Creative Writing Exercises - Leicestershire County Council

This exercise focuses:
on giving free-rein to the imagination, and allowing participants to write – and draw –
without any preconceived outcomes weighing them down.
Giving the opportunity to allow the mind to receive suggestions, and for everyone to work
to their own ability.
Hints and tips:
Make sure that participants really have their eyes closed. One method is to get them to do the
squiggling blindfolded, and then ask the whole group to comment.
Also make sure that participants don’t actually attempt to draw – or write – anything during
squiggle-time. The point is randomness. This frees the participants from feeling under
pressure to produce a figurative drawing of something.
For participants with less confidence, offer the beginning of a line: “Today you will…” and ask
them to complete it a certain number of times by using the images in the squiggle. Another
way of making the writing more unified is to mention the colour of the squiggle in every line:
“You will fall in a purple hole, a purple rabbit will eat you, there will be a purple face in the
clouds…”
For more confident writers, ask for more examples, and move towards structuring the list into
a form: sonnet, for example, or a prose narrative.
The interpretation can be psychologically revealing: obviously it will be based on the writer’s
thoughts, not the artist’s, and this can reveal obsessions with certain emotions or subjects.
These need to be handled sensitively if they do arise – they may well have nothing to do with
the thoughts, emotions or life, of the person who drew the squiggle.
Who?
Anyone can do this, and it’s a good warm-up for adults, but kids will love the crayons,
and reliance on the colour will help them feel safer about writing things down.
Section C
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