Adventures in story-telling : Creative Writing

At the moment, I am preparing my Year 11s for some creative writing. Surprisingly, I am pretty bad at making stories.  I am not that bad, I think, at telling them, but it is the creating and making them that I struggle with. I read, devour, absorb, digest (thankfully, I don’t defecate them – painful, but could be profitable) books and stories, yet I struggle to invent my own stories. This sadly affected my teaching of creative writing. “How do I begin?” says a student. I would often think to myself, “Yeah, how do you begin to write a story?” My colleagues, at the time, would often waltz into the staffroom and squeal with delight at how their class had written some wonderful, poignant, effective stories from his or her ‘crazy idea’.  I would stare back and start looking for my T.A. to help me as I was ‘well stuck’.

Now a few years later and my house is menagerie of storytelling. As I have a young family, stories are my life. I read a bedtime story each night. I watch as my daughters act out imagery stories to each other. I tell stories in the day to entertain them.  I put on puppet shows with finger puppets and they copy – I am a drama student at heart.  We even have stories that form parts of routine.  I even get my daughters to quote from stories. They sometimes quote Oscar Wilde or Charles Dickens during the day. A handbag! Please, sir, can I have some more? Start them young, I say.

Now, the girls are starting to read. I am enjoying things even more as they love listening to me read a book without pictures. At the moment the current favourite is ‘The Enchanted Wood’ – why that hasn’t been made into a film is a complete surprise to me. By having children, I was able to find my ‘storytelling’ gene. I saw how they created stories, how they found inspiration and how they had fun with it all.  Anyway, I had the opportunity to test out some creative writing things with some Year 9s last year, and boy did I experiment. I taught a different group every two weeks and during that time I experimented, trialled and practised a number of different things. This blog is just simply me telling you some of the things I did. Warning: some work with some classes and some don’t.

Post-its on a fridge

A student recommended this idea to me. They had read a book that was about a conversation taking place through notes on a fridge.

I gave groups of students six green post-its  and six yellow post-its. On them, they had to tell a story through notes on a fridge. Each post-it was a different note. Each colour represented a different person. They then stuck their notes to a ‘fridge’ or a sheet of A3 paper. It created some interesting stories about a kidnapped child and a divorce. Later we played around with the order of notes to make the narrative even more effective. Very easy and simple way of generating a story and exploring the way dual narratives work.

Plus, it is a great starter or inspiration for another lesson. The finished stories have been laminated and I have been used to springboard other stories.    

Connections
This is inspired by a book I read once. At the start of the book, the writer wrote a list of supposedly unrelated characters. The rest of the novel saw how these totally opposite characters linked together.

Martin Davies, retired teacher, 67, Spain

Gethin Williams, student, 18, Bangor

Mavis Grant, company director, 42, Australia

There’s a story there, but you have to dig deep and think about it. I find this helps to avoid the simplistic story telling that favours action over character development. How do these characters link together? Usually, it will be through some kind of relationship or acquaintance. Do they know each other? Or, is there a person that links them all together?

Random objects from a bag

This started out as one of those ‘quick I haven’t got a starter’ things, but it became quite successful. I emptied a cupboard of random items and placed them in the middle of a desk. The students around the desk took it in turns to tell a story about an object. The rule was they had to hold the object as they told the story. When they finished, another person told a different story about that same object. If the item was exhausted of storytelling potential, then they picked another item.

At first, students were quite hesitant to tell stories, but after a time they got it and then I struggled to get them to stop. The students were free to pick the genre of the story, but it made for an excellent way in to start a story.

Photo album

Google is great. I searched for some pictures and then copied them onto a sheet of A3 paper to make a photo album. I made sure that the pictures were a mixture of family portraits and holiday snaps. I even found some old black and white photographs to add a bit of a hidden past.

Finally, I gave the students the photo album sheet and I asked them the following questions:

*What’s this family’s story?

*Who is who in this family?

*What is the secret in the family?

Every group in the class had the same set of photographs, yet every group produced a different story behind the photos. At points it did sound like an episode of Emmerdale, but it did make for some great discussion and some even better storytelling. 

Check out photopin.com for some copyright free pictures

Using a poem – Identification by Roger McGough
I love poetry that shocks the reader. Roger McGough is a particular favourite of mine because he has written some very powerful poetry that is shocking and effective. An English teacher introduced me to the ‘Jogger’s Song’ when I was a student and it left me cold. His poem ‘Identification’ has intrigued some of my classes for quite a while now. I think it is brilliant poem that has this slowly unfolding realisation and denial of the death of a loved one. Furthermore, it creates a mystery, and, there lies a story. Now, I know that the story is based on a real event and how a teenage boy was killed by a car bomb.  Students, however, have so many different theories as to what happens, and they become incredibly motivated when describing the lead up to this sad and tragic conclusion. I tell them they are to write the story and the ending of their poem will be the poem.

At the end of all this, I reveal the true story behind the poem and it stuns the class into silence.

20 line story

Love. Pain. Fear. Jealousy. Disappointment. The average day of a teacher – only joking! These are titles I have given students to write about an emotion or a feeling. The students have to write the story in twenty lines. It makes for a very simple story, but it keeps things focused and clear. The writing becomes quite effective as the student has to be concise with their writing.  It is a staple that most teachers use, but it is quite effective.

Describing one moment in a story and not a story

I have read so many stories written by students over the years and they all tend to have the same problem. They are too focused on plot. I have had students try to condense the complete ‘The Lord of the Rings’ saga into two sides of A4 lined paper which is devoid of any description or atmosphere. Most students are driven by the storytelling of films, which is fine, occasionally. However, the length of the story telling in a film amounts to the length of a novel in writing terms. Therefore, it is no wonder that students try to cram stories full of battles, explosions and expensive car chases in the first paragraph. 

