learning platform helping students build key math skills. As students explore and build a world of their very own, they’ll answer curriculum-aligned reading and language questions that help build essential skills and encourage a love of learning. 

Sign up for your free teacher account and get access to teacher tools that help you differentiate learning and track student progress as they play.

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Teach Creative Writing In High School With 10 Fun Activities

Creative writing is a meaningful aspect of literature that mandates you to utilize your expertise, ingenuity, and story to depict a critical message, emotion, or plot. It defies the traditional bounds of other forms of writing and is completely subjective to our preferences and experiences. In creative writing, it’s all about imaginativeness!

Using creative imagination and originality to convey feelings and concepts in a unique way is at the heart of creative writing. Simply stated, it’s about infusing your own ‘flair’ into your writing, moving beyond academic or other technical kinds of literature. 

In this post, we will explore the various activities which would be advantageous for a high schooler who wishes to indulge in creative writing!

What Happens When Creative Writing Is Put To Use?

Creative writing is any form of writing that deviates from traditional professional, investigative journalism, educational, or technological forms of literature. It is typically distinguished by emphasizing narrative craft, character development, literary tropes, or various poetic traditions.

Here are the few ways how high schoolers can benefit from creative writing –

1. Imagination

When you write creatively, you expand your imagination by creating new environments, scenarios, and characters. This way, you are also boosting and stretching your imagination, as well as “thinking out of the box.” This allows you to concentrate your energy on many other things and improve your ability to find fresh ideas and alternatives to problems you’re having. Whether you’re a researcher or a businessman, creative writing will increase your imagination and help you think more creatively, and push the boundaries.

2. Empathy and Communications skills

When you create characters, you’ll be constructing emotions, personalities, behaviors, and world views that are distinct from your own. Writers must conceive personalities, emotions, places, and walks of life outside of their own lives while creating universes with fictional characters and settings.

This can give children a good dose of empathy and understanding for those who aren’t like them, who don’t live where they do or go through the same things they do daily. Writers are better equipped to communicate when they have a greater understanding of other points of view. They can come up with creative ways to explain and debate subjects from multiple perspectives. This ability is crucial in both professional and personal situations. 

3. Clarification of Thoughts 

Creating structures in creative writing allows you to organize your impressions and emotions into a logical procedure. You may express both your thoughts and your sentiments through creative writing. For example, if you’re a marketing executive, you could create a short tale in which your clientele reads your promotional emails. You can guess what they’re up to, where they’re seated, what’s around them, and so on.

This enables you to focus on the language and strategies you employ. Alternatively, if you’re a technical writer writing on a new desktop platform, you could create a creative scenario in which a user encounters a problem. 

4. Broadens Vocabulary and gets a better understanding of reading and writing

You’ll learn a larger vocabulary and a better understanding of the mechanics of reading and writing as you begin to practice writing exercises regularly. Even if you’re writing a budget report, you’ll know when rigid grammar standards work and when they don’t, and you’ll know what will make your writing flow better for your readers. Exploring different ways of expressing yourself when writing creatively allows you to extend your vocabulary.

You’ll notice a change in your use and range of language as you improve your writing over time, which will be useful in any professional route and social scenario. You’ll be able to bend and break the rules when you need to, to utilize your voice and make what you’re writing engaging without coming off as an amateur, dull, or inauthentic once you’ve grasped the fundamentals of writing professionally and creatively.

5. Building Self-Belief 

When you write creatively, you’re actively involved in an activity that allows you to fully develop your voice and point of view without being constrained. You have a better chance to investigate and express your feelings about various issues, opinions, ideas, and characters. And you’ll feel more at ease and secure stating your thoughts and perspectives in other things you write as a result of this.

Writers who don’t write creatively may be concerned about appearing authoritative or trustworthy. They accidentally lose their voice and sound like drones spouting statistics by omitting to include their perspective on the topics they’re writing about. As a result, they miss out on using their distinct voice and presenting themselves as an expert with real-world expertise.

Creative Writing Activities That Will Strengthen Your Writing Skills  

Short spurts of spontaneous writing make up creative writing activities. These writing exercises push a writer to tackle a familiar topic in a new way, ranging from one line to a lengthy tale. Short, spontaneous projects are common in creative writing programs, but any writer should make them a regular practice to extend their abilities and learn new tactics to approach a series of stories.

These activities must be performed for ten minutes at a time, several times a week – by creative writers. They’re designed to help you improve your writing abilities, generate fresh story ideas, and become a better writer.

1. Free Writing

Writing is the first and foremost activity that is going to give your creative writing a boost. Start with a blank page and let your stream of thoughts and emotions flow. Then simply begin writing. Don’t pause to think or alter what you’re expressing. This is known as “free writing.” This writing activity is referred to as “morning pages” by Julia Cameron, the author of ‘The Artist’s Way.’ She recommends that authors do this every day when they first wake up. Stream of consciousness writing can provide some intriguing concepts.

Allow your intellect to take the lead as your fingers type. Or write a letter to your younger self.  Consider a topic you’d like to discuss, such as a noteworthy event, and write it down. Give guidance or convey a message that you wish you had heard as a youngster or a young adult.

2. Modify a Storyline – Read

Most of us like to read. However, just reading won’t really help augment your creative writing skills. While reading bestows insight into the deeper meanings of numerous things, you need a more concrete approach to better your aptitude. To do this, you can modify any storyline. Take an episode from a chapter, if you’re feeling brave—from one of your favorite books and recreate it. Write it from the perspective of a different character. Swap out the main character in this exercise to examine how the story may be conveyed differently.

Take Percy Jackson’s thrilling conclusion, for instance, and rework it with Annabeth as the primary character. Another way to approach this creative activity is to keep the primary character but switch viewpoints. Rewrite a scene in the third person if the writer has told a story in the first person. 

3. Add Creative Writing Prompts or Create Flash Fiction

Use writing prompts, often known as narrative starters, to produce writing ideas. A writing prompt is a sentence or short excerpt that a writer uses to start composing a story on the spot. You can look up writing prompts online, pick a sentence out of a magazine at random, or use a brilliant line from a well-known work as the start of your short scene.

Another thing you can do to accentuate your writing is to create flash fiction. Sit down at your desktop or pick up a pen and paper and write a 500-word story on the spur of the moment. This isn’t the same as just writing whatever comes to mind. With no fixed guidelines, free writing generates a stream of consciousness. All of the basic components of a story arc, such as plot, conflict, and character development, are required in flash fiction, albeit in a shortened form.

4. Create a Fictitious Advertisement

Pick a random word from a nearby book or newspaper and create a fictitious commercial for it. Write one ad in a formal, abbreviated newspaper classified format to require you to pay special attention to your word choice to sell the item. Then write one for an online marketplace that allows for longer, more casual text, such as Craigslist. Describe the item and persuade the reader to purchase it in each one.

5. Engage in Conversations 

Engaging in conversations with your friends/family – or simply communicating can help brush up your writing skills. Talk to your loved ones about their hobbies, career, views on societal issues – any suitable topic for that matter. This helps implement others’ points of view and expands your mental ability. Another useful thing that you can do is – make another person’s tale and create it by implementing your own thoughts. Then talk about it in an impeccable manner. Also, talk in complete sentences. This goes to show your Linguistic intelligence proficiency – and helps augment your creative writing skills.

6. Create Your Own Website/Blog

Start your search for blogging. There are a million writing suggestions out there, but they all boil down to the same thing: write. Blogging is excellent writing practice because it gives you a place to write regularly.

To keep your fingers and mind nimble, write a post every day. Like most bloggers, you’ll want to restrict your subject—perhaps you’ll focus on parenting or start a how-to site where you can tell stories from your point of view.

7. Participate in Debates/Extempores  

Participating in debates, extempores – anchoring for your school function, giving a speech, all of these activities help boost your creative spirit. These group events make you understand what other people are envisioning, which in turn helps you generate new ideas, approaches, and methods. Not only do they improve your articulation and research skills, but they also develop critical thinking and emotional control abilities. All of these promote a better creative writing aptitude.

8. Start a YouTube Channel or Podcast 

Starting a YouTube channel or podcast will definitely level up your creative game. YouTube is a never-ending platform, covering myriads of topics. Choose a particular niche for your channel.

Then do your topic research, create content, manage SEO, approach brands, talk to clients and influencers – do all the good stuff. Communicating with other influencers and creating content will take your creative writing skills to another level. Starting a podcast will have a similar impact. 

9. Love them? Say it with your words!

We have many festivals, occasions, birthdays, parties, anniversaries and whatnot! You can employ these special days and boost your creative writing skills. You can make a token of love for them – writing about your feelings. You can also make gift cards, birthday cards, dinner menus, and so on. So let’s say, it’s your mother’s birthday, you can write her a token of love, elucidating your feelings and letting her know what all she’s done for you and that you’re grateful. Do this for all your near and dear ones. This not only spreads positivity and love but helps you develop your creative aptitude.

10. The What-if Game

The What-If game is an incredible way to upgrade your creative abilities. You can play this game with your friends, cousins, relatives, or solo. Here, you need to find links to many interesting hypothetical questions. For instance, what if the sun doesn’t rise for a week? What if there’s no oxygen for one minute? Play it with your peeps, or ask these questions to yourself. It can be anything random but concrete. If you don’t know the answers to the questions, look them up on Google. This way, you’re training your mind to learn new concepts all the while enhancing your visualization process. 

We can conclude that creative writing encourages students to think creatively, use their imaginations, imply alternatives, expand their thinking processes, and improve their problem-solving skills. It also allows the child to express themselves and grow their voice. Besides, it enhances reasoning abilities. The principle behind the creative writing concept is that everyone can gain the qualities that are needed to become a successful writer or, rather become good at writing. Creative writing is all about using language in new and innovative ways.

