Writing painting games

After the 5 minutes, for small groups everyone reads their new description to everyone else, or for large groups, each person just reads their new scene to their partner.

World building is the art of conveying the magic of living in a different world, whether it's a spaceship, a medieval castle, a boat, or simply someone's living room. To master world building, it's not necessary to know every intricate detail, rather to convey the experience of what it would be like to live there. Choose one of the above images as a prompt and spend 10 minutes writing a scene from the perspective of someone who is seeing it for the first time.

Now, move your character six months forward and imagine that they've spent the last six months living or working there. Write another scene perhaps with an additional character using the image as a background, with the events of the scene as the main action.

Chris Claremont said, "For me, writing the 'X-Men' was easy - is easy. I know these people, they're my friends. What are they up to? How are they? What would you say if you were gossiping about them? Then split up into groups of 4 to 6 writers.

The other participants will role-play a group of friends gossiping about the character behind their back and ask questions. This is based on an acting game, to help actors understand how to perform with different degrees of emotion.

For groups of 5 or less, write down numbers starting with 1 and going up until everyone has a number, then give them out in order. For groups of 6 or more, divide groups into 3's, 4's or 5's. Each person has to write a scene where the protagonist is alone and is only allowed to say a single word, e.

The writer with number 1 should write the scene with a very low level of the emotion e. Once each writer has written about happiness, rotate the numbers one or two spaces, then move onto anger, then fear, then sadness. It can help to give everyone numbers showing the intensity of the emotions to write about at the start of the exercise, in which case you may wish to print either the Word or PDF file, then use the ones corresponding to 3, 4 or 5 writers. The first paragraph of a surprising number of best-selling novels serves multiple purposes.

These are to:. Nearly every chapter in a novel also serves all three purposes. Instead of establishing a goal though, the protagonist either moves towards it, or encounters an obstacle that hinders them from achieving it. Some books manage to meet all three purposes with their opening lines, for example:.

Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. Rowling , Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. A little more than one hundred days into the fortieth year of her confinement, Dajeil Gelian was visited in her lonely tower overlooking the sea by an avatar of the great ship that was her home.

For this exercise write a sentence or short paragraph that serves all three purposes. If you're already writing a novel, then see if you can do this for the first line in a chapter.

If not, choose any combination from the following table:. Here's a Valentine's Day themed writing exercise that you might enjoy, it doesn't require any romantic attachment between writers, but is probably best for adults. In pairs one writer spends a minute or two describing a character they're writing about, or alternatively they can describe a celebrity or someone from a work of fiction.

The next writer then describes their character. The story is that these 2 characters or in my case, person and alien, as I'm writing a sci-fi have accidentally ended up on a blind date with each other, perhaps the waiter seated them in the wrong location, perhaps it's an actual blind date, or perhaps they met in some other fashion that the writers can determine.

This exercise works best for online groups, via Zoom, for example. The instructions to give are:. It can be a small victory or a large one. Share a personal example of your own mine was watching my homeschooled sons sing in an opera together.

The writing exercise is then to choose someone else's victory to write about for 10 minutes, as if it was the end of your own book. If you want to write for longer, now imagine how that book would start, and write the first part of the book with the ending in mind. In this difficult time, this is great for reminding people of a success in their lives, and also helps everyone connect and discover something about each other.

Finally, everyone spends another 5 minutes writing down a description of the holiday, then shares it with the others. A haiku is a traditional Japanese form of non-rhyming poetry whose short form makes it ideal for a simple writing exercise.

They traditionally are structured in 3 lines, where the first line is 5 syllables, the second line is 7 syllables, and the third line is 5 syllables again and tend to focus on themes of nature and deep concepts that can be expressed simply.

A summer river being crossed how pleasing with sandals in my hands! Yosa Buson , a haiku master poet from the 18 th Century. Spend up to 10 minutes writing a haiku. See How to write a haiku for more details and examples. A wonderful bird is the pelican. His bill can hold more than his beli-can He can take in his beak Food enough for a week But I'm damned if I see how the heli-can.

There was a young lady named Bright, Whose speed was far faster than light; She started one day In a relative way, And returned on the previous night. The 1 st , 2 nd and 5 th line all rhyme, as do the 3 rd and 4 th line.

Alternatively, you as a child travels forward in time to meet yourself as an adult. Or perhaps both happen, so that the child you, adult you, and senior you are all together at the same time.

In story form write down what happens next. Participants then share their story with other writers either in small groups, or to the whole group. One challenge writers face is describing a character and a common mistake is to focus too much on the physical features, e.

