Teaching Creative Writing

Creative writing is imaginative writing distinguished from technical or journalistic writing, and includes autobiography, fiction, poetry, screenwriting and drama. The skill plays a valuable lifelong role and provides therapeutic self-expression, offers an enjoyable artistic outlet, and can produce entertaining reading for others. Creative writing teachers help students engage their imaginations, develop ideas, and relate these ideas in written form according to accepted grammar and stylistic norms. Students learn how to establish the theme or subject of a composition, and develop characters, plots, and endings. Teachers can use writing prompts, modeling, journaling, freewriting and storytelling to develop creative writing projects.

Keywords Autobiography; Character Development; Creative Writing; Freewriting; Journaling; Modeling; Plot Development; Revising; Rough Draft; Writing Conference; Writing Prompts

Overview

Creative writing is imaginative writing distinguished from technical or journalistic writing, and includes autobiography, fiction, poetry, screenwriting and drama. The skill plays a valuable lifelong role and provides therapeutic self-expression, offers an enjoyable artistic outlet, and can produce entertaining reading for others. Educators believe that children can begin learning to write creatively as early as they learn to write.

Teaching creative writing addresses the ability to engage the imagination, develop ideas and relate them in written form according to accepted grammar and stylistic norms. These teaching areas include establishing the theme or subject of the composition, character development, plot development, and the ending. Techniques such as providing writing prompts, modeling, journaling, freewriting and storytelling can be effectively used in teaching how to develop a creative writing project.

Understanding the mechanics of writing (proper grammar, spelling, punctuation and sentence structure) is a necessary foundation for writing a good story. Language arts educators use a variety of teaching techniques to help stimulate students' creative thinking for the origination of story ideas.

Applications

Creative writing is a difficult subject to teach because it requires the seemingly paradoxical task of encouraging the free flow of ideas while containing amorphous ideas within the framework and structure of written language. Preliminary guidelines regarding the topic or subject for students' writing assignments help to jumpstart the creative writing process. Adequate structure allows students to express themselves and enhances the process of expression by providing a starting point for the imaginative exercise.

Aspects of Writing

Character & Plot Development

An important element in creative writing is learning how to develop characters. Character development is the combination of details, dialog, speech and actions of a character through which a storyteller informs the audience about the character's personality and motivation. Middle school and secondary language arts students can learn that characters move the story along through their dialog and point of view. They can be protagonists, antagonists, or minor characters. Through careful prompting, a teacher can ask questions that will direct a student to develop a character with depth, personality, and interest. Aspects of characters that writers should address include body language, gestures, the way they move, mannerisms and the way they speak to include unique dialects and methods of speech.

For the middle and secondary level, next comes teaching students to develop a plot. Plot development is organizing the story elements to create a casual sequence that draws the reader into the characters' lives and provides a story conflict. Teachers can help students with plot development by leading a discussion on the types of obstacles and difficult situations the story's character might face. Other points of instruction include the pace of the story and how fast or slow the story moves.

Language arts educators in all levels also address how to write compelling endings to students' stories-the part of the story that readers are most likely to remember. By asking questions, the teacher can direct student writers to create endings that are satisfying.

Autobiographies

Writing autobiographies is a powerful and effective tool in learning creative writing, as a student's life experiences are a familiar, passionate source of ideas. An autobiography is a personal history with information about one's life written by that person. In the elementary classroom, students would be asked to write autobiographical sketches about shorter spans of time, such as what they did last night, or over the weekend, or what exciting thing happened over their vacation. For the middle school and secondary student, reading and discussing autobiographies of others enriches the students' understanding and writing of their own autobiographies. An instructor in the elementary, middle, or secondary language arts class, can further enhance the students' understanding by modeling his/her own autobiography to demonstrate the process of adding details and interesting anecdotes to make the story unique.

Teachers in the middle and secondary language arts programs can help their students focus on the stories they want to tell in their autobiographies with prewriting activities (Novelli, 2006). A helpful exercise is to brainstorm writing ideas. Talk about the categories of real-life stories together, such as school adventures, siblings or friends, summer camps, scary moments, or places they've lived.

Teachers of inner city students have helped them to write by tapping into a genre that these students find familiar, that of oral storytelling. According to retired elementary teacher, Judy Wolfman, in "Passing on the Art of Story," (cited in Merina, 2002) many of her students in the inner city schools of York, Pennsylvania, came from an oral storytelling background. Teachers in the inner city can effectively use the familiar territory of oral storytelling as a launching point to help their students compose autobiographies or craft a story about a fictional character.

Creating a Writing Assignment

The first step in a lesson on creative writing in elementary, middle, and secondary language arts classes is for the instructor to define the topic of the writing assignment. Once the topic to be written about is identified, students enrich their creative writing by exploring further avenues of thought in the subject area. The process begins with drawing upon the experiences and information students bring to the writing assignment.

Teachers have discovered and successfully utilized various techniques to encourage creative thinking. In the elementary classroom, teachers may pose questions to prompt writing, such as "What I would do with a red wagon." In the middle school and secondary language arts classes, reading and discussing novels, short stories, plays and poems provides additional insights and examples for student writing assignments. Class discussion in the form of brainstorming adds to the bank of ideas to help students to write creatively.

