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How to Start Creative Writing: 6 Ways to Fast-Track Your Writing

There are plenty of great reasons to begin a creative writing journey, whether your goal is to have fun, express your feelings, improve your language skills, or even become a professional writer. If you’re uncertain about how to start creative writing, the key is to start small. By taking things one word at a time, you can reliably develop your craft and habit — learning how to get your voice on the page while attuning yourself to a sustainable writing routine. 

To help you get the ball rolling on your new life as a creative writer, I’ve compiled a list of approaches to try out. I’ll start with a few ideas that require little time and effort commitment, and grow more ambitious as  go.

1. Start a journal

A journal doesn’t need to be a “dear diary”-style chronicle of your entire day. Instead, it can be the perfect way to get used to expressing yourself without feeling self-conscious, since no one will be able to read your entries. If having an audience motivates you, you could instead start an anonymous blog and post your entries there — just be careful not to share any information that might let people identify you.

Journaling ideas

Pick a moment and expand on it. This could come from your day or a recent experience. How did it make you feel? Why do you think you chose this particular moment?

Write about someone you saw recently. It could be someone you know or a passing stranger. Try to describe how they were feeling or what they were up to.

Reflect on a big question. What do you think you deserve in life? What makes you happy? What are your most joyful memories?

Take five and write anything. On days when you’re feeling emotionally charged, set a 5-minute timer and just do a word dump. The only rule is that you don’t stop writing. Just write down anything that comes to mind, from daily stressful thoughts and worries to your hopes and aspirations.

Write a secret letter. Take inspiration from Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and write letters to people from your past: your favorite teachers, people who wronged you, your first crush, someone who let you down. You don’t need to mail anything to anyone: the process alone can be cathartic and helpful in untangling how you feel about your experiences. Plus, you’ll be getting lots of practice in articulating feelings and writing about emotionally intense subjects!  

2. Give creative writing exercises a go

Sometimes practicing writing isn’t so much about putting together a cohesive, polished piece as it is about strengthening a specific aspect of your craft. That’s where creative writing exercises come in!

Such exercises offer a low-pressure sense of direction for your writing — while helping you actively improve on particular elements like voice, building tension, or characterization. If you’re struggling with a certain part of creative writing, try out a writing exercise with that element as its focus. To help you out, we’ve identified some common problem points, and devised some example exercises to flex that specific writing muscle.

Example exercises

Plot: Write a short story (or a pivotal scene in your longer project) from the perspective of an outsider, someone who has no significant role in the story.

Character Development: Establishing how your character is perceived by others is a great way to give them deeper context. To give this method a go, write a scene in which your character is only present through candid descriptions by others, or a scene where they’re speaking in first person point of view.

Dialogue: The next time you go outside, discreetly listen in on any conversation between two people for five minutes. Then go home and “fill in the blanks,” using Person A and Person B’s cadences and speech patterns to complete the conversation yourself.

3. Try out some writing prompts

If your number-one writing obstacle is a lack of ideas, then meet your new best friend: this directory of 1000+ creative writing prompts. Ranging from suggestions for character studies to potential opening lines, the prompts in this directory are sortable by genre topic, so you’re sure to find one for every occasion (and for many you’d never considered before).

The best thing about writing prompts is that you can do almost anything you want with them: they’re inspiring without being too constrictive. Prompts can help you start a project, test your skills in a different genre, or stretch your creative muscles after a long time on the bench!

Prompt examples

  1. Create a ghost story where there’s more going on than it first appears.
  2. Write about a character who smells something familiar and is instantly taken back to the first moment they smelled it.
  3. Try writing a story that feels lonely, despite being set in a packed city.
  4. Write about someone who’s stuck in an elevator when the power goes out.
  5. Write a story that starts or ends with someone asking, “Can you keep a secret?”

4. Take part in writing contests

If motivation is what you’re lacking, how does a hard deadline and a little prize money sound? Writing contests are another fantastic way to dive into creative writing, especially if you sometimes need a kick in the pants to get to work (no judgment — we’ve all been there!).

This is the route we’d recommend if you haven’t written creatively in years, or if you frequently start pieces but never seem to finish them. The combination of competition, an inflexible due date, and the potential to win a prize or even have your work published is often just what’s needed to propel you over the finish line. 

5. Sign up to creative writing classes

For a more structured, dedicated approach to creative writing, you can’t go wrong with a writing class. Classes on specific topics can really help strengthen your weak spots and build up new skills. On the other hand, you might prefer a more general, workshop-style class similar to a critique circle, in which everyone offers feedback on each others’ work.

6. Commit to writing a book

If you’re not someone to shy away from a challenge, you also just take the plunge and try writing a book off the bat. ‘Writing a book’ doesn’t mean you have to write a novel — you could also write a book of creative nonfiction (e.g. personal essays) or assemble a poetry collection. You can even go mega-ambitious and start to write a whole series of novels, if you like!  

Whatever type of book you choose to work on, the key is to write the whole thing, and be prepared for it not to be a masterpiece. It’s a learning process, and it’s not for the faint-hearted: it will involve coming up with a book idea, then planning, writing, and editing, before preparing your work for publication — and of course giving it an excellent, correctly capitalized title. It’s a long process, but the satisfaction you’ll feel when you finally write ‘The End’ will be all the sweeter.

Remember that the important thing is not to expect a magnum opus the first time you set pen on paper. Don’t overthink it, or spend ages obsessing over tips and books on writing if you don’t find them helpful: sometimes, rather than agonizing over how to start creative writing, you should just get started with your manuscript

There’s no right or wrong approach to creative writing. All of these methods and many more are perfectly legitimate ways to put your creativity to use, and get better every time. And who knows? It could even lead to a creative writing job down the line.