A sample of Ticking Mind's resource on teaching creative writing.

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© Ticking Mind Educational Publishing 2013
First published 2013 as part of the How To Teach Series
For information email enquiries@tickingmind.com.au
Copyright
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Creative 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
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5. 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 shouldn’t 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. Don’t 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)
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• Resolution (what happens in the end)
3. Having identified the elements, students should then tease
out these parts into a story. What’s 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?
Fairytale
Story
Generator
Orientation
Complication
Crisis
Resolution
A
father
lives
in
the
woods
with
his
three
children.
He
remarries
after
his
wife
dies.
The
villain
is
jealous
because...
A
horrible
spell
is
cast
on
the
main
character...
The
main
character
marries...and
lives
happily
ever
after...
A
kingdom
with
a
beautiful
princess
and
a
wicked
fairy.
The
villain
hates...
An
axeman
is
hired
to...
The
curse
is
lifted
from
the
main
character
by...
A
place
with
a
forest
where
there
lives
an
evil...
The
main
characters
is
curious
about...
The
villain
tries
to
eat...
The
villain
is
chased
away
by...and
never
seen
again.
A
kingdom
of
happy
pigs
and
an
evil
wolf.
The
main
character
doesn’t
follow
advice
that...
No
one
realises
that
the
villain
is
trying
to...
The
villain
is
chased
over
a
cliff
by...
A
beautiful,
but
poor
girl
lives
with
her
wicked
step
mother
The
villain
is
angry
because
he/
she
hasn’t
been
invited
to...
The
villain
locks...in
The
villain
is
tricked
somehow
and
beaten.
A
family
of
beautiful
girls
live
in
a
kingdom
where
there
is
a
cruel
king
The
villain
wants
to
marry...
The
villain
poisons...
The
main
character
is
rescued
by...
A
beautiful
princess
is
bored...
To
break
a
spell
the
main
character
must...
The
villain
turns...into
The
main
character
kisses
the...and
lives
happily
ever
after
A
beautiful
princess
has
been
cursed...
A
curse
comes
true...
No
one
believes
that
the
main
character
is...
The
faithful
companion
fixes
the
problem,
is
rewarded
and
the
kingdom
is
at
peace
©
Ticking
Mind
2013
-
www.tickingmind.com.au
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If 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. Here’s some:
• http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-most-powerful-photos-o
f-2011
• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/
• Changing existing story ideas:
Creative writing ideas certainly don’t 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. Here’s a few
ideas to do this:
• The worse film I’ve 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
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This 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 it’s 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. Here’s
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 didn’t know how it had got to this point.
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1. Working in pairs students need to brainstorm what might be
the chain of events between the beginning and end of the
story.
2. Discuss as a class and write up a range of ideas on the white-
board.
3. Students can then ‘harvest’ ideas from the whiteboard and
write up the story individually. The story should begin with the
ending.
See the ‘How did it get to this?’ handout attached at the end of
the book.
• Tips from Andy Griffiths:
Andy Griffiths is the author of kids bestsellers such as The Day
My Bum Went Psycho, Bumageddon and The 13 Storey Tree-
house. In his book Once Upon A Slime he details a range of
ways kids can create their own stories. Written up below are
some of these strategies - adapted for the English classroom.
1. Bad mummy / Bad Daddy / Bad Teacher:
Griffiths’ Bad series is essentially a satire of figures who should
be role models and the voice of sense in the lives of children. In
this series of cartoons children ask their parents outrageous
things such as: "Can I jump in the volcano?" "Can I cross the
busy road with my eyes shut?" "Can I jump off the dangerous
cliff into shark infested waters?". After some prevarication the
parents always agree to this and the child comes to a grisly
end. The bad teacher teaches students things that are outra-
geously wrong - but which students want to hear: "Vegetables
are bad."
Students can have a go creating stick figure cartoons such as
Griffiths has done. In the students' cartoon a child should ask a
parent if they can do something completely, stupidly risky and
the parent agrees. The student should have one cartoon box in
which the question is asked - another in which we see the re-
sult. Alternatively, students can write this as a short, one para-
graph story.
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2. What happens next?
This is a good, basic way of teaching plot device: the object,
person or event in a story that makes the plot start. In this sce-
nario, we give students some basic orientations such as:
*It was a pretty typical day. I was on my way to school, sitting in
my normal seat next to...when I looked out the window and no-
ticed...
*I was dropping off to sleep in my bed on Wednesday night
when I saw on the ceiling....
*My parents had left me in charge of my five year old cousin for
a few hours while they went out. Everything was going comple-
tey smoothing until I turned around and...
Working in pairs students need to brainstorm all the things - as
crazy and interesting as possible - that could happen next in
each of these scenarios. Then they need to pick one scenario
and the best what-happens-next-idea to write about.
