You want to practice, and a list of story ideas doesn't tell you what to practice. An exercise gives you one thing to do on purpose, and a way to see afterward whether you did it.
This page has seven exercises. Each one shows an attempt, followed by notes on what works and what doesn't. Every attempt is a fictional teaching example written for this article, so treat it as one way through the exercise, not a standard to match.
Choose the skill you want to work on, not the exercise that sounds most enjoyable. Each Write link opens a page with that exercise on it. Six of the exercises take one sitting each. Exercise 4 takes two, a few days apart, so it has two Write links.
1. Concrete detail: a room without its owner
This exercise keeps the person out of the room, so the objects have to do all the telling.
Describe a room so that a reader could guess who lives there. Don't mention the person, and don't say what they're like. Afterward, list the details that could belong to anyone. Then write down what a stranger would now believe about this person. Write
One fictional attempt:
Three alarm clocks sit on the nightstand, set for three different times, all of them five minutes fast. The bed is made with hospital corners, and a half-eaten sleeve of crackers is tucked under the pillow. Nine running medals hang from the closet door. A tenth lies on the dresser with a sticky note on it: NOT THIS ONE. The books are shelved by color, except for a guide to bird calls, which is open on the floor with a spoon holding its place.
Three alarm clocks could belong to any heavy sleeper. Setting them all five minutes fast is a lie you tell yourself on purpose, and that's a person. The hospital corners and the crackers pull against each other, which is the most useful thing in the paragraph: one room, two habits. The sticky note is the liveliest detail, because a reader wants to know what was wrong with the tenth medal. It also bends the rule, since the note is the owner speaking. The bookshelf is the weakest part. Books shelved by color are a stock sign of a tidy person, and the spoon is odd only for the sake of being odd. A stranger would now guess at someone strict by day and hungry at night, with one race they won't forgive.
2. Point of view: one event, two witnesses
Keeping the facts fixed shows how much of a story comes from who is telling it.
Tell one small event twice, from two people who disagree about whose fault it was. Keep everything they both saw the same. Afterward, list the facts the two versions share. Then ask whether a reader could tell which person you agree with. Write
One fictional attempt, in two versions:
He saw me. I was ten feet from the doors with my arm up, and his eyes came right to the mirror and stayed there. Then the bus pulled out. There were maybe six people on it. It would have cost him four seconds, and I stood in the rain working out what I'd done to him.
I saw her in the mirror, ten feet back with her arm up. Six people on board, and one of them was the old man who gets off at the clinic and had been checking his watch since the bridge. Four seconds at that stop means missing the light at Mill Road, and missing that light means five minutes. I pulled out. It was raining. I thought about her as far as the clinic.
Ten feet, the raised arm, the mirror, six passengers, four seconds and the rain stay fixed in both versions. What moves is what each person brings to them. She brings a guess about what he was thinking. He brings the old man, the watch and the light at Mill Road, so four seconds is nothing to her and five minutes to him. Because he goes second and knows more, the page leans his way. Swapping the order, or giving her one fact he doesn't have, would be worth trying.
3. Subtext: an argument about something else
People often argue about the thing they can bear to argue about. Subtext is the distance between that and the real subject, and this exercise asks you to keep the distance open.
Write a short conversation in which two people argue about one thing and mean another. Neither of them says what the argument is really about. Afterward, find the line where the real subject comes closest to the surface. If someone says it outright, put it back inside the thing they are arguing about. Write
One fictional attempt:
"Take the highway. It's empty at this time."
"The highway's closed at the interchange."
"It was closed in June."
"Fine. You drive."
"I'm not saying that. I'm saying we left with plenty of time, and you always go the way that makes it feel like we didn't."
"It's your flight."
"It's a flight. I'll be back in three weeks."
"You said that in June."
She took the highway. It was open.
For four lines this is an argument about roads. Then 'you always go the way that makes it feel like we didn't' comes close to naming the problem, and it's too neat for someone sitting in a car. A shorter, clumsier line would keep the distance open. 'It's your flight' moves off the road, and 'You said that in June' is where the real subject comes closest. It works because June is already in the conversation as a fact about traffic. Now it's a fact about the two of them. The last line shows what the closed road was for.
4. Imitation: rewrite a paragraph from notes
In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin describes how he practiced prose from an odd volume of the Spectator. He made "short hints of the sentiment in each sentence," set them aside for a few days, rewrote the papers without looking at the book, and then "compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them." The gap between sittings gives you time to lose the exact wording.
The first sitting:
Choose a paragraph you admire. Write one short note for each sentence, saying what that sentence does, and then put the original away. In a few days you'll rewrite the paragraph from these notes, so save a copy somewhere you'll find it. Write
The second sitting, a few days later:
Find the sentence notes you made a few days ago and copy them here. Write the paragraph again from those notes, without looking at the original. Then compare the two, and list what the original does that yours doesn't. Write
Here is a worked version. The paragraph is the opening of A Christmas Carol, which is in the public domain:
Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Five notes, one for each sentence:
- He's dead. Say it flatly, as the first thing to get out of the way.
- Rule out any doubt.
- List who signed for the burial: clergyman, clerk, undertaker, chief mourner.