The problem with this is that it doesn't reveal anything about the character's personality, or about the relationship between your protagonist and the character and your reader is therefore likely to quickly forget what someone looks like. When describing characters, it's therefore best to:. Lawendowski, Snapped. Spend 5 minutes writing a character introduction that is animated, uses metaphors or similes and involves your protagonist. If working with a group, then form small groups of 3 or 4 and share your description with the rest of the group.

Several authors recommend reading your writing out loud after you've written it to be sure it sounds natural. Philip Pullman even goes as far as to say:. I know what the rhythm of the sentence is going to be before I know what the words are going to be in it.

For today's exercise, choose the name of a song and write for 10 minutes as if that's the title for a short story. Focus on how your writing sounds and aim to include at least one onomatopoeia, rhyme or alliteration. At the end of the 10 minutes, read it out loud to yourself, or to the group.

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, The furrow followed free; We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea. This is a novel way to write a story as a group, one word at a time.

Keep going round until you have completed the alphabet. Ideally it will all be one sentence, but if you get stuck, start a new sentence. It can be tricky to remember the alphabet when under pressure, so you may wish to print it out a couple of times, so the storytellers can see it if they need to, this is particularly helpful if you have dyslexics in the group. The standard format in our group is a short writing exercise followed by an hour and a half of silent writing on our projects.

At one point I felt like we'd done a lot of small group exercises, and wanted to gain an insight into what everyone was working on, so we did the following exercise instead:. Go round the table and ask everyone to briefly talk about their writing. Everyone responds either by raising their hand for 'yes' or shaking their heads for 'no'. You can also leap up and down to indicate a very strong 'yes'. Questions can be about anything, and you can use them either to help guide your writing or to help find other people in the group who have similar interests.

This works best when you give participants some advance notice, so they have time to think of a question. This exercise takes minutes and allows participants to create a murder mystery outline together. Each person then writes a police report as if they are either describing the scene of the crime, or recording the notes from their interview with a single suspect:. See more ideas on creating murder mystery party games. Pick a famous movie and spend 5 minutes writing a scene from it from an unusual perspective.

Your aim is to achieve a balance between being too obscure and making it too obvious. Feel free to add internal dialogue. At the end of the 5 minutes, everyone reads their movie scene to the others and all the other participants see if they can guess what the movie is. The goal of this exercise is to practice subtlety. Imagine you are setting a scene for the future where the characters feelings will become more important. Choose a situation like a work conference, meeting with a group of friends, etc.

How do you indicate how the characters feel without them saying it in words? The other writers then brainstorm ideas for related stories you could write, or directions your project could take.

There are no right or wrong suggestions and the intention is to focus on big concepts, not little details. Everyone writes the first line of a story in the Zoom chat, or on paper. Other people can then choose this line as a writing prompt. Once everyone's written a prompt, everyone chooses a prompt preferably someone eles's, but it can be your own if you feel really inspired by it.

Then write for 10 minutes using this prompt. See if you can reveal who the protagonist is, what their motivation is it can be a small motivation for a particular scene, it doesn't have to be a huge life goal , and introduce at least one new character.

Robot Castle Longing Ice cream. Happy Scream Guard Evil. Whirlwind Cactus King Chaos. Angry Desert Laugh Heart. Give each participant a couple of pieces of paper at random. The first person says the first sentence of a story and they must use their first word as part of that sentence. The second person then continues the story and must include their word in it, and so on. Go round the group twice to complete the story.

You can also do this creative writing exercise with story dice, your own choice of words, or by asking participants to write random words down themselves, then shuffling all the cards together.

Every Christmas adults tell kids stories about Santa Claus. In this exercise you write a Christmas story from an alternative dimension. What if every Christmas Santa didn't fly around the world delivering presents on his sleigh pulled by reindeer?

What if gnomes or aliens delivered the presents? Or perhaps it was the gnomes who are trying to emulate the humans? Or some other Christmas tradition entirely that we humans have never heard of! If you're working with a group, then give everyone a couple of minutes to write 2 possible themes for the new Christmas story.

Each theme should be 5 words or less. Then simply shuffle the paper and distribute them at random or everyone types the themes into a Zoom or group chat, if you're working online. Everyone then spends 10 minutes writing a short story for children based on one of the two themes, or their own theme if they really want to. If working alone, choose your own theme and spend 15 minutes writing a short story on it.

See if you can create the magic of Christmas from another world! In a murder mystery story or courtroom drama, there's often conflicting information and lots of links between characters and a mind map is an ideal way to illustrate how everything ties together. Split into groups of 3 or 4 people each and place a blank piece of A3 paper double the size of A4 in the middle of each group.

Discuss between you who the victim is and write their name in the middle of the piece of paper. Then brainstorm information about the murder, for example:.

