creative writing lessons learned

10 Essential Lessons You’ll Learn in a Creative Writing Workshop

by Melissa Donovan | Jul 11, 2023 | Creative Writing | 9 comments

What can you learn in a creative writing workshop?

When I look back over all my years of formal education, from preschool through college, only a few classes stand out as truly educational in a life-changing way.

In sixth grade, we did a section on space, which fascinated me. I retained a lot of what I learned. Later, I took astronomy and learned even more about the universe. A class on women writers exposed me to a whole world of literature I didn’t know existed. And two writing workshops (poetry and creative writing) put me on the path to becoming a professional writer.

The main difference between a regular class and a workshop is that a workshop is interactive. You work together with your fellow students, critiquing each other’s work, asking questions, and exchanging insights. Whatever you can learn from a single instructor is multiplied by all the knowledge and wisdom you gain by sharing ideas with a roomful of your peers.

What You Can Learn from a Creative Writing Workshop

2. Find out what your writing strengths are. The best part about receiving critiques from your peers is that they tell you what you’re doing right, which is reassuring. When you know that your writing skills have a solid foundation, it’s easier to accept that you still have work to do.

3. Accept the weaknesses in your writing. No matter how good your writing is now, there are things you can do to improve it. When ten of your classmates agree that certain elements in your prose need touching up or that you need to hit the grammar books, all you can do is accept it and dig your heels in.

4. Learn to handle critiques of your work. The first few critiques might be a bit rough, but once you see how all the suggestions make your writing better, you’ll start looking forward to them. You’ll learn how to separate yourself from your work, and you’ll be able to not only handle but actually embrace (and look forward to) critiques. This will also prepare you for real-world critics and their reviews.

5. Help others improve their work. When other writers put your suggestions into action or express appreciation for your recommendations and then tell you that your feedback helped them improve their writing, it feels good, especially when the arrangement is reciprocal.

6. Meet people who share your passion. There’s nothing like sitting in a room surrounded by people who are just as excited about writing as you are. It’s not only inspiring, it’s comforting. Plus, it’s a great opportunity to meet like-minded people, some of whom may become lifelong friends, writing partners, or your future writing group.

7. Improve your writing. This, of course, is the main reason most people take a creative writing workshop. The ultimate goal is to become a better writer , and a workshop will definitely do the trick. You’ll also put a lot more effort into everything you write because you know it will be scrutinized, and this builds excellent writing habits .

8. Adopt new writing techniques. Between the instructor and your peers, you’ll discover all kinds of interesting new writing tools and techniques, often simply through the course of discussion as well as through observing everyone’s work.

9. Get access to a mentor. The person running the workshop should be knowledgeable and experienced in the world of writing. Maybe the instructor is a published author, or maybe it’s someone who’s worked as an agent, editor, or publisher. This access to a mentor is priceless. Take advantage of it!

10. Gain experience and get a lot of creative writing practice. This is one of the most valuable benefits of a creative writing workshop. When writers work on their own, they tend to procrastinate, get distracted, and generally don’t finish most of the projects they start. But in a workshop, you’re forced to get it done. This gives you lots of great experience and practice, and it also builds good writing habits.

Thinking About Taking a Creative Writing Workshop?

I definitely recommend taking a creative writing workshop if you can find a good one that suits your schedule, budget, and writing needs. If you’ve already taken a creative writing workshop or class, share your experiences by leaving a comment. Did you learn or gain anything? Would you do it again?

You have spoken along these lines before, Melissa, and this entry is, as all your posts, fascinating and carries a great deal of sense. However, and I know I am repeating myself, I am quite unable to allow others to trample over my work, however poor it is and however noble their (expressed) motives.

I cannot help but think of the vast number of ‘real’ writers, men and women who would not have entertained the thought that writing could be learned, like arithmetic, in a classroom.

I am a poor writer and have come to accept the fact I shall always be a poor writer; it is my belief that some things – like arithmetic – can be ‘brought to heel’ by sheer hatd work, while others, like music, painting and writing, will remain ever beyond the reach of some.

Further, I have seen very promising young tennis players taken up by organisations such as the LTA and coached, every shred of flair and originality brutally ‘ironed out’ of them, and my fear is that, for many of us, attending a writer’s workshop would be a similarly dulling experience.

I also realise, however, that there are those of a temperament to survive – and evn thrive in such conditions. Sadly, I am not one of them.

Again, my thanks for a fascinating and informative blog and may it go on to even greater success, but I think you should make it clear that not everyone who has pretensions of being a writer will see their dream come true.

I believe anyone can become a writer. It starts with believing in yourself. I would add that successful authors demonstrate a range of writing skills. Even a “poor writer” (which you are not) can eke out a career in writing. I’ve seen it done. The only way to be sure you will never succeed is to never try.

Writing can be intended for a wide audience but it’s reason for being is that the writer cannot bear not to write. Whether you are a Eudora Welty, basking in prayers se or an Ethel Jackson whose writing fills notebooks only she has seen, your work has much value

Our local university has leisure learning classes that are workshops. We not only get feedback on our work, but we also learn how to workshop a piece, looking parts of the writing process with a discerning eye. The instructors keep the focus on the work, not the author. It’s so helpful for all the reasons you mentioned, but also to learn how to look constructively at my own work before anyone else ever reads it. Being inspired by fellow writers talking about writing is my favorite part. I’m sorry that opsimath feels that way. Whose to say what’s poor writing or good writing? Of course, some is obvious, and the above comment isn’t bad writing. I found it to be well-crafted and conveyed what the author intended. Not everybody is Stephen King or F.Scott Fitzgerald, and there are some who would argue even they aren’t good writers. I had the fear that I would lose myself in critique, but even in that it’s a good exercise. One of my best lessons is that no matter what others said, it’s still my writing. I can choose to take their advice or not. Workshops are only helpful when the focus is on the work, though. It’s a criitique, not a criticism. I’ve been in bad ones and they can hurt more than help. I got out of them quick.

Yes! Everything you said is spot-on. Your experiences in workshop give all of us reason to feel optimistic about finding good writing workshops and the benefits that we’ll gain from them. Thanks so much for sharing your experience. I hope it inspires others to take the plunge and try workshopping for themselves.

You have talked thusly some time recently, Melissa, and this section is, as every one of your posts, interesting and conveys a lot of sense. On the other hand, and I know I am rehashing myself, I am very not able to permit others to trample over my work, however poor it is and however honorable their (communicated) thought processes.

I really want to think about the incomprehensible number of “genuine” essayists, men and ladies who might not have entertained the prospect that written work could be learned, similar to math, in a classroom.

I am a poor essayist and now acknowledge the actuality I should dependably be a poor author; it is my conviction that a few things – like math – can be ‘conveyed to heel’ by sheer hatd work, while others, similar to music, painting and composing, will remain ever past the compass of some.

Further, I have seen extremely encouraging youthful tennis players taken up by associations, for example, the LTA and instructed, each shred of energy and innovation mercilessly ‘resolved’ of them, and my trepidation is that, for a significant number of us, going to an author’s workshop would be an also dulling knowle

Hi Shamit. Receiving feedback and critiques is not the same as people trampling all over your work. A good critique is designed to make your writing better. If you want to be a better writer, you can certainly work toward that. It’s your choice. There are people who have a natural talent for writing. However, great writing requires a lot of different skills (grammar, storytelling, word-craft, etc.). Even the most talented writers will find some area of the craft where they need to learn skills they don’t possess. The idea that writing can’t be learned is simply not true, as evidenced by thousands upon thousands of people who worked hard to learn the craft and then became successful. The myth that talent is a requirement is an unfortunate one.

A writer is someone who writes. However, the object of writing is not necessarily to get published or make a living by writing. Read, for example, the notebooks of Thomas Edison. One of the best writers I knew was my grandmother, who maintained weekly correspondence with seven high school girlfriends for over 50 years.

That’s true, Ann. People write for many reasons and not only for professional purposes.

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What Is Creative Writing? (Ultimate Guide + 20 Examples)

Creative writing begins with a blank page and the courage to fill it with the stories only you can tell.

I face this intimidating blank page daily–and I have for the better part of 20+ years.

In this guide, you’ll learn all the ins and outs of creative writing with tons of examples.

What Is Creative Writing (Long Description)?

Creative Writing is the art of using words to express ideas and emotions in imaginative ways. It encompasses various forms including novels, poetry, and plays, focusing on narrative craft, character development, and the use of literary tropes.

Table of Contents

Let’s expand on that definition a bit.

Creative writing is an art form that transcends traditional literature boundaries.

It includes professional, journalistic, academic, and technical writing. This type of writing emphasizes narrative craft, character development, and literary tropes. It also explores poetry and poetics traditions.

In essence, creative writing lets you express ideas and emotions uniquely and imaginatively.

It’s about the freedom to invent worlds, characters, and stories. These creations evoke a spectrum of emotions in readers.

Creative writing covers fiction, poetry, and everything in between.

It allows writers to express inner thoughts and feelings. Often, it reflects human experiences through a fabricated lens.

Types of Creative Writing

There are many types of creative writing that we need to explain.

Some of the most common types:

• Short stories
• Screenplays
• Flash fiction
• Creative Nonfiction

Short Stories (The Brief Escape)

Short stories are like narrative treasures.

They are compact but impactful, telling a full story within a limited word count. These tales often focus on a single character or a crucial moment.

Short stories are known for their brevity.

They deliver emotion and insight in a concise yet powerful package. This format is ideal for exploring diverse genres, themes, and characters. It leaves a lasting impression on readers.

Example: Emma discovers an old photo of her smiling grandmother. It’s a rarity. Through flashbacks, Emma learns about her grandmother’s wartime love story. She comes to understand her grandmother’s resilience and the value of joy.

Novels (The Long Journey)

Novels are extensive explorations of character, plot, and setting.

They span thousands of words, giving writers the space to create entire worlds. Novels can weave complex stories across various themes and timelines.

The length of a novel allows for deep narrative and character development.

Readers get an immersive experience.

Example: Across the Divide tells of two siblings separated in childhood. They grow up in different cultures. Their reunion highlights the strength of family bonds, despite distance and differences.

Poetry (The Soul’s Language)

Poetry expresses ideas and emotions through rhythm, sound, and word beauty.

It distills emotions and thoughts into verses. Poetry often uses metaphors, similes, and figurative language to reach the reader’s heart and mind.

Poetry ranges from structured forms, like sonnets, to free verse.

The latter breaks away from traditional formats for more expressive thought.

Example: Whispers of Dawn is a poem collection capturing morning’s quiet moments. “First Light” personifies dawn as a painter. It brings colors of hope and renewal to the world.

Plays (The Dramatic Dialogue)

Plays are meant for performance. They bring characters and conflicts to life through dialogue and action.

This format uniquely explores human relationships and societal issues.

Playwrights face the challenge of conveying setting, emotion, and plot through dialogue and directions.

Example: Echoes of Tomorrow is set in a dystopian future. Memories can be bought and sold. It follows siblings on a quest to retrieve their stolen memories. They learn the cost of living in a world where the past has a price.

Screenplays (Cinema’s Blueprint)

Screenplays outline narratives for films and TV shows.

They require an understanding of visual storytelling, pacing, and dialogue. Screenplays must fit film production constraints.

Example: The Last Light is a screenplay for a sci-fi film. Humanity’s survivors on a dying Earth seek a new planet. The story focuses on spacecraft Argo’s crew as they face mission challenges and internal dynamics.

Memoirs (The Personal Journey)

Memoirs provide insight into an author’s life, focusing on personal experiences and emotional journeys.

They differ from autobiographies by concentrating on specific themes or events.

Memoirs invite readers into the author’s world.

They share lessons learned and hardships overcome.

Example: Under the Mango Tree is a memoir by Maria Gomez. It shares her childhood memories in rural Colombia. The mango tree in their yard symbolizes home, growth, and nostalgia. Maria reflects on her journey to a new life in America.

Flash Fiction (The Quick Twist)

Flash fiction tells stories in under 1,000 words.

It’s about crafting compelling narratives concisely. Each word in flash fiction must count, often leading to a twist.

This format captures life’s vivid moments, delivering quick, impactful insights.

Example: The Last Message features an astronaut’s final Earth message as her spacecraft drifts away. In 500 words, it explores isolation, hope, and the desire to connect against all odds.

Creative Nonfiction (The Factual Tale)

Creative nonfiction combines factual accuracy with creative storytelling.

This genre covers real events, people, and places with a twist. It uses descriptive language and narrative arcs to make true stories engaging.

Creative nonfiction includes biographies, essays, and travelogues.

Example: Echoes of Everest follows the author’s Mount Everest climb. It mixes factual details with personal reflections and the history of past climbers. The narrative captures the climb’s beauty and challenges, offering an immersive experience.

Fantasy (The World Beyond)

Fantasy transports readers to magical and mythical worlds.

It explores themes like good vs. evil and heroism in unreal settings. Fantasy requires careful world-building to create believable yet fantastic realms.

Example: The Crystal of Azmar tells of a young girl destined to save her world from darkness. She learns she’s the last sorceress in a forgotten lineage. Her journey involves mastering powers, forming alliances, and uncovering ancient kingdom myths.

Science Fiction (The Future Imagined)

Science fiction delves into futuristic and scientific themes.

It questions the impact of advancements on society and individuals.

Science fiction ranges from speculative to hard sci-fi, focusing on plausible futures.

Example: When the Stars Whisper is set in a future where humanity communicates with distant galaxies. It centers on a scientist who finds an alien message. This discovery prompts a deep look at humanity’s universe role and interstellar communication.

Watch this great video that explores the question, “What is creative writing?” and “How to get started?”:

What Are the 5 Cs of Creative Writing?

The 5 Cs of creative writing are fundamental pillars.

They guide writers to produce compelling and impactful work. These principles—Clarity, Coherence, Conciseness, Creativity, and Consistency—help craft stories that engage and entertain.

They also resonate deeply with readers. Let’s explore each of these critical components.

Clarity makes your writing understandable and accessible.

It involves choosing the right words and constructing clear sentences. Your narrative should be easy to follow.

In creative writing, clarity means conveying complex ideas in a digestible and enjoyable way.

Coherence ensures your writing flows logically.

It’s crucial for maintaining the reader’s interest. Characters should develop believably, and plots should progress logically. This makes the narrative feel cohesive.

Conciseness

Conciseness is about expressing ideas succinctly.

It’s being economical with words and avoiding redundancy. This principle helps maintain pace and tension, engaging readers throughout the story.

Creativity is the heart of creative writing.

It allows writers to invent new worlds and create memorable characters. Creativity involves originality and imagination. It’s seeing the world in unique ways and sharing that vision.

Consistency

Consistency maintains a uniform tone, style, and voice.

It means being faithful to the world you’ve created. Characters should act true to their development. This builds trust with readers, making your story immersive and believable.

Is Creative Writing Easy?

Creative writing is both rewarding and challenging.

Crafting stories from your imagination involves more than just words on a page. It requires discipline and a deep understanding of language and narrative structure.

Exploring complex characters and themes is also key.

Refining and revising your work is crucial for developing your voice.

The ease of creative writing varies. Some find the freedom of expression liberating.

Others struggle with writer’s block or plot development challenges. However, practice and feedback make creative writing more fulfilling.

What Does a Creative Writer Do?

A creative writer weaves narratives that entertain, enlighten, and inspire.

Writers explore both the world they create and the emotions they wish to evoke. Their tasks are diverse, involving more than just writing.

Creative writers develop ideas, research, and plan their stories.

They create characters and outline plots with attention to detail. Drafting and revising their work is a significant part of their process. They strive for the 5 Cs of compelling writing.

Writers engage with the literary community, seeking feedback and participating in workshops.

They may navigate the publishing world with agents and editors.

Creative writers are storytellers, craftsmen, and artists. They bring narratives to life, enriching our lives and expanding our imaginations.

How to Get Started With Creative Writing?

Embarking on a creative writing journey can feel like standing at the edge of a vast and mysterious forest.

The path is not always clear, but the adventure is calling.

Here’s how to take your first steps into the world of creative writing:

• Find a time of day when your mind is most alert and creative.
• Create a comfortable writing space free from distractions.
• Use prompts to spark your imagination. They can be as simple as a word, a phrase, or an image.
• Try writing for 15-20 minutes on a prompt without editing yourself. Let the ideas flow freely.
• Reading is fuel for your writing. Explore various genres and styles.
• Pay attention to how your favorite authors construct their sentences, develop characters, and build their worlds.
• Don’t pressure yourself to write a novel right away. Begin with short stories or poems.
• Small projects can help you hone your skills and boost your confidence.
• Look for writing groups in your area or online. These communities offer support, feedback, and motivation.
• Participating in workshops or classes can also provide valuable insights into your writing.
• Understand that your first draft is just the beginning. Revising your work is where the real magic happens.
• Be open to feedback and willing to rework your pieces.
• Carry a notebook or digital recorder to jot down ideas, observations, and snippets of conversations.
• These notes can be gold mines for future writing projects.

Final Thoughts: What Is Creative Writing?

Creative writing is an invitation to explore the unknown, to give voice to the silenced, and to celebrate the human spirit in all its forms.

Check out these creative writing tools (that I highly recommend):

Read This Next:

• What Is a Prompt in Writing? (Ultimate Guide + 200 Examples)
• What Is A Personal Account In Writing? (47 Examples)
• How To Write A Fantasy Short Story (Ultimate Guide + Examples)
• How To Write A Fantasy Romance Novel [21 Tips + Examples)

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What a creative writing course taught me

I spent six months of 2009 on the Faber Academy's inaugural Writing a Novel course. During that time I wrote a novel that became Before I Go to Sleep . Now, almost four years later, that book is an international bestseller and about to be turned into a film, and …

One of the questions I'm most often asked at events and in interviews is, would I have written Before I Go to Sleep had I not been on a creative writing course? Of course I can understand why. The question is usually asked by those who are writing themselves, and within it is wrapped its unspoken twin: do you think I should do a creative writing course, in order to do what you've done?

They're tricky questions for me to answer. Usually I'll reply that I'd have written my novel had I not been on the course, but I think it might have taken a lot longer. I compare it to skiing – by myself I'd probably learn to ski eventually, but taking lessons speeds up the process. My answer is glib and also disingenuous; it implies the course did little more than provide me with a shortcut to publication.

