Hobbies And Interests
Association
For a quickfire game to get the writing brain in gear, play a game of word association. Pick a word at random from the dictionary and give players one minute to write down all the words and ideas they associate with that word. For an alternative version, show players a photo or an object. The aim of the game is to come up with as many appropriate words and ideas as possible within the set time.
Pass the Story
Choose a starting phrase and ask one person in the group to tell a story about that subject for one minute. The story must then be taken up by the next person in the group. When everyone has added their part to the story, each person must then write it down according to their memory of what's been told, and then has a set time to come up with an ending for the story. Writers should then compare each other's versions and how they concluded the tale.
Magic Box
Encourage writers' poetic skills and imagination by using Kit Wright's poem "The Magic Box" for inspiration. In this poem, the poet imagines all the things he would put in a magical box, things it would be impossible to contain in an ordinary box, such as "the swish of a silk sari on a summer night, fire from the nostrils of a Chinese dragon, the tip of a tongue touching a tooth." (The Magic Box from Cat Among The Pigeons, Kit Wright, Viking Kestrel, 1987). Writers should create their own poetic list starting with the line "I will put in the box"...then using their imagination.
Story End
Give writers the last sentence of a classic book. To play this game yourself, ask a friend to find one for you. The book may be well-known, but the line should not be so easily recognized that most writers would be able to say which book it came from. Then write a short story that leads up to the concluding sentence. Compare the short story with the original book and see how different the ideas, characters and concepts are.