These exercises develop writing range and flexibility. They were originally compiled by emsenn for a writing team and are preserved here as craft exercises useful for any writer.
Creative writing prompts
Force a villain on a vacation
You have the opportunity to take someone you dislike — fictional or real — and send them anyplace you choose, as long as it’s a real place on earth. You have now intercepted a post card from this person, sent back to their associates. What does it say?
You’re a disgruntled baby
400-600 words. Continue this sentence: “I know I’m only 20 months old, but I don’t think it’s right that my parents…”
You’ve won!
300-500 words. Continue this sentence: “When I received the letter, I almost threw it away. It looked like a scam. When I opened it, it definitely looked like a scam. No one just gives this sort of thing away. But here I am, watching the delivery crew drop off a brand new…”
Give them a condiment
300-500 words. Think of three fictional characters. In order, describe each — in a complimentary manner — by comparing them to one of the following: ketchup, mayonnaise, peanut sauce.
Craft exercises
Word substitution and sentence reconstruction
- Go to Wikipedia and find a random article.
- Write 150 words about the topic. Choose your own writing type and tone.
- In your piece, use the table below to replace characters at specific positions. For each row, go to the character position indicated and replace it with the suggested character. Rewrite the text to make sense around the new character, replacing words or sentences as needed, while keeping the document truthful to the Wikipedia article — and keeping the characters in the right positions.
| Position | Character |
|---|---|
| 12 | e |
| 88 | p |
| 156 | i |
| 287 | o |
The “Konami Code” variant uses the same method with different character positions.
Neither slinky nor scarf
300-500 words. Describe a snake by writing about the ways in which it differs from a slinky and a scarf — but you may not directly mention the snake, slinkies, or scarves.
This exercise trains comparative writing: defining something by its differences from similar things, without naming any of the three directly. It forces precision about what makes each thing distinctive.
Writing flow training
The assignment
The assignment is the unit of work for commercial writing. Examples: a bundle of pieces for a client, a single piece written as a bid, a series of emails for an internal campaign.
Assignment properties
Assignment properties are standardized pieces of information: length requirements, tone, perspective, address. They’re inherited in layers:
- The assignment template provides defaults.
- The style guide for the content type overrides or extends those defaults.
- The individual assignment may include its own properties on top.
Example of assignment properties:
minimum-length: 700
recommended-length: 900
max-length: 1000
tone: sophisticated terse