Writing is essential in almost every aspect of life. Be it just signing a paper, or taking notes, the ability to write proficiently is often necessary. Understanding the same, some adults may look into learning strategies for better penmanship.
Activities have been seen adding advantages to kids and the learning disabled; the same may also be fitting for adults as well. The options listed here help adults not only make their writing skills better but also brainstorm thoughts to put on paper.
Creative writing activities for adults
Here are some writing activities that are beneficial for adults and can be quickly done for a fun part and to enhance creativity. These campaigns may be good take-ins for aspirants with varying writing needs.
1. Writing down thoughts
Being aware of one’s own thoughts can make you almost never run out of topics to write about. Moreover, as beneficial as it is for your mind, it’s great for the soul as well. For this activity, all you need is a pen and paper, with some peace and tranquility.
Just think of any event of the moment that’s been stuck in your mind, be it happy or sad, or something you wish to talk about to yourself. Pour your thoughts down on the piece of paper. This will not only help you become a better writer but this is considered to be a therapeutic approach where you can fight a lot of feelings and gather calmness from within.
When you write down your own thoughts, you become more creative and writing becomes a way of expressing yourself and relieving. Thus, this activity can be an effective way for adults to get better at writing.
2. Writing With & About A Friend
As much beneficial as it can be to write about oneself, it can be advantageous when you write about others! While writing your own thoughts can be therapy, so can be spending some quality time with friends! For this activity, you need a pen and a paper, and just some topic to write upon.
In this activity, two friends can sit together, and both of them can give each other a common topic to write about. For example, what do you love the most about me? When both the friends write down on the topic and later read it aloud, an individual becomes a better writer eventually, as they are finding creative words and ways to express their feelings about their friends.
3. Research Activity
Researching can be a crucial skill. Now think of it when you blend it with writing! It can bring about the best of both worlds, that is, researching and writing, and can reflect on the piece that you are creating! For this activity, select a topic that is currently in the buzz! However, this should be a topic of your own interest, too, so that you can find super creative ways to write more and more about it. For instance, take cryptocurrency or blockchain.
Find out the available knowledge in the books or internet. Now write your understanding of the topic. After writing, judge your writing with the primary sources; what you have written states true or needs modification.
One of the best things about this activity is that it helps you process your curiosity and decisions to understand any new thing in a better manner. After all, writing down a complex and new topic can be healthy in a way to improve your research skill. Moreover, it also increases your knowledge and educates you further!
4. Writing A Letter To Yourself When You Were Younger
As adults, we think a lot about how our ideas and views about life have changed as compared to when we were kids. Most of us evolve as human beings as our beliefs change, ideologies change and we get a better idea of life when we are grown up. Hence, writing a letter to your younger self can be a great idea to improve your writing skills.
We all have gone through our share of tough times as teenagers or even kids – where we beat ourselves a little too hard in our minds. As adults, we think we underestimated and under-analyzed our potential and were a little too tough with ourselves. Hence, writing a letter to that younger self must be carried as an activity to enhance the writing skills, as well as take a look at how much we have grown as individuals.
5. Free Writing
Find a clock or timer to help you keep track of time. First, choose a topic, idea, or question you would like to consider. It can be a specific detail or a broad concept-whatever you are interested in exploring at the moment. Then, spend 7-10 minutes writing about that subject without stopping.
If you get stuck and don’t know what to say next, write “I’m stuck and don’t know what to say next…” or ask yourself, “what else?” until another idea comes to you. Do not concern yourself with spelling, grammar, or punctuation. Your goal is to generate as much as you can about the topic in a short period and to get used to the feeling of articulating ideas on the page.
This activity can enhance your thinking ability and writing speed simultaneously.
6. Creating A Diary of your Everyday Life
Writing a diary is easy and challenging at the exact moment. At a glance, it seems simple- take your pen and diary and start writing. However, It is more than just writing. Many people find a connection and attachment to their journal. In addition, writing life events and memoirs can be emotional and affect writing skills, at the same time.