Modeling & Motivating Writing

Students learn to write by putting their pens to paper or their fingers on the computer keyboard-and writing. Teachers model writing as an effective teaching technique in elementary writing classes. Modeling is a teaching technique whereby the instructor demonstrates the writing process to the class in real time. Using an overhead projector, the teacher writes a first sentence or two to a story. Then, as the teacher asks questions to guide class participation and contributions to the story, the class helps to develop the story. In an even more unconventional exercise in teaching creative writing on the middle or secondary language arts levels by modeling, the instructor limits almost all verbal communication in the classroom during the writing course. All instructions and teacher comments are written either on the board or on overhead projector. The silence of the classroom environment enhances the writing atmosphere and results in greater student input (Ryan, 1991).

Journaling, or journal writing, is a valid process in motivating students to write. A highly personal form of self-expression, journaling is a freestyle record of one's thoughts and feelings, hopes and dreams, and his or her challenges and stresses. Upper elementary, middle and secondary levels are all fertile fields for developing the art of freewriting and/or journaling. Students should be encouraged to write their thoughts and feelings about certain subjects as a free form of expression without having to worry about the mechanics of grammar and spelling. The goal is to get the students actively writing, based on the principle that, with unhindered practice, students will gradually improve and perfect this skill.

Writing Prompts

In all levels of creative writing programs, asking questions helps to prompt students' creative writing. To spark imaginative thinking, teachers ask thought-provoking questions, or "What if …" questions that allow the students' sense of wonder to produce original ideas. Questions could be as simple as "What if you woke up in China tomorrow morning?" or "What if you found out you had a new baby brother?" Questions posed in the secondary classroom may delve more deeply into literary criticism based on reading assignments.

Asking better questions prompts more thinking and student discussion, and ultimately, writing. To help students think about their work, rather than asking questions with yes/no answers, teachers can pose open-ended queries, such as, "How did you come up with that character?" or "What problems will your character face?" In the elementary classroom, questions can direct students toward considering each piece of their writing as a continuum. With the student's work spread out on the desk, the teacher might ask questions that help early elementary students see patterns in their work, such as, "What topics have you written about this year?" "What do you notice about your writing in the last two weeks?"

Students move more easily into the writing process when given writing prompts or a beginning sentence. Writing prompts are questions, statements, phrases or cues that give definition and direction to help start a student's writing process. Writing prompts are helpful in all levels of the educational setting. In the upper levels, by introducing tools to aid in the writing process, such as a thesaurus or dictionary, teachers can enhance the clarity of writing as well as make the assignment more interesting.

Guiding Writing

Drafting & Revising

Writing the rough draft is the first step in getting down to the task of writing because students are encouraged to just start writing. Students should be encouraged to focus on the topic. The premise of freewriting applies here, as students are urged to write without excessive concern for spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Some elementary schools focus too much on the basic mechanics of writing, to the detriment of content. Having good spelling, grammar, and punctuation is less significant if there is nothing interesting in the content (Creative Writing Solutions).

In the middle and secondary levels, editing and revising the rough draft helps students to refine their work and learn how to improve their writing by making it tighter, cleaner, and more powerful. Editing consists of rereading the rough draft, correcting spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Peer editing is another effective form of editing. Young writers can do a 'buddy-read'-exchanging stories with another student to read and comment. To be most constructive, student feedback should be modeled and monitored.

Writing Conferences

Elementary and secondary language arts teachers can help guide the improvement of students' writing by conducting private writing conferences. One-on-one sessions to discuss a writing project are important in providing positive feedback and constructive criticism to help the student improve the craft.

Weekly private conferences are an opportune time to discuss individual student goals and works in progress. Some educators recommend letting the student lead the conference by asking the writer how the writing is going and to talk about any problems the student is having (Novelli, 2006). Writing conferences with the upper elementary, middle and secondary student are an effective means to get children to think of themselves as writers, especially when asking questions that lead students toward thinking about their progress as writers. Questions such as "What part of this story did you write particularly well?" "What new type of writing did you try in this piece?" "What will you write next?" and "What did you learn about writing from this project?" will help students to value themselves as developing writers (Novelli, 2006).

Publishing

The reward comes when the writer produces something for an audience. An audience of classmates can listen as the story is read aloud. Publishing a student's work, whether as a solo project or as a collection of work, gives the student an even greater sense of accomplishment for his or her writing efforts. Some classes have added art and illustrations to the published writing.

Viewpoints

The Goals of Creative Writing

Opinions differ on the sequence of teaching creative writing. Some language arts educators believe that the governing skill should be understanding the mechanics of writing, i.e., proper grammar, spelling, punctuation and sentence structure. However, others believe that constant emphasis on grammar and mechanics stifles the creative flow of ideas necessary for productive imaginative thinking. These educators believe that the objective is to get students to write a rough draft, and polish and edit the written work later.