In fact, the course did so much more. When I began it writing was something I took seriously, and though it had never crossed my mind that I might one day be capable of writing a bestseller, I thought I could write reasonably well. But I wasn't a writer. Writers were professional, they wrote every day and they took notes everywhere they went and – well, I wasn't sure what they did. I just knew I wanted to be one and saw the course as a way of finding out whether that might one day be possible.

Then something odd happened. On the first night of the course Louise Doughty gave us a pep talk. "You're all good," she said. "But that's the last nice thing I'm going to say to you. If you want to get better you'll have to start taking it seriously." And then she said, "For the next six months, I give you permission to think of yourselves as writers."

For me, it was a pivotal moment. "Fuck it," I thought. "I will!" And I did. I wrote until my fingers bled and read until I could no longer focus. I drank many coffees and sank many pints while discussing books and language, and writing, and words, with people who cared as deeply about those things as I did. I carried a notebook everywhere I went and stopped being embarrassed to whip it out and take notes in public. At parties, when asked what I did, I said, "I write," and when asked what I'd had published, I said, "Nothing. I work in the NHS, too. But I still write." Gradually, it started to feel comfortable. During our lessons I learned about dialogue and character and the importance of conflict. I learned never to start a book with someone being woken up by an alarm (oops!), and to carefully avoid adverbs and cliches like the plague (ahem). But the more important lessons were deeper and more fundamental, and they were related to Louise's comment. In calling myself a writer I learned that that's what I am. A writer. I love language. Writing is how I make sense of my world. It's part of me. I worked harder than I'd ever worked before during those six months, and they were among the happiest I've known, because finally I was sure what I really wanted to do with my life. I learned who I am, and began the process of learning how I work best.

Mostly, though, the course gave me focus. Through it I learned that writing is hard work. Writers write. They don't sit around thinking all day, or lounge about in their pyjamas with a bowl of Coco Pops, watching daytime television while they wait for the muse to descend (though a little bit of that is permissible). Lessons about plot and setting and structure and voice can help, but the only way to become a better writer is by writing. Discussing your work with a wonderful tutor can help, but your tutor can't write it for you. For that, you're on your own. Just you and a pen, your courage, and the whole world of your imagination. It's terrifying, and exhilarating. Could I have written Before I Go to Sleep before learning those lessons? No, I don't think I could. Did I need to go on a course to learn them? Yes. At that point in my life at least, I think I did.

SJ Watson is the author of Before I Go to Sleep (Black Swan)

Anne Enright

For years, when I was asked about the success of the Creative Writing MA in the University of East Anglia , I had no answers or insights. It seemed to me that we weren't "taught" how to write at all – so perhaps that is the way to do it. The students hung out and talked and responded to each other's work. The tutor, Malcolm Bradbury , made sure we weren't too mean to each other. He shifted approvingly when key points were made, and deflected the negative with airy remarks about Tolstoy or Shakespeare. I had one-to-one sessions with Angela Carter , who said nothing about the work either – but she treated me like a fellow writer, and that made all the difference.

It is amazing how much you learn when other people read your work. They don't have to say anything, your words seem to morph under their scanning eyes. A creative writing course gets the stuff out of your head and into the room. It turns your story into a "thing", that can be dismantled and remade. It can not, however, tell you how to remake it. Writing remains a process that only goes one way: from the inside out.

A few years ago I heard someone say that Malcolm's great trick was to spot talent at the application stage – so maybe that is the real secret of a good creative writing course. The other is to find a teacher whose ego isn't bigger than their students' – not as easy as it sounds. Scholarships are also good. Nothing helps a writer like paying their rent. We don't, in the early stages, need food.

Anne Enright is the author of the Booker-prizewinning The Gathering and The Forgotten Waltz (Vintage)

Joe Dunthorne

As a first-year undergraduate creative writing student, I remember one lesson in particular. A tutor at UEA explained that, by placing physical description in the middle of a line of dialogue, I could make my characters walk and talk, rather than walk then talk. It was magical. Suddenly my creations were alive. I had hoped that learning creative writing would continue along those lines – three simple rules on how to make a reader cry, top tips on communicating a revelatory human truth – but it didn't work out that way.

By the time I was studying for a masters in prose fiction, the easy lessons had dried up and I was faced with 12 of my peers who each had a different opinion on how my novel should progress. They all gave convincing, contradictory suggestions. This provoked the last of my great creative writing epiphanies: that there is no majority, no safe path, and in the end we all travel alone.

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7 Writing Lessons Learned in 2020

For me, the turning of the year is certainly a time of examining habits, renewing intentions, and creating plans. But more than setting goals for the coming year, I prefer to think about the lessons I have learned from the year that has passed.

In my experience, goals all but just happen when their required foundations are in place. When that foundation is lacking, then even a great amount of energy and application cannot achieve the desired result. And so when the New Year rolls around, I like to look back at the foundations that have been laid in the past twelve months. What has the year taught me? And how can I build on what I have been given?

This past year was a year like no other. This is clearly true on a global level, and I daresay it is true for each of us in small and subjective ways. Certainly, it has been true for me. Aside from all the big impacts to the world “out there,” my own year and particularly my year as a writer has also been a year like no other. Even in comparison to other recent years, it was a year that deeply challenged almost all the beliefs and identities I have carried around my writing.

It was not a year of deep productivity in an external sense. It was probably the year in which I wrote less fiction than I ever have since my pre-teen years. Largely due to this, it was an unsettling year for me as a writer. It has made me ask questions and face fears.

In many ways, for obvious reasons, it was one of the hardest years ever. But also in many ways, for me personally, I am surprised that it has given me some of the greatest gifts I have ever received. Most of the reason I can say that is directly related to the lessons this past year has taught me about myself as a person and as a writer.

Today, I would like to share seven of the writing lessons I feel I learned (or at least started learning) in 2020, in hopes that they will inspire, ground, and encourage you in contemplating your own foundation for moving forward into the wide new frontier of 2021.

7 Writing Lessons to Build On in the New Year

1. don’t be so serious (play more).

Don’t take life so serious…. It ain’t no how permanent.–Walt Kelly

When did writing become such super-serious business? I look back on general advice I internalized as a young writer starting out, and while I recognize that it helped me build a career, I also realize that such gems as the following also created a pretty grim outlook:

“Treat writing like a job.” “If you don’t take your writing seriously, no one else will either.” “If writing doesn’t pay, it’s not worth doing.” “If you aren’t writing something readers will love, you’re not a real writer.”

I’m not saying there isn’t a measure of truth and value in those statements. But where’s the fun? Where’s the joy of creation for creation’s sake? After all, storytelling is an inherently childlike act. Entertainment is all about having fun.

Mostly, I recognize that this super-serious outlook has less to do with my writing and more to do with me as a grown-up human grappling with what admittedly seems a pretty serious world. In this year when I wrote almost no fiction, I have realized that if my writing doesn’t seem as much fun as it used to, it’s because the act of telling stories has grown separate from the simple joy of creation that prompted it when I was young.

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron (affiliate link)

Building on the Lesson: And so I plan to play more in 2021. More “artist’s dates” with my inner child such as Julia Cameron suggests in The Artist’s Way . No more sitting at the desk and demanding I write something about which I have little enthusiasm. No more self-flagellation for not writing. Writing, as we all know deep down and as Jeff VanderMeer points out ( in this wonderful article which one of you shared in the comments section of the post “ What Is Dreamzoning? (7 Steps to Finding New Story Ideas) “) is far more about not writing that it is the actual writing.

2. Remember Why You’re Here (How It All Started)

That brings me back to the reason I started writing in the first place. What was yours? Do you remember?

I think I rather lost mine for a while, amidst all the very serious work of becoming a capital-letter Writer. But here’s my reason—here’s why I’m here , talking to you, writing this blog every week—here’s why I’ve spent the better part of my life typing away at the keyboard, why I’ve published five novels and why any of this matters to me at all.

I didn’t start out as a writer . I started out as a kid who loved to tell and play stories. At a certain point I decided I would write one down—because I loved it and its characters so much that I didn’t ever want to forget it. I started writing because of the way it made me feel —like there was a infinite world of possibilities out there.

In short, I don’t write because I’m a writer or even because I love writing (although I do). I write because I love my stories so much I want never to forget them.

Building on the Lesson: Maybe I will never find that same childlike passion again. Maybe adults must write for other reasons. But I don’t really believe that. At any rate, I’m committed to giving myself a chance to find that again—to find another story I love so much I must write it down if only so I will never forget it. In practicality, I think there are two steps to this.

One, I must learn to listen again. And two, I must be willing not to write, not to keep flogging the brain. I think that is perhaps the scariest thing of all. Indeed, even as I write this, there is a part of me that isn’t sure I can consciously commit to not at least trying to write for a while. But the very fact that it scares the spit out of me tells me it’s probably exactly the right step forward .

3. Find Your Inspiration (What Do You Want to Say?)

I’ve spent a lot of time in the dreamzone so far this winter, trying to see if there is a story ready to be written. What I’ve realized is that part of what I’m searching for is something new to say. I used to believe we each have one story to tell and we just go on telling it in different ways all our lives. I still think there’s truth to that, but I’m also coming to realize that perhaps I have finished telling the story I was given to tell in the First Act of my life . Now, as I enter the Second Act, I am too different a person. Much as I love the early stories, they are stories that belong to my younger self, not the Me that now is.

This is both frightening and exciting, since I don’t yet know what story I have to tell in this new chapter of my life. I know I have things to say. I can feel them all but bursting inside of me: I just don’t know what they are yet.

Building on the Lesson: This, too, goes back to listening. I often think of Jo March’s statement in the 1994 adaptation of Little Women :

I want to do something different. I don’t know what it is yet, but I’m on the watch for it.

Little Women (1994), Columbia Pictures.

I foretell that one of the greatest challenges of this coming year will be, for me, sitting still, keeping my mouth shut, listening, and waiting. What is it I want to say in a new story? I don’t know yet. But I have always believed that if you know the question, you know the answer. At least I have the question now.

4. Keep Perspective (Writing Was Always Hard)

Somewhere within the last few years, I got this unspoken, mostly subconscious idea that writing wasn’t supposed to be hard. Sure, it required discipline. But agony, doubt, wasted hours, writer’s block? Nah.

It just so happened 2020 was the year in which I decided to re-read all my old journals, starting from when was I was thirteen. It’s a chronicle of all my writing years. And mostly it’s a chronicle of how hard writing has always been. I started and failed on so many more stories than I remembered. I took looooong breaks in between finished novels because I had no idea what to write.

In short, none of this is new. It’s been a welcome, humbling, and slightly humorous return to perspective.

Building on the Lesson: One of the great values in writing a journal (or a blog) is that we can return to remember insights from our former selves which we may have lost track of. So this year I will continue journaling, and I will continue reading my old journals—as letters from my much wiser younger self to my sometimes short-sighted current self. :p

5. Nothing Is Ever Wasted (Unexpected Gifts)

Like so many of us in our fast-moving society, I have a tendency to judge the value of my time based on what I accomplished . To finish a year without moving the needle on a work-in-progress is frustrating. But aside from the unseen productivity of lessons learned, I can also see how true it is that nothing is ever wasted .

I didn’t break through my writer’s block this year or finish my outline. But then I remember that in wrangling with that writer’s block this year and trying to figure out how to fix my story, I spent a great deal of time learning about and working with archetypal character arcs. I may not have gotten what I wanted—a Scrivener file full of outline notes for a novel—but I did get a Scrivener file full of outline notes for a new blog series that will perhaps eventually become a book in its own right. (Stay tuned for more on that in the upcoming weeks.)

Building on the Lesson: Really, this is exactly why I rather dislike goals. They tend to fixate us (me anyway) too much on one specific outcome—and if we don’t achieve that outcome, well then, what was the point?

What is true, I think, is that when we show up at the desk and put in the work, something always happens. It may not be what we expected. It may not even be tangible. But nothing is ever wasted .

6. Being a Writer Doesn’t Always Mean Writing (Word Count, Schmurd Count)

Speaking of narrow perspectives, it has come home to me more this year than any year that I have an extremely narrow definition of what it means to be a “writer.” When I talk about “my writing” or “writing time,” I am always talking about writing fiction. Only fiction . And only writing (i.e., not organizing notes, not daydreaming, not proofreading).

Writing Your Story’s Theme (Amazon affiliate link)

This was something the pandemic helped me recognize pretty early on last year when I wrote the post “ 15 Productive Tasks You Can Still Do Even When You Don’t Feel Like Writing .” More than that, I’ve realized how my fiction block these last few years has rather led me to discount the fact that I have been steadily writing all along—every week on this blog and that, indeed, I did publish a book this year .

Building on the Lesson: I have been so identified as a “writer” for so long that any threat to that identity is disturbing. But even more than realizing that I can be a “writer” in many different ways, I realize I must also be willing to broaden my definition of myself. I am not “a writer”; writing is just one of many ways in which I express myself and my creativity.

7. Be Present (You Can’t Repeat the Past or Plan the Future)

If there’s one thing 2020 has taught us it is that everything can change by the time you get to the end of the toilet paper roll. 2020 was what I think of as a “shatterpoint”: the world will never go back to the way it was before. Ironically, this proof of how irrevocably we are always divided from the past makes it more obvious that we cannot ever truly rely on future plans.

This offers a great deal of significance in so many areas of life, but in regards to my own struggles as a writer this year, it offers the reminder that the only thing I can do is be present. However much I may wish it, I can never return to or truly repeat the magic of my childhood relationship to stories. Nor can I decide what my future as a writer will be and demand that my creativity follow suit. I can only be present with what is and try to be as honest as possible in my perception of it.

Building on the Lesson: Really, it is about relinquishing control. Letting go of the past and letting go of the future. I sincerely doubt am totally positive I will not master that one this year. But in between the grief of letting go of the way things used to be and the yearning that the future should be all that we wish it, there is a centerpoint of peace to be found here in the present.

…all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.—Julian of Norwich

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! What lessons did you learn as a writer from the adventures of 2020? Tell me in the comments!

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K.M. Weiland is the award-winning and internationally-published author of the acclaimed writing guides Outlining Your Novel , Structuring Your Novel , and Creating Character Arcs . A native of western Nebraska, she writes historical and fantasy novels and mentors authors on her award-winning website Helping Writers Become Authors.

Word count, schmurd count, I’m going to remember that one. Happy New Year!

Our new motto for 2021. :p

Hey K.M. Happy New Year. Well, in spite of all the chaos of 2020 I did manage to self-publish my first book although it was only a novella and setup an author website. I did learn, however, that a Christmas bazaar is probably not a good venue for trying to sell your book even if your table is next to a woman selling chocolates. 🙂 Your comment on Scrivener notes struck a chord. For my latest project that has been in the works for 10+ years I have 50 files of research/notes in Scrivener but I’ll bet you have me beat.

That’s great. Huge congrats, Bob! And, no, I think 50 files beats even me. 😉

congratulations on your”small” successes. I’m still working on my website, a goal for this year. I hear novellas sell well in Europe too no “only a novella.” It is a good success.

Great points as always! One lesson I began learning this year in my creative life was to let go of my expectations for how a creative project SHOULD look or feel and gratefully accept “what is.” Relaxing into that reality was much more engaging, reduced personal resistance and frustration, and allowed me to be more emotionally present to what was unfolding in the moment.

Really, that’s the secret of life, isn’t it?

Thanks for sharing, Katie. You approach New Year’s “goals/resolutions” the same way I do. I haven’t yet looked back on the old year and mused about the one ahead, but I will do that soon. I appreciate hearing how it went for you.

Yes, I often look on the entire month of January as the “New Year reset.”

To your point on the agony of writing. I recall an episode of Original Star Trek where Bones was called upon to reattach Spock’s brain. Bones had been given some sort of drug and the surgery was child’s play. Then halfway through the drug wore off and he began to panic. What in the world am I doing? This is impossible!

There’s a metaphor in there for the writing process, lol.

Happy new year!

Hah! That’s a perfect analogy.

I remember that episode. When Bones lost his memory Spock coached him to complete the attachment. If author’s are lucky they have a writing group to do the same. Hope you have one.

It was literally Spock Ex Machina, lol

I hope you and yours enjoyed your holidays.

Here’s to a collectively brighter new year than that behemoth looming in our rear view mirror. Your list went well with my coffee as I look ahead.

Thank you especially for Lesson #1.

Everything goes good with coffee. 😉

Happy new year 🙂

Thank you for pointing out that writing doesn’t have to be so serious. In Norway we are all about the dreadful realism, if you want to be in the club, you have to write properly. Pretty sure my 5 book series about hitmen, hitmen turned good, mafia, trafficking, a group called the Lobbyist ( that secretly rules Europe), weapon smuggling and what not is not going to be receiving prices any time soon. But what do I care, I am enjoying my self immensely. And that is the most important, great storys come from having fun, at least it is that way for me.

Keep ut the good work, your posts are always to the point!

Yeah, I think we’ve all had enough dreadful realism for one year. :p

One lesson I learned is that it’s just as hard to write the middle of a book series as the middle of a single story, even harder actually because you have to connect it to the previous first book. Another is that I’m a terrible procrastinator at times. If I used my time my wisely, I probably would’ve been better prepared for NaNoWriMo, and maybe would’ve actually finished the first draft of the second book in my trilogy series by now. But with everything that happened, I think a lot of writers were in a ” creative slump” last year, so you weren’t alone.

Yes, I think that was a common theme for everyone this past year.

I love these! Made me smile, and all so true. I need to remember the “don’t be so serious” one… Thank you and Happy New Year!

Here’s to more smiling! 🙂

Thank you for sharing this. My husband and I are writers and have found ourselves disillusioned by the world of ‘Writing” with a capital W. The industry, agent hunt, algorithms, key words, fitting into a box that is undefined and always changing drives us both crazy. We’re both former journalists and love creating magic or mayhem with the 26 letters of the alphabet. We’ve also both published books (self-published, mostly) and have been extremely disappointed in not making as many sales as we’d like and having to plug away eight hours a day promoting the darned things with very little reward. Your article was refreshing and encouraging. We write because we love the craft and we should not focus on the outcome or we’d never write another word. I’ve been asked by several people to write a sequel to my first novel (published two months ago) but I don’t know if I want to go through the angst of doing it. So perhaps I’ll try to look at it more as you describe: have fun with it, enjoy making up stories, and be here now. 🙂

“Creating magic or mayhem with the 26 letters of the alphabet.”

