100 Writing Observe Classes & Workouts

Want to become a better writer? Perhaps you want to write novels, or maybe you just want to get better grades in your essay writing assignments, or maybe you’d like to start a popular blog.

If you want to write better, you need practice. But what does a writing practice actually look like? In this post, I’m going to give you everything you need to kick off your writing practice and become a better writer faster.

What Is Writing Practice?

Writing practice is a method of becoming a better writer that usually involves reading lessons about the writing process, using writing prompts, doing creative writing exercises, or finishing writing pieces, like essays, short stories, novels, or books. The best writing practice is deliberate, timed, and involves feedback.

How Do You Practice Writing?

This was the question I had when I first started The Write Practice in 2011. I knew how to practice a sport and how to practice playing an instrument. But for some reason, even after studying it in college, I wasn’t sure how to practice writing.

I set out to create the best writing practice I could. The Write Practice is the result.

I found that the best writing practice has three aspects:

Deliberate. Writing whatever you feel like may be cathartic, but it’s not an effective way to become a better writer or build your writing skills. You’ll get better faster by practicing a specific technique or aspect of the writing process each time you sit down to write.

This is why we have a new lesson about the writing process each day on The Write Practice, followed by a practice prompt at the end so you can put what you learned to use immediately.

Timed. It’s no secret writers struggle with focus. There are just too many interesting distractions—Facebook, email, Kim Kardashian’s Instagram feed (just kidding about that last one, sort of)—and writing is just too hard sometimes.

Setting a timer, even for just fifteen minutes, is an easy and effective way to stay focused on what’s important.

This is why in our writing practice prompt at the end of each post we have a time limit, usually with a link to an online tool egg timer, so you can focus on deliberate practice without getting distracted.

Feedback. Getting feedback is one of the requirements to deliberately practice writing or any other craft. Feedback can look like listening to the reactions of your readers or asking for constructive criticism from editors and other writers.

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Good writing isn’t done in a vacuum. Your readers will teach you to become a better writer.

This is why we ask you to post your writing practice after each lesson, so that you can get feedback from other writers in The Write Practice community. It’s also why we set up The Write Practice Pro community, to provide critique groups for writers to get feedback on each finished piece of writing.

How to practice writing

Our 100+ Best Creative Writing Practice Exercises and Lessons

Now that you know how we practice writing at The Write Practice, here are our best writing practice lessons to jumpstart your writing skills with some daily writing exercises, for beginner writers to even the most expert writers:

All-Time, Top 10 Writing Lessons and Exercises

These ten posts are our most viewed articles to boost your writing practice:

1. What is Plot? The 6 Elements of Plot and How to Use Them. Great stories use similar elements in wildly different ways to build page-turning stories. Click here to read what they are and learn how to start using them!

2. Top 100 Short Story Ideas. Here are over a hundred writing prompts in a variety of genres. If you need ideas for your next story, check this out!

3. How To Use Neither, Nor, Or, and Nor Correctly. Even good writers struggle figuring out when to use neither/nor and either/or. In this post, our copy-queen Liz Bureman settles the confusion once and for all. Click to continue to the writing exercise

4. Ten Secrets To Write Better Stories. How does Pixar manage to create such great stories, year after year? And how do you write a good story? In this post, I distill everything I’ve learned about how to write a good story into ten tips. Click to continue to the writing exercise

5. 35 Questions To Ask Your Characters From Marcel Proust. To get to know my characters better, I use a list of questions known as the Proust Questionnaire, made famous by French author, Marcel Proust. Click to continue to the writing exercise

6. How a Scene List Can Change Your Novel-Writing Life. Creating a scene list changed my novel-writing life, and doing the same will change yours too. Includes examples of the scene lists from famous authors. Click to continue to the writing exercise

7. Why You Need to be Using the Oxford Comma. Most people I’ve met have no idea what the Oxford comma is, but it’s probably something that you have used frequently in your writing. Click to continue to the writing exercise

8. Six Surprising Ways to Write Better Interview Questions. The interview is the most-used tool in a journalist’s bag. But that doesn’t mean novelists, bloggers, and even students can’t and don’t interview people. Here’s how to conduct a great interview. Click to continue to the writing exercise

9. Why You Should Try Writing in Second Person. You’ve probably used first person and third person point-of-view already. But what about second person? This post explains three reasons why you should try writing from this point-of-view. Click to continue to the writing exercise

10. The Secret to Show, Don’t Tell. You’ve heard the classic writing rule, “Show. Don’t Tell.” Every writing blog everhas talked about it, and for good reason. Showing, for some reason, is really difficult. Click to continue to the writing exercise.

