My 10 year old
nephew asked me if I knew of a book that taught kids how to write a story. It
would be nice if this was because he already wanted to be a writer, but my nephew has no love for writing. He enjoys reading and watching
movies, but when it comes to writing something himself,
he’d much rather stick his face in an iPad (for several hours).
However, his English
teacher keeps giving him story-writing assignments, which he finds a chore. In
addition to which, there are other kids in his class who can spit out a story
rat-a-tat-tat
He would also like to be
able to write a good story quickly and without having to spend ages staring at
a wall.
I’m not aware of any “how to write fiction” books specifically aimed at
children. So, instead, I sat him down and attempted to walk him through the
basics of what makes a story a story by having him come up with something on
the spot.
First, I told him,
you need a character who wants something. It can be a boy or girl, or even a
group of people, but they have to want something. What does your character want?
Nephew: World peace.
Okay, that’s a good
general goal, but how does he intend to achieve world peace. I mean if he could
do anything, what would be his plan?
Nephew: He wants to stop war.
All war?
Nephew: Yes.
Okay, you could do
that but it’s much harder to make a story about stuff that’s general and
happening somewhere out there. The more personal you make it for the boy, the
easier it will be to work out what he does. So rather than him wanting to do
something about stuff he sees on TV or whatever, if it’s happening to him in
his life, it will make a better story. And be easier to write.
Nephew: What if there’s a war in the country where he lives and he wants to stop that war?
Yes, good. He wants to stop the fighting going on around him. So here’s the next
thing. Whatever it is he wants to do, there should be a good reason why he
can’t do it. If it’s too easy it won’t be very interesting. Do you understand
what I mean?
Nephew looks blankly at me.
If it’s a story
about a kid who wants to find his missing toy, and he looks under his bed and
there it is, that’s going to be a very short story, and not very exciting.
Whatever he wants has to be difficult so the person reading the story will want
to know what’s going to happen and how the story will turn out. In your story,
what’s stopping the boy from stopping the war?
Nephew (looking at me like I’m an idiot): He’s just a
kid, nobody listens to him.
Fair enough. So then
what does he do?
Nephew shrugs.
You’ve got your main
character—does he have a name? No? That’s fine, come up with it later—and you
know what he wants, and you know why it’s hard for him to do it, so now the
readers want to know how he’s going to stop the war. What does he do?
Nephew: I don’t know.
That’s okay. There
are two types of stories, one where the hero decides to do something and then
he goes off and does it, or maybe it’s his job, like he’s a policeman or a spy.
But then there are some stories where the hero starts off as a more normal
person. Most people have lots of things they’d like to do, but they never do
them because they’re too hard, or they don’t have the time, or they’re
stuck doing other stuff. In those sorts of stories something happens that changes
everything. They go from dreaming about doing stuff to actually having to do
it, because of the change.
Nephew looks at me blankly.
Like in Spiderman, Peter Parker gets
bitten by a spider and then he has these powers and everything changes. Or
Harry Potter gets a letter telling him he’s going to Hogwarts. What happens
to the boy in your story that makes him realise he has to do something about
the war?
Nephew:
When they get to 14 or 15 all the boys have to go in the army.
Okay, that’s interesting. So he’s 13 and
he’s about to turn 14?
Nephew
nods.
That works. And is there any special
reason why he doesn’t want to fight, or any particular person he...
Nephew:
There’s a boy who he used to be friends with...
Who’s on the other side now? Right, so
what would help is if you made this other boy quite important, like he’s the
son of the leader of the enemy. And maybe your hero is the son of the leader on
this side. And the boys used to be best friends before the war started.
Nephew:
So if can get to his friend and talk to him maybe he can find a way to stop the
war.
Maybe. But now that you know what the
boy is going to try and do, it’s important that thing he doesn’t want to
happen, happens.
Nephew
looks at me blankly.
Let’s say the hero doesn’t want to end
up fighting his best friend, that means near the end of the story he should end
up fighting his best friend.
Nephew
looks at me blankly.
Look, when you read a story or watch a
film, you know the good guys going to win, right? You know the guy looking for the
treasure is going to find the treasure. You know the boy and girl who
fall in love are going to end up together, but it’s the writer’s job to make
you not so sure.
If someone’s trying to stop a bomb going off, you could have
them arrive ten minutes early, and stop the bad guys before they have a chance
to start the timer, but that would be pretty boring. That’s why the bomb
always has ten seconds to go and everyone’s running around like crazy.
Nephew
nods slowly.
If he ends up fighting his best friend,
maybe the whole war will be decided by who wins. If he refuses to fight all his
family and the people on his side will lose everything. But his friend wants to
fight. He’s changed.
