Creative Writing Exercises For Your Improvement As A Writer
A lot of people's experiences of creative writing exercises were back in secondary school English classes; where their teacher would let them know where to begin and maybe follow up with an occasional prompt or two. The structure for these exercises is frequently, "Say this, now make something up, now say that"
It didn't just not teach you anything, it also limited your creativity at the same time - the worst of both worlds.
Could it be any wonder then that a lot of writers today wouldn't give creative writing exercises the time of day? They were bored half to death by them!
And this is rather sad, mainly because these exercises can genuinely provide many advantages, and give you the implements to improve your writing skills significantly - when they're done correctly.
The simple truth is, the way that your highschool teacher attempted to direct you through those exercises was simply uninspiring (except maybe for anyone who had the rare fortune of a decent teacher). They may actually have been just waiting around for the bell to ring so they could have another nap in the teachers' lounge.
So how should they be performed?
Well, for starters, they require direction and purpose. The goal of your highschool exercises was to write a story. However , I believe we can recognize that to create a story, one dosen't really require an exercise.
The objective of such an exercise therefore, is to practice a really specific writing skill in a fashion that challenges that skill and pushes you to improve it.
It's by doing this that you're able to target one of your writing weaknesses, then another, and then another, and so on and so forth, having the all around impact of improving the quality of your writing piece by piece, skill by skill - and not just writing a story in the interest of writing a story.
Now we know the benefits. However, you could be thinking, "excellent, but that still does not seem like a great deal of fun."
And yet once again, it most likely has more to do with the way in which your old high school teacher presented them back in the day. Creative writing exercises really can be fun and drastically strengthen your writing simultaneously.
Something that many of us resented about them was the limitations put on their creativity by these kinds of exercises, when you are told what and how to write. What quality exercises try to accomplish however, is to leverage and empower your creativity to solve a problem. You've still got guidelines, but those guidelines are there to push you to adapt, and not just to conform.
It didn't just not teach you anything, it also limited your creativity at the same time - the worst of both worlds.
Could it be any wonder then that a lot of writers today wouldn't give creative writing exercises the time of day? They were bored half to death by them!
And this is rather sad, mainly because these exercises can genuinely provide many advantages, and give you the implements to improve your writing skills significantly - when they're done correctly.
The simple truth is, the way that your highschool teacher attempted to direct you through those exercises was simply uninspiring (except maybe for anyone who had the rare fortune of a decent teacher). They may actually have been just waiting around for the bell to ring so they could have another nap in the teachers' lounge.
So how should they be performed?
Well, for starters, they require direction and purpose. The goal of your highschool exercises was to write a story. However , I believe we can recognize that to create a story, one dosen't really require an exercise.
The objective of such an exercise therefore, is to practice a really specific writing skill in a fashion that challenges that skill and pushes you to improve it.
It's by doing this that you're able to target one of your writing weaknesses, then another, and then another, and so on and so forth, having the all around impact of improving the quality of your writing piece by piece, skill by skill - and not just writing a story in the interest of writing a story.
Now we know the benefits. However, you could be thinking, "excellent, but that still does not seem like a great deal of fun."
And yet once again, it most likely has more to do with the way in which your old high school teacher presented them back in the day. Creative writing exercises really can be fun and drastically strengthen your writing simultaneously.
Something that many of us resented about them was the limitations put on their creativity by these kinds of exercises, when you are told what and how to write. What quality exercises try to accomplish however, is to leverage and empower your creativity to solve a problem. You've still got guidelines, but those guidelines are there to push you to adapt, and not just to conform.
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