- Say who the last signer was, and that his word is trusted.
- He's dead, again, with a common saying.
A fictional attempt, written from those notes:
Marley was dead, and that had to be settled before anything else. Nobody doubted it. The clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker and the chief mourner had all signed the burial register. That was Scrooge, whose signature was trusted by everyone in the city. Marley was stone dead.
The facts survived the notes, and the voice didn't. 'To begin with' is three words, and it promises that something else is coming. 'That had to be settled before anything else' says the same thing with no wit. 'There is no doubt whatever about that' sounds like someone insisting, and 'Nobody doubted it' doesn't. Dickens lets Scrooge act and says his name twice, while the attempt only identifies him. You can't see any of this in the attempt alone. It shows up when the two sit side by side, which is the reason for the comparison.
5. Word choice: a paragraph without one letter
Banning a letter takes away your first word and sends you looking for another. A text that avoids a letter is called a lipogram. Oulipo's page on the form, which is in French, defines it and gives Georges Perec's novel La Disparition, written without the letter e, as its example.
Write one paragraph about an ordinary event without using the letter e. If e is too much for today, leave out s or d instead. Afterward, list the words you chose only because the rule forced you to, and keep any you prefer. Write
One fictional attempt, checked letter by letter:
Tom bought a flat-pack stool on Saturday. It had four parts, a bag of bolts and a drawing of a man smiling. By noon Tom had six parts. By two o'clock Tom was smiling too, and his dog had quit that room. At four his aunt Jo swung by, sat on it, and said, "Not bad." Two bolts hit his floor, and so did Jo.
Losing 'the' gives the paragraph a clipped, slightly odd sound, which happens to suit a joke. 'Stool' is here because shelf, table and bookcase all contain an e, and a stool is the funnier thing to sit on. 'Quit that room' stands in for 'left,' which the rule also bans. The strain shows in the name: 'Tom' appears three times in four sentences because 'he' isn't available, and by the third you can feel the rule.
6. Sentence rhythm: one event, three ways
Read this one aloud. The first two versions tell the same event, so anything that changes between them comes from the sentences.
Write one event as a single long sentence. Write it again in very short sentences. Then write a third version that uses both. Afterward, read all three aloud and find where the sentence length changes in the third. Ask whether something in the event changes there too. Write
One fictional attempt, in three versions:
He went down to the cellar the way he had every morning for eleven years, one hand on the rail and the other already reaching for the switch at the bottom, past the coats and the boiler pipe and the shelf of paint, counting without meaning to, and he had reached thirteen, which was the floor, when his foot found a fourteenth step.
He went down. One hand on the rail. The coats. The pipe. The paint. Twelve. Thirteen. Then another step.
He went down to the cellar the way he had every morning for eleven years, one hand on the rail and the other reaching for the switch at the bottom, past the coats and the pipe and the shelf of paint. Thirteen. That was the floor. Then a fourteenth step. He stood on it for a while, in the dark, and said, "Eleven years."
The long sentence keeps going the way the morning does, and the reader has nowhere to stop, which suits a routine. It also holds the surprise for its last words, so the extra step arrives before the sentence can slow down. The short version counts the stairs but loses the eleven years. The third lets a long sentence carry the habit and breaks it at 'Thirteen,' just before the habit fails. The ending wasn't in either earlier version: he stays on the step, and he speaks. Say 'Eleven years' aloud and see whether it's fear or a complaint, because the attempt hasn't decided.
7. Structure: start the scene later
Where a scene starts decides how long a reader waits for something to happen. It's easier to find the right place after you've written too much.
Write a short scene from the very beginning. Then find the latest line a reader could start from and still follow the scene, and delete everything before it. Afterward, list what you had to put back, and ask whether the scene needed it or you did. Write
One fictional attempt, before and after the cut:
Bea got to the bakery at six and turned on the ovens. She tied her apron and took the clipboard down from its hook. Forty dozen rolls for the Kowalski wedding, due at noon, in her own handwriting. She read it twice. She looked at the flour bin. Then she called Dom, who owed her a favor. "How much flour do you have?" she said. He asked why. "Don't ask why. How much?"
"How much flour do you have?" Bea said into the phone. Dom asked why. "Don't ask why. How much?" Behind her, the order sat on the clipboard: forty dozen rolls for the Kowalski wedding, due at noon, in her own handwriting.
The first version spends most of its length on a morning the reader doesn't need. The ovens and the apron only delay the problem. The cut begins at the latest line a reader could follow, the phone call, and that opening raises a question straight away: why the flour? One thing had to go back in, the order itself, or 'Don't ask why' would never get an answer. 'In her own handwriting' is the one place the cut still leans on the reader. Someone who doesn't catch it won't see that she forgot.
What to do after these
Go back to the exercise that felt hardest and repeat it on a new subject. The second attempt is where you can use what the first one showed you.
If you have a rough page and don't know what to do with it, the freewriting example follows one through to a second pass. If you haven't started writing at all, begin with how to start writing. For a whole book built this way, Ursula K. Le Guin's Steering the Craft pairs each chapter with an exercise you can do alone or in a group.