Sananda Bhattacharya, Chief Editor of TheHighSchooler, is dedicated to enhancing operations and growth. With degrees in Literature and Asian Studies from Presidency University, Kolkata, she leverages her educational and innovative background to shape TheHighSchooler into a pivotal resource hub. Providing valuable insights, practical activities, and guidance on school life, graduation, scholarships, and more, Sananda’s leadership enriches the journey of high school students.

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• Grades 6-12
• School Leaders

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10 Creative Writing Activities That Help Students Tell Their Stories

Lower the stakes and help them get started.

“I don’t have a story. There’s nothing interesting about my life!” Sound familiar? I don’t know a teacher who hasn’t heard students say this. When we ask our students to write about themselves, they get stuck. We know how important it is for them to tell their own stories. It’s how we explore our identities and keep our histories and cultures alive. It can even be dangerous when we don’t tell our stories (check out this Ted Talk given by novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and share it with your students for more on that). Storytelling is essential for every subject, not just English Language Arts; students dive deeper and engage when they practice thinking about how their own stories intersect with historical events, civic engagement, and the real-world implications of STEM. These 10 creative writing activities can work in every subject you teach:

Here are 10 of our favorite story telling activities that inspire students:

1. write an “i am from” poem.

Students read the poem “I am From” by George Ella Lyon. Then, they draft a poem about their own identity in the same format Lyon used. Finally, students create a video to publish their poems. We love this one because the mentor text gives a clear structure and example that students can follow. But the end result is truly unique, just like their story.

2. Design a social media post to share an important memory

How can you use your unique perspective to tell a story? We want our students to learn that they are truly unique and have stories that only they can tell that other people want to hear or could relate to or learn from. In this activity, students watch two Pixar-in-a-Box videos on Khan Academy to learn about storytelling and perspective. Then, they identify an interesting or poignant memory and design a social media post.

3. Create an image using a line to chart an emotional journey

How do you show emotion using a single line? In this activity, students watch a Pixar in a Box video on Khan Academy to learn about how lines communicate character, emotion, and tension. Then they experiment with these aspects as they write their story. We love using this for pre-writing and to help students explore their story arc. Also, for students who love to draw or learn visually, this can help them get started telling their story and show them that there are many different ways to tell a story.

4. Tell the story behind your name

Sharing the story behind our name is a way to tell a story about ourselves, our culture, and our family history. And if there isn’t a story behind it, we can talk about how we feel about it and describe what it sounds like. In this activity, students use video to introduce themselves to their classmates by discussing the origin of their name. This project asks students to connect their names (and identities) to their personal and familial histories and to larger historical forces. If you’re looking for a mentor text that pairs well with this one, try “My Name” by Sandra Cisneros .

5. Develop a visual character sketch

Give students the time to create a character sketch of themselves. This will help them see how they fit into their story. In this lesson, students create a visual character sketch. They’ll treat themselves like a character and learn to see themselves objectively.

6. Create a webpage to outline the story of your movie

Building a story spine is a great way to show students how to put the parts of their story in an order that makes sense. It’s an exercise in making choices about structure. We like this activity because it gives students a chance to see different examples of structure in storytelling. Then, they consider the question: how can you use structure to set your story up for success? Finally, they design and illustrate an outline for their story.

7. Respond to a variety of writing prompts

Sometimes our students get stuck because they aren’t inspired or need a different entry point into telling their story. Give them a lot of writing prompts that they can choose from. Pass out paper and pencils. Set a timer for fifteen minutes. Then, write 3-4 writing prompts on the board. Encourage students to free-write and not worry about whether their ideas are good or right. Some of our favorite prompts to encourage students to tell their story are:

• I don’t know why I remember…
• What’s your favorite place and why?
• What objects tell the story of your life?
• What might surprise someone to learn about you?

8. Create a self-portrait exploring identity and self-expression

Part of what makes writing your own story so difficult for students is that they are just building their identity. In this activity, students explore how they and others define their identity. What role does identity play in determining how they are perceived and treated by others? What remains hidden and what is shown publicly?

9. Film a video to share an important story from your life

Encourage students to think about how to tell the story of a day they faced their fears. Students consider the question: How can you use different shot types to tell your story? They watch a video from Pixar in a Box on Khan Academy to learn about different camera shots and their use in storytelling. Then, they use Adobe Spark Post or Photoshop and choose three moments from their story to make into shots. We love using this to help students think about pace and perspective. Sometimes what we leave out of our story is just as important as what we include.

10. Try wild writing

Laurie Powers created a process where you read a poem and then select two lines from it. Students start their own writing with one of those lines. Anytime that they get stuck, they repeat their jump-off line again. This is a standalone activity or a daily writing warm-up, and it works with any poem. We love how it lowers the stakes. Can’t think of anything to write? Repeat the jump-off line and start again. Here are some of our favorite jump-off lines:

• The truth is…
• Some people say…
• Here’s what I forgot to tell you…
• Some questions have no answers…
• Here’s what I’m afraid to write about…

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• 43 Creative writing exercises

A selection of fun creative writing exercises that can be completed solo, or with a group. Some are prompts to help inspire you to come up with story ideas, others focus on learning specific writing skills.

I run a  Creative Writing Meetup  for adults and teens in Montpellier or online every week. We start with a 5 to 20 minute exercise, followed by an hour and a half of silent writing, during which each participant focuses on their own project. Every exercise listed below has been run with the group and had any kinks ironed out.  Where the exercises specify a number of people, if you have a larger group, simply split everyone up into smaller groups as appropriate.

The solo exercises are ideal to help stimulate your mind before working on a larger project, to overcome writer’s block, or as stand-alone prompts in their own right. If a solo exercise inspires you and you wish to use it with a larger group, give every member ten minutes to complete the exercise, then ask anyone who wishes to share their work to do so in groups of 3 or 4 afterwards.

Looking for something quick to fire your imagination? Check out these  creative writing prompts for adults .

Writing Retreat in South France

A note on running exercises remotely

While you can enjoy the exercises solo, they are also designed for online writing groups using Zoom, WhatsApp, or Discord.

If you're running a group and follow a ' Shut Up and Write ' structure, I recommend connecting on WhatsApp (for example) first, doing the exercise together, sharing writing samples as needed. Next, write in silence for an hour and a half on your own projects, before reconnecting for a brief informal chat at the end. This works great with small remote groups and is a way to learn new techniques, gain online support, and have a productive session.

If you have a larger online group, it's worth looking into Zoom, as this has a feature called  Breakout Rooms . Breakout Rooms let you split different writers into separate rooms, which is great for group activities. The free version of Zoom has a 40 minute limit, which can be restrictive, but Zoom Pro is well worth it if you're going to use it on a regular basis. In my experience, Zoom has a better connection than Facebook chat or WhatsApp.

A Letter From Your Character To You

Spend ten minutes writing a letter from a character in your novel to  you , the author, explaining why you should write about them. This serves three purposes:

• As you write, it helps you get into the mindset of the character. Ask yourself how they would language this letter and what they would consider important.
• It's motivating to know that your character wants you to write about them.
• If your goal is to publish a complete work of fiction one day, whether it be a novel, a play or a movie script, you will want to contact an agent or publisher. This helps you practice in an easy, safe way.

If you're doing this exercise with a group of teens or adults, and some of the group haven't already started working on their masterpiece, they can instead choose any fictional novel they love. Ask participants to imagine that a character within the book wrote to the author in the first place to ask them to write their story. How did they plead their case?

The Opening Sentence

The opening sentence has to grab the reader's attention and make them want to keep reading. Many authors achieve this by starting with an action scene. In modern literature, it's best to avoid starting with someone waking up, or a description of the weather. In this exercise the task is to write an opening sentence either to a book you're currently writing, or simply for an imaginary piece of literature.  Here are some of my favourite opening sentences to get you going:

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

George Orwell , 1984

The Golem's life began in the hold of a steamship.

Helene Wecker , The Golem and the Djinni

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Leo Tolstoy , Anna Karenina

It wasn't a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance.

Diana Gabaldon , Outlander

You better not never tell nobody but God.

Alice Walker , The Color Purple

The cage was finished.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez ,  Balthazar’s Marvelous Afternoon

Imagine that you are living your life out of order: Lunch before breakfast, marriage before your first kiss.

Audrey Niffenegger ,  The Time Traveler's Wife

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Douglas Adams ,  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

There are a plethora of ways you can start a book, however two ways that help engage the reader immediately are:

• Set the scene in as few words as possible, so the reader immediately knows what's happening and wants to know what happens next.  The scene must be original and create a vivid image in the reader's mind.
• Surprise the reader with an unusual event or usual point of view.

Spend 5 minutes working on your own opening sentence, then share it with the other participants.

Make your protagonist act!

Exercise for 2 writers, or can be done solo.

According to John Gardner:

"Failure to recognise that the central character must act, not simply be acted upon, is the single most common mistake in the fiction of beginners."

Spend 5 minutes writing a scene where the protagonist is passive in a conversation with one other character. It could be that the other character says something dramatic, and the protagonist just listens, or it could be anything else of your choice!

Once the 5 minutes is up, swap papers with another writer. If you're using Zoom, or working online, send it to each other in a private chat. Now the other person spends 8 minutes rewriting the scene to make the protagonist as active as possible. This might include:

Read both scenes together. Which makes you want to keep on reading?

If you're doing this as a solo writing exercise, simply complete both parts yourself.

• Showing the emotion this evokes.
• Getting them to disagree with the other character.
• Showing how they respond physically (whether it's as a physical manifestation of how they feel, or a dramatic gesture to make a point).

