Here are your four poetry exercises for today. If you enjoy these prompts, do take a look at my online courses… six are currently half price (when using the coupon codes on my main blog’s online courses page) and another is FREE!
Time yourself for 15 minutes per exercise, having a break in between each one or move on to the next. When you’ve finished, do pop over to this blog’s Facebook Group and let everyone know how you got on.
Below are the four – you can do them in any order.
- Keywords: twist, shout, dog, pole, poll
- Random: pick an item from today’s / the weekend’s news
- Picture: what does this inspire?
- Monologue Monday: first-person poem about a vote
Have fun, and if you would like to, do paste your writing in the comment boxes below so we can see how you got on! Remember though that it counts as being published so don’t post anything that you would want to submit elsewhere (where they require unpublished material).
See below for explanations of the prompts, they do vary…
- Sentence starts = what it says on the tin. You can use it at the beginning of the poem or include it later, and being poetry it doesn’t have to be exact – just be inspired by it.
- Keywords = the words have to appear in the poem but can be in any order and can be lengthened (e.g. clap to clapping).
- Single-word prompt = sometimes all it takes is one word to spawn an idea. Sometimes it easy, sometimes hard but invariably fun.
- Mixed bag = an object, a location, a colour.
- Picture prompts = nothing other than a picture. What does it conjure up?
- Title = The title for your piece.
- Haiku poem= 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables
- Random = whatever takes my fancy!
Tips
- Don’t forget your five senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, smell
- Show don’t tell: if your character is angry, don’t tell us he is, have him thumping his fist on the table.
- Colours: Include at least one colour in your story. It does add depth.
- Use strong verbs and avoid adverbs: Have a character striding instead of walking confidently.
- Only use repetition to emphasise.
- When you’ve finished the first draft, read the story out loud. It’s surprising how many ‘mistakes’ leap out at you when you read out loud… assuming you have any of course!
Pictures courtesy of morguefile.com and/or pixabay.com
I love to talk about writing so feel free to email me. I’ll be pasting these prompts in this blog’s Facebook Group so you may find some other comments there.
If you’d like to submit a poem for critique on this site, see Submissions. The other critique writing groups are:
Morgen’s Online Non-Fiction Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group
Thank you for reading this and we look forward to your comments.
Posted in exercises, poetry, writing
Tagged author, blog, books, competitions, creative writing, critique, exercises, Facebook Group, feedback, fiction, five senses, free verse, haiku, haiku poem, hendecasyllabic, humorous, humour, iambic pentameter, literature, Morgan Bailey, Morgen Bailey, non-fiction, nonfiction, pantoum, poem, poet, poetry, poetry collection, poetry exercises, poetry magazine, poetry slams, rhyming, rhyming poetry, sonnet, tanka, terza rima, triolet, villanelle, writer, writing, writing exercises, writing group, writing poetry, writing workshop
Below are the four – you can do them in any order.