Sounds like a good tagline to me. 🙂

Last year was the year I started tracking sales of my short stories, a category all the experts say is a hard sell. While I would have preferred to see higher numbers than I did, I was pleased every time someone took a chance on my writing. While I would have preferred more of those readers leave reviews, at least I did not get bad reviews. Self-publishing short stories, especially in the Speculative Fiction and Western genres, is always a crap-shoot, and I’m satisfied with the lessons I learned from my experiment.

One of the other things I learned last year is just how difficult it is to make new connections with new readers. I also dabbled a little more in flash fiction and even sent a couple of pieces out to flash fiction magazines.

I also invested more in learning my craft. The past year saw me dedicate more time and focus on becoming a better writer. I reached out into the professional law-enforcement world and made connections with folks who answered so many questions about forensics, the law-enforcement world in general and how things were done in law-enforcement here in Canada. Because I want to be sure that I’ve done all I could to write my made-up worlds with as much accuracy as I can.

I also submitted my mystery novel to a publisher. It was very politely declined and so I’ve been working on strengthening, adding layers and elements I thought of after it had left my hands (as is always the way) and just generally trying to make it stronger.

To my way of thinking, 2020 was the year of lessons. Not as successful as I’d hoped, but definitely not a failure either.

Sounds like you had a full and rewarding year. 🙂

Yes to all of that! One thing I realized, about two months ago, was that even “artists dates” were getting more complicated once the cold weather set in. I used to go to art stores, regular stores, museums, even coffee shops just to observe — and enjoy the wonderful weirdness of human beings. I color with pencils some, but if you come up with other ideas, write them in your blog!

Due to a lot of personal issues that occurred in concurrence with the pandemic, I’ve learned that the vision I had of myself in my mind (stable, panster, part-time writer) could – and should – change. I’m moving into 2021 trying the new (for me at least) in my writing…full time for one thing, with an outline for another 🙂

Love your list – particularly the bit about perspective and what being a writer means outside word count!

Happy New Year to you.

Yes, I’m realizing that most of my identities are also more fluid than I’d taken for granted.

Seven great lessons. Good to be reminded of these, especially that writers are first and foremost storytellers. Thanks.

Here’s the storytellers! 😀

Happy New Year, Katie!

The biggest lesson for me in 2020 was that my lack of self-compassion is crushing my ability to write forward in my projects. As such, I’m focusing on meditation specifically focused on fighting against my inner critic. I purchased Dr. Kristin Neff’s Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook (A proven way to accept yourself, build inner strength and survive). I’m also doing the 10 Percent Happier New Year meditation challenge focused on self-compassion.

I believe more writing will be a pleasant side-effect of this hard, interior work.

Totally agree with all of this! I’ve been working on similar things in the last few years and have seen them bear a lot of fruit.

Biggest lesson was that the thrill in writing is being surprised by what you write and how what you didn’t intend to write gets written anyway. 🙂 Very mysterious.

Isn’t though? And then when you start foreshadowing story events you didn’t even know were going to happen–it’s wild!

My sister says I need to stop being so serious. She’s right! Lol! When I started college in August 2020, I found myself loving strict goals to finish assignments on time with a grade I considered perfect. I did it all very seriously. Now, I’m on winter break so I have to make my own goals. This serious mindset hasn’t transferred so well to my writing goals. These lessons you’ve shared are great reminders for me to remember to stop being overly serious, play more, and that nothing has been wasted even if I don’t see enough “accomplishments.” This article was perfect timing for me, since I’ve been pushing myself on several goals that haven’t gone the way I wanted.

One of the lessons I’ve learned in 2020 is that if something frustrates me or I become snappy, I need to take a break and pray. When I come back to my project, I’m much calmer and come up with the ideas that I needed. The second lesson I’ve learned is that I need to relax and stop worrying. I’ve been training myself to give an irritating situation over to the Lord automatically, since worrying doesn’t do any good.

Thank you for another helpful post. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Love your screen name!

Which sister? Wouldn’t be me would it? Lol

I’m surprised to find you commented… and even more surprised to find you think I’m right -assuming u were talking about what I said.

Glad to see you’re following my advice, little sis. Checking out K.M.’s site and also mentioning moi! 😉

Happy New Year! I totally loved this podcast and it has really helped me put into perspective lots of things that happened in my life in 2020. I realized that all I want to do is spend time on my craft and develop my ideas into stories and with your podcasts and books, I’ve managed to come up with lots of ideas, finish a first draft, and use ywriter for outlining. I’ve tried to redirect my life, my energy and set new priorities and this is reflected in the consistent writing schedule I’m trying to stick to day in day out.

This podcast was fun to listen to and how important is the “don’t be so serious” idea!

Can’t wait to hear your second podcast for 2021!

That’s great! I think 2020 was a “reset” year for many of us, in many different ways. It didn’t go how we planned, but I think it may help us bear even better fruit down the road.

You certainly did not slack in ‘helping writers become authors’ this year. Thank you for the continued generosity of sharing your knowledge. Falling into the rabbit hole of your website is the only procrastination that I do not feel guilty about.

I began to free write by hand one page every morning and that has really helped move my novel along. There’s something about writing by hand that frees a control freak personality (a little bit). NanoWrimo was also a brilliant exercise that set up a new standard in efficiency.

Take your time finding the next story. I always felt I could sniff out the stories/films that were written for the sake of writing versus the ones that found the hand of a writer to take form. Being still and observing the world, listening to your heart and one day you will hear it calling to you.

So glad you’re enjoying the site! And I totally agree about writing by hand. It’s a different neural experience than is typing.

I love your articles! They have been SO helpful to me on my journey as a writer. This one was a very helpful model/reminder of the value of a good reflective process. I, too, did not accomplish what I set out to do in 2020, and had identity struggles based on the loss of ability to be who I was before.

There is a definite pull toward looking at 2020 as a disappointment with few redeeming qualities. For me, the year was definitely disappointing regarding my ability to make progress toward the goals I had set. My 7th concussion kept me off work, and unable to do much screen time and writing (or many other things!), for all of 2020. Moreover, it was a sudden and calamitous end to my identity in teaching in my Field of Dreams (I’ve been a teacher of students with autism and related disorders for 11 years but will no longer be able or allowed to continue in that field due to my injury). I ended the year getting Covid, from which I am still recovering.

Because of Covid, in the last two days I think I am losing my sense of smell, and I discovered that it could be a permanent side effect. Living without the sense of smell also affects my sense of taste…and I didn’t realize before yesterday exactly how many experiences in my life, how many emotions, were tied to my sense of smell. I pray that it comes back for me as I recover! I want to smell my third grandbaby’s head when I hold her for the first time. I want to smell my cooking so that I know when it has the right amount of spice and is done. I want to smell the crisp ice of winter, spring rain in the air, summer toasting the grass, fireplaces in fall! I want to know when my dog is stinky, my house is stinky (or fresh)…when I smell like sweat…and when the smell of my shower soap has brought cleanliness back. (It is amazing how unclean and unrefreshed I felt after a shower in which I could not smell the soap!)

I worry about not being able to smell gas leaks, smoke, etc. in my house…but even more, if you can believe it, I worry that I won’t be able to write effectively from my memory of what things smelled like.

But I have also learned some lessons more thoroughly than I had before…patience, and trusting in God’s plan and timing, among them. No event in my life, resulting from being in the wrong place at the wrong time, making a stupid choice, or other, has ever failed to change and enrich me in some way.

I got to reconnect with my kids and husband this year, I got a better focus on what really matters in my life, and I think I have a better idea of where God is leading me, though His timing is still unclear. Your article has reminded me to be silent…to be present in my life…to listen…to journal my reflections…and to prepare for the moment.

I want to look back on this coming year knowing that I spent each day being the best ‘me’ I could be—as a writer, mom, wife, daughter, granddaughter, teacher, elder, service provider, and parent advocate—by embracing and living in the peace of my true identity as a child of God.

Thank you so much for sharing this.

How beautiful this is:

“But I have also learned some lessons more thoroughly than I had before…patience, and trusting in God’s plan and timing, among them. No event in my life, resulting from being in the wrong place at the wrong time, making a stupid choice, or other, has ever failed to change and enrich me in some way.”

Wishing you all the best in your recoveries!

Thanks so much for some much needed insight. I’m working really hard on accepting that things will never be the same- the pandemic brought a clear focus to that notion but your quote- “ …in between the grief of letting go of the way things used to be and the yearning that the future should be all that we wish it, there is a centerpoint of peace to be found here in the present” will become my mantra for my uncertain future.

I’m trying to let go of the grief (or at least wade through it) watching the loses my husband of 46 years is experiencing as he battles a terminal metastatic Cancer.

Accepting that the future will be what it will be- living our best life in the present is the only weapon we have to fight the fear of the future. I will post your quote where I will see it every morning- again thank. Take care Kathy

So sorry to hear about your husband. Lots of love and compassion! And thank you so much for sharing these beautifully vulnerable thoughts.

Happy new year Katie!

First, I want to see I respect how self-aware and reflective you are. You’ve clearly put a lot of thought into the underlying meaning of your vocation. You have some great suggestion for anyone here, and I salute your personal courage in writing such an honest column.

For several months now, I’ve been walking a ledge. I can admit to myself that writing is a hobby, and there would be nothing wrong with that, but with that admission would come a change in personal priorities which frankly scares me. Or I can push through, write and publish, and take what that brings. Pushing through is work. I have a full time job, but right now I’m consistently finding time almost every day and 10+ hours a week. My current novel, has been in process for a couple of years. I have three trunk novels, that stopped in the editing and revision stage as I found myself interested in other ideas.

I don’t know if I’m unique in this or not, but I enjoy almost every minute I spend writing and editing, though it does wear me out after a few hours. I’d answer “treat writing as a job” with “do the thing you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”. I’d also answer that I’ve had a 40+ year career, and my best work has been when I’m loving it, and not just getting the paycheck or even the colleagues, but also the day in, day out work itself.

When writing does weigh on me, is when I’m not writing. That’s when “oh my lord, I have another fifteen chapters to draft and then all the revision” and “how can I put all this time into this?” type of thoughts perch in my mind.

Katie, for you this is your vocation. It needs to be both serious and fun and there is no conflict between the two. For me, this year I need to find out what I’ve got.

Thank you again for another ladle full of wisdom.

Sounds to me like you’re asking all the right questions. I’m sure the right answers will follow. Happy New Year!

TAC ~ . Your comment is totally me…! . Well, no, that’s impossible, but I connect a WHOLE (emphasis) lot with the it’s-a-hobby-thing-that-took-on-a-life-of-its-own narrative. AND, I dare say (now KM, my spell check dings ‘daresay’) I get it with having a time conflict with a FT pay job. Then the couple years working on a novel idea and then a couple sequels “weighing on you”–check, double check. . So In many respects, you’re not unique in so far as I see it. TY for your comment. . ~ P

Thank you for sharing your insights on the lessons that you learned last year. Your posts always provide food for thought and this one is no different.

A number of things came to me as I watched the world change in 2020. The world is currently a science experiment. Some things will work, some things won’t. I’ve lost my patience for sensationalism in journalism. To the point where I am no longer a news junkie. Anything that’s truly important will find its way into my world.

I’ve spent the last year editing my first novel and in doing that, my craft has improved tremendously. While I am disappointed that it is not yet published, I am more confident in being able to craft this story. Hopefully, others will like it as much as I do. The lesson is that it will take as long as it takes.

There are many other lessons that I could list. I won’t detail them all. The last one that I want to share is that I have learned to step away when the inspiration leaves. My body/mind is telling me I need to rest and to trust the process. Over and over again, the writing craft matured during that break. I no longer berate myself for taking the break.

I hope 2021 turns out to be a stupendous year for everyone.

“There are many other lessons that I could list. I won’t detail them all. The last one that I want to share is that I have learned to step away when the inspiration leaves. My body/mind is telling me I need to rest and to trust the process. Over and over again, the writing craft matured during that break. I no longer berate myself for taking the break.”

In all honestly, I’m still working on this! :p

Happy New Year! Thank you for such an insightful post to start out our new year. I have to say that looking forward to your posts every Monday became the one thing I felt that I could count on in life. HOWEVER if in 2021 you feel completely inspired and can’t tear yourself away from your current novel, you HAVE MY PERMISSION to take these Mondays off and we can just survive be rereading your old posts and your novels. I have a copy of Dreamlander coming in the mail and I’m so looking forward to reading that. My favorite quote from this post was, “I write because I love my stories so much I never want to forget them,” That is SO GREAT. We need to love our own stories!

Aw, this makes my day on a number of levels. 🙂 Thank you very much for the permission, but as a matter of fact this year is the first year in my life when I’ve steadily written blog posts ahead of schedule. So far I have enough saved to last me through May. So we’re good at least until then. 😉

My biggest takeaways from 2020? -What other people think doesn’t matter; do/write what you love anyways. -Reconnect with yourself often. Often writer’s block stems from something that you are frustrated with in your life- so learn to heal.

Absolutely to both of these!

These lessons are great reminders, as are the equally important ideas of building on lessons. December is when I tend to go into hibernation for about six weeks, my own reboot, time to reset and allow. Thanks for sharing!

Winter hibernation is important! 😀

It’s also great for binging “The Crown”! 😉

Looking forward to the latest season!

Fabulous post, Katie. I resonate with pretty much everything you had to say (and said so well).

Thanks, Naomi! Hope all is well with you!

Happy New Year! May fiction writing be a big part of it for you. Loved your post. The point I most appreciate is “I write because I love my stories so much I never want to forget them.” That was the motivation that resulted in me writing a novella about the tour I took in Ukraine. That motivation is also an important part of the novella that is coming out this year. As a teenage I loved dogs and training them. Those fond memories play an important part in Change of Luck: Not My Fault. What I learned this year was to hire a professional for aspects of the writing business that most frustrates me. For me that was setting up a good website. Hopefully that will be a reality in a month or so.

Congrats on your upcoming book!

Hi, Katie. I echo that this a great post. Of all the thoughts in there, for me the two most important are Lesson #1 (Don’t take yourself so durn seriously) and the last quote (It’s gonna be OK ). Thanks for the post and your efforts.

They kinda work together. I find when I stop taking myself so seriously, everything suddenly seems much better all the way around. 🙂

This is super helpful actually seeing it all down like this, because honestly I feel like I had a similar year in the writing sense. And just knowing the whole writers’ struggle during this whole year was wider spread than just me is very comforting. Thank you!

I’ve had the same tendency to think it was just me, but 2020 in general was a year of destructuring across the board.

2020 put so many of my plans on hold. 2021 does not look very promising. And yet, I want to write stories people will enjoy and talk about because they are fun. K., thanks for the reminder and your honest post to help give 2020 the perspective it needs. And happy New Year to you.

As much as we all hope things will be totally different in 2021, a transition as large as 2020 will take time to resolve. I think it’s valuable to realize that and to pay forward whatever perspective we gained in the last year about being kind to ourselves in regard to productivity expectations.

I love your be present advice. Though our writing styles are probably similar – I love planning, but when I am planning – I seem to go to this really crazy and weird place.

If I have a word prompt, I know which of my characters to ask about something, and they always have this crazy story to tell me.

Henry setting a fire cracker in a bully’s pants, and saving the nice girl from being bullied.

Sam marrying Kurall and Emmy.

Hiroku getting angry at Kurall and Emmy for the crap that happened before the first plot point.

They have these very interesting stories to tell me. I must sound crazy, but they are there and I can ask them just about anything, even if they are just figments of my imagination.

Sometimes, I like the life of an INFJ. . . The overactive imagination connected right to almost perfect empathy and connection to everyone and everything – if I pay attention.

I would get these interesting stories from them, if I was present in the hear and now, talking to them.

It’s always great when our characters are talking to us!

I love the notion that writing is not a job. I don’t have to meet a quota, answer to a boss, or endure until that coveted two week vacation. Great podcast. I appreciate you! Glenda

Hear, hear! Glad you enjoyed the podcast. 🙂

This is a good list. I also need to stop being so serious, but then I’m a serious person always struggling to make having fun a higher priority. I self-published my novel this year amidst all the chaos of bushfires (affecting my daughter and son-in-law’s property), a serious family illness and of course, the pandemic.

I didn’t write a lot of words this year, struggled to finish my second novel but built a website, learnt about Amazon ads and started a blog and newsletter. I think one of the lessons I’ve learned is that I need to stop and celebrate my achievements as I go along. I’d been dithering about launching my novel when the pandemic took away my choices. I realised that I often complete something, then move on to the next challenge, without recognising what’s been achieved. (I say I didnt do much writing but not only did I publish my novel, I had 4 short stories accepted for publication this year – it’s a record for me).

Thank you for your blog and your reminders about writing craft and personal goals. I’m currently using your book, Outlining your Novel, to redit my next novel (and applying it to a long short story I’m planning to write).

“I think one of the lessons I’ve learned is that I need to stop and celebrate my achievements as I go along.”

Hey, Katie-girl! I’ve missed bumping into you. As always, your advice is excellent. I love this post. So well thought out. This year, I felt led to back off and rest somewhat, writing merely once a week for my newsletter. I’m pondering on what is next. The New Year will bring surprises, I feel. GOOD surprises, I pray! I know you will do well whatever path you are led to take. New Year’s blessings to you! ❤

Oh my goodness! I was just thinking about you not too long ago, wondering how you were. Glad to hear you’re still at it! 🙂

Thank you, sweetie! 😁❤

Once a week, I can say: “no fear, K.M. is here!” Your blog has taught me many lessons… too many to name and number.

Thank you so much, K.M. Weiland. 🙂 You and your site are blessings in my life!!

Hah. :p Glad you’re finding the site useful!

Useful? Are you kidding? Your site has changed my entire thinking process on writing! It’s changed my writing for the better!! And your amazing books… both fiction and nonfiction are so awesome and helpful. You’ve got the best writing blog I’ve ever known… and I’ve looked at many.