Nephew:
He’s been brainwashed.
Okay. So now the reader of the story
isn’t so sure what’s going to happen. He still wants to stop the war but maybe he
can’t. What you have to do is come up with a solution, but instead of stopping
it before anything bad happens, he has to stop it when the bad thing has already started,
in this case that’s him fighting his best friend and not getting killed.
Nephew:
He can shake him and say, “I know you’re in there.”
Yes. But he’s known him since they were
kids, they used to play together, so he knows stuff about him he can use. Like
maybe they used to play superheroes and he was Captain Fantastic, so he shakes
him and says, “I know you’re in there Captain Fantastic,” to snap him out of
it. Something like that.
Nephew:
He could have a flashback.
Yes, or you could have a scene at the
start of the story of them playing as kids.
Nephew:
But don’t make it obvious.
No, you want it to be there but have
other stuff happening around it so it’s isn’t too obvious.
Nephew
: Or maybe it looks like it’s going to work, but it doesn’t.
Yes, you can do that too. You can trick
the reader and that makes it more interesting to read, but then you have to
still come up with a way for him to win. But that's the thing about being the writer, you get to find out how the story ends and then you can go back and change things so he has the answer. Like that flashback idea, or something else he finds out along the way.
You don't need to have know everything that happens. When you reach the end of a story you're writing, that isn't the end of the story. You can go back and slot stuff in, and the person reading can't tell you did that. It also helps if you write it on a computer, so you don't have to squeeze words onto the page.
So, if the flashback doesn't work out like he hoped, how does he convince his friend to stop fighting?
Nephew
stares at the wall deep in thought. I leave him to it...
It was interesting to see which bits of
information he needed and which he didn’t. Things like the name of the boy,
what he looked like, what kind of world he lived in all seemed unimportant; he was confident he could come up with that stuff himself. I asked him
if he had a title for the story and he immediately said, Friend or Foe. I was also surprised he knew about flashbacks (I guess watching a lot of television has it's benefits after all).
Still, there
didn’t seem to be a way to totally avoid staring at a wall trying to think of
something interesting to write next.
Will be interesting to see if he
approaches his next English assignment any differently.
*
If you found this post useful please give it a retweet. Cheers.
14 comments:
That was hilarious! You handled it well. And hopefully got his gears going enough to create the story.
Kids have such imagination if they only could learn how to tap into it. What if the teacher had talked the entire class through something like this.
My children have great imagination, but like your nephew, they too hate having to write school assignments. I think it's the physical act of writing as well that they hate (I'm thinking of teaching them to touch-type) as well as having to mind all the spelling, adjectives, adverbs etc. I'll have to try this technique next time...
I meet up with this gap between imaginative ideas and the ability to physically write them down all the time when I'm working with my kindergarten students. It can be so helpful to talk kids through a story to help them shape it. It's sad how school assignments can take the love of something away (kind of like how analyzing books takes away the joy of reading them).
One writing book that I've come across about story-writing that is written for kids is Writing Magic by Gail Carson Levine.
Hmm, now how can I have this same conversation with my writing-hating grandson? Stealing all your best ideas, of course.
@Alex - he tends to be much more enthusiastic when no pen or paper is required.
@Susan - the main problem with teaching is time, not enough of it to focus on one student. Our en masse approach is cost effective but not effective in any other way.
@Marina - any kind of physical exertion seems to be a problem for kids these days. Probably something in the water.
@Andrea - Thanks for the tip, will try to track down that book.
@LD - steal away.
I think you're the perfect person to teach lessons on writing.
And Moody, in response to your comment about Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver being Inhumans (or not being Inhumans), they can't be mutants because Fox owns all the mutants. Since Disney doesn't own Fox, I think they have to be Inhumans.
I have spent a lot of the time in different blogs but this is really a unique blog for me.
essay writing website
Enjoy these windows shortcut keys and if you couldn't know about windows shortcut keys.windows shortcut keys Then you should visit here and learn all the information of windows shortcut keys.
Indeed due to global warming environmental conditions are becoming more tough but your essay writing post did a lot for awareness.Thanks.
Indeed due to global warming environmental conditions are becoming more tough but your learn more here writing post did a lot for awareness.Thanks.
A really very nice and informative post about the Auto Transport & Shipping explore more. I liked reading it and it also cleared some points in my mind thanks for presenting it to us
Good, When you see everything with inside and out that truly matters then you can't slight this course. Utilizing this https://www.paraphrasegenerator.org/paraphrase-this-in-canada/ site you may get different aptitudes. Basically interface with us and get shaping.
Great site, The things that you are appearing on this ideas here are so beautiful to utilize and I utilized this thing heretofore. I prescribed to the comprehensive network to utilize these things.