3. Bad road story:
In this activity students imagine that they're traveling along a
road which is punctuated by increasingly ridiculous and scary
signs and write about the adventure they have on this road. For
example, the first sign might say: "Zombies crossing" the next
could be "Zombies falling" then "Zombies attacking" and finally
"End of bad road." Their story might begin like this:
I was driving down a road I'd never been on to visit a friend. I
went past a sign which I didn't really take in at first. It was only
after a few seconds that I thought to myself: that's strange, I
think it said...Then I began to see...
4. It seemed like a good idea at the time...
With this activity students recount real or imagined dumb things
that they've done - which initially seemed like a good idea.
These are things like hopping in a shopping trolley and riding
down a very steep hill, pulling a face at a mean security guard
on a school excursion to parliament or bouncing on a trampo-
line with a pogo stick. Students can start their story like this:
I've done some really dumb things in my time like...or...and...
But the dumbest thing I've ever done is....It actually made com-
plete sense at the time. These were all the reasons I
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thought.....would be a good idea:....But it turned out it wasn't a
good idea at all...
8. Lifting the lid
This last strategy is a type of curiosity killed the cat story. What
happens when you come across a box, bag or container
marked:
*Absolutely do not open - very dangerous!
*Extremely, extremely top secret - no one can know what is in-
side!
*Do not open - it will absolutely change your life if you do!
• Caution signs I should have really paid attention to:
This activity is similar to Griffiths ‘lifting the lid’ and ‘bad road’
story. The difference is that this involves real caution signs
rather than fictional ones. We ignore caution signs all the time -
often because we think we don’t really need to be worried about
the so called ‘danger’. And often we’re right. But what if we’re
not. Here are some caution signs we often dismiss:
• Don’t worry about the dog, beware of the cat!
• Refrigerate after opening.
• Use only as directed.
• Very flammable.
• Maximum persons allowed...
• Use responsibly.
• Use only with adult supervision.
• Don’t feed the animals
• Don’t tap on the glass
The point of this task is not for students to write a story with
tragic outcomes - where someone doesn’t heed a warning and
accidentally chops their arms off, gets dangerously sick or dies.
There’s nothing funny about this.
No, the point of this task is for students to think about a product
one of the above warnings could apply to and the unintended,
dramatic (and mostly non-harmful) consequences that could
come about from not following the directions. A story might be-
gin like this:
You know how things in a jar normally come with the warning
‘refrigerate after opening’? I’d never paid much attention to this.
I thought it was just something food producers said to cover
their backsides. Well, I found out - in a very strange way I might
add - I was wrong. I had this gigantic jar of pickles that I’d
bought one day...
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• Newspaper Scrapbook:
Writers often find inspiration for story ideas from the newspa-
per. We can encourage students to do the same by keeping a
scrapbook of interesting ideas from newspapers. Over a series
of days or weeks, take in newspapers to class and get students
to cut out interesting stories.
Students can easily find many examples of strange human inter-
est stories from around the world at any of these sites:
• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/
• http://www.newsoftheweird.com/archive/index.html
• http://www.egags.com/
Human interest stories can be interesting for several reasons:
• interesting situation
• interesting characters
• interesting setting
As students develop a bank of interesting stories they can be-
gin to select the most interesting ones to use for a story. Stu-
dents can use BAR to help them modify the story, or they can
mix and match elements from different human interest stories
(take the characters from story and match them with the situa-
tion in another story).
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Quite often the majority of student writing is plot driven. Stu-
dents perceive that interesting narratives are the sum of a se-
ries of dramatic events. They put the focus in their writing on
leaping from one event to another. With this approach, the char-
acters are reduced to simply being the conveyers or mecha-
nisms of action. In other words they’re two dimensional charac-
ters - their only purpose to prop the narrative along. Sometimes
we wouldn’t have it any other way: from time to time we like
characters we don’t need to think about too much in Hollywood
pop-corn thrillers. However, we also don’t want students to think
that a story is just about exciting events. In some ways, stories
just driven by dynamic plot elements are like cheap takeaway
food - it provides an initial taste-bang but can leave you under-
whelmed and unhealthy after a while. The reader needs to be
nourished by quality characters in stories. The strategies in this
section of the book look at how we can: 1) develop characters;
2) flesh out characters; 3) characterise characters.
• 10 thing character:
This is a fun way of getting students to come up with ideas for
characters.
1) Students list ten things found in a fridge.
2) Students list ten things smaller than a hand.
3) Students list ten expensive things
4) Students select three numbers between 1 - 10
5) The first number the student chose equates to that num-
bered thing from their fridge list.
6) The second number the student chose means they pick that
numbered thing from their hand list.
7) The third number the student chose means they pick that
numbered thing from their expensive list
8) Students now have a list of three things. They must create a
character who owns these three things by thinking about:
• Is the person a male or female?
• What is their age?