Feel free to expand out from any of these, e. The idea is that everyone writes at the same time! Obviously, you can discuss ideas, but anyone can dive in and write their ideas on the mind map. If completing this exercise with a group, limit it to 3 to 5 resolutions per person and if some participants are non-fiction writers, they can instead pick a celebrity and either write what their resolutions will be, or what their resolutions should be, their choice.

Stephen King said, "I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops. He also said, "Take any noun, put it with any verb, and you have a sentence. It never fails. Rocks explode. Jane transmits. Mountains float. These are all perfect sentences. Many such thoughts make little rational sense, but even the stranger ones Plums deify!

In this fiction writing exercise, start by brainstorming either individually or collectively seven verbs on seven different pieces of paper. Put those aside for later. Now brainstorm seven nouns. Randomly match the nouns and verbs so you have seven pairs. Choose a pair and write a piece of fiction inspired by it for ten minutes. Avoid using any adverbs. If working as a team, then after the 5 minutes is up each writer reads their description out to the other participants.

I've always run these as part of a creative writing group, where there's no teacher and we're all equal participants, therefore I keep any 'teaching' aspect to a minimum, preferring them to be prompts to generate ideas before everyone settles down to do the silent writing.

We've recently gone online and if you run a group yourself, whether online or in person, you're welcome to use these exercises for free! The times given are suggestions only and I normally get a feel for how everyone's doing when time's up and if it's obvious that everyone's still in the middle of a discussion, then I give them longer.

Where one group's in the middle of a discussion, but everyone else has finished, I sometimes have a 'soft start' to the silent writing, and say, "We're about to start the hour and a half of silent writing now, but if you're in the middle of a discussion, feel free to finish it first".

This way everyone gets to complete the discussion, but no-one's waiting for ages. It's also important to emphasise that there's no wrong answers when being creative. Still looking for more? Check out these creative writing prompts. If you've enjoyed these writing exercises, then please share them by clicking the buttons on the left, or link to them from your blog. Skip to main content. I hope you remain healthy and creative throughout this difficult time for us all. Intro I run a Creative Writing Meetup for adults and teens in Montpellier every week where we start with a 5 to 20 minute exercise, followed by an hour and a half of silent writing, where we each work on our own project.

A Letter From Your Character To You Solo exercise If your goal is to write a complete work of fiction, whether it be a novel, a play or a movie script, you will one day need to write to an agent or publisher to ask them to publish your work.

This serves three purposes: If you're doing this exercise with a group of teens or adults, and some of the group haven't already started working on their masterpiece, they can instead choose any fictional novel that they love and imagine that a character within it wrote to the author in the first place to ask them to write their story. As you write, it helps you get into the mindset of the character. Ask yourself how they would language this letter and what they would consider important to include.

It's motivating to know that your character wants you to write about them. It's good practice for when you will need to send a letter to an agent or publisher. The Opening Sentence Solo exercise When you're browsing for a book, there will be times when you read the opening sentence and go, no, that's not for me, and other times when the book will grab you immediately.

Here are some of my favourite opening sentences to get you going: It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. George Orwell , The Golem's life began in the hold of a steamship. Helene Wecker , The Golem and the Djinni All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Leo Tolstoy , Anna Karenina It wasn't a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance. Diana Gabaldon , Outlander You better not never tell nobody but God. Audrey Niffenegger , The Time Traveler's Wife Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Douglas Adams , The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy There are a plethora of ways that you can start a book, however two ways that help engage the reader immediately are: Spend 5 minutes working on your own opening sentence, then share it with the other participants.

Set the scene in as few words as possible, so that the reader immediately knows what's happening and wants to know what happens next. The scene must be original and create a vivid image in the reader's mind. Surprise the reader with an unusual event or usual point of view.

Make your protagonist act! With this paint online game their imagination will run wild and they will have a lot of fun without making any mess. Because kids painting can get pretty messy, right? When a child spends time painting or drawing he starts paying attention and getting really concentrated in what he is doing. And Paint online is a free game where kids will learn how to concentrate using any kind of painting tools, such as paintbrushes, markers, crayons, pencils, paint sprayers and a rubber to erase or correct any mistake.

Thanks to Paint online the kids will improve their artistic education by learning the different colors, making the basic geometrical shapes and getting to know every kind of texture. On the left they can change and choose new colors by clicking on the palette and once they are done they can print or safe their masterpiece.

The kids can even change the thickness and size of the tool they are using in order to create smaller details or big paintings.

Your kid will become such a true and great artist after playing Paint online that Da Vinci or Van Gogh will look like beginners next to your son or daughter! The best thing about this browser game is that your kid can play to it with an Ipad or Tablet, computer and mobile phone. It works with Android as well as with Iphone, and playing to Paint online is free! So show this game to your children right now and have fun creating Art pieces with them.

Piano Online.