Creative writing exercises
I had a lot of fun last week throwing pieces of paper around in my local library. I wasn’t being disruptive - it was all part of a creative writing class for young readers. So, in this article I thought I’d share the exercises I used, hoping they might be useful for other families.
Children often dread the blank page, so our first exercise was designed to get us started. As you might be able to see from the picture, I created two sets of (largely positive) words: nouns and adjectives. The nouns I plumped for were victory, joy, spring, summer, autumn, winter, darkness, shadows, light, and friendship. The adjectives were green, light (to make a point about grammar - it’s how a word is used that matters), rippling, victorious, carefree, spectacular, lazy, lonely, tumbling, and red-haired. Then we scrunched up a piece of paper and threw it first at the adjective area and, afterwards, at the nouns, making a note of which ones it hit or where it came to rest. Suddenly we had a title for our story.
(You can see me using a javelin for the same exercise - though not in a library - in one of the videos on this page.)
The next stage was creating the outline of a plot, so I adapted an exercise from one of my favourite theatre companies, Complicité. Going round the group, each child adds one very ordinary phrase to a very ordinary opening. So, for example,
Victoria woke up
She had her breakfast
She went for a walk
She saw a bird
She came back home.
Then you go round the circle again, adding an unexpected detail to each phrase:
Victoria woke up and found she was in a castle
She had dragonfruit and Yorkshire pudding for breakfast
She went for a walk in the castle gardens
And saw a phoenix
As she walked back to the castle, the phoenix followed her.
If you have time, you can go around again and add even more details. One of the young writers in our group suggested that the phoenix was writing her name in the air, for instance.
So, now we have a title and a plot, but what happens next?
Many students over the years have told me that a story must have a beginning, middle and end. I suppose it’s true but I’m not sure how it helps. How could it be otherwise?
So, I usually tell them that there’s no reason why the middle or the end shouldn’t go at the beginning. Our next stage, therefore, was to write the opening of the story in a way that grabbed the readers’ attention by starting in the middle or the end.
It’s also important, I think, to do these exercises yourself at the same time as the students. Here’s what I wrote:
What might the children learn from this?
My story really doesn’t start at the beginning.
I’m quite happy to cross words out and start afresh. (I make a particular point of telling them that spelling and neatness don’t matter at this stage.)
I sometimes leave blanks and go back to them later. In the final paragraph, for instance, a noun is missing.
I also say that most people read a lot quicker than they write, which means that you have to write a lot more than you think. If you don’t build up a description, the reader isn’t drawn into the story. Not grasping this essential point is, I think, the reason why many children struggle to write convincing scenes or characters.
And then we’re away. What the children need next is time. Time to develop or change the story as they like.
If this is helpful and any of you would like more creative writing ideas or exercises to develop the imagination, please let me know. In the meantime, go scrunch some paper and start throwing it around. You might be surprised what stories you find.