The below are a list of exercises that don't fit well into any given category. Use them as you see fit. You can do as much or as little of them as you wish.
 

1. Take something you feel strongly about, whether it is positive or negaitve, and write about it as if you love it. Go as far as you can, then flip over and write about the same thing as though you hate it. Then write about it from a perfectly neutral standpoint.
 

2. Take a poetry book. Open to any page, grab a line, write it down, and continue from there. If you get stuck, re-write the first line. I find it works best if you're not familiar with the poem (for instance, try not to recite the Raven when you grab the line "Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore.'").
 

3. Imitate the style of a writer you particularly like. Or hate. See if you can do. You can go about this from several directions. You can sit down and literally take apart their work, figuring out what kinds of words they place where and what sentence structures they favour for different moods, then replicate it. Or you can go for the same feel, or just a similar theme. Some people highly recommend this exercise, other's detest it. Just remember, it's an exercise like any other, here to help you strengthen your own, personal style. No matter how hard you may try to emulate another, you can't be any other than yourself.
 

4. Choose a word that has more than one meaning (eg. bear, cleave, lie, sewer, tear, desert). Start by copying the word and quickly, without stopping to think, continue writing whatever comes to mind until you reach the end of the page. If you get stuck, repeat the word. See if anything evolves.
 

5. Begin with the phrase "I don't remember" and fill up a page.
 

6. Put on some music, any music: classical, alternative, folk, a movie soundtrack. Close your eyes for a minute or two and just listen. Give yourself over to the music. Then open your eyes and, while the music is still playing, write whatever comes to mind.
 

7. Choose a favourite fairy-tale or fable. Pick a side-character and tell it through that character's eyes.
 

8. Choose a favourite fairy-tale or fable. Read it over again to get it fresh in your mind. Now change the ending in your head. If the moral is be kind to strangers, maybe have it be don't eat dirt. Whatever you want. Now, staying true to the characters and the base events, change it enough to bring about your ending.
 

9. Start with the phrase "I wish I could forget" and fill up a page.
 

10. Write some place you don't usually. If you always write at your desk, go and sit in a bus depot. What new subjects arise? Is your writing coloured in any way?
 

11. Write a passage, any passage at all, but have all the descriptions be through smell. Do this with all the senses. Create a sense of your own and see what you can do with it.
 

12. Write only lies.
 

13. Write a handful of "if-- then--" statements. See where they take you.
 

14. Explore a personal memory, story, or belief about fire. Or, start with the word "fire" and don't stop until you've filled two pages.
 

15. Write about kissing.
 

16. Take a character shopping. See what they buy, what kinds of stores they go into, what kinds they avoid. Are they quick and effecient or do they like to take their time? Do they bargain shop? Do they take the first thing that strikes their fancy? How do they treat money? Are they chatty with the sales people?
 

17. Choose one of your fantasies about how your life will turn out in twenty years. Now construct a plausible plot that would bring you there. Or do this for one of your characters.
 

18. Write about a room in your house (eg. kitchen, bedroom, bathroom) as if you were a detective. What has just taken place? Look for clues and contradictions. What lurks in the room? Is it a friend or foe?
 

19. Draw comparisons between two things. Choose at least one from your surroundings. The object can be anything at all -- it need not be a physical object. Aim for at least twenty comparisions.
 

20. Write one of the following words at the top of the page, or choose one of your own: fence, road, boil, fall. Without thinking or stopping, write whatever other words come to mind in a list down the middle of the page. Do this until you reach the bottom of the page. Now, write a piece in which each line uses one of the words in the order they appear.
 

21. Describe a place that is impossible to enter. Turn the experience inside-out.
 

22. Write a list. Maybe it's "101 Places I've Been" or "101 Ways to Sing." Number your list ahead of time. Write the list quickly. See if you can finish in fifteen minutes. Don't stop until you have 101. What in the list surprised you?
 

23. Choose an abstract such as love or apathy. Write a recipe for it. Don't forget to note how many people it will feed and what goes with it.
 

24. Find someone on the street, someone you don't know, and describe them.
 

25. Picture a person who is wearing (or doing) something contradictory. Like a beggar on the street with Armani shoes. Construct a story that makes sense and ceases the controversy.
 

26. Take something familiar. Describe it as if viewing it for the first time.
 

27. Take something and describe signs of aging.
 

28. Sit for a moment and consider what you value and know, from experience, to be true. Make a list. Make another list of what you once valued and believed true, but no longer reflect your current understanding. Develop a character from each of these lists. Focus on bringing out the personality, not the beliefs.
 