Overcoming writer's block

Are you staring at a blank page or stuck for any story ideas? This exercise will help anyone who's experiencing writer's block with a particular piece of writing. If this isn't you, that's great, others will value your input!

If anyone has a particular scene they're stuck with (a pool of blood on the floor they have no explanation for, a reason why the rich lady just walked into a particular pub, etc.) then at the start of the exercise everyone briefly describes their scenes (if working online with a large group, typing it into the chat might be best). Everyone then chooses one scene to use as a writing prompt to write a short story for 10-15 minutes.

Afterwards, split into small groups if necessary, and read out how you completed someone else's writing prompt. As everyone listens to everyone else's ideas, this can be a wonderful source of inspiration and also improves your writing. As an alternative solo exercise, try free writing. With free writing, simply write as quickly as you can on the topic without editing or censoring yourself - just let your creative juices flow. If you're not sure what happens next, brainstorm options on the page, jot down story ideas, or just put, "I don't know what happens next." Keep going and ideas will come.

Writing Character Arcs

There are several different types of character arc in a novel, the 3 most common being:

For this exercise choose either a positive or negative character arc. Spend 8 minutes writing a scene from the start of a novel, then 8 minutes writing a scene towards the end of a novel showing how the character has developed between the two points. Don't worry about including how the character has changed, you can leave that to the imagination.

The point here is to capture the essence of a character, as they will be the same, but show their development.

• Positive  - Where a character develops and grows during the novel. Perhaps they start unhappy or weak and end happy or powerful.
• Negative  - Where a character gets worse during a novel. Perhaps they become ill or give in to evil tendencies as the novel progresses.
• Flat  - In a flat character arc the character themself doesn't change much, however the world around them does. This could be overthrowing a great injustice, for example.

Sewing Seeds in Your Writing

In this exercise, we will look at how to sew seeds. No, not in your garden, but in your story. Seeds are the tiny hints and indicators that something is going on, which influence a reader's perceptions on an often unconscious level. They're important, as if you spring a surprise twist on your readers without any warning, it can seem unbelievable. Sew seeds that lead up to the event, so the twists and turns are still surprising, but make intuitive sense. Groups : Brainstorm major plot twists that might happen towards the end of the novel and share it in a Zoom chat, or on pieces of paper. Choose one twist each. Individuals : Choose one of the following plot twists:   -  Your friend is actually the secret son of the king.   -  Unreliable narrator - the narrator turns out to be villain.   -  The monster turns out to be the missing woman the narrator is seeking.   -  The man she is about to marry happens to already have a wife and three kids.

Write for ten minutes and give subtle hints as to what the plot twist is. This is an exercise in subtlety. Remember, when the twist occurs, it should still come as a surprise.

This is a fun writing activity for a small group. You’ve found a magic potion labelled ‘Cat Chat’ and when you drink it, you turn into whichever animal you’re thinking about; but there’s a problem, it also picks up on the brainwaves of other people near you!

Everyone writes down an animal in secret and then reveals it to the other writers.  The spell will turn you into a creature that combines elements of all the animals.  Each person then spends 5 minutes writing down what happens when they drink the potion.

After the 5 minutes is up, everyone shares their story with the other participants.

If you enjoy this exercise, then you may also want to check out our  Fantasy and Sci-Fi writing prompts  full of world building, magic, and character development prompts..

Joe Brainard wrote a novel called:  I Remember It contains a collection of paragraphs all starting with “I remember”.  This is the inspiration for this exercise, and if you’re stuck for what to write, is a great way to get the mental gears turning.  Simply write “I remember” and continue with the first thing that pops into your head.

Spend 5 minutes writing a short collection of “I remember” stories.

Here are a couple of examples from Joe Brainard’s novel:

“I remember not understanding why people on the other side of the world didn't fall off.”

“I remember waking up somewhere once and there was a horse staring me in the face.”

Giving feedback to authors

If you're running a workshop for more experienced adult authors and have at least an hour, this is a good one to use. This is the longest exercise on this page, but I felt it important enough to include.

Give each author the option to bring a piece of their own work. This should be double spaced and a maximum of 3 pages long. If you're running a workshop where not everyone is likely to bring a manuscript, ask everyone who wants to bring one to print two copies each. If someone forgets but has a laptop with them, the reader can always use their laptop.

Print out a few copies and hand them around to everyone in the workshop of the guide on: 'How to give constructive feedback to writers'

Each author who brought a sample with them then gives them to one other person to review. They write their name on the manuscript in a certain colour pen, then add any comments to it before passing it to a second person who does the same (commenting on the comments if they agree or disagree).

Then allow 5 minutes for everyone to discuss the feedback they've received, ensuring they are giving constructive feedback.

The Five Senses

Painting by Giovanni Battista Manerius -  The Five Senses

Choose a scene and write it for 5 minutes focusing on one sense, NOT sight. Choose between:

Hearing  Taste Smell Touch

This can be internal as well as external (I heard my heartbeat thudding in my ears, or I smelt my own adrenaline).

After the 5 minutes stop and everyone reads it out loud to each other. Now write for another 5 minutes and continue the other person's story, but do NOT use sight OR the sense they used.

You can use any sense to communicate the essentials, just focus on creating emotions and conveying the story with the specific sense(s).

If you need some writing prompts, here are possible scenes that involve several senses:

• Climbing through an exotic jungle
• Having an argument that becomes a fight
• A cat's morning
• Talking to someone you're attracted to

Show don't tell

2 or 3 people

A lot of writing guides will advise you to, "Show, don't tell". What does this actually mean?

If you want to evoke an emotional reaction from your reader, showing them what is happening is a great way to do so.  You can approach this in several ways:

Split up into pairs and each person writes down a short scene from a story where they "tell" it.  After this, pass the description of the scene to your partner and they then have 5 minutes to rewrite it to "show" what happened.  If there are an odd number of participants, make one group of three, with each person passing their scene clockwise, so everyone has a new scene to show.  After the 5 minutes, for small groups everyone reads their new description to everyone else, or for large groups, each person just reads their new scene to their partner.

• Avoid internal dialogue (thinking), instead have your protagonist interact with other people, or have a physical reaction to something that shows how s/he feels.  Does their heart beat faster?  Do they notice the smell of their own adrenaline?  Do they step backwards, or lean forwards?
• Instead of using an adjective like creepy, e.g. "Mary entered the creepy house", show why the house is creepy through description and in the way the protagonist responds - "The light streamed through the filthy skylight, highlighting the decomposing body of a rat resting on top of it.  As Mary stepped inside, she felt a gust of freezing air brush past her. She turned, but there was nothing there..."

World building

World building is the art of conveying the magic of living in a different world, whether it's a spaceship, a medieval castle, a boat, or simply someone's living room. To master world building, it's not necessary to know every intricate detail, rather to convey the experience of what it would be like to live there.

Choose one of the above images as a prompt and spend 10 minutes writing a scene from the perspective of someone who is seeing it for the first time. Now, move your character six months forward and imagine they've spent the last six months living or working there. Write another scene (perhaps with an additional character) using the image as a background, with the events of the scene as the main action.

Click the above image for a close-up.

Gossiping about a character as if they're a friend.

Judy Blume says that she tells her family about her characters as if they’re real people. 

Chris Claremont said, "For me, writing the 'X-Men' was easy - is easy. I know these people, they're my friends." 

Today’s exercise has 2 parts. First, spend 5 minutes jotting down some facts about a character you’ve invented that might come up if you were telling your friends about them. Either choose a character in something you’ve already written, or invent one from scratch now.

Answer the questions:

What are they up to? How are they? What would you say if you were gossiping about them?

Then split up into groups of 4 to 6 writers. 2 volunteers from each group then role-play talking about their character as if they were a friend (perhaps another character in the story).  The other participants will role-play a group of friends gossiping about the character behind their back and ask questions. If you don’t know the answer, invent it!

Degrees of Emotion Game

This is based on an acting game, to help actors understand how to perform with different degrees of emotion.

Ask everyone to write the following 4 emotions:

For groups of 5 or less, write down numbers starting with 1 and going up until everyone has a number, then give them out in order. For groups of 6 or more, divide groups into 3's, 4's or 5's.

Each person has to write a scene where the protagonist is alone and is only allowed to say a single word, e.g. "Banana".  The writer with number 1 should write the scene with a very low level of the emotion (e.g. happiness), number 2 increases the intensity a bit and the highest number writes a scene with the most intense emotion you can possibly imagine.

Once each writer has written about happiness, rotate the numbers one or two spaces, then move onto anger, then fear, then sadness.

It can help to give everyone numbers showing the intensity of the emotions to write about at the start of the exercise, in which case you may wish to print either the Word or PDF file, then use the ones corresponding to 3, 4 or 5 writers.

Everyone shares their scene with the other course participants.

Three birds, one line

The first paragraph of a surprising number of best-selling novels serves multiple purposes. These are to:

• Establish a goal
• Set the scene
• Develop a character

Nearly every chapter in a novel also serves all three purposes. Instead of establishing a goal though, the protagonist either moves towards it, or encounters an obstacle that hinders them from achieving it.

Some books manage to meet all three purposes with their opening lines, for example:  

Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

J.K. Rowling ,  Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone  

A little more than one hundred days into the fortieth year of her confinement, Dajeil Gelian was visited in her lonely tower overlooking the sea by an avatar of the great ship that was her home.

Iain M. Banks ,  Excession  

"We should start back," Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them.

