Ten Writing Exercises For Overcoming Writer’s Block

Sometimes article writers may experience writer's block for weeks or months, which could be a very frustrating experience. Plainly, writer’s block means the inability to come up with anything worth writing about. If you are a professional writer, you’ll know that at certain times ideas fly easily, and writing articles is very simple. You’ll also know that at other times, it becomes really hard to think of anything new to write. Fortunately, there are many ways to cure writer's block, before it gets you down. The trick is to try different writing exercises to get your creative juices flowing.

Below are ten writing exercises to help you beat writer's block, and start writing highly creative content once again:

1. Book titles: Scan the titles of books that you own, as well as those in a library or bookshop. Select a few titles, and write a story based on them, or the words within.
2. Baby names: Look through baby books, baby-name websites or the telephone directory for unusual or exotic names. Select a few interesting names, before creating characters based on those names, and building a story around them.
3. Television: Watch an unfamiliar TV show or movie with the volume muted, to avoid being influenced by dialogue, sound effects or music. Later invent a story based on the setting and characters seen in the show.
4. Dictionary: Randomly pick out words from a dictionary or publication, by shutting your eyes and running a fingertip down a page. Select a few of the chosen words, and create a narrative around any or all of them.
5. Historical figures: Conduct research on historical figures over online reference websites like Wikipedia. Write a story about a fictional incident from their life. You could perhaps write about some imaginary secret, or maybe a chance meeting with another famous figure of that era. The options are limitless.
6. Photographs: A picture is said to tell a thousand stories. Select a photo or painting from the Internet and study it, before writing a plot around the subject. Your story could be based around a person, animal, place or thing; or a combination thereof.
7. Historical locations: Visit a historic site, like a palace, church, fort or ancient city. When you’re back at your computer, do a bit of online research and collect facts about the location. You can later write a plot featuring the historical site, or one inspired by it. If there are no historical sites near your home, you can do the same for any modern structure, such as a bridge, building or train station.
8. Magazines: Cut out pictures or words from different magazines, and arrange them in patterns (linear, groups or sequences) until a line of thought develops. Use that line in the first sentence of your article, and fill in the following lines, accordingly.
9. People watching: Go to a public place like the mall, and watch people. Do this unobtrusively, so that the cops are not called in to investigate what some might consider ‘suspicious’ behaviour. Select some interesting characters, and create background stories based on their appearance, behaviour and communication style.
10. Animal watching: Go to a zoo, aquarium, pet store or even a dog show, and study the animals. Select a few animals, and develop human characters based on the characteristics seen in these animals. Later, write a story around these newly created characters.

Did you find these tips helpful? Have you ever suffered from writer's block? What do you do to overcome writers block, and get back to your writing best again?

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