29. Write about sleep.
 

30. Write a piece in which the narrator isn't entirely forthcoming; as if they're holding something back from the reader.
 

31. Fill two pages by creating a list of "I used to be..., but now...." Work quickly, without really thinking. Do any jump out at you?
 

32. Write a short passage or dialogue using slang. Then rewrite the passage, replacing conventional phrasing for the slang. What is lost? What gained?
 

33. Choose a part of your body and write an ode (a poem of praise) to it. Think hard about what's worth praising. Can you figure out a way to praise a less admirable characteristic about it (such as the sent of your feet after you take of your gym socks)?
 

34. Write a paragraph to a page of prose that's meant to be read aloud. Use alliteration, onomatopoeia, hyperbole, litotes, made up words, slang -- anything but rhyme and metre. Have fun with it. Remember it's meant to be performed. Once you write it, read it!
 

35. Write a page with no punctuation. None. No paragraphs, breaks, nothing. An idea to get you started: write about people in a confused, hectic situation, such as just deboarding a plane and being told that in two minutes a fire will be set at the back of the plane.
 

36. Fill a page with sentences of seven or less words. No sentence fragments. The sentences must be complete with a subject and a verb.
 

37. This next exercise is in two parts: First, write a paragraph that includes at least three repetitve words (not has, was, did, but noticable ones). Second, write a paragraph repeating the syntactical construction or the exact rhythm of a phrase or sentence several times.
 

38. Take a fairly long piece you've written. It can be an exercise or an actual story. Just so long as it's more than 500 words. Cut it in half. This works best if you work on a word processor, as you want it to be ~exactly~ half. If the piece is 600 words long, you make it 300.  The catch is, you have to keep the narrative clear and interesting. Don't put in a generality to get rid of a specific. And don't account for an occurance using "somehow" or "something."
 

39. This is the opposite of no. 38. Take any piece you have that's under 500 words and double it. Where can you add detail? Where can you clarify? Don't get wordy.
 

40. Take a thick piece of paper (it's good if you can get ahold of some black construction paper) and cut a rectangular whole in the middle, about the size of a standard playing card, maybe a little larger. Place it over a page of text. From anywhere -- newspaper, novel, text, magazine. Copy down the text. Only copy entire words. Copy in a continuous stream. Don't break the lines. Do this for several sources and keep them together, don't separate by source. See what you get.
 

41. Pull down from your shelf, or go to the library, five to ten books that contain dialogue. Your best bet is fiction, but don't let it limit you. Flip randomly to a page containing dialogue. Write down one piece of dialogue, even if it's only "Hello." Don't write what follows. Go to a separate book and copy another random line of dialogue. Do this until you fill up a page. Don't look for a line that will jive with what you copied above, just jot it down. When done, look at the conversation you have.
 

42. Create a list of words. They should be interesting words. A sample list might be:
dissolve
anachronism
catharsis
melt
memory
freak
succomb
succulent
ferver
pout
pundit
pain
Let it run for a while. Then, take a word that at the moment particularly strikes your fancy. In a page, evoke that word, without ever using it. Someone who reads the piece should be able to come away with a feeling for that word as a means of describing what you wrote without your having to tell them what you were trying for.
 

43. Think about monsters. All types. Scary types that hide under your bed and mean waiters who spit on your salad. Write about them from their point of view.
 

44. If, in some cataclysm, all scientific knowledge were to be destroyed and only one sentence survived to be passed on to the next generation of beings, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words?
 

45. Take something you've written and rewrite it from a different point of view.
 

46. Write an opening scene with two characters, the protagonist and antagonist. Create a conflict between the two. It should be something small, like who gets to go online first. It can between relatives, friends, total strangers. Try to keep it subtle at first, then let it build into something more complicated -- an unresovled issue from the past, perhaps, or one character suddenly sees a new, disquieting, side of the other. Whatever you like. The point is, let a little conflict grow into something much larger. End the scene unresolved.
 

