Writing exercise: Your best argument as a writer!

I often help my sister Louise by asking her questions and guiding her with her plot and stories. This has resulted in quite a lot of writing exercises and memorable tips, but one of them is actually from way back in our childhood – maybe it’s just the kind of argument you need, for your story to truly belong to you?

This is why I’ll introduce you to this little game/writing exercise;

Your best argument as a writer!

What is the best thing about being the ‘inventor’ of you story, a whole world or even just that one character?

The best thing is, that you came up with it – no matter how many others in the history of all times, wrote about vampires, elves, trolls, witches, dragons or computers taking over the world, you are still in charge of how these things look, work and act in your world!

I used to correct my sister when we were younger, but one day our mother said “that’s just how it is in her world”. This was most likely said just to shut us up, but it stayed with us, as a sort of guideline for what you can and cannot do, when you’re the one telling the stories.

How and when can I use this writing exercise?

“In my world…” is your best weapon as a writer, when you start building the universe your story will unfold in. This small sentence-starter gives you the freedom of throwing away all the old and dusty ideas and “rules” about how dragons, fairies, vampires etc. should be. It gives you the chance to start over, with your own ideas!

”In my world…” can be used by saying “In my world, rabbits are human sized” or “In my world, vampires are scared of fairies” etc. There are no limits as to what you can come up with and you shouldn’t pay attention to other ‘rules’ when playing “in my world…”

“In my world…” is a good exercise when you are in the beginning of writing a story and still developing ideas, coming up with characters, scenes and events for the story. This is the phase where this exercise will be most useful, because it opens up your imagination and the possibilities are endless, giving you the opportunity to come up with something fun, unique and original. It is less useful when you already have most of your story and plot in place.

Remember that no matter how many crazy and amazing ideas you come up with, it will be a good idea to explain your choices later in the writing process, so you don’t end up with a horse-dinosaur with giant whiskers, without being able to explain on some level, why or how this creature is a part of the story – but for now, I think you should just give it a go and play around with breaking the ‘rules’ of stereotypes!

If you don’t know where to start, why not try out some writing prompts?