What exercise do you find really improves your writing ability? For me, it's Flash Fiction. It really hones your story-telling skills, and you learn to make every word count.
I find writing narratives of whatever my current WIP is helps me. Also, the task of summarizing scenes helps.
Carpal pumps. Reckon I get through four or five reps per word. People who shake my hand are like "Do you write?" and I'm like "Yeah." If it wasn't for carpal pumps, I'd have scrawny little woman-hands, and my stories would all be in biro. Nowhere takes biro. I think comments here and on newspaper sites are my warm-up for writing. Either that or I'm stressed and they're some kind of displacement activity.
I go out for a drink in a pub carrying a ratty little shop-keeper's cash-book and wait for a story to strike me between the eyes or for some stranger to come up to talk (its the Westcountry, if its a pub with pints under £4 they will do, sooner or later). If you get to talking then you don't get to the writing, but you tend to get 200% of the material you could ever need for the next time. Change of scenery, limited medium, modest time restraint, lubrication, background bustle and life stories in tap = a good exercise.
Writing poems while taking a walk in the park helps me out. Looking at a scene and writing some poetic tale about it. Like watching a crow get chased off and beat up by a pair of robins. That'll teach it to steal eggs. I like writing short stories that take place in my WIP's universe too. Something unrelated to the main story.
I write horror, so I find it helps to read the comments in the op-ed pieces I find off-putting for places like yahoo, etc. One can almost hear the protagonist in my stories cackle in the background when I return to the blank page!
I write in brief what is going to happen in the scene. For example: 1: The main character will go into the cave. 2: His other friemds will say no 3: The beast will reveal itself 4: A fight breaks out. Then I plan the intricacy of how I'm going to write and describe each part. Firstly, I take the first part, as above, and then I elaborate a bit more by adding more detail. Example: 1: The main character will go into the cave, he will see cobwebs, drops of water will hit his head from above and he will start feeling anxious. 2: His friends will plead with him not to go into the cave and one will grab his arm and pull him back explaining to him that something deadly could be in there. 3: The beast reveals itself and starts walking on the walls and jumping from one wall to the other. It ducks down then thrusts forward making its first attack 4: The battle begins. The beast is fast and very fierce. The main character is armed with a sword and potion. He swipes left then right and when the beast ducks back to make its strike, the main character throws the potion in the beasts face. When I have added more detail, as in the above, I will then use my skills as a creative writer to add all the intricacies needed to make the above into a well written, well described scene that flows with the rest of the story. I find this kind of system I use as the best way to flesh out a scene, plan for how it will be written and then begin writing it.
Hi, Beating my head against a wall! It really gets the creative juices flowing - or is that blood?! Cheers, Greg.
Writing poetry. It is so immediate. Never used to have time for it but I find it let’s the creativity flow like nothing else.
Rewriting master texts. Just find a perfect page/paragraph and write it out longhand. Study it and memorize it. Dissect the text and name its parts. Do it again and again. It's the 19th century technique for gaining writing skill. It's rigorous as hell, which is why nobody does it anymore, but it still works.
I do this with regulatory news announcements as I invest. It is so important not to miss a thing. The text is usually absolutely loaded, especially the pharma and biotech announcements revolving around trial results. Anyway, I went off on a tangent there, but this is very good practice. It really does allow you to understand the detail.
Monthly flash fiction contests, undoubtedly. Another thing I find very useful is to post your story (contest or workshop), get all the feedback, discuss all you can, then let it sit for six months without even thinking about it, and then re-read all the readers' feedback and discussions and write a new improved version. The story will become a lot better than it was at first.
