Creative Writing Activities for Short Stories

1. Color Coded. Ask students to write a short story that begins with the word "blue," and in
which the first word of every paragraph is a color. Use the "color word" only once in each
paragraph, but suggest the colar in as many ways as possible. For example:
The world had turned grey. Nothing but mud and asphalt surrounded the unpainted house,
little more than a box made of concrete blocks. Charlie, dressed in faded work pants, rubber
boots, and a thick wool sweater, steadied himself with a hand on the top rail of a weathered
cedar fence. Behind him, nothing but ash-coloured sky, bare trees, and plumes of smoke
belching from the factory in the distance. A lone sparrow rested on a branch, one beady eye
watching.
2. Turn a poem into a short story. A poem uses tight language to convey emotional or
intellectual ideas in an imaginative and new way. A single poem can provide a rich source of
creative writing ideas for fiction writers who can use specifics in the poem as a starting point
for a narrative. Using the poem of their choice for inspiration, have group members create a
character, a setting, a situation, and a character goal, from the poem and write a short story.
For example, a whimsical visual poem by the late poet bp nichol contains only two
words,blob and plop. If you write the word blob, draw a line under it and align the
word plop under it, the visual suggestion is that of the word blob reflected in water, and
overturned, to plop. (It's a clever little poem that has to be reproduced visually for its full
effect.)
What sort of character do these two words suggest, in what setting, and what situation?
What would a character in this setting and situation want more than anything else, and what
obstacles would he or she have to overcome to attain that goal? With these components or
ones inspired by a more conventional poem, individuals may construct a story.
3. Dictionary Detail. A somewhat easier creative writing activity is to have each individual
choose ten random words from a dictionary and use them to suggest a character, a setting,
and a problem. Put the character into a situation where the problem is not easily overcome
and write a short story.
4. Unusual Sretches Often ideas come when strange or contradictory words or phrases are
strung together. When you use this creative writing activity, provide a list of mixed nonsense
proverbs and have students literalize them and write a paragraph on whichever one fires
their imagination. Explain that the paragraph needn't be perfect or polished but should "free
their muse."
[a] Beauty visits once a year.
[b] Bad news is the best medicine.
[c] Silence makes the heart grow fonder.
[d] Strike while the head wears the crown.
[e] A rolling stone is worth two in a bush.
[f] Uneasy lies the head that gathers moss.
[g] A penny is the mother of invention.
Creative Writing Activities for Dialogue

5. Persuasive Dialogue. Dialogue needs some form of tension or suspense to hold reader
interest. Sometimes suspense is created intrinscially, as when readers know more than the
character, and sometimes it is created extrinsically, through character conflict. Imagine two
characters. One wants to do something and the other does not. Or one wants something the
other has. Write a dialogue between these two characters, where one character is
determined not to give in to the other, to create extrinsic tension.
6. Argumentative Dialogue. Dialogue simulates real conversation, it is not an exact copy.
Dialogue must be pared back to remove redundancies, mistakes, and filler words. To
illustrate this, pair individuals off and provide each pair with a subject of debate. Whichever
side one's character will take, the other's must take the opposing view. Have each pair
politely and respectfully debate their subject for five or ten minutes.
When the time is up, have each individual transcribe the dialogue as closely as possible.
Then have them remove all niceties such as please and thank you, any repetition, all filler
words, etc., to capture the essence of the argument rather than the argument in its entirety.
When they have finished, have both members of each pair read their transcriptions aloud to
see how the accounts differ. If you have time for a "Part II" to this exercise, have each pair
revise their dialogue set to include "beats," or the the "action tags" that show the small
actions characters take as they engage in dialogue.
Creative Writing Activities for Character Development
7. Know Your Characters. This exercise may be used in pairs or small groups and is designed
to test how well each writer knows his or her characters. Have a writer ask the person next to
him a question about his or her protagonist. This individual will answer the question and then
ask a question of another person, who will answer and ask a question of someone else.
During this creative writing activity, encourage group members to ask questions that reveal
character, rather than only questions about appearance. For example, someone might ask
"How does your character express anger?" or "Has your character ever shoplifted?"
The answers may be kept short or, if you have time, answers may explain the "why" of the
response, such as "My character suppresses his anger because when he was a teenager, in
a fit of rage, he slammed the car door as hard as he could and caught his dog in the door as
the dog tried to jump out after him. This broke his dog's spine, and the animal had to be put
to sleep. Ever since, the character avoids confrontation, and when faced with the anger of
another turns pale and stutters."
8. Memorable Characters. An individual in the group names a character from a book or short
story and explains in detail what made this character memorable. Then, using word
association, the person next to him or her picks up on something the first individual said, tells
the group what triggered the association, and then names another character, providing a
similar explanation.
9. Name That Character Give each small group or pair a photograph of a person. The
photographs can be close up headshots, distance shots, or activity shots. Ask each group to
suggest a name for the character, based on whatever they can learn or intuit from the image.
The groups should discuss this for several minutes and then choose a spokesperson to
present the group decision to the class with an explanation of why they chose the name they
did.