Just sending you some love. You have an amazing way of articulating your journey and I see a lot of myself and my struggles reflected in you. Thank you for sharing.

Thanks, Heather. There is something very powerful in knowing we share with other so many nuances within our own unique journeys.

Great blog and lots to ponder… I love that Julian of Norwich quote, it actually inspired me to write and publish a historical novel!

It’s a lovely quote. I return to it again and again.

Jo March is on of my favorite characters ever! Thanks K.M. Weiland for all of the encouragement you gave over 2020. Reading your posts helped on the rough days.

One of my faves too! So glad you’re enjoying the posts.

Excellent post, this resonates with me so much. It’s so easy to get lost in word counts and trying to write the perfect story that it’s easy to forget about the joy of creation that sparked my desire to write in the first place.

Thanks so much for writing this post, it means a lot!

The writing lesson 2020 taught me was that writing is not easy.

In late 2018 I wrote my first novel for NaNo. In 2019 I wrote four more… and came away at year’s end feeling like, not only was this my new calling, but that books just flowed out of me.

And then I spent the first nine months of last year dry as a bone. I still did something creative every day [in visual arts] but nothing as far as writing a book went. Fortunately I pulled it together in time for NaNo last year, but now that that one is done, here I sit again, without a clue. I mistook a streak of beginner’s luck for genuine aptitude. But at least now I am prepared to put in more prolonged effort to make a book happen.

Five novels in two years is impressive by any standard! But, yes, I think 2020 was a time of “rethinking” for a lot of us.

Your books and articles have been such inspiration to me when things get tough and this one is no exception. Thank you and have a good 2021

And to you!

Thanks KM, that was timely indeed. There’s so much here I resonated with. Thank you <3

Happy New Year! 🙂

‘Play More’ – yes! A few months into the pandemic I threw out some potential blog topics on social media and the unanimous vote was for something helping grownups to play again. I think everyone felt they could do with a bit more fun at the time.

My research for the series led me down wonderful pathways on the value of play for adults, including a pearler of a book by Meredith Sinclair titled ‘Well Played’. So many ideas, and the blog series got ME thinking very differently about play for grownups. It’s definitely not just for kids – science says it’s really important for us! And I’ve found it to be really good for inspiring creativity in writing too.

I think the biggest lesson I learned was from an empirical observation: how friends and family agreed how crappy TV is, how mind-numbing reruns are, and how watching old movies kinda stank. I learned what Maxwell Perkins said, that “There is nothing more important than a book,” is really true. I learned that reading makes a writer write better, that books on writing are huge morale boosters, and, of all things, endless hours stuck in lockdown forced the issue: to write every day. So! Got 3rd revision off to editor #1, and the outline and 30K written with editor #2. Hazzah. : )

Katie, you are surely and purely a treasure!

Word count, schmurd count!

everything can change before the end of the toilet paper roll.

I started writing because of the way it made me feel—like there was an infinite world of possibilities out there.

I write because I love my stories so much I want never to forget them.

I feel like I could quote the whole post here. I spent 2020 (and a little of 2019 and spilling into 2021) writing and editing my first novel. I have never written anything of that size before. I have written the occasional poem, creative letters and such. The novel was a new adventure. Since the subject matter was cathartic, I wonder now if I have more to say. Your post is a reminder that storytelling is as much for the teller as for the listener; an experience in the present that makes a memory to be cherished.

Thank you for this sharing of your journey and yourself. Like I said, a treasure.

Fascinating!

Big lesson of the year (great for achievers): Negotiating a small, daily writing goal (one you know you can meet) is more motivating than the idealistic, ‘mini mount’ you constantly fail to climb. A few words, a sentence or two; whatever you can accomplish despite life’s busyness and feel satisfied about. My ‘mini mount’ was the likely culprit to my motivational clog, but with this focus shift, I might be doing 25% more than my ‘mini mount’ required; the fun is also increasing! If this sounds like you, it’s worth a try. It defies mathematical reasoning, but logic can easily be a writer’s nightmare. Don’t let it beat you this year : )

I’ve written a mantra, reminding me why I did writing in the first place. I did it for myself. I did it because I liked writing stories, and dialogue, and I remember the first stories I ever told was these stick figures running around where I pointed with drawn arrows since I didn’t understand how comic panels worked, and one of them tripped over a dress, and it was very strange, but I loved writing it. Remembering that feeling helped me access that emotion again. I’m a teen, but due to depression, my brain physically aged, and I lost that childlike passion quicker than most. But I’m starting to find it again. And it feels quieter, more mature, more reliable, because I took intentional strides to find it.

I’m still nowhere near the output I would like to have, but I’ve learned the hard way the importance of taking baby steps and nurturing the foundation. So every morning, I read my mantra.

“I write because I love to write. I literally can do anything I want when I’m writing, especially during a first draft. You wanna write about vampires taking a vacation to a beach hotel during nighttime? You write that weird vampire story, you.” “Keep the wonder inside the page.” “It’s perfectly acceptable to write a paragraph composed completely of em dashes.” “Even when I don’t feel writing, I know it’s good for me, and after I finish writing, I’ll feel way better.” “Write because you wanna read your story someday. You’re a person too.” “Don’t jump into idealistic goals. I’m fine if you just write a sentence.” “And above all else, your life is your art. If you physically cannot write today, then just go read a book or watch a show. You’re making art inside your life.”

Thank you for this post, Katie. I hope you find the new story of your Second Act. I feel like you’re already telling it, through your blog, and someday, you’re gonna tell it through a new book, and I feel like I’ve gonna finish my first draft and finally start editing. You and I, we’ve just got to wait and listen.

I learned two things in 2020. The first was patience. I spent many months with a brain empty of story, and frankly, in my world at the time, I couldn’t have found the focus to write it if it had come along. I had to trust that a story would turn up when it was ready and when I was able to write it. So, I stopped stressing and just waited–until September! The second thing I learned was acceptance. When inspiration did come, it was for something I had never done before–a screenplay for a Hallmark-style movie–so instead of trying to turn it into a short story or novel, I went with it. I invested in formatting software and started typing. I have never enjoyed writing anything so much in my life. I have drafted two screenplays so far, and am outlining my third. Whether anything comes of them is not a priority (but, yes, I will try to find a home for them in the future.) For now, though, my brain is no longer empty of story, words are appearing on the screen, and writing is a genuine joy. I didn’t expect to end 2020 on such a positive, creative note, but there it is, and it’s something that I’m gratefully carrying into this year. I hope everyone finds their joywriting this year and has a healthy, creative 2021.

Thank you for this very validating post. Been there, felt that, and still grapple with it! It was very encouraging to read this. Wishing you inspiration for 2022!

Reading this again in Jan. 2022, and I still wanna cry my gratitude, if not more so than a year ago. This is all so true. Thanks.

Hi. I have just stumbled across this great post today, Jan 4 2022. I wonder how 2021 did turn out for you, given all the very brave thoughts that you posted here (and as a writer struggling to figure out the key question regarding my writing: “Why Bother”, I found it tremendously liberating). Thanks and here’s hoping the 2022 is not another repeat of the previous two years.

Henry Gasko

[…] considers that your writer’s block may really be writer’s indecision, K.M. Weiland shares 7 writing lessons learned in 2020, Kris Maze compiles productivity hacks from best-selling authors, and Kelsey Allagood shares what […]

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100 Writing Practice Lessons & Exercises

by Joe Bunting | 50 comments

Want to Become a Published Author? In 100 Day Book, you’ll finish your book guaranteed. Learn more and sign up here.

Want to become a better writer? Perhaps you want to write novels, or maybe you just want to get better grades in your essay writing assignments , or maybe you'd like to start a popular blog .

If you want to write better, you need practice. But what does a writing practice actually look like? In this post, I'm going to give you everything you need to kick off your writing practice and become a better writer faster.

What Is Writing Practice?

Writing practice is a method of becoming a better writer that usually involves reading lessons about the writing process, using writing prompts, doing creative writing exercises , or finishing writing pieces, like essays, short stories , novels , or books . The best writing practice is deliberate, timed, and involves feedback.

How Do You Practice Writing?

This was the question I had when I first started The Write Practice in 2011. I knew how to practice a sport and how to practice playing an instrument. But for some reason, even after studying it in college, I wasn't sure how to practice writing.

I set out to create the best writing practice I could. The Write Practice is the result.

I found that the best writing practice has three aspects:

Deliberate . Writing whatever you feel like may be cathartic, but it's not an effective way to become a better writer or build your writing skills. You'll get better faster by practicing a specific technique or aspect of the writing process each time you sit down to write.

This is why we have a new lesson about the writing process each day on The Write Practice, followed by a practice prompt at the end so you can put what you learned to use immediately.

Timed . It's no secret writers struggle with focus. There are just too many interesting distractions—Facebook, email, Kim Kardashian's Instagram feed (just kidding about that last one, sort of)—and writing is just too hard sometimes.

Setting a timer, even for just fifteen minutes, is an easy and effective way to stay focused on what's important.

This is why in our writing practice prompt at the end of each post we have a time limit, usually with a link to an online tool egg timer , so you can focus on deliberate practice without getting distracted.

Feedback . Getting feedback is one of the requirements to deliberately practice writing or any other craft. Feedback can look like listening to the reactions of your readers or asking for constructive criticism from editors and other writers.

This is why we ask you to post your writing practice after each lesson, so that you can get feedback from other writers in The Write Practice community. It's also why we set up The Write Practice Pro community , to provide critique groups for writers to get feedback on each finished piece of writing.

Our 100+ Best Creative Writing Practice Exercises and Lessons

Now that you know how we practice writing at The Write Practice, here are our best writing practice lessons to jumpstart your writing skills with some daily writing exercises, for beginner writers to even the most expert writers:

All-Time, Top 10 Writing Lessons and Exercises

These ten posts are our most viewed articles to boost your writing practice:

1. What is Plot? The 6 Elements of Plot and How to Use Them . Great stories use similar elements in wildly different ways to build page-turning stories. Click here to read what they are and learn how to start using them !

2. Top 100 Short Story Ideas . Here are over a hundred writing prompts in a variety of genres. If you need ideas for your next story, check this out!

3. How To Use Neither, Nor, Or, and Nor Correctly . Even good writers struggle figuring out when to use neither/nor and either/or. In this post, our copy-queen Liz Bureman settles the confusion once and for all. Click to continue to the writing exercise

4. Ten Secrets To Write Better Stories . How does Pixar manage to create such great stories, year after year? And how do you write a good story? In this post, I distill everything I've learned about how to write a good story into ten tips. Click to continue to the writing exercise

5. 35 Questions To Ask Your Characters From Marcel Proust . To get to know my characters better, I use a list of questions known as the Proust Questionnaire, made famous by French author, Marcel Proust. Click to continue to the writing exercise

6. How a Scene List Can Change Your Novel-Writing Life . Creating a scene list changed my novel-writing life, and doing the same will change yours too. Includes examples of the scene lists from famous authors. Click to continue to the writing exercise

7. Why You Need to be Using the Oxford Comma . Most people I've met have no idea what the Oxford comma is, but it's probably something that you have used frequently in your writing. Click to continue to the writing exercise

8. Six Surprising Ways to Write Better Interview Questions.  The interview is the most-used tool in a journalist's bag. But that doesn't mean novelists, bloggers, and even students can't and don't interview people. Here's how to conduct a great interview. Click to continue to the writing exercise

9. Why You Should Try Writing in Second Person . You've probably used first person and third person point-of-view already. But what about second person? This post explains three reasons why you should try writing from this point-of-view. Click to continue to the writing exercise

10. The Secret to Show, Don't Tell . You've heard the classic writing rule, “Show. Don't Tell.” Every writing blog ever has talked about it, and for good reason. Showing, for some reason, is really difficult. Click to continue to the writing exercise.

12 Exercises and Lessons To Become a Better Writer

How do you become a better writer? These posts share our best advice:

• Want to Be a Better Writer? Cut These 7 Words
• What I Mean When I Say I Am A Writer
• How to Become a Writer: 3 Simple Steps
• 72% of Writers Struggle With THIS
• 7 Lies About Becoming a Writer That You Probably Believe
• 10 Questions to Find Your Unique Writing Voice
• The Best Writing Book I’ve Ever Read
• The Best Way to Become a Better Writer
• The Creative Writer’s Toolkit: 6 Tools You Can’t Write Without
• Should You Write More or Write Better: Quantity vs Quality
• How to Become a Better Writer in One, Simple Step
• 11 Writing Tips That Will Change Your Life

6 Lessons and Exercises from Great Writers

If you want to be a writer, learn from the great writers who have gone before you:

• 23 Essential Quotes from Ernest Hemingway About Writing
• 29 Quotes that Explain How to Become a Better Writer
• 10 Lessons Dr. Seuss Can Teach Writers
• 10 Writing Tips from Ursula Le Guin
• Once Upon a Time: Pixar Prompt
• All the Pretty Words: Writing In the Style of Cormac McCarthy

12 Genre and Format Specific Writing Lessons and Exercises

Here are our best writing lessons for specific types of writing, including essays, screenplays, memoir, short stories, children's books, and humor writing:

• Writing an Essay? Here Are 10 Effective Tips
• How To Write a Screenplay: The 5 Step Process
• How to Write a Great Memoir: a Complete Guide
• How to Write a Short Story from Start to Finish
• How to Write a Thriller Novel
• How to Write a Children's Book
• How to Write a Love Story
• How to Write a Coming of Age Story or Book
• How to Write an Adventure Book
• 5 Key Elements for Successful Short Stories
• 4 Tips to Write a Novel That Will Be Adapted Into a Movie
• Humor Writing for People Who Aren’t Funny

14 Characterization Lessons and Exercises

Good characters are the foundation of good fiction. Here are our best lessons to create better characters:

• Character Development: How to Create Characters Audiences Will Love
• Writing Villains: 9 Evil Examples of the Villain Archetype
• How NOT to Introduce a New Character
• The Strongest Form of Characterization
• The Most Important Character Archetype
• How Do You Build A Strong Character In Your Writing?
• 75+ Antihero Examples and How to Use Them
• How to Explore Your Characters’ Motivations
• 8 Tips for Naming Characters
• The Protagonist: How to Center Your Story
• Heroes vs. Anti-Heroes: Which Is Right For Your Story?
• The Weakest Form of Characterization
• How to Write With an Accent
• How To Create a Character Sketch Using Scrivener

15 Grammar Lessons and Exercises

I talk to so many writers, some of whom are published authors, who struggle with grammar. Here are our best writing lessons on grammar:

• Is It Okay To End A Sentence With A Preposition?
• Contractions List: When To Use and When To Avoid
• Good vs. Well
• Connotation vs. Denotation
• Per Se vs. Per Say
• When You SHOULD Use Passive Voice
• When Do You Use “Quotation Marks”
• Polysyndeton and Asyndeton: Definition and Examples
• The Case Against Twilight
• Affect Versus Effect
• Stop Saying “Literally”
• What Is a Comma Splice? And Why Do Editors Hate Them?
• Intra vs. Inter: Why No One Plays Intermural Sports
• Alright and Alot: Words That Are Not Words
• The Poor, Misunderstood Semicolon

4 Journalism Lessons and Exercises

Want to be a journalist? Or even use techniques from journalism to improve your novel, essay, or screenplay? Here are our best writing lessons on journalism:

• Six Ways to Ask Better Questions In Interviews
• How Should You Interview Someone? Over Email? In Person?
• What If They Don’t Want to Talk to You?
• Eleven Habits of a Highly Effective Interviewers

16 Plot and Structure Lessons and Exercises

Want to write a good story? Our top plot and structure lessons will help:

• The Ten Types of Story and How to Master Them
• Points of a Story: 6 Plot Points Every Story Needs
• How to Shape a Story: The 6 Arcs
• 7 Keys To Write the Perfect First Line of a Novel
• The Secret to Creating Conflict
• 4 Tips to Avoid Having Your Short Story Rejected by a Literary Magazine
• 7 Steps to Creating Suspense
• 5 Elements of Storytelling
• 3 Important Rules for Writing Endings
• A Writer’s Cheatsheet to Plot and Structure
• Overcoming the Monster
• How to Satisfy Your Reader With a Great Ending
• Pow! Boom! Ka-Pow! 5 Tips to Write Fight Scenes
• The Dramatic Question and Suspense in Fiction
• How to Write a Memorable Beginning and Ending
• How to Write the Perfect First Page

6 Lessons and Exercises to Beat Writer's Block

Writer's block is real, and it can completely derail your writing. Here are six lessons to get writing again:

• How To Write Whether You Feel Like it Or Not
• This Fun Creative Writing Exercise Will Change Your Life
• When You Should Be Writing But Can't…
• What to do When Your Word Count is Too Low
• 7 Tricks to Write More with Less Willpower
• When You Don’t Know What to Write, Write About Your Insecurities

7 Literary Technique Lessons and Exercises

These writing and storytelling techniques will teach you a few tricks of the trade you may not have discovered before:

• 3 Tips to “Show, Don’t Tell” Emotions and Moods
• 3 Reasons to Write Stream of Consciousness Narrative
• 16 Observations About Real Dialogue
• Intertextuality As A Literary Device
• Why You Should Use Symbolism In Your Writing
• 6 Ways to Evoke Emotion in Poetry and Prose
• 3 Tips To Write Modern Allegorical Novels
• Symbol vs. Motif: What’s the Difference

3 Inspirational Writing Lessons and Exercises

Need some inspiration? Here are three of our most inspiring posts:

• Why We Write: Four Reasons
• You Must Remember Every Scar
• 17 Reasons to Write Something NOW

3 Publishing Blogging Lessons and Exercises

If you want to get published, these three lessons will help:

• The Secret to Writing On Your Blog Every Day
• How to Publish Your Book and Sell Your First 1,000 Copies
• How to Get Published in Literary Magazines

11 Writing Prompts

Need inspiration or just a kick in the pants to write. Try one of our top writing prompts :

• Grandfathers [writing prompt]
• Out of Place [writing prompt]
• Sleepless [writing prompt]
• Longing [writing prompt]
• Write About Yourself [writing prompt]
• 3 Reasons You Should Write Ghost Stories
• Road Trip [writing prompt]
• Morning [writing prompt]
• The Beach [writing prompt]
• Fall [writing prompt]
• How to Use Six-Word Stories As Writing Prompts

Is It Time To Begin Your Writing Practice?

