Still not found that creative streak you want? These three tips might be just the push you need.

Create Some Negative Space

Negative space is, in art and design, the area that is around an object but is not part of the object itself. This applies to creative writing too, not just visual art. Every book has its own negative space. When a great story is crafted by an author, it almost feels like the characters have more to them than what we read; we can image the lives that these character lead, the experiences they have outside of the book.

Negative space scenes may never make the final cut but they can give you some truly great ideas about the character and about the world they live in. If you ever find yourself in the situation where you are stuck, take your character and write a short scene about them, following them outside of the book. This is the negative space and it can give you a deeper understanding of a character and what motivates them.

Create a Word Box

Word boxes are useful things. In a word box, you can put bits of paper that have a single word on them and, when you need a boost to your inspiration, shit your eyes and pull out five or six of the pieces of paper at random. Now start to write and use all of those words before you stop writing. What this does is force you to work with what you have to hand instead of scrabbling around blindly looking for that inspiration and it forces you to make connections that you might otherwise have ignored.

Create an Acrostic or Word Puzzle

Lewis Carroll is best known for producing literary greats like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the follow-up, Through the Looking Glass, but he was also known for writing acrostic poems and other brain-teasing problems. You can do this; you can create your own acrostic.

Start by writing a word, even your name vertically on a piece of paper. Now use that word to create a paragraph or a poem. You can use the letters as the first of a sentence or embed them somewhere in the text. Do keep in mind; if you want others to decode your puzzle, you do need to follow a bit of logic in the way that the letters are hidden. You could also do this to create a bio for your character, using each letter of the character's name to describe a quality or trait that the character has.

Think of these exercises as being like a physical exercise regime. You need to keep it up to build up your strength, stamina, and consistency and the same goes for when you train your brain. It really doesn’t matter if the words you write in these exercises don’t get into your book; the point is that your creative muscles are being worked and are providing you with the skills you need to use when it counts.