Free Creative Writing Worksheet with 5 Warm-up Exercises

Download these free writing exercises to challenge your creativity and come to the blank page filled with inspiration

Writing a unique and engaging book that readers simply can’t put down often means finding ways to put a twist on well-known tropes and writing habits. Prompts are a great way to open your mind by introducing new ideas and rules to experiment with.

Emily Barr (@emily_barr) is an award-winning novelist and Domestika teacher who combines a love for travel with her talent for writing addictive thrillers to take readers on a journey. Here, she shares five warm-up prompts that will help you stretch your writing muscles in a downloadable PDF worksheet.

How to get started with writing prompts

“It’s much easier to not write a book, than to write a book!” Emily explains. As the author of several adult and young adult thrillers in the UK, and horror and sci-fi in the US, she needs to stay motivated and engaged with her projects through lots of drafting and editing.

While reading Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, Emily was introduced to the practice of morning pages, where you begin a writing day by filling three pages by hand. This can help “unstick” your mind.

And if you’re struggling to think of things to write about, writing prompts are your best friend. They might be a single word or image you can bounce off, or they might be a whole scene waiting to be explored.

Benefits of using writing prompts

1. You can discover new ideas and themes you want to explore in your main project.

2. It’s easier to get started on a slower writing day.

3. You can experiment with styles or genres you don’t usually write.

4. They give your brain a break from writing the same thing every day.

5. It’s liberating to write something completely silly, that you don’t have to share with anyone!

Download the free PDF worksheet with five writing warm-up exercises

After clicking on the download button below, you’ll find a PDF file titled Creative Writing Warm-up Worksheet by Emily Barr in your Downloads folder.

Inside, you can learn more about Emily’s course, and also discover the prompts she recommends to stimulate your creativity before you work on your novel. They will push you to think about a range of aspects in your writing, from dialogue to description—and even challenge you to write a story with every letter of the alphabet!

Sign up for Emily’s course, Writing a Psychological Thriller. There, you’ll write the opening of your own book, a 25-word synopsis, and plan the rest of your plot with an experienced novelist as your guide.

Discover more writing resources

1. Try these two additional writing exercises to overcome creative block.

2. Learn the difference between a novel and a short story, so you can make the right choice for your narrative.

3. Watch these six free creative writing tutorials for all levels.

4. Go from the blank page to a daily writing practice with this course by Aniko Villalba.

5. Develop your first novel idea with this course by Shaun Levin.