 

Book Idea WorksheetGet a Free Book Idea Worksheet to plan your story in a sentence: This worksheet from our Write Plan planner will help you identify the core elements of your story.
Click here to download the free book idea worksheet. 

12 Exercises and Lessons To Become a Better Writer

How do you become a better writer? These posts share our best advice:

  1. Want to Be a Better Writer? Cut These 7 Words
  2. What I Mean When I Say I Am A Writer
  3. How to Become a Writer: 3 Simple Steps
  4. 72% of Writers Struggle With THIS
  5. 7 Lies About Becoming a Writer That You Probably Believe
  6. 10 Questions to Find Your Unique Writing Voice
  7. The Best Writing Book I’ve Ever Read
  8. The Best Way to Become a Better Writer
  9. The Creative Writer’s Toolkit: 6 Tools You Can’t Write Without
  10. Should You Write More or Write Better: Quantity vs Quality
  11. How to Become a Better Writer in One, Simple Step
  12. 11 Writing Tips That Will Change Your Life

6 Lessons and Exercises from Great Writers

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“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.” —Isaac Newton

If you want to be a writer, learn from the great writers who have gone before you:

  1. 23 Essential Quotes from Ernest Hemingway About Writing
  2. 29 Quotes that Explain How to Become a Better Writer
  3. 10 Lessons Dr. Seuss Can Teach Writers
  4. 10 Writing Tips from Ursula Le Guin
  5. Once Upon a Time: Pixar Prompt
  6. All the Pretty Words: Writing In the Style of Cormac McCarthy

12 Genre and Format Specific Writing Lessons and Exercises

Here are our best writing lessons for specific types of writing, including essays, screenplays, memoir, short stories, children’s books, and humor writing:

  1. Writing an Essay? Here Are 10 Effective Tips
  2. How To Write a Screenplay: The 5 Step Process
  3. How to Write a Great Memoir: a Complete Guide
  4. How to Write a Short Story from Start to Finish
  5. How to Write a Thriller Novel
  6. How to Write a Children’s Book
  7. How to Write a Love Story
  8. How to Write a Coming of Age Story or Book
  9. How to Write an Adventure Book
  10. 5 Key Elements for Successful Short Stories
  11. 4 Tips to Write a Novel That Will Be Adapted Into a Movie
  12. Humor Writing for People Who Aren’t Funny

14 Characterization Lessons and Exercises

Good characters are the foundation of good fiction. Here are our best lessons to create better characters:

  1. Character Development: How to Create Characters Audiences Will Love
  2. Writing Villains: 9 Evil Examples of the Villain Archetype
  3. How NOT to Introduce a New Character
  4. The Strongest Form of Characterization
  5. The Most Important Character Archetype
  6. How Do You Build A Strong Character In Your Writing?
  7. 75+ Antihero Examples and How to Use Them
  8. How to Explore Your Characters’ Motivations
  9. 8 Tips for Naming Characters
  10. The Protagonist: How to Center Your Story
  11. Heroes vs. Anti-Heroes: Which Is Right For Your Story?
  12. The Weakest Form of Characterization
  13. How to Write With an Accent
  14. How To Create a Character Sketch Using Scrivener

15 Grammar Lessons and Exercises

I talk to so many writers, some of whom are published authors, who struggle with grammar. Here are our best writing lessons on grammar:

  1. Is It Okay To End A Sentence With A Preposition?
  2. Contractions List: When To Use and When To Avoid
  3. Good vs. Well
  4. Connotation vs. Denotation
  5. Per Se vs. Per Say
  6. When You SHOULD Use Passive Voice
  7. When Do You Use “Quotation Marks”
  8. Polysyndeton and Asyndeton: Definition and Examples
  9. The Case Against Twilight
  10. Affect Versus Effect
  11. Stop Saying “Literally”
  12. What Is a Comma Splice? And Why Do Editors Hate Them?
  13. Intra vs. Inter: Why No One Plays Intermural Sports
  14. Alright and Alot: Words That Are Not Words
  15. The Poor, Misunderstood Semicolon

