Starting in the fall of 2018, I began regularly providing writing exercises for my writing group, the Hourlings, an intermediate/advanced SF and Fantasy writing group based in the Northern Virginia area. The group typically critiques up to five pieces from members every week, but sometimes we don’t have five items to review.
As a writing group, we thought filling the gaps with short writing exercises was a capital idea. So, here are the Hourlings Writing Exercises, as well as some Writing Prompts.
Writing Exercises
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1. | Stepping Off the Bus: Your character is stepping off a bus. What do they see? What does the reader learn about the character? Credit: allynh |
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2. | Blurb Writing: Blurbs can be painful to create. Here’s an exercise to enhance your blurb generation skills. Credit: John Dwight |
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3. | Ideation Mashup: Having trouble coming up with ideas for stories? Here’s a simple exercise to help you generate story ideas. Credit: David Keener |
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4. | Ideation / Plotting: This exercise explores idea generation and then follows up with some steps for high-level story development. Credit: David Keener |
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5. | Occupational Hazard: This exercise in character development starts by defining an SF or Fantasy job and then exploring the type of person who might take on that sort of job. Credit: David Keener |
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6. | Voyage of the Daedalus Seven: Learn about the doomed voyage of the Daedalus Seven, a vast generation spaceship in this three-part world-building exercise, detailing the design of the ship and its multiple habitats. Design the ecosystems of the habitats, craft the surviving civilizations after its 12-thousand-year voyage, and envision plots leveraging the world-building details. Credit: David Keener |
Writing Prompts
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1. | Ashburn Wildlife Sighting: During a snowstorm, a live mastodon is sighted in Ashburn, VA, complete with photos to document the sighting. Afterwards, the creature is gone. Read the faux report, then write 1000 words about what really happened. Credit: David Keener |
For more writing advice, check out the Hourlings Podcast Project, where real working writers provide tips on diverse subjects like finding time to write, writing on vacation, character development, book covers, and worldbuilding. Additionally, David Keener has a bunch of professional-level workshops available which he has previously conducted at a number of SF/Fantasy conventions.