47. This is something rather fun to do, and every now and again a story really comes to life from it. There are a couple ways to do it, depending on the situation. Note, this exercise requires other people. Way one: this method works great if you're at a party. Grab a piece of paper and a pen. Write down a sentence of dialogue - anything at all. Try and start with a question. Then hand it to the next person. They write a responding sentence, then fold over the paper so only their sentence shows. Do this until everyone has written something. You can go around more than once, or have several pieces of paper going at once. Once done, read the resulting converation aloud. It's a writer's game of telephone.
Way two: this is best done over email. Write a paragraph, setting up a scene, then send it on to a friend. Have them contribute a paragraph and send it on to the next friend in line. Keep doing this with a group of about five people. See what story develops. You can also do this by having each person write an entire scene, as opposed to just a paragraph.
 

48. Write about watching someone cry.
 

49. Write about a childhood staring contest.
 

50. Write about an adult staring contest.
 

51. Take a collection of short stories and examine them ~solely~ for craft. See how the author uses certain words and sentence configurations to evoke ideas and emotions. What works? What doesn't?
 

52. If you're having trouble writing a story, try writing ~about~ the story, like you would write about a book for a book report in grade school.
 

53. Study the sound patterns in different types of literature.
 

54. Take a paragraph of your own writing and break it into shorter units. Look at the rhythm when you do this. Try doing it in several different ways.
 

55. Pay attention to vowel pitch when you write.
(here follows a quick demonstration of vowel pitch, from low to high. Read these words aloud to hear the difference in pitch and the progression)
Boo Bone Book Bought Boy Bough Bar Bud Bird Bat Bet Bit Buy Bay Bee
 

56. To gain an ear for sound, translate (by sound alone) a poem in a language you don't know. This exercise isn't meant to give you a new story idea, though it well might, but to get your ear involved in the writing process.
 

57. Take any piece you've written. Cross out four words at random and replace them with words that ~sound~ the same.
 

58. Take an object, say a brick, and have it symbolize something, such as religion. Write about the object, but have it imply the abstract.
 

59. Create a simile. For example: Fear is like chalk. Push it. The point of this exercise is to avoid cliches in your writing. Do this as fast as possible, not stopping to think if it makes sense. Just have fun with it and see where it takes you. Once you've pushed the simile as far as it will go, take the first word and match it to something that came about later in the exercise. Going from the below, it could be: Fear is like Rome.
Here's a quick example of how to push the simile:
Fear is like chalk. What colour? Orange. Whose chalk? 6th grade history teacher's. What did this teacher do? Make the chalk squeak. What did it sound like? Like a thousand nails crying out as the hammer came down. Where were they hammered? In Rome.  etc. etc.
 

60. Take an object and load it with comparisons to a family member.
 

61. Describe someone's hands. Next, describe what they're doing with their hands. Write a metaphor of any exotic place. Ask the hand-owner a question about what they're doing with their hands. Have them respond in a way that doesn't really answer the question.

62. Take a short play -- a one act. Insert character movement between sections of dialogue.

63. Okay, if you've ever looked at writing exercises before or gone to a seminar or ~anything,~ you've probably heard this one before: record your dreams. Wonderful idea. Truly. But, for most, that's asking a bit much. Not everybody has the time to spend in the morning jotting down the convoluted storylines the subconscious came up with last night. I don't. For one, the moment I start writing about the dream, I can't stop until I've recorded every single detail that I can remember. So this exercise is really for when you have time for it: the weekend, a vacation, when you're sick and bored. When you wake up, lie still for a moment and let the dream come back to you. Have a notebook ready to jot it down. You can either record all the dreams you can recall, or stick with one and describe it as thoroughly as possible. Your choice. Try to do this at least once a month. It seems an inconsequential amount, but it'll add up and you may find yourself doing it more often. If nothing else, at the end of a year, you'll not only have a record of 12 of your dreams, but 12 new storylines to toy with.

64. This next exercises does not require a pen or paper -- unless you wish to jot some notes. What it does require is for you to go and pick up a new book: a book written by an author you've never read before (preferably never even heard of before, so you've no preconceptions) and written in a genre you never (or very seldom) read. The point is to get you used to different styles and ways of working prose and poetry. You don't have to suddenly become a die-hard sci-fi fan, but pay attention to what the author does to create the new world. How is it different than what you do? Similar? If you want to take this exercise one step farther, pick up two books in the same genre by two unknown (to you) authors: one that comes highly acclaimed, one that's shoved toward the back in the hopes no one will notice it. What makes one good and one bad? The reason to do this in a genre you're unfamiliar with is to free you of "my opinion of good memoir is..." etc. Focus on the writing and the feelings the author evokes in you (even if it is to hurl the book violently across the room).
 
 

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