George R.R. Martin ,  A Game of Thrones

For this exercise write a sentence or short paragraph that serves all three purposes. If you're already writing a novel, then see if you can do this for the first line in a chapter. If not, choose any combination from the following table:

Blind Date on Valentine's Day (Exercise for Adults)

In pairs one writer spends a minute or two describing a character they're writing about, or alternatively they can describe a celebrity or someone from a work of fiction.  The next writer then describes their character.

The story is that these 2 characters (or in my case, person and alien, as I'm writing a sci-fi) have accidentally ended up on a blind date with each other. Perhaps the waiter seated them in the wrong location, perhaps it's an actual blind date, or perhaps they met in some other fashion the writers can determine.

Now spend 10 minutes discussing what happens next!

A Success (Works best for online groups)

This exercise works best for online groups, via Zoom, for example.  The instructions to give are:

"In a few words describe a success in your life and what it felt like to achieve it. It can be a small victory or a large one."

Share a personal example of your own (mine was watching my homeschooled sons sing in an opera together).

"Once you have one (small or large), write it in the chat.

The writing exercise is then to choose someone else's victory to write about for 10 minutes, as if it was the end of your own book.

If you want to write for longer, imagine how that book would start. Write the first part of the book with the ending in mind."

This is great for reminding people of a success in their lives, and also helps everyone connect and discover something about each other.

Your dream holiday

You’re going on a dream holiday together, but always disagree with each other. To avoid conflict, rather than discuss what you want to do, you’ve decided that each of you will choose a different aspect of the holiday as follows:

• Choose where you’ll be going – your favourite holiday destination.
• Choose what your main fun activity will be on the holiday.
• Decide what mode of travel you’ll use to get there.
• If there’s a 4 th  person, choose what you’ll eat on the holiday and what you’ll be wearing.

Decide who gets to choose what at random. Each of you then writes down your dream holiday destination/activity/travel/food & clothes in secret.  Next spend 5 minutes discussing your dream holiday and add any other details you’d like to include, particularly if you’re passionate about doing something in real life.

Finally, everyone spends another 5 minutes writing down a description of the holiday, then shares it with the others.

A haiku is a traditional Japanese form of non-rhyming poetry whose short form makes it ideal for a simple writing exercise.

They are traditionally structured in 3 lines, where the first line is 5 syllables, the second line is 7 syllables, and the third line is 5 syllables again. Haiku tend to focus on themes of nature and deep concepts that can be expressed simply.

A couple of examples:

A summer river being crossed how pleasing with sandals in my hands! Yosa Buson , a haiku master poet from the 18 th  Century.

And one of mine:

When night-time arrives Stars come out, breaking the dark You can see the most

Martin Woods

Spend up to 10 minutes writing a haiku.  If you get stuck with the 5-7-5 syllable rule, then don’t worry, the overall concept is more important!

See  How to write a haiku  for more details and examples.

Unlike a haiku, which is profound and sombre, a limerick is a light-hearted, fun rhyming verse.

Here are a couple of examples:

A wonderful bird is the pelican. His bill can hold more than his beli-can He can take in his beak Food enough for a week But I'm damned if I see how the heli-can.

Dixon Lanier Merritt, 1910

There was a young lady named Bright, Whose speed was far faster than light; She started one day In a relative way, And returned on the previous night.

Arthur Henry Reginald Buller in  Punch,  1923

The 1 st , 2 nd  and 5 th  line all rhyme, as do the 3 rd  and 4 th  line.  The overall number of syllables isn’t important, but the 3 rd  and 4 th  lines should be shorter than the others.

Typically, the 1 st  line introduces the character, often with “There was”, or “There once was”. The rest of the verse tells their story.

Spend 10 minutes writing a limerick.

Time Travel - Child, Adult, Senior

Imagine that your future self as an old man/woman travels back in time to meet you, the adult you are today.  Alternatively, you as a child travels forward in time to meet yourself as an adult.  Or perhaps both happen, so the child you, adult you, and senior you are all together at the same time.  In story form write down what happens next.

Participants then share their story with other writers either in small groups, or to the whole group.

Focus on faces

Solo exercise.

One challenge writers face is describing a character. A common mistake is to focus too much on the physical features, e.g. "She had brown eyes, curly brown hair and was five foot six inches tall."

The problem with this is it doesn't reveal anything about the character's personality, or the relationship between your protagonist and the character. Your reader is therefore likely to quickly forget what someone looks like.  When describing characters, it's therefore best to:

• Animate them - it's rare that someone's sitting for a portrait when your protagonist first meets them and whether they're talking or walking, it's likely that they're moving in some way.
• Use metaphors or similes  - comparing physical features to emotionally charged items conjures both an image and a sense of who someone is.
• Involve your protagonist  - if your protagonist is interacting with a character, make it personal.  How does your protagonist view this person?  Incorporate the description as part of the description.
• Only give information your protagonist knows  - they may know if someone is an adult, or a teenager, but they won't know that someone is 37 years old, for example.

Here are three examples of character descriptions that leave no doubt how the protagonist feels.

“If girls could spit venom, it'd be through their eyes.” S.D. Lawendowski,  Snapped

"And Ronan was everything that was left: molten eyes and a smile made for war." Maggie Stiefvater,  The Dream Thieves

"His mouth was such a post office of a mouth that he had a mechanical appearance of smiling." Charles Dickens

Spend 5 minutes writing a character introduction that is animated, uses metaphors or similes and involves your protagonist.

If working with a group, then form small groups of 3 or 4 and share your description with the rest of the group.

Onomatopeai, rhyme and alliteration

Today's session is all about sound.

Several authors recommend reading your writing out loud after you've written it to be sure it sounds natural.   Philip Pullman  even goes as far as to say:

"When I’m writing, I’m more conscious of the sound, actually, than the meaning. I know what the rhythm of the sentence is going to be before I know what the words are going to be in it."

For today's exercise, choose the name of a song and write for 10 minutes as if that's the title for a short story. Focus on how your writing sounds and aim to include at least one onomatopoeia, rhyme or alliteration.  At the end of the 10 minutes, read it out loud to yourself, or to the group.

Alliterations

An alliteration example from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, The furrow followed free; We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea.

Onomatopoeias

Buzz, woof, quack, baa, crash, purr, beep, belch,...

The alphabet story - creating a story as a group

This is a novel way to write a story as a group, one word at a time.  The first person starts the story that begins with any word starting with “A”, the next person continues the story with a word starting with “B”, and so on.

Keep going round until you have completed the alphabet.  Ideally it will all be one sentence, but if you get stuck, start a new sentence.  Don’t worry if it doesn’t make complete sense!

It can be tricky to remember the alphabet when under pressure, so you may wish to print it out a couple of times, so the storytellers can see it if they need to, this is particularly helpful if you have dyslexics in the group.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Here’s an example of an alphabet story:

A Band Can Dance Each Friday, Ghostly Hauntings In Jail Kill Lucky Men, Nobody Or Perhaps Quiet Rats, Still That Unifies Villains Who X-Ray Your Zebras.

As I mentioned, it doesn’t need to make sense!

A question or two

Small or large groups

The standard format in our group is a short writing exercise followed by an hour and a half of silent writing on our projects.

At one point I felt like we'd done a lot of small group exercises, and wanted to gain an insight into what everyone was working on, so we did the following exercise instead:

Go round the table and ask everyone to briefly talk about their writing.  Each person then asks one or two yes/no questions.

Everyone responds either by raising their hand for 'yes' or shaking their heads for 'no'. You can also leap up and down to indicate a very strong 'yes'.

Questions can be about anything, and you can use them either to help guide your writing or to help find other people in the group who have similar interests.

Here are some random examples you might ask:

• I want to write a romance novel and am considering setting it in Paris, a traditional romantic setting, or Liverpool which is a less obvious setting. Who thinks Liverpool would be best?
• I need to know more about the life of a farmer. Has anyone got farming experience who I can interview in exchange for a drink?
• My character gets fired and that night goes back to his office and steals 35 computers. Does that sound realistic as the premise of a story?

This works best when you give participants some advance notice, so they have time to think of a question.

Murder Mystery Game

Groups of 3 or 4

This exercise takes 20-30 minutes and allows participants to create a murder mystery outline together.

Phase 1 (3 minutes)

• Split into groups of 3 or 4
• Decide as a group where the murder occurs (e.g. the opera house, a bar, a casino)
• Decide one person who will write the details of the victim and the murder itself.  Everyone else writes the details of one suspect each.
• The ‘victim author’ then invents a few extra details about the scene of the crime, who the victim was (a teenage punk, an adult opera singer, etc.) and the murder weapon and summarises this to the others.

Phase 2 (10 minutes)

Each person then writes a police report as if they are either describing the scene of the crime, or recording the notes from their interview with a single suspect:

Write the following:

• 1 line description of the victim.
• When they were last seen by a group of witnesses (and what they were doing).
• How the murder occurred in more detail based on the evidence available.

Write the following (from the perspective of the investigator):

• 1 line description of the suspect
• What they said during the interview (including what they claim to have doing when the murder occurs).
• A possible motivation (as determined by the police from other witnesses).

Phase 3 (5 minutes)

• Each person reads out their police reports to the other members of their small group
• As a group, decide who the murderer was and what actually happened

See more ideas on  creating murder mystery party games

The obscure movie exercise

Pick a famous movie and spend 5 minutes writing a scene from it from an unusual perspective.  Your aim is to achieve a balance between being too obscure and making it too obvious.  Feel free to add internal dialogue.

At the end of the 5 minutes, everyone reads their movie scene to the others and all the other participants see if they can guess what the movie is.

How to hint at romantic feelings

Write a scene with two people in a group, where you hint that one is romantically interested in the other, but the feelings aren’t reciprocated.