4 Journalism Lessons and Exercises

Want to be a journalist? Or even use techniques from journalism to improve your novel, essay, or screenplay? Here are our best writing lessons on journalism:

  1. Six Ways to Ask Better Questions In Interviews
  2. How Should You Interview Someone? Over Email? In Person?
  3. What If They Don’t Want to Talk to You?
  4. Eleven Habits of a Highly Effective Interviewers

 

16 Plot and Structure Lessons and Exercises

Want to write a good story? Our top plot and structure lessons will help:

  1. The Ten Types of Story and How to Master Them
  2. Points of a Story: 6 Plot Points Every Story Needs
  3. How to Shape a Story: The 6 Arcs
  4. 7 Keys To Write the Perfect First Line of a Novel
  5. The Secret to Creating Conflict
  6. 4 Tips to Avoid Having Your Short Story Rejected by a Literary Magazine
  7. 7 Steps to Creating Suspense
  8. 5 Elements of Storytelling
  9. 3 Important Rules for Writing Endings
  10. A Writer’s Cheatsheet to Plot and Structure
  11. Overcoming the Monster
  12. How to Satisfy Your Reader With a Great Ending
  13. Pow! Boom! Ka-Pow! 5 Tips to Write Fight Scenes
  14. The Dramatic Question and Suspense in Fiction
  15. How to Write a Memorable Beginning and Ending
  16. How to Write the Perfect First Page

6 Lessons and Exercises to Beat Writer’s Block

Writer’s block is real, and it can completely derail your writing. Here are six lessons to get writing again:

  1. How To Write Whether You Feel Like it Or Not
  2. This Fun Creative Writing Exercise Will Change Your Life
  3. When You Should Be Writing But Can’t…
  4. What to do When Your Word Count is Too Low
  5. 7 Tricks to Write More with Less Willpower
  6. When You Don’t Know What to Write, Write About Your Insecurities

7 Literary Technique Lessons and Exercises

These writing and storytelling techniques will teach you a few tricks of the trade you may not have discovered before:

  1. 3 Tips to “Show, Don’t Tell” Emotions and Moods
  2. 3 Reasons to Write Stream of Consciousness Narrative
  3. 16 Observations About Real Dialogue
  4. Intertextuality As A Literary Device
  5. Why You Should Use Symbolism In Your Writing
  6. 6 Ways to Evoke Emotion in Poetry and Prose
  7. 3 Tips To Write Modern Allegorical Novels
  8. Symbol vs. Motif: What’s the Difference

3 Inspirational Writing Lessons and Exercises

Need some inspiration? Here are three of our most inspiring posts:

  1. Why We Write: Four Reasons
  2. You Must Remember Every Scar
  3. 17 Reasons to Write Something NOW

3 Publishing Blogging Lessons and Exercises

If you want to get published, these three lessons will help:

  1. The Secret to Writing On Your Blog Every Day
  2. How to Publish Your Book and Sell Your First 1,000 Copies
  3. How to Get Published in Literary Magazines

11 Writing Prompts

Need inspiration or just a kick in the pants to write. Try one of our top writing prompts:

  1. Grandfathers [writing prompt]
  2. Out of Place [writing prompt]
  3. Sleepless [writing prompt]
  4. Longing [writing prompt]
  5. Write About Yourself [writing prompt]
  6. 3 Reasons You Should Write Ghost Stories
  7. Road Trip [writing prompt]
  8. Morning [writing prompt]
  9. The Beach [writing prompt]
  10. Fall [writing prompt]
  11. How to Use Six-Word Stories As Writing Prompts

Is It Time To Begin Your Writing Practice?

It’s clear that if you want to become a writer, you need to practice writing. We’ve created a proven process to practice your writing at The Write Practice, but even if you don’t join our community, I hope you’ll start practicing in some way today.

Personally, I waited far too long to start practicing and it set my writing back years.

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Today is the best day for you to practice writing for the first time. Let’s do it together.

How about you? Do you think practicing writing is important? Let me know in the comments section.

PRACTICE

Choose one of the writing practice posts above. Then, read the lesson and participate in the writing exercise, posting your work in the Pro Practice Workshop. And if you post, please give feedback to your fellow writers who also posted their practices.

Have fun and happy practicing!

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