Creative Writing Activities to Encourage Dramatization (Show Don't Tell)

10. Show and Tell Learning to "show" rather than "tell" is an important writing skill, but showing
is not always appropriate, and there is also a place for narrative summary, particularly
between active scenes. Discuss the appropriate use of dramatization and narrative
summary, and provide students with an example of each.
Then present individuals or small groups with a statement that inappropriately "tells," such as
"Jane was angry with her father." Have them change the telling into active showing by writing
a passage that first dramatizes the statement. Then have them summarize the same
passage in vivid and appropriate detail. When everyone has finished, have each individual or
a member from each group read the passages aloud to the entire class or workshop.
Creative Writing Activities for Setting or Description
11. Everything but the Eyes Many of us are visually oriented. We forget that others may
respond equally well to a sense of smell or hearing. Ask writers to describe a place of
importance to them using sensory details of taste, smell, hearing or touch. Anything except
the visual.
12. Photo Shuffle This exercise encourages vivid description and also illustrates how
perception will vary from person to person. Have each member in the class or workshop
bring in a photograph or image, along with a short written passage describing what the
image signifies to the individual. Collect the images, shuffle them and pass them out, so that
no one has the image with which he or she arrived. Now have each person write a passage
that describes the subject or event shown in the photo and what it signifies. Then have each
individual read his work aloud. Following this, ask the owner of the image explain what the
photo meant to him or her.
13. Skimping on Adjectives
Creative writing instructors often caution against using too many adverbs, but adjectives too
can become problematic if overused. To combat that, have students or workshop members
perform a simple creative writing activity: Describe something in detail without using
adjectives. Notethe use of color is permitted.
Creative Writing Activities That Put the Focus on Diction
14. Consider the extraordinary sentence below, by Vladimir Nabokov, from his novel Pnin.
The brook in the gully behind the garden, a trembling trickle most of the time, was tonight a
loud torrent that tumbled over itself in its avid truckling to gravity, as it carried through
corridors of beech and spruce last year's leaves, and some leafless twigs, and a brand-new,
unwanted soccer ball that had recently rolled into the water from the sloping lawn after Pnin
disposed of it by defenestration. (p.108)
Ask students to name the ways this sentence imitates or draw parallels with the brook it
describes?

15. Word String Good diction can make the difference between an ordinary piece of writing and
a spectacular one. This exercise is designed to have individuals notice the language used in
a piece of writing and encourages them to expand their own repertoires. Distribute a short
story to everyone in the group and have them read it. Ask them to make an A-Z list of
appealing words from the story, one word for each letter of the alphabet. When everyone has
finished, suggest a starting word, and have someone choose a word from his or her list that
begins with the final letter of your original word. Have each person in turn add a word that
begins with the final letter of the word that came before it. Alternatively, have them create a
piece of flash fiction one word at a time, with each student contributing where possible.
16. Alphabetical Sentence To spark new and unusual ideas, have students work alone or in
small groups to write a sentence where each subsequent word begins with the next letter of
the alphabet. For instance:
"Acids, bases, compounds" Dorothy explains, "for group homework." Instantly jaded,
knowing long monosyllabic nonsense oozes, pupils quickly revolt.
Have students go on for as long as they are able (X,Y, Z can get a little tricky), and then if
you like, have them work in the reverse direction. Or ask them to use the idea, setting, or
character that resulted to write a short piece of fiction. Such limited constraints will
sometimes yield fresh and surprising concepts or descriptions.
17. Removing Stale Similes To inspire fresh language and avoid phrases such as "melt like
butter," "fresh as a daisy" and "slippery as an eel," make a list of the beginning of similes,
similar to the example below, and have students complete these phrases with new
comparisons that help lift the prose.
As cold as __________
As unpredictable as ______________
White like a _______________
As an accompanying creative writing exercise, a discussion of what a simile should not be
would have value. Students could choose the worst simile they can find from sites s