[Loosid]

I'm trying to come up with some writing exercises for my writers group. You know...some five to ten minute exercises to 'get the juices flowing'.
Any ideas?
At the moment all we've got is; everyone picks a word [about sixteen] and we write a piece with all those words in there [or as many as we can].
I can handle it once, although it's not very stimulating, but no more than that. Can anyone help?

[JHerzog01]

writersdigest.com always has a daily exercise.

[Hoodwink]

Not so long back, a member called Jacquin ran a couple of exercises that might prove useful.
Writing Exercise 1 (http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21129)
Writing Exercise 2 (http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21167)

[baragh]

I can't remember where I read this, or maybe it was a radio interview or something, nor can I remember who this was about.... BUT....


there was a professional writer author who, when he had writer's block, would force himself to write 4,000 words per day, regardless of whether it was toward his WIP or not. Maybe it would be some jibber-jabber, nonsensical anything, but his reasoning was: if he could write a bunch of crap that had nothing to do with anything, if he could push out that many words... then why not start typing words that had something to do with being publishable? He was wasting his time in front of the keyboard, anyway, wasn't he?

That's sort of the logic that I use... especially in the first draft phase. Just get the thing done. I don't bother with ... exercises... so much as just try to get from scene to scene and get the first draft manuscript done. The few things I find useful to stop writing the manuscript for are to "world build" a little and to develop deeper character profiles. The character part is even more useful to me, as I find that planning the plot really doesn't do as much as I expected it would, so long as I have strong character profiles. You could argue that characters come from the world you build, but sometimes I wonder if the world I build doesn't come from the characters I need first.

Anyway, since I'm almost an anti-exercise kind of writer, I hope that helps your question to be answered, regardless.

[Loosid]

Thanks Baragh [and others]. I don't really use exercises myself [I just write].
The exercises are for a monthly writers group of about fifteen so I'm after interactive exercises that can be completed in twenty to thirty minutes.