Two Fun Writing Exercises You Need to Try

Hello, fellow human! I hope you’re having a wonderful day!

The other day I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write, so I decided to try out a couple of writing exercises that had been stirring in my mind for a while. These turned out to be a ton of fun and quite helpful, so I decided to share them with you today! If you’re a writer of any kind (e.g. a fiction writer, nonfiction writer, blogger, poet, etc.) these will help you out, I’m sure! Let’s jump right in!

Writing Exercise #1: Rewriting Sentences

This is an awesome exercise! Try writing out a mediocre sentence in any style you want. If you’re a fiction writer, perhaps it would be a sentence of description or dialogue. If you write non-fiction, write a sentence that’s non-fiction. But don’t try too hard–just write something you might write in a first draft–nothing polished or overthought.

For an example, let’s just say I wrote out this sentence of description:

Sweat ran down his face, causing it to glisten in the torchlight.

Okay, now we have our mediocre sentence! It’s not awful, but it’s not too fancy either. Now, while still trying to get the point of your sentence across, take some time to make the sentence pop. Let me see if I can improve our sentence here…

His sweat-soaked skin gleamed in the sharp, flickering torchlight.

That’s a little better than our previous sentence–I’m sure you get the point! Basically, the idea is to do your best to perfect your sentences so that writing high-quality sentences becomes more like muscle memory. That way, all of your sentences will become tighter right off the bat!

Here are a few sentences that I practised with the other day:

She had wavy blond hair.

Her hair rippled down her shoulders like a golden waterfall.

His mouth opened in a crooked smile.

His smile gaped in the form of a disfigured cave.

The sun set behind the mountains.

The mountains pulled the sun below their peeks, quenching its fire.

All right! Moving on!

Writing Exercise #2: Analyzing Published Books

At first glance, this exercise seems like a no-brainer.

“Caleb, I’m a writer! Of course I’m going to analyze books! I read books all the time to get better at writing!”

Well, hear me out. Simply reading books isn’t exactly what I meant. What I did when I tried out this exercise was to actually pick up a book and write down a paragraph or two from the story! Then I would carefully analyze how it was written, what the prose were like, etc.! I also tried out editing the sentences of the book to alter it to my style/see how I would’ve written the paragraph. This way you’re able to pick apart the writing even more than just giving it a quick read-over.

You could do this with not only novels, but also non-fiction books and poetry!

Well, there you have it! Two fun writing exercises that I would highly recommend everyone try! They’re very enjoyable, and I feel like I benefited from them quite a bit. I’ll definitely be using them more in the future to tighten up my writing and try to learn.

What about you? Have you ever tried something like this before? Are you going to try out these two exercises? Let me know in the comments below!!

Until later,

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