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Ticking Mind Educational Publishing 2013

First published 2013 as part of the How To Teach SeriesFor information email enquiries@tickingmind.com.au

Copyright

3Creative writing can be one of the most rewarding types of writ-ing to engage in in the English classroom. However, anyone who has spent any time in the English classroom knows the diffi-culty involved in teaching creativity and getting students to tell a story well.

One of the hardest things for students to be able to do is to come up with good ideas to write about. Often there can be lim-ited time or strategies provided to students for brainstorming story ideas in the classroom. Published authors develop many ideas to write about - selecting only the best to finally pursue. The opposite can be true of the English classroom. Students routinely come up with one idea to write about and, in the ab-sence of any other ideas, write about that idea regardless of whether it is a quality idea or not. The following strategies aim to give students stimulus for developing many story ideas. With a pool of ideas to draw from, they can be critical about evaluat-ing which idea will be best to write about.

Narrative element brainstormer:

This activity is a way for students to become familiar with the ba-sics of narrative (character, problem, event and resolution), and is also a technique for brainstorming lots of ideas and selecting the ones which are best.

1. Divide students into groups of four.

2. In each group, the student who lives closest to the school needs to pick four random numbers between 1-10 and write these down somewhere.

3. Using individual scrap pieces of paper, each student in the group needs to then create a list of ten things (one thing per scrap piece of paper): one student needs to write a list of ten jobs (i.e policeperson, doctor etc...); one student needs to write a list of ten problems, fears or anxieties someone can have (i.e fear of heights, low self esteem); one student needs to write a list of ten things that can go wrong (i.e fire, car crash, break up); another student needs to write a list of ten ways to solve prob-lems (i.e make a plan, communicate, work together).

4. Students should carefully place the scrap pieces of paper in the order they write them.

Section 1

Narrative fiction: developing ideas

45. Once students have made these lists, the random numbers that were picked at the start of the activity are used to select one item from each list. If the student who picked the numbers selected 3, 6, 2 and 7 - these equate to things in that place on each list: the third thing from the list of ten jobs; the sixth thing from the list of fears; the second thing from the list of problems etc...

6. Using these randomly selected things, the group needs to work out and summarise a storyline - what happens when you combine these elements?

7. After this, students can then match up items from the differ-ent lists that combine together to make an interesting basis for a story. Students shouldnt necessarily look for logical combina-tions of elements - but dramatic combinations of elements. From the different combinations they come up with, students should pick the best ideas to write about.

Narrative element story generator:

All the ideas in the above activity are student generated. How-ever, where we want students to focus more on thinking about the combination of ideas, rather than generating ideas, we can generate a grid of narrative elements ourselves. This works par-ticular well in units where students are producing genre pieces - such as a horror, fantasy or science fiction story. Genres such as these typically draw from a stock set of narrative elements.

Below is an example of a story generator grid for a unit on fairy-tales. Student would use the same procedure outline in the Nar-rative Element Brainstormer activity to combine elements in this grid as the basis of a story.

Picture inspiration #1:

A picture tells a thousand words and a whole lot more stories. This strategy is about giving students visual stimulus to develop plots and story ideas.

1. Select a range of pictures (such as the ones shown on page 3) that can be loosely connected. Dont over think the connec-tion - we want to provide plenty of space for students to be crea-tive in how they associate the pictures.

2. Working in groups, students need to annotate the picture with at least three of the following story elements:

Setting (which picture sets the scene),

Character (who or what is the protagonist, hero or subject of this story)

Problem (what is the main thing that goes wrong)

Further Problem (what is a second thing that goes wrong)

Process (what happens to sort the problem out)

5 Resolution (what happens in the end)

3. Having identified the elements, students should then tease out these parts into a story. Whats the narrative these pic-tures are telling? Go around the class and get groups to share their ideas.

Picture inspiration #2:

An alternative way students can use pictures as inspirations for stories is to think about whether a picture tells the beginning or end of a story. For example, at what end of the narrative spec-trum does the picture overleaf come?

Fairy

tale

Sto

ry G

ener

ator

Orie

ntation

Complica

tion

Crisis

Reso

lutio

n

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ther

live

s in

the

woo

ds w

ith

his

thre

e ch

ildre

n. H

e re

mar

ries

afte

r his

wife

die

s.

The

villa

in is

jeal

ous

beca

use.

..A

hor

rible

spe

ll is

cas

t on

the

mai

n ch

arac

ter..