The goal of this exercise is to practice subtlety. Imagine you are setting a scene for the future where the characters feelings will become more important. Choose a situation like a work conference, meeting with a group of friends, etc. How do you indicate how the characters feel without them saying it in words?

Some tips for hinting at romantic feelings:

• Make the characters nervous and shy.
• Your protagonist leans forward.
• Asks deeper questions and listens intently.
• Finds ways to be close together.
• Mirrors their gestures.
• Gives lots of compliments.
• Makes eye contact, then looks away.
• Other people seem invisible to your protagonist.

A novel idea

Take it in turns to tell everyone else about a current project you’re working on (a book, screenplay, short story, etc.)

The other writers then brainstorm ideas for related stories you could write, or directions your project could take.  There are no right or wrong suggestions and the intention is to focus on big concepts, not little details.

This whole exercise takes around 15 minutes.

Creative writing prompts

Exercise for groups of 3-5

If you're in larger group, split up into groups of 3 or 4 people.

Everyone writes the first line of a story in the Zoom chat, or on paper. Other people can then choose this line as a writing prompt.

For this exercise:

• Say who the protagonist is.
• Reveal their motivation.
• Introduce any other characters

Once everyone's written a prompt, each author chooses a prompt (preferably someone eles's, but it can be your own if you feel really inspired by it.)  Then write for 10 minutes using this prompt. See if you can reveal who the protagonist is, what their motivation is (it can be a small motivation for a particular scene, it doesn't have to be a huge life goal), and introduce at least one new character.

Take turns reading out your stories to each other.

• Write in the first person.
• Have the protagonist interacting with an object or something in nature.
• The challenge is to create intrigue that makes the reader want to know more with just a single line.

Creative story cards / dice

Cut up a piece of paper and write one word on each of the pieces of paper, as follows:

Give each participant a couple of pieces of paper at random.  The first person says the first sentence of a story and they must use their first word as part of that sentence.  The second person then continues the story and must include their word in it, and so on.  Go round the group twice to complete the story.

You can also do this creative writing exercise with story dice, your own choice of words, or by asking participants to write random words down themselves, then shuffling all the cards together.

Alternative Christmas Story

Every Christmas adults tell kids stories about Santa Claus. In this exercise you write a Christmas story from an alternative dimension.

What if every Christmas Santa didn't fly around the world delivering presents on his sleigh pulled by reindeer? What if gnomes or aliens delivered the presents? Or perhaps it was the gnomes who are trying to emulate the humans? Or some other Christmas tradition entirely that we humans have never heard of!

Group writing exercise

If you're working with a group, give everyone a couple of minutes to write two possible themes for the new Christmas story. Each theme should be 5 words or less.

Shuffle the paper and distribute them at random. If you're working online, everyone types the themes into the Zoom or group chat. Each writer then spends 10 minutes writing a short story for children based on one of the two themes, or their own theme if they really want to.

If working alone, choose your own theme and spend 15 minutes writing a short story on it. See if you can create the magic of Christmas from another world!

Murder Mystery Mind Map

In a murder mystery story or courtroom drama, there's often conflicting information and lots of links between characters. A mind map is an ideal way to illustrate how everything ties together.

Split into groups of 3 or 4 people each and place a blank piece of A3 paper (double the size of A4) in the middle of each group. Discuss between you who the victim is and write their name in the middle of the piece of paper. Then brainstorm information about the murder, for example:

Feel free to expand out from any of these, e.g. to include more information on the different characters involved.

The idea is that  everyone writes at the same time!   Obviously, you can discuss ideas, but anyone can dive in and write their ideas on the mind map.

• Who was the victim? (job, appearance, hobbies, etc.)
• Who did the victim know?
• What were their possible motivations?
• What was the murder weapon?
• What locations are significant to the plot?

New Year’s resolutions for a fictional character

If you’re writing a piece of fiction, ask yourself how your protagonist would react to an everyday situation. This can help you to gain a deeper insight into who they are.

One way to do this is to imagine what their New Year’s resolutions would be.

If completing this exercise with a group, limit it to 3 to 5 resolutions per person. If some participants are historical fiction or non-fiction writers, they instead pick a celebrity and either write what their resolutions  will  be, or what their resolutions  should  be, their choice.

Verb Noun Fiction Exercise (Inspired by Stephen King)

Stephen King said, "I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops."

He also said, "Take any noun, put it with any verb, and you have a sentence. It never fails. Rocks explode. Jane transmits. Mountains float. These are all perfect sentences. Many such thoughts make little rational sense, but even the stranger ones (Plums deify!) have a kind of poetic weight that’s nice."

In this fiction writing exercise, start by brainstorming (either individually or collectively) seven verbs on seven different pieces of paper. Put those aside for later. Now brainstorm seven nouns. Randomly match the nouns and verbs so you have seven pairs. Choose a pair and write a piece of fiction for ten minutes. Avoid using any adverbs.

It’s the end of the world

It’s the end of the world!  For 5 minutes either:

If working as a team, then after the 5 minutes is up each writer reads their description out to the other participants.

• Describe how the world’s going to end, creating evocative images using similes or metaphors as you wish and tell the story from a global perspective, or
• Describe how you spend your final day before the world is destroyed.  Combine emotion and action to engage the reader.

7 Editing Exercises

For use after your first draft

I’ve listened to a lot of masterclasses on writing by successful authors and they all say variants of your first draft won’t be good and that’s fine. Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman summarise it the best:

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”  

Terry Pratchett

“For me, it’s always been a process of trying to convince myself that what I’m doing in a first draft isn’t important. One way you get through the wall is by convincing yourself that it doesn’t matter. No one is ever going to see your first draft. Nobody cares about your first draft. And that’s the thing that you may be agonising over, but honestly, whatever you’re doing can be fixed… For now, just get the words out. Get the story down however you can get it down, then fix it.”

Neil Gaiman

Once you’ve written your first draft, it will need editing to develop the plot, enhance the characters, and improve each scene in a myriad of ways – small and large. These seven creative editing exercises are designed to help with this stage of the process.

The First Sentence

Read the first paragraph of the novel, in particular the first sentence. Does it launch the reader straight into the action? According to  On Writing and Worldbuilding  by Timothy Hickson,  “The most persuasive opening lines are succinct, and not superfluous. To do this, it is often effective to limit it to a single central idea… This does not need to be the most important element, but it should be a central element that is interesting.” Ask yourself what element your opening sentence encapsulates and whether it’s the best one to capture your readers’ attention.

Consistency

Consistency is crucial in creative writing, whether it’s in relation to location, objects, or people.

It’s also crucial for personality, emotions and motivation.

Look at scenes where your protagonist makes an important decision. Are their motivations clear? Do any scenes force them to choose between two conflicting morals? If so, do you explore this? Do their emotions fit with what’s happened in previous scenes?

As you edit your manuscript, keep the characters’ personality, emotions and motivation in mind. If their behaviour is inconsistent, either edit it for consistency, or have someone comment on their strange behaviour or be surprised by it. Inconsistent behaviour can reveal that a character is keeping a secret, or is under stress, so characters don’t always need to be consistent. But when they’re not, there has to be a reason.  

Show Don’t Tell One

This exercise is the first in  The Emotional Craft of Fiction  by Donald Maass. It’s a writing guide with a plethora of editing exercises designed to help you reenergize your writing by thinking of what your character is feeling, and giving you the tools to make your reader feel something.  

• Select a moment in your story when your protagonist is moved, unsettled, or disturbed… Write down all the emotions inherent in this moment, both obvious and hidden.
• Next, considering what he is feeling, write down how your protagonist can act out. What is the biggest thing your protagonist can do? What would be explosive, out of bounds, or offensive? What would be symbolic? … Go sideways, underneath, or ahead. How can your protagonist show us a feeling we don’t expect to see?
• Finally, go back and delete all the emotions you wrote down at the beginning of this exercise. Let actions and spoken words do the work. Do they feel too big, dangerous, or over-the-top? Use them anyway. Others will tell you if you’ve gone too far, but more likely, you haven’t gone far enough.

Show Don’t Tell Two

Search for the following words in your book:

Whenever these words occur, ask yourself if you can demonstrate how your characters feel, rather than simply stating it. For each occasion, can you use physiological descriptors (a racing heart), actions (taking a step backwards) or dialogue to express what’s just happened instead? Will this enhance the scene and engage the reader more?

After The Action

Find a scene where your characters disagree – in particular a scene where your protagonist argues with friends or allies. What happens next?

It can be tempting to wrap up the action with a quick resolution. But what if a resentment lingers and mistrust builds? This creates a more interesting story arc and means a resolution can occur later, giving the character development a real dynamic.

Review how you resolve the action and see if you can stretch out the emotions for a more satisfying read.

Eliminating the Fluff

Ensure that the words used don’t detract from the enormity of the events your character is going through. Can you delete words like, “Quite”, “Little”, or “Rather”? 

Of “Very” Florence King once wrote: “ 'Very' is the most useless word in the English language and can always come out. More than useless, it is treacherous because it invariably weakens what it is intended to strengthen .” Delete it, or replace the word after it with a stronger word, which makes “Very” redundant.

“That,” is another common word used in creative writing which can often be deleted. Read a sentence as is, then reread it as if you deleted, “That”. If the meaning is the same, delete it.

Chapter Endings

When talking about chapter endings, James Patterson said,  “At the end, something has to propel you into the next chapter.”

Read how each of your chapters finish and ask yourself does it either:

• End on a cliff hanger? (R.L. Stine likes to finish every chapter in this method).
• End on a natural pause (for example, you’re changing point of view or location).

Review how you wrap up each of your chapters. Do you end at the best point in your story? Can you add anticipation to cliff hangers? Will you leave your readers wanting more?

How to run the writing exercises

The editing exercises are designed to be completed individually.

