How to be productive: Short Creative Writing Exercises For Writing On The Move

 

Learn How To Be Productive & Start Writing On The Move Today

Finding ways how to be productive can be hard. As writers, we all have other artists and authors who have to work normal, nine-to-five jobs, finding time to write can be hard at times. They end up writing on the move. Whether we are members of the online writing community (#writingcommunity) yet to be published, indie authors or traditionally published writers, time always appears to be like the Grim Reaper, hovering over our shoulders, reminding that seconds, minutes or hours are burning away.

At times, we may not struggle to iron out these creases and there are others where nothing seems to move them. We seem to find ourselves trapped in a dystopian apocalypse, searching for time, like scraps of food, in order to gather enough to get by.

In schools, children and teenagers are given time to ‘free write’, where they are given a topic and asked to use whichever form of writing they choose in order to complete it. They can write a poem, a story or even a newspaper article. It doesn’t matter! So long as they write a piece that is related to the topic, and include relevant information, the work is accepted.

When teaching in these classes, the pieces produced would be of mixed quality, but the experience was more than worthwhile!

As adults, we need to be less critical and utilise the time we have to write and explore our work in progress (#WIP). If we have five or thirty-five minutes, we need to take that time and get what we can out of it. It may not be perfect, but the process, rather than the end product, could unearth gold.

Here are some creative writing exercises that are similar to those I have used in the past when writing or planning my novel, Inside Iris. Read on to see what I did to start writing on the move.

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What is your favourite creative writing exercise when writing fiction? Comment below.

How to Be Productive: Let’s Get Writing On The Move

1) Short And Sweet

When I started writing and using Instagram and Twitter as a means of communicating with fellow writers, authors and poets online, I used this approach to warm up my mind before starting into an Inside Iris writing session.

From my time as a teacher, I always treat the time before I start into a major task as a time to warm up my brain ahead of the task and to help my mind slip into the appropriate gear. Just like exercise, we need to remember that our minds need to be given a chance to ‘warm up’ or wake up and settle into the mode we wish it to work in.

Why not learn how to be productive and try this approach and see what you come up with?

Set yourself a timer, five to ten minutes, and allow your mind to write whatever it feels like. You may have an idea in mind or could even use something or someone around you as a stimulus. It doesn’t matter!
The point is that you are allowing your mind to wander and, at times, nothing of use will come but, at times, you can unearth a rough diamond!

2) Conversation Starter

Through my time as a playwright, I fell in love with authentic dialogue and its importance in the narrative of any story. I will always remember dramaturgs and other playwrights talking about ‘show, don’t tell’, and it is something that I feel is paramount when writing drama, but it also helped me to shape how dialogue can be used to write a story.

Through so many movies, plays and novels, I have found myself getting sucked in to how the writer has structured a dialogue between two characters. Rather than simply getting a narrator to reveal the information, the characters do so in the form of a waltz of spoken words than entice us in as a viewer or reader.

Can you practice how to structure or write dialogue on your morning commute?

Choose a commuter on the train or bus. Imagine they sit beside you and you strike up a conversation. What would you ask them? What would they reply? Do you have to probe strategically to get the information you require? Are they an open book, who are only too glad to have the company?
You choose but challenge yourself as you do so!

Use this as a dialogue writing exercise and see where the interaction takes you. Writing on the move can help you learn how to be productive and even pinch awesome dialogue from other commuters.

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Click on the image to watch Scott’s video on why he started his YouTube channel and what video content can be found there.

3) Have I Seen You Here Before

Description of a character’s appearance, their habits and their mannerisms can add so much to the fabric of them either as a major, or minor character in your story. When we add details, we can come up with the hidden gems that make our characters sparkle in the eyes of our reader or viewer.

Taking examples from masters like The Coen Brothers, we can even have minor characters who plant seeds in the minds of our audience that make them come back for more.

Similar to the second exercise, use a different subject on your next commute and rather than write an imaginary dialogue, describe them in as much detail as you can and, if you can, try to give them a back story.
How interesting can you make them? What hopes and dreams do they have? Do they have any skeletons in their closet? What aspects of characters make people interesting in novels you have read in the past?

Again, challenge yourself. What can you try, in the time you have or allow yourself, to make this character unique or shine to a reader?

4) See It From My Side

As we go through life, we are regularly asked to consider events or stories in the media from others’ point of view. When the BBC or Sky News bring panels on to discuss issues in the news, they regularly invite a number of ‘experts’ from a variety of areas on the spectrum that they wish to air at that particular time.

This provides balance and a variety of colours that can be used by the audience to ensure they are informed and consider all viewpoints, alongside their own. This approach can be used when writing an integral scene in a novel or script that we are composing.

If you have a work in progress (#WIP), is there a scene that you could write from another character’s point of view? If there is, could this give you a different perspective on what you initially wrote?

This could add a further dimension to the scene and ensure that you, as an author, are not selling yourself short when it comes to the dramatic delivery of the climactic moment. By learning how to be productive, you can start writing on the move today!

creative writing tips how to be productive

For other creative writing exercises, click the image to watch Scott’s YouTube playlist, Two-Minute Fix.

5) See It From My Side

There are many passages from novels that we have read where we feel we are literally a fly on the wall, witnessing and experiencing a scene as it unfolds before us. The hairs on our arms stand on end and we are utterly engrossed. They make the work more exciting and more dramatically tense.

Done correctly, is can deliver the same result for your own novel or story.

Senses and emotions can add a world of realism to what we write. Wherever you are, whether it is a bus, train or a passport office waiting for an appointment, why don’t you cycle through the senses you are experiencing as well as any emotions that are coursing through your veins and mind.

These senses and emotions, in this captive environment, can give you a further insight into how you may be able to use emotions and senses in your current piece of work.

 

How To Be Productive & Get Writing On The Move

As writers, we all have bills to pay, schedules to adhere to and nine-to-five jobs so it can be an issue trying to find time to write. Rather than seeing time as the Grim Reaper, hovering over our shoulders, reminding us that seconds, minutes or hours are burning away. See time as a deadline to keep you on track, to be focused, to train the mind for an ‘elevator pitch’ or to explore aspects of your work in progress (#WIP) that you haven’t got around to.

If you use an approach like those I have listed, please feel free to send them to me at scott@sgfiction.co.uk. I’d love to see what you came up with and learn from fellow members of the online writing community (#writingcommunity). Let’s see how you were able to start writing on the move.

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