It's clear that if you want to become a writer, you need to practice writing. We've created a proven process to practice your writing at The Write Practice, but even if you don't join our community, I hope you'll start practicing in some way today.

Personally, I waited  far  too long to start practicing and it set my writing back years.

How about you? Do you think practicing writing is important?  Let me know in the comments section .

Choose one of the writing practice posts above. Then, read the lesson and participate in the writing exercise, posting your work in the Pro Practice Workshop . And if you post, please give feedback to your fellow writers who also posted their practices.

Have fun and happy practicing!

Join 100 Day Book

Enrollment closes May 14 at midnight!

Joe Bunting

Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris , a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).

Want best-seller coaching? Book Joe here.

50 Comments

You have THE BEST content for writing on this blog!!

Thank you, Kristen. This made my morning. 🙂

Thanks Mitch. 🙂

I can’t remember when I started following this website. I have to look in my notebooks because that’s where I did these practices. I didn’t have access to a computer when I did them, so I wrote them out, setting the time limit. But even when I do get to a computer, I have my reservations about putting my practices on the page. even though it’s practice, I want them to be the best, almost perfect. But I know it won’t be. I’ve gotten feedback before that says so. It still gets to me that I didn’t put something together that not everyone liked. I need to get over it. After all, that is what these practices are about: to learn and improve on our craft.

I don’t know either, George, but it’s been several years. Perfectionism is something so many of us face, and it’s made worse when you don’t have a critique community as warm and encouraging as ours is. I hope you and everyone here are always willing to try something new, even if it comes out a little messed up, because you know we’ll support you and try to make you better.

What a great share! Thanks so much!

You’re so welcome, Elizabeth. Thank you for commenting.

when I ran writing classes I wrote. when I am “a member of writing classes” the teacher/leader/facilitator is NOT MY AUDIENCE and so I don’t write as well/as much. I don’t get the feedback I need from fellow students because most of them have never run their own writing projects/workshops. So many people expect you to write their story for them. I’ve actually got quite a few stories of me own. I have finally decided I like owning them. 😉

It sounds like you need a new critique group, Patience! Hope you can find a place where you get the feedback you need.

Wow! Terrific round-up of resources. 🙂

Thanks Stephanie. 🙂

Practice is necessary, period. It doesn’t matter what you want to learn. If you want to improve, practice is vital.

It’s odd. I’ve known and applied that principle for years on a variety of things. Painting. Drawing. Blogging. Gardening. Laundry.

But never writing.

Like you, I had the notion that just writing every day was all it took to improve. Why not the same level of dedication to writing?

Perhaps it’s time to change that!

I can relate, Carrie. It’s easy to confuse the craft of writing with journaling, thinking that you can just write whatever you feel like and you’ll get better, write something worth reading. The truth is that writing interesting things to read is a skill, but the good news is that you can get better at it with practice. Thanks for practicing with us! 🙂

I love these suggestions , and have set Writing Practice as my homepage so the first 15 minutes of my day is spent writing, whether its a practice or exercise here or another that is sprinkled through out this site, Thank you for all you do everyone here at The Write Practice

This is great Debra. I want to write the first 15 minutes of my day too!

I agree with Joe, Do it. Could be your to do list… ( that could lead to something else story wse later)

I love that, Debra. Such a good way to start your day.

Thanks Joe!

The best! Thank you so much for this.

You’re very welcome!

I simply LOVE all the tips and suggestions given on this blog. They are super helpful!

THANK you. We love sharing them with you. 🙂

Hi! You forgot the link to How to Write a Story a Week: A Day-by-Day Guide.

Thanks a lot for your work! This post is amazing.

It’s a great post Thiago. Definitely one of our most shared. Thanks for mentioning it! BTW here’s the link:

https://thewritepractice.com/a-story-a-week/

Wow!! There are so many exercises…. I just love it..! I am gonna really enjoy it..!

Awesome! Thank you for reading and practicing with us. 🙂

I only read halfway , My tootie is jumping all over me, and typing this is a struggle when a 3yr old wants his Toy Story movie on Youtube in this computer. Thank you for this article, will come back later to finish reading.

I know the feeling! Good luck!

Can’t wait to get stuck in with this! 🙂

Very helpful! Thank you!

I’ve just bookmarked this page. Thanks for this wonderful list.

This is awesome! So many helpful tips. I will be coming back to this often. Thanks for posting this!

Wow, so many goodies! Thank you for always providing such amazing content!!

I have enjoyed all these articles. Thank you for the help an inspiration to get my writing on its way. My creativity is boosting with confidence. Tootle loo.

Amazing contents for beginners like me Joe. I am highly inspired by your commitment. Thank you.

Hey, thanks!

Although I have only read half of thisc article, the practice exercises are excellent. Some of them are exactly what a beginning writer like myself needs. I am committing to at least try ALL of them. Thanks Joe!!

very helpful! thank you..

Amazing articles! Thanks so much for sharing!

My god this article made me love this site . You know it’s kinda hard for a beginner writer, who don’t know where to start and fixing goals, even samll ones give us a direction . A place to go , an aim for our creativity so thanks you , this community and this site. Love you all . At your pens ! 😉

Wow. This is great. I find all your posts informative, but this one is the best for me to use as a guide to get my self starting to write….Thank you.

I’m an old lady who wants to publish one more book before I die — have published several, all non-fiction, and done two under contract to a major publisher (reference books). So help me, the BIGGEST problem I have all along, is keeping track of the damned paper work and research that goes into a book!!! Yet I never ever see articles on something as simple as “How to file” — Oh I know, there’s wonderful software these days so probably I will never find a way to get paper organized — everybody will use software and do it on the computer. I’m too old for that — just one look at the learning curve for software, even putting the damned stuff into computer files is even MORE frustrating than paper!! Oh well, somehow I managed in the past to get books published, I may be able to do it one more time.

you enjoy writing more than anything else and you do indeed care to help others write. I love writing but translation from Arabic into English and English into Arabic is taking all of my time from the early hours of the morning till the evening. I will soon get all of your books in order to read them as soon as possible. One thing I am sure of. You know what you are doing very well. Hamzah

Excellent! Many useful tips. Many thanks!

Liz and Joe, I have only looked at a few exercises. Already, I am convinced that your site is one of the best sites out there. Thank your for sharing your wisdom.

Wow, these are the best lessons and exercises for writing. Actually i’m participating in a compitition this wendsday. so, i’m quite nervous and exited. this helped me a lot

Magnificent post ever I have read. This article will help me a lot to write a right way. Thank you.

i need your help to improve to become a better writer please. i think i usually commit moist of these errors and i don;t pay attention to many advices too.

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Why learn creative writing? Truthfully, creative writing is one of the most misunderstood disciplines in the 21st century. When people think of a creative writing course, they often imagine a group of lofty, out-of-touch people who wear argyle sweater vests and have unproductive conversations about abstract concepts.

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth: the best writing classes remain engaged with the real world, and the skills gained in a creative writing course apply to nearly every facet of daily life.

If you’re wondering whether it’s worth picking up a course in fiction, nonfiction, or poetry, we have five reasons to learn creative writing. But first, let’s talk about what actually happens in a creative writing course.

The Basics of a Writing Workshop

Whether you’re enrolled in a poetry, fiction, or nonfiction writing class, you can expect the following writing process – at least in a quality writing course like the ones at Writers.com.

• Weekly prompts and writing exercises to sharpen the precision and necessity of each word you use.
• Constructive critiques from a community of writers who are each growing their writing skills alongside you.
• A creative space to explore new ideas, experiment with language, and arrange words in new and exciting ways.
• Focused writing instruction from a master of the craft.

The benefits of creative writing come from engaging with the course material, the writing prompts, and the other class members. These elements help you become a better writer, both in creative realms and in everyday life. How? No matter what form of writing, a creative writing class pushes you to connect ideas and create effective narratives using the best words – and that skill translates into real world success.

The Benefits of Creative Writing

1. why learn creative writing: improved self-expression.

Improving your writing skills leads to stronger communication. When you practice finding the right word in a story or poem, you engage the same parts of your brain that are active in everyday writing and speaking. A creative writing course subconsciously turns you into a more effective communicator.

The importance of precise language and self-advocacy translates well into both interpersonal relationships and working environments. Take it from this expert on how writing and self-advocacy results in career and leadership success.

2. Why Learn Creative Writing: Job Success

This brings us to our next point: great writing leads to job success. Of course, your boss probably isn’t expecting you to write emails in the form of a short story or a sonnet – though if they are expecting this, you have a pretty cool boss.

In reality, almost every job requires some sort of written work, whether that’s simple written communication or something more elaborate, like publishing data or marketing materials. In a creative writing class, you practice the style and grammar rules necessary for effective writing, both within the realms of literature and in career-related writing. Sharpening your writing and creativity skills might just land you your next promotion.

3. Why Learn Creative Writing: Improved Thinking Skills

Strong writing leads to strong thinking. No matter what type of writing you pursue, learning how to write is another form of learning how to think.

That might seem like a bold claim, so think about it this way. Without language, our thoughts wouldn’t have form. We might not need language to think “I’m hungry” or “I like cats,” but when it comes to more abstract concepts, language is key. How would you think about things like justice, revenge, or equality without the words to express them?

When you hone in on your ability to find choice, specific words, and when you work on the skills of effective storytelling and rhetoric , you improve your ability to think in general. Good writing yields great thinking!

4. Why Learn Creative Writing: Empathy

Reading and writing both rely on empathy, especially when it comes to being an effective workshop participant. When we read and write stories, we situate ourselves in the shoes of other people; when we read and write poetry, we let language navigate us through emotion.

The importance of creative writing relies on empathy. We practice empathy whenever we listen to another person’s life story, when someone tells us about their day, and when we sit down with a client or work partner. When we write, we practice the ability to listen as well as to speak, making us more effective communicators and more compassionate human beings.

5. Why Learn Creative Writing: It’s Fun!

In case you’re not convinced that a writing course is right for you, let’s clarify one more fact: creative writing is fun. Whether you’re in a fiction writing course, starting a memoir, crafting a poem, or writing for the silver screen, you’re creating new worlds and characters. In the sandbox of literature, you’re in control, and when you invest yourself into the craft of writing, something beautiful emerges.

The Importance of Creative Writing

Simply put, creative writing helps us preserve our humanity. What better medium to explore the human experience?

To learn creative writing, like any art form, requires compassion, contemplation, and curiosity. Writers preserve the world as they observe it in stories and poetry, and they imagine a better world by creating it in their works.

Through the decades, literature has explored society’s profound changes. Literary eons like the Naturalist movement and the Beat poets responded to the increase in Western Industrialization. Confessional poets like Virginia Woolf helped transform poetry into a medium for emotional exploration and excavation. And, genre movements like the cyberpunk writers of science fiction helped popularize the idea of an “information economy.”

Thus, the importance of creative writing lies in its ability to describe the world through an honest and unfiltered lens. Anyone who engages in creative writing, no matter the genre or style, helps us explore the human experience, share new ideas, and advocate for a better society. Whether you write your stories for yourself or share them with a wide audience, creative writing makes the world a better place.

Jobs for Creative Writers

Because creative writing isn’t a STEM discipline, many people don’t think that learning it will help their job prospects. Why learn creative writing if it doesn’t make any money?

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Creative writing skills are much sought after on resumes, since both creativity and the ability to write are soft skills in decline. Additionally, if you’re considering a career change—or ready to start one!—these are some popular jobs for creative writers.

• Average Starting Salary: $51,000
• Demand: High
• Skills needed: creativity, grammar, timeliness

Copywriters help companies put their branding into words. A copywriter might write emails, blogs, website content, or ad copy that encompasses the company’s voice and purpose. Copywriting requires you to write in a mix of styles and forms, flexing your writing muscles in new and exciting ways.

Grant Writer

• Average Starting Salary: $50,000
• Skills needed: storytelling, research, argumentation

Nonprofits and research facilities rely on local and national grants to fund their projects. Grant writers help secure that funding, writing engaging grants that tell the organization’s story in an engaging, tailored, and convincing way. Creative writers will enjoy the opportunity to tell a meaningful story and create positive community change through this career.

Communications/Public Relations Specialist

• Skills needed: creativity, communications, social media

A communications specialist helps drive a company’s image through various social channels. They may help create a positive narrative for their company through blogs, journalist outreach, social media, and other public-facing avenues. Much like copywriting, a PR specialist helps weave an effective story for a company.

• Average Starting Salary: $55,000
• Demand: Medium/High
• Skills needed: creativity, storytelling, organization, self-reliance

The dream job for many writers is to write and sell books. Being a novelist is an admirable career choice—and also requires the most work. Not only do you have to write your stories, but you also have to market yourself in the literary industry and maintain a social presence so that publishers and readers actually read your work. It’s a tough business, but also incredibly rewarding!

Reasons to Learn Creative Writing: Finding a Writing Community

Finally, creative writing communities make the writing struggle worth it. The relationships you foster with other creative writers can last a lifetime, as no other group of people has the same appreciation for the written word. Creative writing communities create transformative experiences and encourage growth in your writing; if there’s one reason to study creative writing craft, it’s the friendships you make in the process.

You don’t need a class to start writing, but it’s never a waste of time to learn the tools of the trade. Creative writing requires the skills that can help you in everyday life, and a creative writing course can help.

At Writers.com, we believe that creative writing can transform both individual lives and the world at large. See the importance of creative writing for yourself: check out what makes our creative writing courses different , then take a look at our upcoming course calendar today.

Sean Glatch

Would like to apply for a course to write a novel.

I’d be happy to help! Please email [email protected] with any questions, and we’ll find the right course for your writing.

[…] Sean. “Why Learn Creative Writing.” writers.com. June 7, 2020. https://writers.com/why-learn-creative-writing . Accessed November 7, […]

[…] And last of all it’s fun! I hope to live my life doing the things I love, with like-minded creative people who I love. I have many exciting things upcoming as I continue with the process of completing my first novel, Les Année Folles, such as publishing to my first magazine, journal, and working on the millions of short story ideas I have stored in my head. Stay tuned! References: Glatch, S. (2020, June 7). WHY LEARN CREATIVE WRITING? Retrieved from Writers.com: https://writers.com/why-learn-creative-writing […]

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The Creative Penn

Writing, self-publishing, book marketing, making a living with your writing

Writing Tips: Lessons Learned From Rewriting My First Novel Over A Decade Later

posted on February 25, 2022

Podcast: Download (Duration: 53:40 — 43.8MB)

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In January 2022, I re-edited my first novel, Stone of Fire , which I started during NaNoWriMo in 2009 and published in April 2011. In this episode, I explain why and how I re-edited the book, as well as some lessons learned from revisiting my writer self of over a decade ago .

This episode includes:

Why I decided to rewrite when so much advice says ‘never go back’

• How Stone of Fire developed from 2011 to 2022 
• My re-writing process 
• Practicalities of publishing a new edition
• Craft notes from rewriting, including character, pacing, grammar and sentence structure, author voice, dialogue, and more
• Was it worth it?!

There’s nothing really wrong with the book. As I write this, Stone of Fire has 1374 reviews on Amazon US with a 4.1 star average (and many more reviews on other stores and platforms) so clearly, readers enjoy it. 

But I know I can improve it. 

Stone of Fire was my first novel — but it’s also the first in my 12-book ARKANE action-adventure thriller series . It’s my permafree first in series ebook , the one I repeatedly put ads on to bring readers into my writing. It’s pretty important for my fiction marketing efforts!

Morgan Sierra, the main character of my ARKANE series, is also my alter-ego. Sure, she’s an ex-Israeli military psychologist, Oxford University professor, and Krav Maga expert — but her thoughts are often my own, or at least represent some facet of my personality.

Like me, Morgan is fascinated with religion and travels the world, but of course, I just visit exciting locations, whereas she investigates supernatural mysteries in each one alongside Jake Timber and the rest of the ARKANE team. 

The advice from many writing coaches and experts is to leave your old series behind, and write a new one. In this way, you can improve your work without rewriting old books. 

But I can’t leave Morgan behind. And neither can my hardcore readers who love the ARKANE series and demand a new one as soon as I deliver the next story!

I’ve written other series — my Mapwalker fantasy trilogy , my Brooke & Daniel crime thrillers , and various stand-alone stories. But in terms of action-adventure books, I’m invested in Morgan and the ARKANE team. 

The ARKANE series appeals to fans of James Rollins’ Sigma series, Steve Berry’s Cotton Malone books, Lincoln & Child’s Pendergast, and thrillers by Greig Beck, Matthew Reilly, Ernest Dempsey, J Robert Kennedy, and R.D. Brady. They are action-adventure/conspiracy thriller with aspects of the supernatural . 

I wrote them because I love these kinds of long-running thriller series and always set out to write something for the ‘old me’ who used to read thrillers on the commuter train every weekday to a job I hated. 

My writing has improved after almost 13 years and writing over 35 books, as well as taking all kinds of writing classes, reading many thousands more thrillers, and learning my craft. Plus, I’ve worked with professional editors and proofreaders , and now augment my craft with ProWritingAid .

Since I won’t “just start another series,” I decided to rewrite the first three books to bring them up to my current standard. 

Importantly, I have not changed the story at all.

The plot and characters are the same and if you’ve read the book, you don’t need to re-read it. But as I outline below in the craft section, I have made a lot of changes for pacing, reader flow, character depth, and author voice.

Being an indie author simplifies the technical side of re-editing and re-releasing. I don’t need to ask anyone’s permission for a new edition. I just rewrite, republish, and carry on. 

My plan is to rewrite the first three ( Stone of Fire, Crypt of Bone, Ark of Blood ) because they are linked by the antagonists, and also readers who get to book 4 tend to continue the series, anyway. The read-through is much stronger after they are hooked on Morgan and Jake’s adventures!

I also need to get on with the next book and don’t want to spend any more time on older work, but never say never. Maybe by 2035, I’ll want to rewrite some more!

How Stone of Fire developed from 2009 to 2022

I started the story during NaNoWriMo 2009 and joined The Year of the Novel at Queensland Library in Brisbane, Australia, where I lived at the time.