With the others, I've always run them as part of a creative writing group, where there's no teacher and we're all equal participants, therefore I keep any 'teaching' aspect to a minimum, preferring them to be prompts to generate ideas before everyone settles down to do the silent writing. We've recently gone online and if you run a group yourself, whether online or in person, you're welcome to use these exercises for free!

The times given are suggestions only and I normally get a feel for how everyone's doing when time's up and if it's obvious that everyone's still in the middle of a discussion, then I give them longer.  Where one group's in the middle of a discussion, but everyone else has finished, I sometimes have a 'soft start' to the silent writing, and say, "We're about to start the hour and a half of silent writing now, but if you're in the middle of a discussion, feel free to finish it first".

This way everyone gets to complete the discussion, but no-one's waiting for ages.  It's also important to emphasise that there's no wrong answers when being creative.

Still looking for more? Check out these creative writing prompts  or our dedicated Sci-Fi and Fantasy creative writing prompts

If you've enjoyed these creative writing exercises, please share them on social media, or link to them from your blog.

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7 Fun Writing Sub Plans for Substitute Teachers

You might be a full-time classroom teacher who needs to take an unexpected day off and wants to keep their class busy and engaged in your absence.

In that case, you’ll need to devise straightforward yet stimulating activities for an off-the-cuff lesson plan.

 Or, perhaps you’re that hardy breed of wandering samurai known as the substitute teacher. Either way, it pays to have a couple of fun, preplanned lesson plans and writing tasks quick to hand in case of emergencies.

 Most battle-worn subs have a few rabbits they can pull from their magic hat immediately as and when the occasion calls for it. But it’s always good to mix things up a little and add a new trick or two to that trusty old bag of tricks.

 In this article, we’ll explore seven fun writing tasks that promise to keep a room full of unfamiliar students equal parts engaged and entertained.

Daily Quick Writes For All Text Types

Our FUN DAILY QUICK WRITE TASKS will teach your students the fundamentals of CREATIVE WRITING across all text types. Packed with 52 ENGAGING ACTIVITIES

  1. Pick and Mix

This activity requires a little preparation ahead of time. Still, your energy investment will be more than justified by the number of activities you can pull out of your hat instantly when needed.

To prepare for this activity, you’ll need to compile a list of well-known but seldom-used words. For example, while most 14-year-olds will know words such as missile , sorcerer , and miniature , they will most likely rarely use them in their writing.

The words you choose for your list will depend on the age of the students you’ll be teaching. As a sub, you might not always know what age group you’ll be teaching, so it’s worth preparing a few different lists for different age groups in advance. There are innumerable suitable word lists for each grade, a quick Google search away.

Once you have your word lists, type them and print them off. Cut out each word and place it in a small drawstring bag or similar container.

Then, when you need a spontaneous activity, pull out your bag and ask a student to pull out three words at random. The students must write a poem that incorporates the three chosen words.

There are many ways to adapt this central idea.

You can challenge the students to use their words to write a specific type of poem, e.g. sonnet, calligram, haiku, etc. Or, you might impose a time limit for the students to complete the task, e.g. 1 minute, 5 minutes, etc.

Perhaps you can ask them to collaborate in small groups to produce a shared writing piece. You can also ask them to choose different numbers of words or write in other genres, such as a short story or a dialogue.

The number of variations on this activity is limited only by your imagination.

2. Mystery Meal Review

In this activity, students will be challenged to use language to conjure up a mirage of a meal in the minds of their readers.

First, ask the students to think about the best meal they have ever eaten. Tell them to close their eyes to engage their imagination better. Instruct them to think about what they ate during that meal. Ask a series of rhetorical questions to help trigger their memories and inspire their creativity.

•  What vegetables did they have?
• What type of meat was there?
• Was the food roasted? Fried? Boiled?
• Did they have sauces or seasonings?
• What was the texture of the food like in their mouths? Crunchy? Creamy? Melt in the mouth
• What colors were on their plate?
• How did the food smell?

Once they’ve had time to quietly reflect on the best meal they’ve ever eaten, it’s time to write about it. However, the twist in the tale here is that they cannot mention any of the food items they write about by name.

Instead, the students must describe the meal and its component items in such detail that the reader will be able to tell what they ate without the writer mentioning the food by name.

To make things a little easier, the students can use generic terms such as vegetable, meat, dessert, etc., but they must not use specific nouns such as chicken, carrots, gravy, etc.

This will challenge the student to use their powers of description to convey the details of their food to the reader. They’ll have to use sensory details appealing to the senses of sight, smell, taste, touch, and even sound.

When the students have finished writing their reviews of their best-ever meals, they can swap their descriptions with other classmates, who will then try to deduce the ingredients of their meal.

The winning writer will be the one with the most readers who correctly figure out the main elements of the writer’s meal.

3. Rewrite the Past

This activity is an excellent way to encourage the students to exercise their creativity while also instilling in the students the structure and features of recount writing .

To prepare for this activity, you’ll need to gather up a few old photographs to serve as visual stimuli for this writing activity. You can simply print these from the Internet. Alternatively, you can gather up a few props such as old postcards , an old-fashioned hat, a pair of spectacles, some old coins, etc.

Whatever the props used, students will employ them as a jumping-off point to kickstart their creativity as they write an imaginative first-person recount.

To revise the structure and features of a recount, check out our informative article here.

You can leave the background to their recount entirely up to the student and how they respond to the prompt. If you prefer, you can provide some context to the stimuli used, for example, in the form of some historical background or detail on who is in the photograph.

Either way, it will be incumbent upon the student to respond creatively to whatever prop you provide, all while considering the structural conventions and features of the recount text type.

If you wish to add a competitive element to the exercise, you might award a small prize for the most original, the funniest, etc.

4. Alternate Endings

Begin this writing activity by asking the students to name their favorite books or movies. Through a class vote, find the overall class favorite to base the activity on.

It doesn’t matter if some class members haven’t seen the movie (or read the book). You will start by retelling the story of the movie or book as a class. Pay particular attention to the ending. Make sure the class as a whole agrees on how the story comes to a climax and resolution.

Once this has been established, it’s time for students to kick their own pens into gear to write an alternative ending for the tale.

Encourage students to be as wacky and outlandish as possible. They can subvert the movie or book’s genre by tacking on a horror ending onto a comedy or vice versa, for example.

When students have completed their rewrite of the ending, encourage them to share their efforts with the class by reading their work out loud.

Which alternate ending did the class enjoy the most? Why?

5. Dialogue Reconstruction

Learning to write dialogue well is an effective way to breathe life into storytelling.

It takes practice and careful observation to develop the finely tuned ear required to write it well. This activity helps students to begin this process by carefully reconstructing a dialogue they overheard or participated in.

To get the ball rolling in this activity, first review the specifics of punctuating dialogue correctly. Do a little research to get up to speed if you are unsure about these rules. But, in brief, here are five of the most important of these rules:

•  Introduce dialogue with a comma, e.g. She said , “The hat makes your head look small.”
• Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote, e.g. “The hat makes your head look small ,” she said.
• Place periods and commas within closing quotations, e.g. “ It’s the hat that’s big, not my head . ”
• Use single quotes when using quotes within dialogue, e.g. “My mother told me, ‘ Your head is a perfect size, darling. ’ ”
• Mark a change of speaker by starting a new paragraph, i.e. skipping a line. For example,

  “The hat makes your head look small, ” she said.

“ It’s the hat that’s big, not my head,” he replied.

Technicalities out of the way, now it’s time for the students to get reconstructing!

Ask the students to think of a conversation they’ve had today. It might have been a trivial conversation they had with a parent over breakfast or with a friend or sibling on the way to school. Maybe it was some small talk with a worker in a shop. It doesn’t matter.

The task here is for the student to reflect on the conversation and attempt to recreate it on paper with as much faithfulness as possible.

Remind the students that we don’t speak as we write. Our spoken language is filled with half-finished sentences, slang, and non-standard pronunciations. Encourage students to accurately convey the rhythms and sounds of the speech they heard and/or uttered themselves.

This may require the students to veer from the usual grammar and spelling rules to render the dialogue convincingly.

Also, encourage the students to read their words aloud as they write to listen for their authenticity.

When students have finished, have them share their work with the class.

6. Found in Translation

This is a poetry writing activity, but with a twist.

Bring in a copy of a poem that is in a language other than English to show the students. Another European language will work best for this activity, as it is helpful if the students can make some educated guesses at the meanings of some of the words.

The students’ task will be to ‘translate’ the poem from a language they don’t read into English. Just in case some students do speak the language, be sure to have an alternative poem in another language to hand, too.

When you give the students the poem, don’t provide them with any background about the poem’s meaning.

Instead, tell them that they are to translate the poem into English. They can mimic the lines, spacing, and shape of the poem on the page. They can examine the words and attempt to deduce or guess at their meanings. Simply, they must do their best to interpret the poem and render its meaning on the page.

When the students have finished, have them share their work with the class and compare the wildly different interpretations of the original poem.

You might well be surprised at how close some students will come to the original subject matter!

Year Long Inference Based Writing Activities

Tap into the power of imagery in your classroom to master INFERENCE as AUTHORS and CRITICAL THINKERS .

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (26 Reviews)

This YEAR-LONG 500+ PAGE unit is packed with robust opportunities for your students to develop the critical skill of inference through fun imagery, powerful thinking tools, and graphic organizers.

7. In Case of Emergency, Break Glass!

Writing prompts are the quickest, most straightforward way to get those pens moving and every sub worth their salt should have a few tried-and-tested prompts to hand at all times.

Here are five quick writing prompts guaranteed to get the ink flowing.

