Here are 4 creative writing ideas to improve your writing. Read through this piece and take away whatever seems of value to you and your work. All the best in your endeavours.
Writing exercises to spark creativity
- Freewriting
Freewriting is aimed at capturing your ideas as they occur, without any judgment. It comes down to writing whatever comes to mind about a specific topic for a set amount of time, without editing what you write straight away. You let the words flow from your fingers without pausing to question or criticize what you’ve written.
How to freewrite
How do you go about freewriting? You can follow these steps:
- First, set a timer for a certain amount of time – for example, 10 minutes.
- Then, pick a topic you’d like to write about. Having trouble coming up with a topic? Cruise the Internet for a few minutes and jot down topics ideas. You can freewrite about anything.
- After you’ve picked something, start writing whatever comes to mind about the topic, and don’t stop until the time is up!
After you’re finished, take a look at what you’ve written. Are there any words, phrases, or sentences that you find interesting, little gems, worth noting?
- Extend and advance
Extend and advance is an improvisation exercise, just like freewriting. Only this time, when the timer beeps, reset the time and keep writing, extending whatever point you’re writing about at that point, to see where your thoughts take you. And, when the timer beeps again, you’ll advance to a new point.
How to extend and advance
So, how does this writing exercise work? Make sure to set a timer at certain intervals or keep track of time by watching the clock. The intervals could look like this:
- Freewriting to get your gears going (1 minute)
- When the timer goes off, extend on whatever point you’re at (1 minute)
- Advance to a new point (1 minute)
- Extend again on the point where you’re at now (1 minute)
- Advance to a new point (1 minute)
- Wrap things up! (30 seconds)
Extending and advancing can help you generate new ideas or explore old ones in a different way. Also, it’s an excellent exercise for improving your ability to write short content quickly.
- Engage with your audience
Engage with your audience be they email recipients, friends, writing associates. Reach out to these people, send them a message, or even schedule a call with one or two of them. Ask them questions like “what would you like to read on my blog?”, “what are you struggling with?”, or “what do you want to know about my product or service?”
This is a great way to trigger ideas about your writing. You’ll be surprised by the insights that come up, and you can definitely use those for your writing!
- Use creative writing prompts
Creative writing prompting will flex your writing muscles. There are lots of creative writing prompts available online, or you can create your own. Examples of these prompts are: write about the first day at a new job, write about navigating through an unfamiliar city, write about how to make the perfect omelet (or pizza!), write about what year you would travel to if you could time travel, reminisce about a favourite family festivity, a great celebration and so on.