• What do they do?
Section 2
Narrative fiction:
developing
characters
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• What is this person interested in?
• What is this person’s goal in life?
• Fill these shoes character:
The above activity can also be done by bringing in physical arte-
facts to the classroom - such as clothes, knick knacks, accesso-
ries, old food containers. Students can use these as the basis
for creating a character. If we don’t want to bring in the physical
items, we can always give students pictures.
Overleaf is a set of pictures of shoes that have been chosen be-
cause they show some ‘character’. In this activity, students
need to pick a set of shoes that attracts their interest and create
a character that owns those shoes. We might start by explain-
ing to students that we often use the phrases: ‘big shoes to fill,’
‘hard shoes to fill,’ ‘if I were in your shoes,’ ‘follow in the foot-
steps.’ These phrases figuratively link shoes with a sense char-
acter. We can explain to students that we’re going to take these
phrases literally and build a character from the shoes up. Stu-
dents can use questions from the previous activity to help build
their character. Alternatively, there are many sites which list
questions to think about when creating characters. Here’s one:
http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/crafttechnique/tp/createcharac
ter.htm
A Ticking Mind Resource
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• Wants but.../Plot device :
Interesting stories are driven by interesting characters who find
themselves in interesting circumstances. Characters have to
navigate the situation they find themselves in. This often in-
volves balancing their emotional and rational response to a
situation. At a basic level, every character wants something in a
story. In terms of narrative structure we call this goal, motivation
and conflict:
Motivation: How does a character want to feel? What do they
want to be like in life? Free? Powerful? In control? Respected?
Happy? Wise?
Goal: What is the particular thing a character is going to do to
act on their motivation?
Conflict: What problems does a character come across that
prevent them from achieving their goal?
Short films provide excellent models for short story writing be-
cause they typically involve one character in one scene where
motivation, goal and conflict can be very apparent. You might
like to watch through the short film Reach, about a robot trying
to achieve freedom, and ask students to pick out the robot’s mo-
tivation and goal. You can watch the film here:
http://vimeo.com/65529665
In the short film Reach the robot is prevented from achieving
freedom by the cord which attaches it to its power source. The
cord - its restraint - is its conflict. The robot must battle to free
itself from this. The cord is what’s called a ‘plot device’ - some-
thing external to the protagonist of a story which provides a chal-
lenge to the protagonist or forces him or her to take action
somehow.
The plot device might be another character or characters (a
new character that comes on the scene, for example), an event
(such as a murder) or an object (a piece of technology, an aster-
oid hurtling towards earth). Students will usually do a good job
of providing a plot device in a story - they understand that some-
thing needs to happen in order to put the story in motion.
However, what students are less familiar with is that there are
two types of complication in a story. There’s the plot device and
there’s also the inner character complication. Every interesting
character has something inside them which is somehow holding
them back, preventing them from achieving what they want or
impacting on their life somehow.
When students are creating characters they need to identify
what is the character’s inner complication. Typically characters
are held back by their lack of self belief, their fear or anxiety
about something or a negative attitude. These following state-
ments can help students define a character’s inner complica-
tion:
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15. 15
• The character wants...but is held back by their inability to...
• The characters wants...but is afraid to...
• The character wants...but has an attitude that...
• The character wants...but doesn’t feel that...
• Visual characterisation:
Authors will sometimes spell it out to us whether a character is
good or bad or in between, but often, in more interesting writ-
ing, they’ll leave it to us to figure it out for ourselves by giving us
cues and clues. It’s about “showing” us what a character is like
rather than “telling” us. We might have a character who is rigid
(perhaps too rigid) about certain principles in life. In order to
show us this, an author might describe the meticulously organ-
ised state of the character’s house. On the other hand, we
might be presented with a character whose house is a sham-
bles - and in this case it represents the chaotic emotional life of
the character. What a character wears, what and how they eat,
what objects or things they use or carry with them and what
these things are like can all provide us cues as to what a char-
acter is like on the inside. Objects and spaces are physical
manifestations of the things we can’t always see within a
character.
How can we get students to develop this skill of “showing” us
rather than “telling” us? To begin with we might have a creative
writing unit that explicitly focuses on this and features a suc-
cess criteria such as “Has been able to show what a character
is like through the things they have or the spaces they occupy”.
We might also give students writing exercises to develop this
skill. For example, give out a range of pictures which feature a
person such as these ones overleaf. Students need to create a
character for this person. Looking at the picture they need to
come up with:
• What does this person do?
• What are they like?
• What is a problem they have?
• What is their name?
Students then need to write a paragraph about this character.
Two of the above questions (their name and what they do), stu-
dents can answer explicitly in their paragraph. However, stu-
dents need to show us what a character is like and what their
problem is through representing something in their paragraph
such as:
• The state of their house
• The state of their fridge
• The state of their car
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