Creative Writing Ideas

You have an essay to write, or an idea for your story, or a character you want to develop; but you can’t seem to get started. Here are some methods I’ve used for myself and my kids that help. Some of these ideas also work for other kinds of creative block or getting projects started.

1. Free Writing: Just get started. Sometimes the problem is actually that we’re editing ourselves, before we even have anything down on paper. We want it perfect the first time, or maybe we just need to get rid of the critic in our heads. It doesn’t matter if you start out writing, “I don’t know what to write”, or “this is stupid”, or if you have some fragments of your subject or idea. Do this for at least 5-10 minutes, no censoring, no analyzing, no editing. Often this is enough to clear your head, get your brain in gear and shut that inner critic up. If you already have ideas for your paper/story, and you’re just not sure how to execute it, just start writing what’s in your head, and worry about what order it goes in, and making sense of it later. Since we don’t use stone to write on anymore, you can always change it!

2. Mind Mapping: Write your topic or idea in the  center of the page and circle it. Draw lines radiating from that word and write other  related ideas as they pop into your head, branching from those and adding others. Work quickly. You should be chaining ideas together as you work, using new branches for separate ideas. In other words: suppose our center word was apple; you might have a branch(or row) of lines connecting all the words about how apples look, then a separate branch for all the words about how they taste, etc.

3. Take a Walk: Get up and take a walk and do something totally unrelated to your  writing for a while (don’t get lost) then try again.

4. Consult Others: Talk to others or read what others have written on the subject. Sometimes others’ ideas will spark something for you. Sometimes it just helps to bounce ideas off of someone else. Often while asking for help, the solution comes to me.

I hope these are helpful. Happy Creating!