Try these exercises designed to kick-start your imagination:

1. Begin with the phrase “I remember’ or ‘I don’t remember’ and write for 15 minutes.
After, look back at that moment and try describing it using only one of the 5 senses (taste/smell/touch/sight/sound)

2. Look around your room and choose an object, describe the room through ‘its’ eyes.
Try taking the object and putting it some place it would never belong, up a mountain, on a plane, in a tank etc. Now describe what it sees.

3. Take a newspaper headline, without reading the story and write your own, make it as outrageous as you can.
Try writing newspaper headlines about your day.

4. Flick through a dictionary and at random write down 10 words. Make up your own definitions.

5. Go for a walk – write down:
10 things you saw
5 things you heard
3 feelings you experienced
1 question you wanted to ask.

6. Start with the words – I am writing – and do not stop.
If your mind goes blank continue with the words ‘I am writing…I am writing’ until something else appears. Write for at least 10 minutes. Don’t check or alter anything. When you have finished go back over your writing and underline words you find interesting. See if you can develop these into a poem or a short piece of prose.

7. With as much imagination as you can manage write down the following:
a) A mood: happy, sad, revengeful, lonely etc.
b) A Protagonist: main character; the being who is feeling your chosen mood – man, woman, child, animal, object, alien etc.
c) A Verb : decide on a verb of movement. How is your protagonist moving? Walking, running, gliding, sailing, galloping etc.
d) An Adverb: to describe ‘how’ the character is doing whatever they are doing e.g. Walking riding slowly, uncomfortably, waltzing energetically.
e) An Era: a time in which to set your piece – past, present, future.
f) A Setting: the place where your story starts - a forest, a town, a distant
planet etc.
g) An Object: anything at all.
h) An Adjective to describe the object – a red ball, a fading flower etc.
i) A Name – name your protagonist.

Finally use these elements to construct a wonderful beginning!