After finishing the draft in 2010, I worked with several professional editors. I self-published Pentecost (as it was originally called) in April 2011. You can find my experience detailed here with some amusingly old videos!

I wrote two more ARKANE novels, Prophecy , and Exodus , all under Joanna Penn. 

But my early reviews proved a couple of things. 

Readers enjoyed the books — they have always had good reviews. But the branding and book titles looked like Christian Fiction, and although the stories are rooted in ecclesiastical history, biblical locations and myth, I am not a Christian.

The ARKANE thrillers are more like Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code in that they skirt the edge of religious myth and history, but are essentially global action-adventure thrillers .

So I needed to figure out how to re-position them. 

Most authors struggle with this question of genre and market fit, and I struggled just as much as anyone else. 

I also had a few reviews that mentioned my gender, for example, “I can’t believe a woman wrote this.” I’m not going to get into gender politics, but I don’t want my writing to be judged by my name or gender.

So I switched my fiction to J.F. Penn ( full story here in A Tale of Two Author Brands ) and I started a new website and a new email list. 

I have never regretted that decision. I love having two author names as it helps me separate aspects of myself as well as my audience. Yes, it’s more work to manage two names, but it helps me switch mindset, and I have almost completely different business plans for the brands .

During those early years, I met with a few agents who were interested in working together, one in the USA, one in the UK. They didn’t work out ultimately, but they helped me with some repositioning and we parted on good terms. (It is not uncommon for authors and agents to part ways. It’s a business relationship and it has to serve both parties).

In 2015, I rebranded the first three books as Stone of Fire, Crypt of Bone , and Ark of Blood. I had new covers designed and also did a light edit of Stone of Fire to add more emotional beats than the original.

As I write this in late February 2022, there are now 12 ARKANE thrillers. They can be read as a series or as standalone stories, which is usually true of the kind of thrillers I read, as well as how I write. 

Stone of Fire is out in its new re-edited form , but the other two books are still underway. You can get it as a free ebook on the usual stores, or download from my website if you’ve previously downloaded an older version. Check the copyright page says 2022 if you’re unsure which version it is.

Some authors worry about new editions and whether readers will be annoyed. Most readers don’t realize anyway, and the rest rarely care! I’ve never had an issue with re-writing and re-issuing books, whether fiction or non-fiction.

My re-writing process

I’ve updated the back matter and typos since 2015 and also reformatted the ebook file with Vellum. Here are my technical steps for re-writing. 

Exported .RTF file from Vellum and saved as MS Word .docx

Imported .docx into Scrivener . This became my new master Scrivener file. 

Opened ProWritingAid on my desktop and then opened Scrivener within ProWritingAid. 

I edited each chapter within ProWritingAid, fixing issues that it flagged, many of which detailed in the craft section below. ProWritingAid has various suggestions for improvement and then an overall score. For most chapters, I was able to take the score from 60% to 90%, an invaluable first step. 

Every day I worked on the manuscript, I exported the whole file from Scrivener as an MS Word docx, emailed it to myself and saved on Dropbox.

Once all the chapters were completed, I exported from Scrivener back to MS Word and printed out the full draft.

I edited the manuscript by hand. There was a lot of scribbling and deleting and removing of extraneous info, as detailed in the craft section below. 

I updated the master Scrivener file with the hand edits.

I printed it again and edited the manuscript once more, but there were only minor issues this time through. 

I ran it through ProWritingAid one more time and then exported to MS Word.

I sent the manuscript to my new editor, Kristen Tate at The Blue Garret . My previous editor/s have moved on over the years and it’s a natural thing to find a new editor over time. Kristen did a great edit with Track Changes on the MS Word with comments, line edits, and she created a new Style Guide which we’ll use going forward.

I went through the MS Word edits and Accepted or Rejected and changed things, then Kristen checked one more time.

I imported the final MS Word .docx into Vellum, formatted and published the ebook, and sent the files to my designer for print formatting. Here's my tutorial on how to format with Vellum (Mac only) , and there are other formatting options here .

Practicalities of publishing a new edition 

I have never used an ebook ISBN for Stone of Fire , so I just uploaded the new edition with updated copyright info on the ebook stores.

I use a date in my file name so I always know when I updated the file last. I’ve updated this file multiple times over the last decade with minor edits and changes to the title, cover, back matter, etc. Updating files is a normal part of the indie author business and including dates in your files can help keep track of when you upload new versions.

I used new ISBNs for the print editions: 978-1-913321-96-3 (paperback); 978-1-913321-97-0 (large print); 978-1-913321-98-7 (hardback).

I unlinked the editions and unpublished them at KDP Print and Ingram Spark, then published new editions and linked them to my author name through author.amazon.com .

Remember, you can never get rid of old print editions completely, as there is a secondhand market. So un-publish the old editions, but be aware that they may still ‘win the buy button' on Amazon, which is a pain! Check the publication date if you want the new version.

The copyright page has all the years that changes were made (more than just a typo), and also Previously Published as Pentecost . 

The audiobooks are now out of date, so I have unpublished the first three books and the first boxset, and will consider getting new editions produced later. 

Craft notes on rewriting

There is an anecdotal saying amongst writers that after a million words published, you know what you’re doing. Or at least, you have a better idea what to improve next!

I recommend Stages of a Fiction Writer: Know Where You Stand on the Path to Writing by Dean Wesley Smith if you want to assess where you are. 

I’ve published several million words now, most of those since I wrote Stone of Fire , plus I’ve spent a lot of time improving my craft since then. These are some of the things I fixed in the rewrite. 

Increased depth of character, emotion, and character Point Of View (POV)

Depth of character is all about point of view. Although I understood that each chapter needed a POV, it was clear in my writing that I had not sunk deep enough into each person. 

For example, “Morgan saw that the door was open,” can become “The door was open.” Because I am in Morgan’s POV, I can write from her frame of reference.

“Morgan thought that perhaps Jake might need help” becomes “Jake needed help.”

The use of ‘[character name] thought’ or including thoughts in italics isn’t usually necessary because the chapter should be in the POV of the characters. 

I also increased depth and emotion by including more detail about the character response to a situation and internal reactions, rather than just their actions. We read in order to get an insight into someone else’s life, to experience something vicariously, and understanding their point of view is part of the joy of reading. 

In early drafts, Morgan would react with action and movement, but the reader didn’t know why. You might hear this described as ‘stimulus-response’ in some craft books, but it’s just a case of ‘something happens-characters responds physically but also internally.’

I think I was able to write more emotionally because after 12 ARKANE books, I know my characters so much better. My series characters, Morgan, Jake, and others like Father Ben, Martin (like Q in Bond), and others are more real to me. I found myself saying ‘Morgan wouldn’t do that,’ or ‘Jake wouldn’t say that.’ I couldn’t have known those things a decade ago. 

If you want to develop this area, I recommend the Depth in Writing and Advanced Depth courses by Dean Wesley Smith at WMG Publishing on this topic.  

In terms of books, check out Writing Unforgettable Characters: How to Create Story People Who Jump Off the Page by James Scott Bell, and Nail Your Novel: Bring Characters to Life by Roz Morris. 

Leaned into my author voice

It’s annoying in the early years as craft workshops and books talk about ‘finding your voice,' but the reality is that it’s more likely you will uncover it slowly. 

When I started writing, I was afraid to let people see what was inside my mind. I have always struggled with fear of judgment and I’m a people-pleaser a lot of the time. I want people to like me, to think I am useful and a ‘good girl’ and an excellent member of society.

[More on this in The Successful Author Mindset .]

But J.F. Penn is not like that, and I needed time to discover that darker side of me. I needed time to stop self-censoring. J.F. Penn is my rebellious side, my inner Goth, the taphophile who loves visiting crypts and ossuaries, as well as cathedrals and galleries.

J.F. Penn writes about good and evil, right and wrong, angels and demons — and she loves a fast-paced, explosion book (or movie!) with a high body count!

At points in Stone of Fire , I could see glimpses of my future author voice, but I needed to lean into it further. I could sense my early writer self backing away from what I really wanted to say for fear of being judged as weird or too dark or too imaginative. But now I embrace my weird. I embrace my voice.

Improved pacing 

The first edition of Pentecost was written more like a literary novel with long, complicated sentences, long paragraphs, and a lack of thriller pacing. After reading many thousands of thrillers in the last decade, and studying pace in particular, I made a few specific changes. 

I used more line breaks, more paragraph breaks, shorter sentences in parts, sentence fragments, and faster dialogue . This increases ‘white space’ on a page, which means it’s faster for the reader’s eye to cross the space, and they have to turn the page to get the rest of the story. 

James Patterson talks about this in his excellent Masterclass and I also recommend Dean Wesley Smith’s Pacing workshop .   

I also broke scenes across the end of chapters so the reader would have to start a new chapter to find out more. This is more easily done when you’ve finished the whole book since most of us write in scenes, rather than chapters. I learned this from Story Engineering: Mastering the 6 Core Competencies of Successful Writing by Larry Brooks . 

I also changed the order of some scenes to vary pacing , so there were some slower-paced chapters in between scenes of action to give the reader a respite. However, Stone of Fire is an action-adventure thriller, so needs to move at a decent clip!

I also used dates and timestamps in early editions, as well as other timeline details. This is because I’m a discovery writer, and in fact, I could remove those timeline aspects without impacting the story.

They were important in the story structure to make sure everyone was where they needed to be at the right time etc, but they didn’t need to be so obvious in the final text. I could indicate morning by the early sunlight or the passing of time with a mention of ‘next day,’ or other phrases. 

Reduced research info-dumps 

I love love love my research! One of the main reasons I write fiction is so I can go deep into research and spin-off real-world events, places, artifacts, and people, into story. 

Too much research in the text can slow the pacing and may cause the reader to skip parts of the story. But equally, one of my hallmarks as J.F. Penn is sparking curiosity in the reader. Many of my fans email to say they google things to find out what’s true and they love my Author’s Note at the back of the books with my inspiration. So it’s a fine line in terms of what to leave and what to edit and what to remove completely. 

I discovered I had repeated the same information within the book. I kept telling different characters the same thing, but not every character needed to know all that information, and it was the reader I needed to ensure had all the information at the right time. 

I also wanted to open questions in the reader’s mind and hold information back so they didn’t know everything too early. They needed to read on to solve those open questions and keep turning those pages.

Changed passive voice to more active writing (where appropriate)

This is an extremely common issue with new writers, and especially those of us who have been in the world of legal or business writing, where hedging your bets rather than making strong statements is a good way to protect yourself.

For example, “The statue of St James was surrounded by pilgrims,” becomes “Pilgrims surrounded the statue of St. James.”

Of course, there are good reasons to use passive voice in some situations. As ever, it’s a fine line that you learn with experience and writing tools like ProWritingAid , which helped immensely. I wish I’d had it when I started out! 

Resolved dialogue issues 

Some craft books say that you should only ever use basic dialogue tags i.e. “Morgan said, Jake said.”

But that advice is dated in the world of increased audio consumption. 

It is very obvious when a writer uses repetitive words in an audiobook. So, please, don’t repeat words like ‘said’ too much, but equally, you don’t have to replace them with ‘interjected,’ or ‘spat,’ or ‘whispered,’ although those can be good options if the story demands it. 

The best thing to do is replace dialogue tags with character action.

Morgan walked over to the window and looked out at the sparkling blue waters. “The key is out there somewhere. We just have to find it.”

The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression is a good resource for matching character action with their emotions. For example, “Morgan was angry,” or “Morgan said angrily,” becomes “Morgan slammed the mug down on the table, her knuckles white with tension,” followed by dialogue. 

Another new writer issue is using too many names in dialogue.

“How are you, Morgan?” said Jake.

“Thanks for asking, Jake. I’m fine,” Morgan answered.

Seriously, too many names! The main thing is to make it clear who is speaking.

Rephrased ‘started to’ and ‘began to'

I rephrased lots of ‘beginning to’ and ‘starting to’ phrases as well as other overly wordy phrasing. Sometimes that works fine, but I overused those phrases.

“He began to pray,” to “He prayed.”

“She started to walk,” to She walked.”

“She said with a whisper,” to “She whispered.”

I also checked every use of words like ‘actually, really, very, suddenly,’ and changed obvious clichés to something more original.

Edited for audio

I’ve learned a lot about writing for audio over the last decade and these days, I narrate my own short stories as well as non-fiction, so I’m far more sensitive to repetitive sounds, not just repetitive words. For example, the words you, blue, tattoo, and interview all start and end with different letters. They look different on the page, they have different meanings, but they strike the same note on the ear.

Repetition can work if you have a point to make, but sometimes it can jar the listener if you do it too much.

Repeated words are an issue and as writers, this often happens as the word is in our heads already, so we just re-use it without thinking. “For example, Mario led them around the side of the building and in through a side door.”

In many of these repeated word examples, I used thesaurus.com to find a better word.

There’s a chapter on this in Audio for Authors: Audiobooks, Podcasting, and Voice Technologies.

Rephrased disembodied body part action

This is a surprisingly common issue and once you’re aware of it, you will see it everywhere!

“Her hands held him down,” becomes “She held him down.”

“Morgan’s eyebrows raised in surprise,” becomes “Morgan raised an eyebrow.”

“Her mouth whispered a prayer,” becomes “She whispered a prayer.”

“His eyes were fixed on the screen,” becomes “He gazed at the screen.”

Rephrased for inclusivity and checked diversity

I’m British, so I have a keen sense of hierarchy. That is part of our national identity, and if you watch The Crown on Netflix, you’ll understand why!

When I wrote Stone of Fire , I still lived in a hierarchical office world and I found phrasing in this edit that I wouldn’t use now, and that has changed in the cultural shifts of the last decade. For example, I had one character addressing another as ‘Sir’ when they were not in the military.

I also had gendered language that I made gender-neutral. Mankind became humanity. Policeman became police officer. ProWritingAid has an inclusive language filter that helps identify phrasing that might need revisiting, although, of course, it is up to you as the writer to fix what you think is appropriate.

Edited to make the story more up to date in terms of technology

I wrote Stone of Fire in 2009-early 2011 and it included technology that has changed. 

I changed ‘smart phone’ to phone; ‘mini-copter’ to ‘drone,' and removed some dates which were in the future when I wrote the book, but are now meaningless.

I also wrote about a prototype virtual reality library for the ARKANE investigators to use in their research and rewrote that to make it more natural in a world where VR is becoming more common. 

Reduced word count 

These changes reduced the word count from around 72K to nearer 55K, which is the usual length for my ARKANE thrillers. 

Originally, I was told that a book had to be over 70,000 words to be publishable, but that was back in the days when the digital revolution was in its early days. I definitely padded out with extra scenes that I removed in this edit.

Conclusion: Was it worth it?

This might seem like a lot, and it was about a month of working a few hours a day to re-edit and re-publish Stone of Fire, but it was worth the effort. 

I am now re-editing Crypt of Bone and the issues are similar but it’s taking less time as I definitely improved between books 1 and 2. I intend to re-edit Ark of Blood , book 3, and that will be it for now. I can then re-release the boxset of the first 3 ebooks, and see what the effect of the changes have on my read-through to the rest in the series. I’ll report back on that in my 2022 year-end round-up. 

Even if it doesn’t increase read-through, it has been well worth the effort to solidify my craft, provide new story ideas, as well as ideas for limited editions and NFTs, plus, more examples for How to Write a Novel , which I’ll be putting out this year in book form (fingers crossed!) I also feel much more confident in my fiction writing craft , and able to move forward into new stories.

Only you can decide whether such a rewrite is useful for your situation. It’s certainly not for everyone.

If you have any questions, or want to share your tips or rewriting experience, please leave a comment below. 

Want to read Stone of Fire?

You can get the ebook for free on all the usual platforms . You can also download it for free on my Payhip store here , and have it sent to whatever digital device you like through Bookfunnel.

If you download a copy, check the copyright page says 2022 to make sure it's the latest edition.

Print copies are available on Amazon here and filtering out through the other services over the next few weeks. You can search by the new ISBNs: 978-1-913321-96-3 (paperback); 978-1-913321-97-0 (large print); 978-1-913321-98-7 (hardback). I'm waiting to do the new audio editions.

The rewrites of Crypt of Bone and Ark of Blood should be completed by the end of April, and if you enjoy the books, there are 12 in the ARKANE series so far.

Want more tips on How to Write a Novel? Check out my course here.

Reader Interactions

March 31, 2022 at 2:07 pm

This has been one of the most useful write-ups that I’ve read in years. I’m going to re-edit my historical action thriller series this summer. Did you lose the reviews that the first editions had gained, when you redid the interiors? Is there any way to preserve them and have Amazon connect them? Or does the Zon consider extensive editing to be a completely new book? Are there any parameters (ie word count) that it takes into consideration before labelling the new version as a completely new publication? Thanks so much for continuing to instruct, share your knowledge and educate the rest of us. That is so generous of you and I’m so grateful.

April 3, 2022 at 12:21 am

Thanks, Dianne! Glad it was useful. I kept the original ebook ASIN and just uploaded a new edition, I redid the print and relinked it, but I don’t think I lost any reviews. All the best with your rewrites!

April 7, 2024 at 4:40 pm

I’m rewriting a previously published first-person narrated book and itching to switch it from past tense to present tense because that’s the voice in which I’ve become comfortable. It’s a difficult decision because some people HATE present tense, and yet my latest published book is getting amazing read through. Any advice?

April 8, 2024 at 8:59 am

You’re the author. You get to decide 🙂 Go with what you want the book to be.

[…] was only able to write it because I rewrote my first three novels in early 2022 (lessons learned here), and that exercise proved to myself that I know what I am talking […]

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Creative Writing Skills: 6 Lessons You Need To Teach Today

So, you’re going to teach Creative Writing. Congratulations! Now comes the hard part–what exactly does that mean? What should you be teaching? What skills should your students be learning? In this post, I’m going to share some essential Creative Writing skills you should be teaching in your high school Creative Writing class. 

If you’re looking for more tips to teach Creative Writing, check out this post . And if you need help planning the Creative Writing semester, this post should help . 

(Looking to skip the planning entirely? Grab all of my Creative Writing skills lessons right here! )

Creative Writing Skills #1: Show. Don’t Tell.