Working with Novice Writers

Novice writers are advised to expand on the details, flesh out the characters, elaborate on the descriptions and settings, and add to the dialog. Yet, paradoxically, students might tend to write too much, filling pages with repetition, redundancies, and overstated material. While teachers can urge students to delve deeply into the writing topic, they (particularly on the secondary level) also will help produce good creative writers by helping them to edit out superfluous material. The saying 'less is more,' in practical application, produces tighter writing, in which every word and sentence counts.

Creative writing often involves self-expression, with the student revealing personal and emotionally-charged feelings and issues. The student may also feel especially connected to the writing, as well as a pride of authorship that feels threatened by a teacher's critique. Because of the personal nature of some compositions, teachers usually seek permission from the student before reading aloud to the class the better samples from an assignment.

There are also opposing thoughts on using music as a background or as a stimulus for creative writing. Some language arts teachers play soft music as a background to the classroom writing atmosphere, in the interest of providing a pleasing sound to promote creative writing. However, others believe that playing music in the writing room actually inhibits the creative process, distracting students from the main subject of their writing assignment. "Listening to music while writing took their attention away from the process of creating their own works in order to shift focus to an engagement with the music itself," (Brown, 2006). Music can effectively be used as a writing prompt or to stimulate discussion before the actual writing process.

Working with Learning Disabled & Emotionally Disturbed Students

While many of the writing units taught in mainstream classes adapt easily to emotionally disturbed or learning disabled students, language arts educators face unique challenges in the creative writing unit. These students may have problems focusing their thoughts in order to write. They may need extra help to overcome fears of writing. Some learning disabled students need help in learning how to organize their thoughts in order to improve their creative writing skills. Language arts teachers of emotionally disturbed students can more successfully teach creative writing by developing a simple outline for students to follow when composing their written assignment. This outline helps learning disabled students focus on key elements, such as identifying the theme, writing a few beginning sentences, adding a few paragraphs to expand the concept, and writing the ending.

Evaluating Creative Writing

Many teachers view assessing students' creative writing as an impossible task since any form of evaluation is subjective and unfair. However, in order to narrow the field to something more objective, educators advise that the teacher communicate specific criteria that will be evaluated, such as spelling, punctuation, and organization.

Terms & Concepts

Autobiography: A personal history with information about one's life written by that person.

Character Development: The combination of details, dialogue, speech and actions of a character through which a storyteller informs the reader about the character's personality and motivation.

Creative Writing: Imaginative writing distinguished from technical or journalistic writing, and includes autobiography, fiction, poetry, screenwriting and drama.

Freewriting: Automatic, spontaneous writing done especially as a classroom exercise.

Journaling: A highly personal form of self-expression where one captures the essence of one's thoughts and feelings, hopes and dreams, challenges and stresses, expressing them in written form.

Modeling: A teaching technique whereby the teacher demonstrates the writing process to the class in real time.

Plot Development: Organizing the story elements to create a causal sequence that draws the reader into the characters' lives and provides the conflict for a story.

Revising: The process of looking over the written piece, and making corrections and improvements.

Rough Draft: An author's first version, outline or sketch.

Writing Conference: A private meeting between teacher and student where constructive direction and encouragement on the student's work are given.

Writing Prompts: Questions, statements or cues that give definition and direction to start a student's writing process.

Bibliography

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Barbot, B., Tan, M., Randi, J., Santa-Donato, G., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2012). Essential skills for creative writing: Integrating multiple domain-specific perspectives. Thinking Skills & Creativity, 7, 209–223. Retrieved December 6, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=82065512

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Brown, R. (2006). Soundtracking our selves: Teaching creative writing with a musical approach. Interdisciplinary Humanities, 23 , 53-57 Retrieved December 6, 2006 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=21065888&site=ehost-live

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Novelli, J. (n.d.). Telling our own stories. Retrieved December 7, 2006, from Scholastic.com http://content.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=4411

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Smith, G. (2013). Dream writing: A new creative writing technique for secondary schools?. English In Education, 47, 245–260. Retrieved December 6, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=90675567

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Suggested Reading

Crose, S. Better fiction writing. (n.d.). Retrieved December 6, 2006, from Creative Writing Solutions http://www.creative-writing-solutions.com/fiction-writing.html

Gregory, C. (1995). Teach students, not writing. Instructor, 104 , 38. Retrieved December 6, 2006 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=9504061636&site=ehost-live

Knoeller, C. (2003). Imaginative response: Teaching literature through creative writing. English Journal, 92 , 42. Retrieved December 6, 2006 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=9811766&site=ehost-live

Shapiro, N. L. (1994). On teaching creative writing. Curriculum Review, 34 , 5. Retrieved December 6, 2006 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=9411281656&site=ehost-live

Thomson, L. (2013). Learning to teach creative writing. Changing English: Studies In Culture & Education, 20, 45–52. Retrieved December 6, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=86009572

Williams, R. D., & Williams, A. R. (2012). Creative writing in alcohol, tobacco, and other drug education. Contemporary Issues In Education Research, 5, 327–330. Retrieved December 6, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=82186569

Wojciechowski, J. (1998). The perfect day. Teaching PreK-8, 28 , 56. Retrieved December 8, 2006 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=332063&site=ehost-live