Students may feel more enthusiastic about creative writing if they are able to use their own personal stories, memories and interests as a topic. Ask students to bring one object from home, such as a photograph, a piece of jewelry or any small, meaningful object. Have students tell the story of when they first encountered or received the object. Ask them to use very specific detail and to describe the object concretely in their stories or poems. Alternatively, you can bring in a few objects from your own home and ask students to write a story that starts with a description of the object.
Students can generate topics for writing by using aleatory and collage techniques. Aleatory techniques use "chance" exercises to create text. For example, an acrostic poetry exercise asks students to pick a text (a newspaper, page from a romance novel or a website, for example) and find random sentences or lines that begin with a letter that can create a word that reads down the page. For example, if the acrostic word prompt was "terror," the first line would be a sentence that starts with a "t," the second with an "e," and so on. This kind of exercise can create interesting juxtapositions and surreal imagery. The poet Charles Bernstein's University of Pennsylvania website has many other examples of chance exercises.
Collage and cut-up techniques, popularized by William S. Burroughs, can help students to find interesting topics. Students must choose a text and cut out interesting phrases, sentences or even words, to put them back together into a story or a poem. Online cut-up machines, such as the one at the website Language is a Virus, provide an automated cut-up process.
Collaborative exercises can help students to create topics and generate ideas together. Have students write down a possible topic or idea on a sheet of paper. Then, fold the paper, place each folded piece of paper in a hat or bowl, and have each student pick a slip of paper and write based on the topic.
Students can also work together to write a story or poem. Have students alternate lines, sentences or even paragraphs to create a long work.
Students can generate topics and ideas by keeping a writing journal. A writing journal differs from a regular diary in that it usually has one specific topic and serves as a place where an author can generate ideas and come back later to develop those ideas. Author Bernadette Mayer's journal ideas range from subjects such as weather, conversations and car rides to minute descriptions of one object every day. A writing journal can be a great way for students to generate topics throughout the term of a class.