Creating a diary can be a fun way to look back on your life, making it easier to remember special moments. Keeping a diary is often more than just recording events – it can also provide you with an outlet for your thoughts and feelings. Writing in your journal reduces stress levels and increases mental clarity, emotional stability, and self-esteem.
Writing one or two pages every day helps you form a habit of writing, and penning down your thoughts makes you a better writer as you are able to express your words more diligently on the paper.
7. 5 Question Activity
Questioning things in multiple ways enhances the brainstorming process. The same is ensured in this activity. All this campaign needs is a pencil and a piece of paper.
To start with, the learner creates 5 different sections on the paper. These include: what, why, how, when, and where. The adult needs to fill up all of these sections. For instance, if the topic is the “Summer trip”. They need to write every possible question which can start from these question words and also answer them properly.
This activity will help you to introspect yourself and understand viewpoints. Moreover, there might be questions to which there might not be a particular perfect answer; the writer now has to think hard and be as creative as possible while answering the question.
8. Rewriting The Ideas
For this activity, you need to take an older published short article, stopwatch, pen & paper together.
To start with, the person reads the article, takes the headings in their notebook, and then writes down their own ideas below it. On a fresh sheet, the person starts the article based on their memory and the heading that has already been noted down. Once they complete it, they compare it with the original one to compare and look for missing points.
This activity demonstrates quick grasping capacity along with ameliorating writing. Repeating this campaign may also enhance memorisation skills.
9. Narrating Your Version of Someone Else’s Story
Have you ever wanted to write a story like one of your favorite writers? Writing your version of someone else’s story is a great way to improve your writing skills.
Before starting this activity, you should pick out a book that you love and read it over to understand the writer’s style. After that, it’s up to you. Start by picking a character and setting. Think about “what’s happening in the world?”. What does the character want, and how did they get there? Write your version of the story and recite it to your friends.
When you perform this activity, you will be able to learn the situations in which the writer had written those stories and what is your situation while writing the story. This activity can be performed in a movie or TV series as well.
10. Timeline Writing
Creating a timeline is quite simple. You need a notebook, pencil, and some time to organise your thoughts as per time intervals.
First, start by putting down the year at the top of the page; next, list all of the significant events that happened that year in chronological order; finally, jot down any other information between the years as you think of it. For example, it could be 2011 – The birth of my first baby. Now, the writer must not stop here. For such events, they can mention how they felt at that exact moment or how they feel about it now.
Basically, describing each of the events is crucial to this activity. This will not only enhance the writing skills of an individual but also create a memory of a lifetime for the person!
11. News Writing
News writing is one of the most underestimated forms of writing. However, becoming perfect in that makes a writer perfect! For this activity, the writer can pick any current affair topic and write about 200 words on the same. Now we all know that news writing is strictly based on the number of words and characters. Therefore, the writer must complete the news piece in 200 words or any other limit that they can set for themselves.
In this word limit, they must include all necessary details, at the same time, being grammatically correct. This will help individuals know how to write precisely and consciously by making their points clear at the same time. This will also help them polish their General Knowledge skills.
How exactly do these activities make our writing skills effective?
When you start involving in these sorts of writing activities, your creativity, and writing skills both improve significantly. The writing activities bring out the confidence inside a person.
The benefits of writing are reflected in many different ways. It helps people process their thoughts and feelings, teaches them to communicate better, and improves memory.
When writing activities are used as a part of skill development, they are especially beneficial because they help people increase their skills in many different areas, including reading comprehension, writing skills, grammar, logic, and more. In addition, their sense of imagination can bring out a revolutionary novel.
Conclusion
Many adults have a hard time finding ways to improve their skills because of their busy schedules. Whether it’s improving their writing skills, strengthening their vocabulary, or looking for ways to expand their creativity. Various writing activities can help adults improve their skills and abilities.
They can start by making a list of all things they would like to work on. Then, from the above list, they can find out how to make a plan for how long each piece will take them. You may find these activities capable of honing your writing skills and making you stress-free.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,