.Th

e m

ain

char

acte

r m

arrie

s...a

nd li

ves

happ

ily e

ver

afte

r...

A k

ingd

om w

ith a

bea

utifu

l pr

ince

ss a

nd a

wic

ked

fairy

.Th

e vi

llain

hat

es...

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axem

an is

hire

d to

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e cu

rse

is li

fted

from

the

mai

n ch

arac

ter b

y...

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lace

with

a fo

rest

whe

re

ther

e liv

es a

n ev

il...

The

mai

n ch

arac

ters

is c

urio

us

abou

t...

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villa

in tr

ies

to e

at...

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villa

in is

cha

sed

away

by

...an

d ne

ver s

een

agai

n.

A k

ingd

om o

f hap

py p

igs

and

an e

vil w

olf.

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mai

n ch

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oesn

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llow

adv

ice

that

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at th

e vi

llain

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llain

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ked

som

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d be

aten

.

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mily

of b

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irls

live

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a ki

ngdo

m w

here

ther

e is

a

crue

l kin

g

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ants

to m

arry

...Th

e vi

llain

poi

sons

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e m

ain

char

acte

r is

resc

ued

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eaut

iful p

rince

ss is

bor

ed...

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reak

a s

pell

the

mai

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arac

ter m

ust..

.Th

e vi

llain

turn

s...i

nto

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mai

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isse

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ver

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ss h

as b

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ed...

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urse

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es tr

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one

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ter i

s...

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ompa

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s th

e pr

oble

m, i

s re

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and

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Tic

king M

ind 20

13 -

www.

tickin

gmind

.com.

au

6If students think the picture comes at the start of a story, then they need to write about what happens next. If they think it comes at the end, they need to write about what comes before.

There are lots of places on the web we can find fascinating pic-tures of events. Heres some:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-most-powerful-photos-of-2011

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/

Changing existing story ideas:

Creative writing ideas certainly dont need to be original. How many stories have you read or watched that are variations of a formula? Is there really any such thing as an original romantic comedy or teen film?

The trick with story telling, then, is not to come up with a new formula, but to take existing ideas and plots and modify them to give them a twist or refreshed sense of drama. Heres a few ideas to do this:

The worse film Ive seen...

All students will have seen films they consider bad or lame. Challenge students to identify exactly what it was that was bad about the movie, and to write a pitch or summary of a new ver-sion of the film that is better.

BAR:

BAR is creative thinking tool that starts from an existing idea, concept or thing. In this case, students pick an existing story (such as a bad film) and:

*B = Make something bigger, better or badder - such as give a character a bigger part, make a problem or obstacle in the story bigger

*A = Add something completely new - such as a new setting, character or complication

*R - Remove, Reverse, Re-order something - take away some-thing such as a character or problem, reverse or re-order the sequence of events

7This strategy works particularly well with fables and fairytales and can be a good tool for students to use when creating their own fractured fairytales. In the handouts section, find an blank BAR brainstorming page that students can use.

SCAMPER

SCAMPER is a more sophisticated version of BAR.

*S: Substitute: Change one character with another character, one event or plot element for another event or plot element.

*C: Combine: Combine two or more characters together or two or more plot elements together

*A: Adapt: Change the genre of the story. Make the story more like another story.

*M: Modify: Alter the ending, middle or beginning or the story or the way characters act.

*P: Put to another use: Have characters perform different roles in the story or respond to the plot events in a different way.

*E: Eliminate: Take away a character, scene or plot element.

*R: Reverse: Reverse the way a story ends or the roles of char-acters.

Unlike BAR, where students need to change a text using each of B, A and R, students do not need to apply each part of the SCAMPER acronym to a story. Students can choose three ele-ments from SCAMPER which they believe they can best apply to an existing story or plot to make it interesting.

How did it get to this?

One way of hooking the reader at the start of the story is to be-gin with the complication. This activity get kids thinking about exciting complications, relatively innocuous orientations, and fill-ing in the gaps between. In a way its similar to the Picture inspi-ration #1 activity - except this activity only involves words and gives students both ends of the story - not just one.

To start this activity, we first need to give students some exam-ples of exciting complication and innocuous orientations. Heres two:

*As the bell rang to finish the day, I rushed to the door.....Everyone watched the wreckage of the plane sink into the sea and then turned around and stared hard at me. How had it gotten to this?

*Nothing was worse than detention after school with Mrs Scar-row - the meanest teacher on earth....I stared at all the money in the bag - there must be hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash. I didnt know how it had got to this point.