Ten Wacky Prompts for Ten Minute Writing Exercises

A ten minute writing exercise x 10 Ten-minute writing exercises are a great way to get the creative juices flowing and how better to do that than to make them a litter weird and wacky. Get your writing group started on these and you will be surprised at the variety of responses. The sillier the

A Twist in the Tale

A ten minute writing exercise Write a Story with a Twist in the Tale. Many writing clubs have a free writing period during their meetups – ten minutes to write anything you want. Ten minutes of free-flowing thought unconstrained by concerns of plot, character development, grammar or style. Too easy, you say, your pen poised

Two Truths and A Lie

A ten minute writing exercise The object of this exercise is to develop an ability to write convincing detail in fiction. Everybody is to write two lies and one truth about themselves and then the group guesses which of the statements is the true one. The challenge is to make the lies as compellingly realistic

Write a Complete Story in Ten Minutes

A ten minute writing exercise. Write a complete story in ten minutes. At its most fundamental, a story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Simple enough; maybe, but challenging when you only have ten minutes to write the story. WOW – ten minutes! No worries; you’re a writer, you’ve done it before. You

Write a Fake News Article

A ten minute writing exercise Writing a fake news article can get the creative juices flowing and may spark an idea for a story. Your fake news article could be a distortion of current news, something completely fictional or even a humourous piece, but it must read like a news report. Write a Fake News

Revealing Character Through Dialogue

A ten minute writing exercise Part of writing good dialogue is to give your character a unique voice. Good dialogue will give insight into how the character feels, and what motivates them to act. It tells us something about them and this can be done through: choice of words, tone, and body language. In order

Getting Into Your Character’s Head

A ten minute writing exercise A fiction writer needs to get into their character’s head in order to make your characters interesting and alive in a way that readers will find them believable. This is perhaps most difficult when your character is unlikable, or holds views completely opposed to your own. Earlier this year I

The Order of Ideas

A ten minute writing exercise A writer orders their ideas so the reader can comfortably follow along and understand what they are reading. Imagine the reader is your dance partner. You are the lead and are responsible for guiding your reader through the steps, so you are both dancing as one. If you falter, your

Setting the Scene

A ten minute writing exercise To set the scene is to create the conditions in which the story can happen. It is about conveying the tone of the story, giving some sense of what is to come. Today I was challenged to set the scene from two different and opposing sides. To describe the same

From Letters to Words to Sentences

A ten minute writing exercise I was recently challenged to use a group of nine letters to form three words of three or more letters and then to present those three words in a sentence. This pushes the writer to use the mind in two ways – to create words from letters and then to