•  You have a crocodile as a pet. Write about what it’s like to keep a croc as a household pet.
• You are going to interview your favorite celebrity. What questions do you ask?
• You have been appointed President of the World . What are the first laws you would change and why?
• Close your eyes, open a book and point at the page. Now, open your eyes again. What is the first word you see? Write about this word for five minutes.
• Write about ten things you could do to improve your life. Write about ten things you could do to improve the life of the people around you.

The Final Bell

So, there we have seven engaging writing tasks that make perfect additions to any sub’s bag of tricks. Each activity is quick and easy, with only a few requiring anything more than a minute or two in preparation in the form of easy-to-find materials.

Not only are these the perfect go-tos for any harassed substitute, but they are also useful to have in reserve for regular class teachers too. The teaching day is full of lots of little transitions, and it is always helpful to have a few quick, off-the-cuff activities to fall back on in such situations.

OTHER GREAT ARTICLES FOR SUBSTITUTE TEACHERS

17 Fun First Day Of School Writing Activities

10 fun writing activities for the reluctant writer

13 Fun Reading Activities for Any Book

10 Fun Classroom Writing Games to Improve Literacy Skills

5 Fun Seasonal Writing Activities Students and Teachers Love

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51 Creative Writing Activities For The Classroom: Comics, Prompts, Games, And Pretend Play

January 4, 2024 //  by  Milka Kariuki

Creative writing can be tough for learners of any age. From knowing where to start to establishing the vocabulary to develop their story, there are a bunch of different skills they’ll need to perfect their creative writing pieces. There are so many creative writing activities out there, but which ones are best for your kiddos? Our list of 51 creative writing activities is the perfect place to start looking if you’ve got a creative writing unit coming up! Read on and see which ones might grab your little writers’ attention!

1. Make Your Own Comic Books

We bet your kiddos just love comic books! Let them create their very own in the style of the super popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid books! Encourage your students to come up with their own plot, dialogue, and illustrations to spark their creativity. Even your most reluctant writers will love this fun activity! 

Learn More: Puffin Schools

2. Mad Libs

Using Mad Libs is a super popular way to develop your little creative writers! Use these free printables to get their creative juices flowing as they try to come up with words to fill the gaps to create weird and wonderful new stories. The best thing is that you can use these printables as many times as you like as their answers will be different each time!

Learn More: Teacher Vision

3. Flash Fiction

Flash fiction is a fantastic way to get your kiddies writing creatively while keeping things short and sweet! Use the range you prompts included in this resource to challenge them to write a creative story in less than 100 words. Flash fiction is amazing because your students won’t be overwhelmed by a huge writing task and it also means that your more confident writers will need to focus on the quality of their work, not the quantity! 

Learn More: TES

4. Write a Story Based on the Ending

Test your students’ creativity by providing them with writing prompts that start at the end! In backward story writing, your budding writers will need to plan and pen a story that eventually leads to the ending you give them. This idea is a fantastic way to turn your traditional creative writing lesson on its head and in many ways take the pressure off your kids, as ending their stories is often the most difficult part for them!

Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers

5. Found Poetry

Your learners will love this fun and creative found poetry activity. You can encourage them to collect words or a group of words from a favorite story or song then write them on a piece of paper or cut them out of a printed page. The overall goal is to have them rearrange the words differently to make an interesting poem with a unique writing style or genre!

Learn More: Homeschooling Ideas

6. Picture Dictionary

A picture dictionary is a brilliant way to support every member of your younger elementary class in their creative writing. The words paired with pictures give your writers a ‘dictionary’ that they can use pretty independently, so your less confident writers or non-native English-speaking students can still access your writing lessons! 

Learn More: Twinkl

7. Creative Journal Writing

Why not start a creative journal with your kiddos? Have them engage in daily journaling activities by giving them a different creative prompt each day. For instance, write a story about what would happen if dogs took over the world or what would you do if you were the security guard at a zoo and someone stole an animal? The fun is never-ending with these prompts!  

Learn More: Think Written  

8. Roll a Story

Roll-a-Story is one of the best ways to help any of your kids who are suffering from a bout of writer’s block! They’ll roll the dice to discover the character, setting, and problem for their story then set to work weaving their creative tale! It could be a story about a wise doctor being chased by a mysterious creature in a casino, or maybe a rich artist losing their wallet in a library. Then it’s up to your students to fill in the gaps!

Learn More: TPT

9. Pass-it-on Story Writing

There’s no telling quite where this fun writing game will end up! Start by writing the first sentence of a story on a piece of paper then pass it around your class, having your kids come up with a sentence that continues the story. The paper is then passed around the whole class until every student has contributed. Finally, once it makes its way back to you, read out your collaborative story to the whole class!

Learn More: Minds In Bloom

10. Picture Writing Prompts

Creative writing prompts activities test not only your little ones’ imaginations but also their ability to craft a story and dialogue from that. Display an intriguing picture prompt for your class and have a discussion about it, recording their ideas. You could discuss what the person or animal in the picture is doing or what they’re thinking, where they think the picture was taken, and much more. They can use your collective notes to inspire their story!

Learn More: Pandora Post

11. What’s the Question?

What’s the Question is a simple, yet super engaging game that requires your young learners to think creatively. Spark their creativity by writing an answer on the whiteboard such as “the moon would explode,” and task your kiddos with coming up with a question to match it. There’ll be lots of laughs as everyone shares what they came up with!

Learn More: That Afterschool Life

12. Creative Writing Printables

This website is absolutely full of quick and fun graphics for children that’ll encourage their creative writing! The cute graphics and simple directions make it an easy bellringer activity for your writing class. Just print out some of these cool sheets and let your students get creative as they write thank-you notes to helpful heroes or finish little cartoon comics!

Learn More: Jarrett Lerner

13. Paint Chip Poetry

Nothing says creative writing quite like figurative language! Grab some of these free paint swatches from your local home improvement store and have your students create metaphors about their chosen color! We love this low-prep activity as once your kids have finished their poems, they’re a ready-made multi-colored display that’ll brighten the walls of your classroom! 

Learn More: Fabulous In Fifth

14. Story Storm Activities

Once again, these Jarrett Lerner activities do not disappoint! Your students will have a blast pretending they are the principal for a day and they’ll get to create their very own rules for the school. Not only will this be an engaging writing exercise that we’re sure they’ll love getting creative with, but it also challenges children to think about why rules in school are important.

Learn More: Tara Lazar

15. Story Bag

Story bags are a fantastic way to destroy any kind of writer’s block! Grab an assortment of random objects from your home or classroom and pop them into the story bag. Next, gather your students around and pull out all the objects in the bag. Can they then write a story connecting all the items? Be sure to leave time to let them share their stories at the end of the lesson!

Learn More: Life Hack

16. Change the Ending

An easy way to ease your kiddos into the writing process is by having them rewrite part of a story. Grab their favorite read-aloud, and challenge them to come up with a new ending! They’ll need to finish the story in a way that makes sense, but aside from that, they can be as creative as they like! Your reluctant readers will like this one as much of the work on setting and characters has already been done! 

Learn More: Make Beliefs Comix

17. Plot Twist Writing Prompts

BUT WAIT – there’s a twist…This fun writing practice is perfect for older middle or high school but could also be simplified for younger students. Write these twist prompts on notecards and have your kids draw one each before letting them go off and write a story around their chosen twist! They’ll be eager to share their finished work with classmates at the end. After all, who doesn’t love a good plot twist?

Learn More: Pinterest

18.  Craft Box Craft

Every kid loves the book The Day the Crayons Quit for its creative narrative about this familiar box of coloring supplies! This extension activity rolls art and creative writing into one! Your students will have fun coming up with dialogue for each of the different crayons and you could even make it into a fun display for your classroom walls!

Learn More: Buggy And Buddy

19. Dialogue Pictures

Personalizing writing activities always makes it more engaging for kids! Print out a picture of yourself with a blank speech bubble, and model how to add in some dialogue. Then, let your kiddos practice speech bubbling with a photo of themselves, a pet, or a favorite celebrity, and have them come up with some interesting things for each of their subjects to say!

Learn More: SSS Teaching

20. Figurative Language Tasting

Your students will be creative writers in no time after practicing their figurative language with food tasting! Not only do tasty treats make this activity incredibly fun, but it also brings the writing process of metaphors and hyperbole to life. Just give each of your kids a few pieces of candy or snacks, and have them practice writing figures of speech relating to each one! They’ll have the words on the tip of their tongue- literally! 

Learn More: It’s Lit Teaching

21. Explode the Moment

One of my favorite writing concepts as a teacher is ‘exploding the moment’. This method is perfect for showing your kiddies that even the smallest moment can be turned into an imaginative, descriptive story! Start by having them brainstorm some ideas and expand on tiny memories like losing a tooth, getting a pet, or making a winning goal in a soccer game!

Learn More: Raise The Bar Reading

22. Round-Robin Storytelling

Round-robin storytelling is the perfect collaborative creative writing activity! This one can be done verbally or in writing, and it challenges your class to build a story using a given set of words. They’ll have a fun and challenging time figuring out how to incorporate each piece into one cohesive story.

Learn More: Random Acts Of Kindness

23. Acrostic Poems

Acrostic poetry is one of the least intimidating creative writing exercises as there are no rules other than starting each line with the letter from a word. Challenge your kiddies to use each letter in their name to write lines of poetry about themselves, or they could choose to write about their favorite food or animal!

Learn More: Surfin’ Through Second

24. Sentence Sticks

This exercise requires minimal prep and can be used in so many different ways. All you’ll need are some craft sticks in which you will write sentences with blanks and word banks. Your young writers can then pull a stick and fill in the blanks to practice creative thinking! Task them with a different goal each time; can they make the sentence silly or sad for example?

