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Section 1
Narrative fiction:
developing ideas
Creative writing can be one of the most rewarding types of writing to engage in in the English classroom. However, anyone
who has spent any time in the English classroom knows the difficulty 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 limited 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 absence 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 evaluating which idea will be best to write about.
Below is an example of a story generator grid for a unit on fairytales. Student would use the same procedure outline in the Narrative 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 connection - we want to provide plenty of space for students to be creative 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),
Crisis
Complication
Orientation
Resolution
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 version of the film that is better.
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 pictures of events. Heres 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 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?
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 something such as a character or problem, reverse or re-order the
sequence of events