The advice to “show, don’t tell” is some of the oldest and most consistent advice given to young writers. And it’s for a good reason–they really struggle with it!

About half of my students come into Creative Writing with these big elaborate stories they want to tell. But when they actually get into writing, their stories feel more like a list of events that happened. 

I’ve seen months of plot happen in just a paragraph of my students’ writing. Students need to learn to slow down and create an experience for their readers. It’s how a story unfolds, after all, that makes it worthwhile–not the events themselves. 

Tips for Teaching “Show. Don’t Tell”

Like all creative writing skills, you’ll want to show your students some really good mentor texts first . Find some excerpts from books with really juicy descriptions. Share these with your students. 

After they have some examples, give students time to try “telling” an event, description, or emotion instead of “showing” it. 

I do this by giving each student a “telling sentence” and asking them to turn it into a “showing” paragraph. A student might get a sentence that says something like, “Billy felt angry.” Then, they’ll have to write a whole paragraph that implies Billy is angry without actually saying it bluntly. 

If you want to save yourself some time (and the mental anguish of brainstorming a bunch of bland sentences), you can get my “Show. Don’t Tell” Mini-Lesson right here. It includes a slideshow, student worksheets, and those telling sentences.  

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Creative Writing Skills #2: Precise and Concise Language Choice

Now that your students are learning to slow down and offer descriptions in their writing, it’s time to help them focus on their word choice. 

Diction is immensely important to a writer–especially when storytelling gets more advanced. A lot of our students want to write down the first words that come to their minds and then “be done.” 

But we know great writing doesn’t happen like that. We have to teach our students to find the best word, not the first word–without abusing a thesaurus. 

Tips for Teaching Better Word Choice

First, you’ll want to show your students some examples of really great concise and precise word choice. You’ll also want to show some not-so-great examples. The comparison should be eye-opening for your students. 

Now, the best way to become more precise in your diction is to improve your vocabulary. We probably can’t make great strides in improving our students’ vocabulary in just a quarter or semester of Creative Writing. 

But we can show them how to improve some of the most commonly used vague language . One great example of this is the word “got.” 

It’s pretty rare that “got” is the best verb for a situation, but we–and our students–use it all the time. If we can teach students that “got” is a red flag for vague language, that’s a huge step!

We can also teach our students to avoid filler words. 

If you need help putting this all together in a lesson, I have a no-prep Precise and Concise Langauge Mini-Lesson right here for you . Included is a slideshow, students worksheets, and a reference handout for students they can use every day. 

Creative Writing Skills #3: Dialogue

Your students are starting to put words on a page and–hey–they’re not bad!

But at some point, your students are going to have their characters talk to each other. And this can be when stories get really, really bad. 

Early on in your Creative Writing class, encourage your students to start listening to the way others speak. Where do they pause? What slang do they use? When do they use complete sentences and when don’t they? You can even ask students to jot down conversations they overhear.

A great writer has an ear for dialogue, and this skill begins when students become aware of speech around them. Encouraging them to eavesdrop will help them write realistic dialogue later.  Just remind them to be respectful. Eavesdropping in the cafeteria is one thing. Listening outside someone’s bedroom door is another.

Our students not only struggle with mimicking real, authentic speech, but they also struggle with punctuating it. Depending on the skill level of your students, you may have to pick your battles here. Cheesy speech might be worth ignoring if there’s no quotation mark in sight. 

Tips for Teaching Dialogue Writing

First, and foremost, I like to cover punctuating dialogue first. For one reason, it’s because punctuating dialogue is either right or wrong. It’s easier to learn something that is objective. 

For another reason, I, personally, can’t stand reading poorly punctuated dialogue. My English teacher’s eyes just can’t see past it. 

Only once the quotation marks, commas, and periods are at least close to the right spot do I focus on trying to improve the content of students’ dialogue. 

Students’ dialogue writing is only going to get better through practice and observing real-life speech. However, you can give them some tips for writing dialogue better. 

For example, remind your students not to have characters talk too much . I’ve seen stories with pages and pages of dialogue. Each character’s every little “hi,” “‘sup?” and “‘nothin’ much” gets recorded. Let your students know they can skip anything that doesn’t add value to the story. 

If you need help planning this lesson, I have a done-for-you Dialogue Mini-lesson right here. It includes a slideshow lesson, worksheets for focusing on both punctuation and craft, and a writing exercise. Get it here. 

Creative Writing Skills #4: Mood

If you can only teach your students the above Creative Writing skills, you will no doubt improve their writing tremendously. But if you want to take your students’ writing up a notch, encourage them to think about the mood in their poetry and stories.  

Students will no doubt have heard this literary term from their regular English classes, but it’s always worth reviewing first. Plus, they’ve probably read for mood, but creating it is a totally different game. 

Tips for Teaching Mood

There are so many ways you can teach your students to create mood. It’s a pretty fun topic!

You might want to begin with some brainstorming. Like, what kind of mood might a horror story have? A comedy? You want students to understand why, as a writer, mastering mood is important to them. 

Then, like always, you’ll want to share some solid mentor texts. I love horror stories for showcasing well-written mood, but love poems are also good for this. 

Whenever possible in Creative Writing, I like to mix up the media, so I have students first analyze the mood of various classic paintings. As an English teacher, it tickles me to show students that these literary terms apply to art of all kind. Film clips would work really well, too. 

Then, challenge students to write a scene and evoke a specific mood. You could randomly assign the mood or let students pick. 

In my Mood Mini-Lesson , I have students analyze the mood in painting first. Then, I have them choose a card. Each card has a different mood written on it. Then, students must describe a setting that evokes that mood. You can get this mood lesson for yourself here.  

Creative Writing Skills #5: Tone

Well, if you’re going to teach mood, then tone is the likely next skill, right?

Teaching tone and mood is important because their differences are subtle, but important. Until students study tone, they might mistake it for mood and mix the two together. 

I never expect my students to master tone. It’s difficult and something that even professional writers polish over the course of many drafts. But it doesn’t hurt to get students thinking about the impact of their word choice. 

Don’t forget to remind students of the importance of choosing those precise and concise words. With tone, it’s truly what makes a difference. 

Tips for Teaching Tone

After defining tone and showing great examples of it to your students, give them some space to practice identifying it.  

I like to cover informal and formal tones–not just emotional tones. Identifying whether a piece of writing is formal or informal is a great first step for students. It’s a little easier but an important skill and might give your students a bit of confidence in their tone-identifying skills. 

Once they know what tone looks like, they can try to create it themselves.  

The activity I do involves having students write a short scene.

I randomly give my students a tone to use. I also randomly give them a situation. So, a student may have to describe “eating lunch in the cafeteria” with a “romantic” tone. The results can be pretty entertaining!

If that sounds like a lesson you’d like, you can get my Tone Mini-Lesson right here . Includes are a slideshow, students worksheets, and the slips for tones and situations.

And, if you’re teaching mood and tone, I have a FREE Mood and Tone Handout right here!

Creative Writing Skills #6: Voice

I put voice last in this blog post, but it could just as easily have been first. Voice is difficult to define for students, but it’s something they should be working on crafting throughout your whole Creative Writing class. 

Even if your students never quite master their literary voice (who does?), it’s a good skill to discuss with them. If students understand the concept of literary voice, it will make them better writers and more analytical readers. 

Tips for Teaching Literary Voice

You’ll first have to define voice for your students. This can be challenging. It might be easier to focus on a few aspects of voice–like diction or syntax–in order to explain the concept. 

Discuss with students their favorite authors. What does their “voice” sound like? What about the authors you’ve read and studied together?

Give students examples of strong voice to examine (the stronger the better). Have them discuss the techniques and style of each mentor text. 

To drive this home, I do a fun activity with my students. I take three very different poems by authors with very different voices. Then, I cut them up, line by line, and mix the three poems together. My students are then tasked with putting the poems back together!

To do this successfully, they’ll have to look for styles that match. Rhyming may be part of one author’s voice, but not another. One author may create a dark mood while another uses humor consistently. It’s a great way to drive home how voice can be an author’s calling card. 

This activity and some additional practice are included in my Voice Mini-lesson . Also included is a slideshow to introduce the concept. You can save yourself some time and get the lesson here. 

These are some skills that I think are essential for any Creative Writing class. There’s no one right way to teach any of these skills, and teaching from multiple angles is best. 

Whenever possible, I like to make my Creative Writing lessons hands-on. Even the most die-hard students get sick of writing every minute of every class. 

If you, too, would like some hands-on lessons and short activities that cover these essential skills, check out my Creative Writing Workshops Bundle . Each lesson includes everything you need to teach, model, and help your students master these skills one at a time. 

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105 Creative Writing Exercises To Get You Writing Again

You know that feeling when you just don’t feel like writing? Sometimes you can’t even get a word down on paper. It’s the most frustrating thing ever to a writer, especially when you’re working towards a deadline. The good news is that we have a list of 105 creative writing exercises to help you get motivated and start writing again!

What are creative writing exercises?

Creative writing exercises are short writing activities (normally around 10 minutes) designed to get you writing. The goal of these exercises is to give you the motivation to put words onto a blank paper. These words don’t need to be logical or meaningful, neither do they need to be grammatically correct or spelt correctly. The whole idea is to just get you writing something, anything. The end result of these quick creative writing exercises is normally a series of notes, bullet points or ramblings that you can, later on, use as inspiration for a bigger piece of writing such as a story or a poem. 

Good creative writing exercises are short, quick and easy to complete. You shouldn’t need to think too much about your style of writing or how imaginative your notes are. Just write anything that comes to mind, and you’ll be on the road to improving your creative writing skills and beating writer’s block . 

Use the generator below to get a random creative writing exercise idea:

List of 105+ Creative Writing Exercises

Here are over 105 creative writing exercises to give your brain a workout and help those creative juices flow again:

• Set a timer for 60 seconds. Now write down as many words or phrases that come to mind at that moment.
• Pick any colour you like. Now start your sentence with this colour. For example, Orange, the colour of my favourite top. 
• Open a book or dictionary on a random page. Pick a random word. You can close your eyes and slowly move your finger across the page. Now, write a paragraph with this random word in it. You can even use an online dictionary to get random words:

• Create your own alphabet picture book or list. It can be A to Z of animals, food, monsters or anything else you like!
• Using only the sense of smell, describe where you are right now.
• Take a snack break. While eating your snack write down the exact taste of that food. The goal of this creative writing exercise is to make your readers savour this food as well.
• Pick a random object in your room and write a short paragraph from its point of view. For example, how does your pencil feel? What if your lamp had feelings?
• Describe your dream house. Where would you live one day? Is it huge or tiny? 
• Pick two different TV shows, movies or books that you like. Now swap the main character. What if Supergirl was in Twilight? What if SpongeBob SquarePants was in The Flash? Write a short scene using this character swap as inspiration.
• What’s your favourite video game? Write at least 10 tips for playing this game.
• Pick your favourite hobby or sport. Now pretend an alien has just landed on Earth and you need to teach it this hobby or sport. Write at least ten tips on how you would teach this alien.
• Use a random image generator and write a paragraph about the first picture you see.

• Write a letter to your favourite celebrity or character. What inspires you most about them? Can you think of a memorable moment where this person’s life affected yours? We have this helpful guide on writing a letter to your best friend for extra inspiration.
• Write down at least 10 benefits of writing. This can help motivate you and beat writer’s block.
• Complete this sentence in 10 different ways: Patrick waited for the school bus and…
• Pick up a random book from your bookshelf and go to page 9. Find the ninth sentence on that page. Use this sentence as a story starter.
• Create a character profile based on all the traits that you hate. It might help to list down all the traits first and then work on describing the character.
• What is the scariest or most dangerous situation you have ever been in? Why was this situation scary? How did you cope at that moment?
• Pretend that you’re a chat show host and you’re interviewing your favourite celebrity. Write down the script for this conversation.
• Using extreme detail, write down what you have been doing for the past one hour today. Think about your thoughts, feelings and actions during this time.
• Make a list of potential character names for your next story. You can use a fantasy name generator to help you.
• Describe a futuristic setting. What do you think the world would look like in 100 years time?
• Think about a recent argument you had with someone. Would you change anything about it? How would you resolve an argument in the future?
• Describe a fantasy world. What kind of creatures live in this world? What is the climate like? What everyday challenges would a typical citizen of this world face? You can use this fantasy world name generator for inspiration.
• At the flip of a switch, you turn into a dragon. What kind of dragon would you be? Describe your appearance, special abilities, likes and dislikes. You can use a dragon name generator to give yourself a cool dragon name.
• Pick your favourite book or a famous story. Now change the point of view. For example, you could rewrite the fairytale , Cinderella. This time around, Prince Charming could be the main character. What do you think Prince Charming was doing, while Cinderella was cleaning the floors and getting ready for the ball?
• Pick a random writing prompt and use it to write a short story. Check out this collection of over 300 writing prompts for kids to inspire you. 
• Write a shopping list for a famous character in history. Imagine if you were Albert Einstein’s assistant, what kind of things would he shop for on a weekly basis?
• Create a fake advertisement poster for a random object that is near you right now. Your goal is to convince the reader to buy this object from you.
• What is the worst (or most annoying) sound that you can imagine? Describe this sound in great detail, so your reader can understand the pain you feel when hearing this sound.
• What is your favourite song at the moment? Pick one line from this song and describe a moment in your life that relates to this line.
•  You’re hosting an imaginary dinner party at your house. Create a list of people you would invite, and some party invites. Think about the theme of the dinner party, the food you will serve and entertainment for the evening. 
• You are waiting to see your dentist in the waiting room. Write down every thought you are having at this moment in time. 
• Make a list of your greatest fears. Try to think of at least three fears. Now write a short story about a character who is forced to confront one of these fears. 
• Create a ‘Wanted’ poster for a famous villain of your choice. Think about the crimes they have committed, and the reward you will give for having them caught. 
• Imagine you are a journalist for the ‘Imagine Forest Times’ newspaper. Your task is to get an exclusive interview with the most famous villain of all time. Pick a villain of your choice and interview them for your newspaper article. What questions would you ask them, and what would their responses be?
•  In a school playground, you see the school bully hurting a new kid. Write three short stories, one from each perspective in this scenario (The bully, the witness and the kid getting bullied).
• You just won $10 million dollars. What would you spend this money on?
• Pick a random animal, and research at least five interesting facts about this animal. Write a short story centred around one of these interesting facts. 
• Pick a global issue that you are passionate about. This could be climate change, black lives matters, women’s rights etc. Now create a campaign poster for this global issue. 
• Write an acrostic poem about an object near you right now (or even your own name). You could use a poetry idea generator to inspire you.
• Imagine you are the head chef of a 5-star restaurant. Recently the business has slowed down. Your task is to come up with a brand-new menu to excite customers. Watch this video prompt on YouTube to inspire you.
• What is your favourite food of all time? Imagine if this piece of food was alive, what would it say to you?
• If life was one big musical, what would you be singing about right now? Write the lyrics of your song. 
• Create and describe the most ultimate villain of all time. What would their traits be? What would their past look like? Will they have any positive traits?
• Complete this sentence in at least 10 different ways: Every time I look out of the window, I…
• You have just made it into the local newspaper, but what for? Write down at least five potential newspaper headlines . Here’s an example, Local Boy Survives a Deadly Illness.
• If you were a witch or a wizard, what would your specialist area be and why? You might want to use a Harry Potter name generator or a witch name generator for inspiration.
• What is your favourite thing to do on a Saturday night? Write a short story centred around this activity. 
• Your main character has just received the following items: A highlighter, a red cap, a teddy bear and a fork. What would your character do with these items? Can you write a story using these items? 
• Create a timeline of your own life, from birth to this current moment. Think about the key events in your life, such as birthdays, graduations, weddings and so on. After you have done this, you can pick one key event from your life to write a story about. 
• Think of a famous book or movie you like. Rewrite a scene from this book or movie, where the main character is an outsider. They watch the key events play out, but have no role in the story. What would their actions be? How would they react?
• Three very different characters have just won the lottery. Write a script for each character, as they reveal the big news to their best friend.  
• Write a day in the life story of three different characters. How does each character start their day? What do they do throughout the day? And how does their day end?
•  Write about the worst experience in your life so far. Think about a time when you were most upset or angry and describe it. 
• Imagine you’ve found a time machine in your house. What year would you travel to and why?
• Describe your own superhero. Think about their appearance, special abilities and their superhero name. Will they have a secret identity? Who is their number one enemy?
• What is your favourite country in the world? Research five fun facts about this country and use one to write a short story. 
• Set yourself at least three writing goals. This could be a good way to motivate yourself to write every day. For example, one goal might be to write at least 150 words a day. 
• Create a character description based on the one fact, three fiction rule. Think about one fact or truth about yourself. And then add in three fictional or fantasy elements. For example, your character could be the same age as you in real life, this is your one fact. And the three fictional elements could be they have the ability to fly, talk in over 100 different languages and have green skin. 
• Describe the perfect person. What traits would they have? Think about their appearance, their interests and their dislikes. 
• Keep a daily journal or diary. This is a great way to keep writing every day. There are lots of things you can write about in your journal, such as you can write about the ‘highs’ and ‘lows’ of your day. Think about anything that inspired you or anything that upset you, or just write anything that comes to mind at the moment. 
• Write a book review or a movie review. If you’re lost for inspiration, just watch a random movie or read any book that you can find. Then write a critical review on it. Think about the best parts of the book/movie and the worst parts. How would you improve the book or movie?
• Write down a conversation between yourself. You can imagine talking to your younger self or future self (i.e. in 10 years’ time). What would you tell them? Are there any lessons you learned or warnings you need to give? Maybe you could talk about what your life is like now and compare it to their life?
• Try writing some quick flash fiction stories . Flash fiction is normally around 500 words long, so try to stay within this limit.
• Write a six-word story about something that happened to you today or yesterday. A six-word story is basically an entire story told in just six words. Take for example: “Another football game ruined by me.” or “A dog’s painting sold for millions.” – Six-word stories are similar to writing newspaper headlines. The goal is to summarise your story in just six words. 
• The most common monsters or creatures used in stories include vampires, werewolves , dragons, the bigfoot, sirens and the loch-ness monster. In a battle of intelligence, who do you think will win and why?
• Think about an important event in your life that has happened so far, such as a birthday or the birth of a new sibling. Now using the 5 W’s and 1 H technique describe this event in great detail. The 5 W’s include: What, Who, Where, Why, When and the 1 H is: How. Ask yourself questions about the event, such as what exactly happened on that day? Who was there? Why was this event important? When and where did it happen? And finally, how did it make you feel?
• Pretend to be someone else. Think about someone important in your life. Now put yourself into their shoes, and write a day in the life story about being them. What do you think they do on a daily basis? What situations would they encounter? How would they feel?
• Complete this sentence in at least 10 different ways: I remember…
• Write about your dream holiday. Where would you go? Who would you go with? And what kind of activities would you do?
• Which one item in your house do you use the most? Is it the television, computer, mobile phone, the sofa or the microwave? Now write a story of how this item was invented. You might want to do some research online and use these ideas to build up your story. 
• In exactly 100 words, describe your bedroom. Try not to go over or under this word limit.
• Make a top ten list of your favourite animals. Based on this list create your own animal fact file, where you provide fun facts about each animal in your list.
• What is your favourite scene from a book or a movie? Write down this scene. Now rewrite the scene in a different genre, such as horror, comedy, drama etc.
•  Change the main character of a story you recently read into a villain. For example, you could take a popular fairytale such as Jack and the Beanstalk, but this time re-write the story to make Jack the villain of the tale.
• Complete the following sentence in at least 10 different ways: Do you ever wonder…
• What does your name mean? Research the meaning of your own name, or a name that interests you. Then use this as inspiration for your next story. For example, the name ‘Marty’ means “Servant Of Mars, God Of War”. This could make a good concept for a sci-fi story.
• Make a list of three different types of heroes (or main characters) for potential future stories.
• If someone gave you $10 dollars, what would you spend it on and why?
• Describe the world’s most boring character in at least 100 words. 
• What is the biggest problem in the world today, and how can you help fix this issue?
• Create your own travel brochure for your hometown. Think about why tourists might want to visit your hometown. What is your town’s history? What kind of activities can you do? You could even research some interesting facts. 
• Make a list of all your favourite moments or memories in your life. Now pick one to write a short story about.
• Describe the scariest and ugliest monster you can imagine. You could even draw a picture of this monster with your description.
• Write seven haikus, one for each colour of the rainbow. That’s red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. 
• Imagine you are at the supermarket. Write down at least three funny scenarios that could happen to you at the supermarket. Use one for your next short story. 
• Imagine your main character is at home staring at a photograph. Write the saddest scene possible. Your goal is to make your reader cry when reading this scene. 
• What is happiness? In at least 150 words describe the feeling of happiness. You could use examples from your own life of when you felt happy.
• Think of a recent nightmare you had and write down everything you can remember. Use this nightmare as inspiration for your next story.
• Keep a dream journal. Every time you wake up in the middle of the night or early in the morning you can quickly jot down things that you remember from your dreams. These notes can then be used as inspiration for a short story. 
• Your main character is having a really bad day. Describe this bad day and the series of events they experience. What’s the worst thing that could happen to your character?
• You find a box on your doorstep. You open this box and see the most amazing thing ever. Describe this amazing thing to your readers.
• Make a list of at least five possible settings or locations for future stories. Remember to describe each setting in detail.
• Think of something new you recently learned. Write this down. Now write a short story where your main character also learns the same thing.
• Describe the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen in your whole life. Your goal is to amaze your readers with its beauty. 
• Make a list of things that make you happy or cheer you up. Try to think of at least five ideas. Now imagine living in a world where all these things were banned or against the law. Use this as inspiration for your next story.
• Would you rather be rich and alone or poor and very popular? Write a story based on the lives of these two characters. 
• Imagine your main character is a Librarian. Write down at least three dark secrets they might have. Remember, the best secrets are always unexpected.
• There’s a history behind everything. Describe the history of your house. How and when was your house built? Think about the land it was built on and the people that may have lived here long before you.
• Imagine that you are the king or queen of a beautiful kingdom. Describe your kingdom in great detail. What kind of rules would you have? Would you be a kind ruler or an evil ruler of the kingdom?
• Make a wish list of at least three objects you wish you owned right now. Now use these three items in your next story. At least one of them must be the main prop in the story.
• Using nothing but the sense of taste, describe a nice Sunday afternoon at your house. Remember you can’t use your other senses (i.e see, hear, smell or touch) in this description. 
• What’s the worst pain you felt in your life? Describe this pain in great detail, so your readers can also feel it.
• If you were lost on a deserted island in the middle of nowhere, what three must-have things would you pack and why?
• Particpate in online writing challenges or contests. Here at Imagine Forest, we offer daily writing challenges with a new prompt added every day to inspire you. Check out our challenges section in the menu.