Learn More: Liz’s Early Learning Spot

25. Conversation Prompts

These fun prompts require your kids to think creatively and answer a range of interesting questions. They’ll be excited to write stories about waking up with a mermaid tail or describe what is in a mystery package delivered to their doorstep! These creative prompts are perfect for bellringers or transitions throughout the school day!

Learn More: Twitter

26. Pretend Play Writing

Do you remember playing with fake money and fake food when you were younger? This idea takes it a step further by incorporating some writing practice! All you’ll have to do is print the templates for dollars, shopping lists, and recipes then let your little learners have fun with these play-pretend writing ideas!

Learn More: Prekinders

27. Question Cubes

Your class will be on a roll with these amazing question cubes! Whether the cubes are used for responding to a story, brainstorming the plot of a story, or practicing speech and listening, they are an easy, affordable tool for your little readers and writers! You can snag some foam dice at the dollar store and hot glue questions on each side to spark some creative writing ideas for your class.

Learn More: A Love 4 Teaching

28. Balderdash

Not only is Balderdash an addicting board game, but it can even be used in the classroom! Your little learners will have a blast as they create made-up, imaginative definitions for words, important people, and dates. Whoever guesses the real answer out of the mix wins the points!

Learn More: EB Academics

29. Two Sentence Horror Story

This creative writing exercise is best for older students and would be a great one to try out around Halloween! You’ll be challenging your learners to write a story that runs chills up their readers’ spines, but there’s a twist…the story can only be two sentences long! Your kiddos will love writing and sharing their writing to see who can come up with the spookiest short story!

30. Telephone Pictionary

Another game that your kids will be begging to play over and over again is telephone pictionary! The first player will write down a random phrase, and the next person must draw their interpretation of the phrase. The third player will write what they think the picture is and so on!

Learn More: Imagine Forest

31. Consequences

You need at least two players for this fun creative writing game. Each pair or group of kids will start by having one person write a random phrase and conceal it by folding the paper. Then, they pass it to the next student to fill in the blank using the prompt. Once all the blanks are filled in, let them unfold the paper and get ready to reveal some seriously silly stories!

32. Story Wands

​​Story wands are a fun way to have your kids respond to stories and study what makes something their favorite. Responding to what they’re reading is a super helpful exercise in preparing them for creative writing as it allows your students to connect to their favorite stories. By figuring out what elements make stories great, this is sure to help them in their own creative writing assignments!

Learn More: Little Lifelong Learners

33. The Best Part of Me

Probably my favorite creative writing activity, this one is infused with social-emotional learning and self-esteem building! Let your students get to choose their favorite physical characteristics about themselves; whether it be their eyes, hands, feet, etc. Then, they take a picture to attach to their written reasoning! Make sure to boost the creative element of this writing task by encouraging your learners to use a bunch of adjectives and some figurative language!

Learn More: Sarah Gardner Teaching

34. Me From A-Z

Challenge your kiddos to get creative by coming up with 26 different words to describe themselves! Me From A-Z gives your students the opportunity to explore who they are by coming up with words describing them in some way using each letter of the alphabet. Why not let them decorate their lists and turn them into a display celebrating the uniqueness of each of your class members?

35. How to Make Hot Chocolate

How-to writing is a great way to get the creative writing wheels turning in your kiddies’ brains! They’ll have a fun time coming up with their instructions and ways to explain how to make hot chocolate! Do they have a secret recipe that’ll make the best-ever hot cocoa!? Once they’ve written their instructions, be sure to try them out and do a taste-test of their recipes!

Learn More: Teacher Mama

36. Give Yourself a Hand

Hands up if you love this idea! For this creative writing activity, have your little ones trace their hand on a piece of paper and decorate it with accessories. Then, encourage them to write a list of all the different things they do with their hands all over their tracing! This is a great warm-up to get the creative gears turning.

Learn More: Write Now Troup

37. Word Picture Poem

A word picture poem is a fantastic way to challenge your kids to write descriptive poetry about a common object! Your little poets will learn to find beauty in ordinary things and strengthen their sensory language skills and their vocabulary. For some added fun, you can even task them with writing a short story about the item as well! The results are sure to be fun to read!

Learn More: Teaching With Terhune

38. Shape Poem

Shape poems are some of the most creative poetry as they combine words and art into one! First, your young poets can choose an object to use as their muse and lightly trace an outline onto some paper. Then, they’ll write words along the outlined shape in the form of a poem that describes the object! The result is a bunch of fun and striking poems that’ll look great displayed around your classroom!

39. Crazy Hair Poetry

Here’s another one that combines writing and art! Start by guiding your kiddos in drawing a self-portrait then adding some crazy hair by blowing watercolor paints around! After the paint dries, have your kids come up with a short but creative poem describing their hair art.

Learn More: Grade School Giggles

40. Fingerprint Poetry

Nothing is more creative than getting your kiddies to let down the barriers in their mind and tap into their stream of consciousness! Show them how to pick a topic and then let their words flow straight from mind to paper in a swirling pattern. This fingerprint idea can be used for a get-to-know-you activity as well!

Learn More: Kristen Dembroski

41. Doggie Haiku Poems

Put a fun twist on classic haiku poetry! Your students will have a paw-some time writing three-line poems about dogs which they can then illustrate afterwards! Before starting the activity, you can use Dogku by Andrew Clements as a read-aloud to get your class hooked on this idea!

Learn More: Teaching Fourth

42. Fractured Fairy Tale

Ever wondered if the Big Bad Wolf was framed? Or if Sleeping Beauty was actually a snorer? Your writers in training will have a fun time taking a classic fairytale and putting their own spin on it! Following five simple steps, your kids will be funky fairytale authors in no time!

43. Letter Writing

These creative letter-writing prompts are sure to boost your kiddies’ imaginative writing skills! Whether writing to a pen pal or a favorite celebrity, letter writing is a great way to practice handwriting, word flow, descriptive language, and communicating all rolled into one! Have your writers grab their pencils and let the creativity flow as they write fun response letters to these prompts!

44. Hersey’s Kisses Similes

Teach sensory language and similes by connecting this tasty treat with the sense of taste! Your students will have a lovely time brainstorming how chocolate connects to each of our senses and applying that knowledge by writing some sweet similies! What a fantastic way to teach them how to use these essential creative writing tools!

Learn More: Teacher By The Beach

45. Sensory Poetry

Another great way to teach sensory details is to have your learners write poems about their favorite foods! Task them with writing a line for each sense to describe the food! Everyone will be hungry after this creative writing lesson so it might be a good idea to have some snacks on hand!

Learn More: Mrs. Tice’s Class

46. Season Personification

Each season of weather has an array of characteristics making this the perfect activity to practice personification in creative writing! Allow your little writers to choose a season to write about as if it were a person with human characteristics. Winter is a no-brainer! It’s Elsa!

Learn More: Write Shop

47. Class Book of Character Traits

To be creative writers, your kids need to know how to create realistic characters for their stories. For this class book, you’ll start by giving each student two opposing character traits. Next, have them demonstrate these traits by illustrating two characters and displaying them through dialogue!

Learn More: Crafting Connections

48. Socialgrams

With Instagram being all the rage these days, your kiddos will have a fun time creating a ‘socialgram’ on paper! Challenge them to create a descriptive and engaging caption to go along with their “photo” in the post. Then, classmates can comment on each other’s work! 

Learn More: Breezy Special Ed

49. Story Introduction Worksheets

Creative writing worksheets are a simple, minimal-prep tool to use in your creative writing units. Print out a variety of options, and have your kids practice their skills by finishing imaginative story introductions. By giving them a place to start their story, you can really take the pressure off your kids which will help ease them into the creative writing process!

Learn More: Lanternfish ESL

50. Dialogue Worksheets

Here’s another low-prep option for the last-minute planners! Pre-written dialogue can help guide the mood of the story and allow your kiddies to just focus on filling in the characters’ actions. This is also a great way to model how dialogue is spaced out and balanced in a story!

Learn More: ESL Writing Worksheets

51. Character Trait Posters

In this personalized character trait activity, your students will create a poster of themselves and label it with a bunch of different character traits. Descriptive, interesting characters are what make a story captivating, so this is a great introduction to understanding characters and their physical as well as personality traits! This is an activity that’s sure to help them build a strong foundation for their creative writing skills to build from!

Learn More: Life In First Grade

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Provide your students with nonfiction texts paired with AI-powered writing prompts, instead of multiple-choice questions, to enable deeper thinking.

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Help your students advance from fragmented and run-on sentences to complex and well structured ones.

Using the evidence-based strategy of sentence combining, students combine multiple ideas into a single sentence. They then receive instant feedback designed to help them improve their clarity and precision.

Quill Lessons

The Quill Lessons tool enables teachers to lead whole-class and small-group writing instruction.

Teachers control interactive slides that contain writing prompts, and the entire class responds to each prompt. Each Quill Lessons activity provides a lesson plan, writing prompts, discussion topics, and a follow up independent practice activity.

Quill Diagnostic

Quickly determine which skills your students need to work on with our diagnostics.

The diagnostics cover vital sentence construction skills and generate personalized learning plans based on the student’s performance.

Quill Proofreader

Proofreader teaches your students editing skills by having them proofread passages.

Students edit passages and receive personalized exercises based on their results. With over 100 expository passages, Proofreader gives students the practice they need to spot common grammatical errors.

Quill Grammar

Students practice basic grammar skills, from comma placement to parallel structure.

Quill Grammar has over 150 sentence writing activities to help your students. Our activities are designed to be completed in 10 minutes so you have the freedom to use them in the way that works best for your classroom.

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