Writing Exercises for Inside and Outside the Classroom
Read Meg Kearney's "Creed" from her book An Unkindness of Ravens. Talk and think about the line images and phrases she uses. What kind of impact do they have? Pay attention to the rhythm too. When does the poem speed up, slow down, or change tempo?
Now, write your own Creed. Remember to use both what you do and don't believe in. You can also use what you want to or used to believe in to paint your picture.
This exercise is a great one to do every year to see how your ideas change over time.
The sense of smell is considered the strongest memory trigger of the 5 human senses. In this exercise, we'll use smell images to create list poems that describe people, places, and memories.
- Pick a person, place, or childhood memory that is very close to you. Pick carefully, it's important that you know these places and people well. Parents, childhood bedrooms, and siblings are good starting points.
- Make a list of smells that you associate with that place, person, or memory. Try to be specific. For example "Johnson's Baby Shampoo" is a better choice than "shampoo." Also be sure to think of different types of smells (food, cloth, perfumes, plants, etc). Don't worry about picking the most interesting smells at this stage, just list as many as you can think of.
- Now it's time to make a poem! Go back through it and pick out the items that you think are most descriptive, appropriate, interesting, or compelling and arrange them in an order that makes sense for you. When picking your order pay attention to sound, rhythm, and context. Read it out loud. Move things around. Read it again. Keep going until you have a draft that describes your person, place, or memory accurately.
- Share your smell poems with your peers, what can you tell about other people's memories based just on smell? What do think of yours? Were you successful in portraying your person, place, or memory the way you intended?
*This exercise has been borrowed and adapted from a workshop conducted by Kimiko Hahn.
Part of being a writer is putting yourself in someone else's shoes and having empathy for characters that are very different from you. In this exercise, we'll write Persona pieces from someone else's point of view.
On scrap pieces paper write down several different personas and/or situations. Be creative and try to think of situations that other people may not have experienced. Fold these scraps up and put them in a hat or basket and shake them up.
Let everyone pick one (or two) personas out of the bag.
Now write a poem or a short fiction piece in the point of view of the person you pulled out of the hat. Use first person narration for this exercise. Remember to think of situations your person might have to deal with, the kind of language he/she would use, and the way he/she would interact with other people. Try to do this without being too obvious and giving away exactly who your person is right away. Remember to show your person, rather than tell about him/her. Feel free to invent details that weren't already given to you. If an age or gender weren't specified, make one up!
Share your pieces with your peers. Can others guess who you started out with? Can they guess the gender and age of your person?
Some persona ideas to get you started:
- A young woman who has just found out she has 6 months left to live.
- A soldier
- An old man with no living relatives
- A homeless teenager
- A girl growing up in rural Iowa on a farm
- A single mother of 3 children
- A professional basketball player
Write about your name. Use whatever form feels comfortable to you. If you don't know much about your name, make things up!
Things to think about:
- Were you named after someone?
- Do you have a family name?
- Is your name shared with someone famous?
- What are the origins of your name?
- Do you have nicknames? Where did they come from?
- If you could change your name, would you?
Have fun and remember to think of this as a creative piece. How do you want to tell the story of your name? And who is the intended audience?
Pick a clothing item that belongs to or used to belong to someone close to you, such as your mother, father, siblings, other family members, or close friends. Write about the item you choose. Make sure you include a physical description. Some closet pieces include description of when an item was new and how it changes over time. Some pieces choose to personify the item and write from its point of view. You can write about why this item matters to its owner, how it was acquired, what it's used for, or even a specific memory when it was worn.
This exercise is good for working on descriptive language and for character sketches. It's also a flexible one-- your piece can be a poem, a non-fiction piece, or a fictional piece.