Do you have any more fun creative writing exercises to share? Let us know in the comments below!

Marty the wizard is the master of Imagine Forest. When he's not reading a ton of books or writing some of his own tales, he loves to be surrounded by the magical creatures that live in Imagine Forest. While living in his tree house he has devoted his time to helping children around the world with their writing skills and creativity.

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Walking by the Way

the road to inspired learning

Engaging Creative Writing Lessons for Your Students

I often hear students protest, “But I’m not creative.” And moms look at me with a shoulder shrug and a mirror claim, “I’m not creative either.”

I don’t buy in.

We have been gifted with a creativity muscle. It’s just that it doesn’t work properly if it hasn’t been exercised.

As I design creative writing lessons , my goal is to provide you with engaging, hands-on activities–creative writing exercises to keep your students smiling, laughing, and moving that yellow pencil (or purple marker!) across the page.

The Importance of Creative Writing

Why should you care about creative writing? Because creative writers are creative thinkers.

Creative thinkers are resourceful problem-solvers. They aren’t afraid to try new things as their curiosity leads them to experiment. Creative thinkers gain emotional intelligence as they explore their own thoughts and feelings, the thoughts and feelings of others, and the big, big world around them.

Creative writing doesn’t have to be hard, scary, or dreadful. I promise. I’m here to help you deliver interesting, enjoyable lessons to your students.

Browse the lessons below to find the just-right creative writing activity for your students.

Creative Writing Lessons and Activities for Early Elementary

Character Sketch: My Pet Dragon Even young students can write a character sketch with this guided writing activity. Students fill out the pet dragon form and then write a short sketch using the information on the form.

Christmas Story Writing Prompts Flip, flap, and mix until you find a setting, characters, and conflict you want to use for your short story.

Circus Writing Prompt Cards This set of writing prompt cards is great for kids who need help generating ideas. The prompts are questions. As the students answer the questions, they will have ample ideas for writing a circus themed story.

Creative Writing Activities for Kids This group of activities from other bloggers will provide you with lots of new ideas for your students.

Creative Writing Dice Game You can partner with your student for this fun dice game; it is the perfect remedy for students who balk at pushing their pencils.

Design a Circus Poster Creative Writing Activity Another great activity for reluctant writers; the circus poster only includes a tiny bit of writing, but a great bit of creating thinking.

Dialogue Lesson Plan for Young Writers Introduce the importance of dialogue with This Is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen. This lesson also includes a hands-on dice writing game that helps students write their own dialogue examples.

Dinosaur Creative Writing Prompts This set of writing prompts will help your student write a paragraph or journal entry about dinosaurs.

Dinosaur Writing Prompt Cards This set of writing prompt cards will motivate your student to write a dinosaur themed short story. The cards are structured in a way to help your student generate gobs of ideas for a short story.

Fairy Tale Writing Prompts Inspire your student to write with fairy tale settings, objects, and characters.

Halloween Story Writing Prompts Write spooky stories with this set of flip, mix, and match strips. Students are given various options for settings, characters, and conflicts.

Hot Air Balloon Writing Prompt Cards If your student complains about not knowing what to write about, try this set of adventure themed writing prompt cards. You can easily guide your student through the writing process with these prompts.

Imaginary Animals Writing Activity Even young students in kindergarten and first grade can enjoy a creative writing lesson. Your students will love creating crazy animals with playdough and using the writing form to compose simple paragraphs.

Listmaking Writing Prompts Students may not be ready to write sentences or paragraphs, but you can entice them to make lists with these engaging prompts.

Mad Science: Adjectives Writing Lab First, students will imagine wonderful and strange things hissing and fizzing in a mad scientist’s lab. Next, students will name and write a description for each item. Finally, students will use their descriptions to write paragraphs about the mad scientist’s lab.

Monster Creative Writing Prompt Cards Boost your student’s imagination with these monster creative writing prompts. You can use these for paragraph writing or journal entries; some of the prompts might even lead to short stories.

Mystery Writing Prompts Do you have a super sleuth? Let your detective try writing some mystery stories using these prompts.

Nurture Creative Thinking with Wordless Books The precursor to creative writing is creative thinking. This activity, designed to build your student’s creative thinking skills, is based on Aaron Becker’s wordless books, Journey and Quest .

Pet Picture Writing Prompts I love using pictures for prompts! Grab this set of free pet pictures and use some of the ideas in the post to get your students writing about pets.

Pirate Writing Prompts It’s a pirate’s life with these fun prompts. Print and cut out the cards. Laminate and put them on a ring and let your student pick one and write.

Teach Parts of a Story with a Picture Book Use Help! We Need a Title!  by Herve Tullet to teach your student about author, title, characters, setting, conflict, and resolution.

Super Hero Writing Prompts Save the day with these fun prompts for your students.

Thanksgiving Dice Writing Activity Your students will laugh out loud as they create silly sentences about Thanksgiving.

Use a Picture Book Teach the Story Element of Conflict The Pencil  by Allan Ahlberg is a fantastic base for teaching how to add conflict and resolution to a short story. Use the lesson and game to teach it to your students.

Writing Activity for Sam and Dave Dig a Hole: Make a List Use the book Sam and Dave Dig a Hole to inspire your student to create a fun (and funny!) list.

Write Backstories for Fairy Tale Characters Have you ever wondered what Rapunzel was doing before she got trapped in that tower? Or what about Goldilocks? What was she doing before she invaded the Three Bears’ house? Explore all kinds of writing possibilities with this fun creative writing lesson.

You can also find an assortment of creative writing lessons and activities for elementary students in the Tip-Top Printables Shop .

Creative Writing Lessons and Activities for Upper Elementary

Pictures to Inspire Creative Writing If you are looking for an easy way to boost interest in creative writing, try this simple activity.

Pourquoi Tales Writing Lesson Why does the leopard have spots? How did the bear lose its tail? Let your students build their creative thinking skills while composing pourquoi tales with this lesson plan.

Creative Writing Lessons for a Homeschool Co-op

I taught this series of posts for a local homeschool co-op, but you can use them however you want.

Creative Writing Lesson One: Cliché and Metaphor Students learn the importance of words with this lesson–including how to avoid clichés and what makes a great metaphor.

Creative Writing Lesson Two: Sensory Details Students consider how a reader experiences the world through writing and how sensory details are a key part of that experience.

Creative Writing Lesson Three: Showing vs. Telling Students learn how to recognize authors who utilize showing, and students will be able to articulate the difference between showing and telling.

Creative Writing Lesson Four: Capturing Images Image is essential. Students learn why images are necessary and how to capture their own.

Creative Writing Lesson Five: Character and Conflict Introduce character and conflict and why these story elements are vital for short story writers.

Creative Writing Lesson Six: Point of View Students learn about point of view and then enjoy reading poems and using pictures to write descriptions from different points of view (and perspectives).

Creative Writing Lesson Seven: Fractured Fairy Tales As we work to put together everything we’ve learned in the previous lessons, students begin composing their own fractured fairy tales.

Creative Writing Lesson Eight: Revision After a mini-lesson about revision, students partner up for peer editing.

You can use this Writing Ideas Notebook to help your students record and explore dozens of writing ideas.

Creative Writing Lesson Plans: Week One

Looking for creative writing lesson plans? I am developing creative writing lesson ideas! 

I’ve written and revamped my creative writing lesson plans and learned that the first week is vital in establishing a community of writers, in outlining expectations, and in working with a new class.

What are some good creative writing exercises?

Some good creative writing exercises include writing prompts, free writing, character development exercises, and fun writing games.

The first week, though, we establish trust—and then we begin powerful creative writing exercises to engage young writers and our community.

How can add encouragement in creative writing lesson plans?

I’ve found students are shy about writing creatively, about sharing pieces of themselves. A large part of the first week of class is setting the atmosphere, of showing everyone they are free to create. And! These concepts will apply to most writing lesson plans for secondary students.

Feel free to give me feedback and borrow all that you need! Below, find my detailed my day-by-day progression for creative writing lesson plans  for week one.

Creative Writing Lesson Day One: Sharing my vision

Comfort matters for young writers. I’m not a huge “ice breaker” type of teacher—I build relationships slowly. Still, to get student writing, we must establish that everyone is safe to explore, to write, to error.

Here are some ideas.

Tone and attitude

For day one with any lesson plan for creative writing, I think it is important to set the tone, to immediately establish what I want from my creative writing students. And that is…

them not to write for me, but for them. I don’t want them writing what they think I want them to write.

Does that make sense? Limitations hurt young writers. My overall tone and attitude toward young writers is that we will work together, create and write together, provide feedback, and invest in ourselves. Older kiddos think that they must provide teachers with the “correct” writing. In such a course, restrictions and boundaries largely go out the window.

Plus, I specifically outline what I believe they can produce in a presentation to set people at ease.

The presentation covers expectations for the class. As the teacher, I am a sort of writing coach with ideas that will not work for everyone. Writers should explore different methods and realize what works for them. First, not everyone will appreciate every type of writing—which is fine. But as a writing community, we must accept that we may not be the target audience for every piece of work.

Therefore, respect is a large component of the class. Be sure to outline what interactions you find acceptable within your classroom community.

Next, as their writing coach, I plan to provide ideas and tools for use. Their job is to decide what tools work for their creative endeavors. My overall message is uplifting and encouraging.

Finally, when we finish, I share the presentation with students so they can consult it throughout the semester. The presentation works nicely for meet-the-teacher night, too!

After covering classroom procedures and rules, I show students a TED Talk. We watch The Danger of a Single Story by Chimamanda Adichie. My goal is to show students that I don’t have a predetermined idea concerning what they should write. This discussion takes the rest of the class period.

Establishing comfort and excitement precedents my other creative writing activities. Personalize your “vision” activities for your lessons in creative writing. Honestly, doing this pre-work builds relationships with students and creates a positive classroom atmosphere.

Creative Writing Lesson Day Two: Activating prior knowledge

Students possess prior knowledge concerning creative writing, but they might not consider that. Students should realize that they know what constitutes a great story. They might not realize that yet. An easy lesson plan for creative writing that will pay off later is to activate prior knowledge. Brainstorm creative, memorable, unforgettable stories with students. Share your thoughts too! You will start to build relationships with students who share the same tastes as you (and those that are completely different!).

Activation activity

During this activity, I want to see how students work together, and I want to build a rapport with students. Additionally, activating prior knowledge provides a smooth transition into other creative writing activities.

This creative writing activity is simple:

I ask students to tell me memorable stories—books, play, tv shows, movies—and I write them on the board. I add and veto as appropriate. Normally doing these classroom discussions, we dive deeper into comedies and creative nonfiction. Sometimes as we work, I ask students to research certain stories and definitions. I normally take a picture of our work so that I can build creative writing lessons from students’ interests.

This takes longer than you might think, but I like that aspect. This information can help me shape my future lessons.

With about twenty minutes left in class, I ask students to form small groups. I want them to derive what makes these stories memorable. Since students complete group and partner activities in this class, I also watch and see how they interact.

Students often draw conclusions about what makes a story memorable:

• Realistic or true-to-life characters.
• Meaningful themes.
• Funny or sad events.

All of this information will be used later as students work on their own writing. Many times, my creative writing lessons overlap, especially concerning the feedback from young writers.

Creative Writing Lesson Day Three: Brainstorming and a graphic organizer

From building creative writing activities and implementing them, I now realize that students think they will sit and write. Ta-da!  After all, this isn’t academic writing. Coaching creative writing students is part of the process.

Young writers must accept that a first draft is simply that, a first draft. Building a project requires thought and mistakes. (Any writing endeavor does, really.) Students hear ‘creative writing’ and they think… easy. Therefore, a first week lesson plan for creative writing should touch on what creativity is.

Really, creativity is everywhere. We complete a graphic organizer titled, “Where is Creativity?” Students brainstorm familiar areas that they may not realize have such pieces.

The ideas they compile stir all sorts of conversations:

• Restaurants
• Movie theaters
• Amusement parks

By completing this graphic organizer, we discuss how creativity surrounds us, how we can incorporate different pieces in our writing, and how different areas influence our processes.

Creative Writing Lesson, Days Four and Five: Creative Nonfiction

Students need practice writing, and they need to understand that they will not use every word they write. Cutting out lines is painful for them! Often, a lesson plan for creative writing involves providing time for meaningful writing.

For two days, we study and discuss creative nonfiction. Students start by reading an overview of creative nonfiction . (If you need mentor texts, that website has some as well.) When I have books available, I show the class examples of creative nonfiction.

We then continue through elements of a narrative . Classes are sometimes surprised that a narrative can be nonfiction.

The narrative writing is our first large project. As we continue, students are responsible for smaller projects as well. This keeps them writing most days.

Overall, my students and I work together during the first week of any creative writing class. I encourage them to write, and I cheer on their progress. My message to classes is that their writing has value, and an audience exists for their creations.

And that is my week one! The quick recap:

Week One Creative Writing Lesson Plans

Monday: Rules, procedures, TED Talk, discussion.

Tuesday: Prior knowledge—brainstorm the modeling of memorable stories. Draw conclusions about storytelling with anchor charts. Build community through common knowledge.

Wednesday: Graphic organizer.

Thursday and Friday: Creative nonfiction. Start narrative writing.

Students do well with this small assignment for the second week, and then we move to longer creative writing assignments . When classesexperience success with their first assignment, you can start constructive editing and revising with them as the class continues.

These creative writing activities should be easy implement and personalize for your students.

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Are you interested in more creative writing lesson ideas? My Facebook page has interactive educators who love to discuss creative writing for middle school and high school creative writing lesson plans. Join us!

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