I started this by showing the Deathstar explosion. I wrote the sentence ‘The Deathstar exploded.’ on the board.  As a class, we discussed how that single sentence doesn’t convey the events on screen. Then we did the old thing of ‘showing’ and not ‘telling’. Then, we turned this single event into a whole story.  We had our structure to a story and the students were limited in a way as to what to describe, but it meant the writing was focused on the event rather than the whole plot. It made them more reflective on their writing choices, rather than the need to tell a massive story that is the ‘bestest bestest story in the world’ which had lots of ‘and then’ and ‘suddenly’ in it.

Moonlight / Perspectives 

This is borrowed from a friend. He did a creative writing course and he explained this idea to me, and it worked – so I ‘borrowed it’. On the whiteboard, you show a picture of the moon at night. Make sure it is a full moon.  Discuss with students the different kinds of narrator you could have to see the moon or be affected by it. Cue the usual werewolf. Then, we explored it further and ended up with a lover, a child, a scientist, a religious person, etc. Finally, they wrote a paragraph describing how a narrator felt in the presence of the moon. There were some fantastic efforts. Again, the beauty of this technique was that the storytelling is about feelings and how a character reacts and not on the plot.

Also, I got the students to write another paragraph, but this time they had to use a contrasting narrator. One example I had was two sides of a relationship. The girlfriend was excited that the boyfriend was going to propose, as he was quite nervous and kept checking something was in his pocket. However, the boyfriend wanted to kill the girlfriend. Both were looking at the moon and feeling different things. I even had one student describing the moon from an atheist scientist’s view and from a religious person’s perspective.  

Collective story – putting bits together

I really enjoyed reading ‘The Slap’ a few years ago and that book is inspired me with a way of writing a story. For this, I got groups to describe an event through a variety of perspectives.  Each person told the event from their perspective. The writing was kept short so students only wrote about three quarters of a sheet of lined A4 paper. The results were glued together to make a continuous story. Students loved reading the final story and, yeah, sometimes the results were clunky but there are some bits of great storytelling going on nonetheless. If the group are clear about the event and the key characters, then you have a fairly consistent story.  

Science Stories – The What If

I went to a fantastic event organised by our dwindling LEA, which was about promoting reading. During the event, there was an author who explained how she was inspired to write a story. Simply, it was from a science report in the news. She suggested that teachers could get a collection of news stories about scientific discoveries.  One example she gave was about a pill that prevented wrinkles. Then, the story was based around that one idea. What if wrinkles were cured? What if wrinkles denoted class? The rich had no wrinkles and the poor were wrinkly. What if the moment you stopped taking the pills the wrinkles immediately came back? Very simple way of generating some story inspiration.  

Behind every book I read there is a lesson somewhere. The more I read, the more ideas I have. Phillip Pullman decried once that English teachers need more time to read. I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment of this.  Sadly, the marking load and the increased emphasis on evidence gathering have meant that the time spent on thinking and creating good ideas is often lost. The time spent reading and just thinking and is also lost.  I really have to force myself to read sometimes. I love reading, but being a teacher sometimes takes me away from reading. I’d love to spend a whole Sunday afternoon reading a book. Instead, I am planning for the week ahead.  I am marking work. I am filling in things I should have had time to do during the week. What would make me an even better teacher of English is the time to read more. I’d love to read more teenage fiction, so that I can recommend more books to students. My love of reading stories is there, but the fire isn’t always burning the brightest it can, because there isn’t enough time to put more logs on the fire. If I am careful, the fire might just die.  How can I be the source of inspiration to students if my inspiration wanes? Gove famously said that students should be reading more than 50 books a year.  How many teachers and especially English teachers come close to that amount?

 And that does not include books like ‘Of Mice and Men’, because you read it to a class.

Thanks for reading,

Xris

Pictures

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tshantz/4630390248/">tshantz</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">cc</a>

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/neilcoleman/2081888118/">Neil Coleman</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">cc</a>

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wicho/5540421779/">wicho</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">cc</a>

More opening sentences, but this time it's non-fiction

In this blog, I am going to write about a lesson I use for teaching the openings of non-fiction texts. In this I will write about examples of …  Gosh, I hate openings like that. Where is the mystery? Where is the suspense? Where is the hook? It seems that students ‘pick up’, from somewhere, this notion that the first sentence of an essay or text should state its intent. It is almost as if it is a text that has to assert that it isn’t a piece of fiction – bit like Daily Mail readers. I am not a story or a poem! We hate poems. The idea that I am a piece of poetry disgusts me, as I am clearly a discursive essay. I am proud to be a discursive essay and I wear a badge and wave a flag to prove it.

Imagine if stories were written in this way. In this story I am going to write about a vampire that falls in love with a human girl. I will write it so that you think they get together and then they fall out, but I will then write about how they get together at the end. Thank you – I don’t need to read the rest of the book now.

I don’t know if students feel that teachers aren’t that bright or that we need constant reminders of things as we have so many things to do. Maybe this provides them with this need to regurgitate the purpose of the assessment so they have it clear in their head. News flash: I set the task; I know what you are going to write about, so I don’t need you to tell me what you are going to write about.

What do I expect an introduction to do?

·Grab the reader

·Entertain the person

·Persuades the reader that they have to read the rest of the article

·Give a hint about what the text is about

·Inform the reader of the direction you are taking - agree / disagree

·Explain complex ideas

 

Quite a few English teachers across the land are preparing students for the English Language exam in January, and I am one of those lucky teachers. Like most of them, I have set the class a writing task to do and, when I received it completed, I noticed the same thing: introductions that don’t engage the reader. Introductions that don’t signal to an examiner that these students are bright, clever people. This blog is about how I got them to improve – ahh, I am doing it again.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS  - The Lesson

The lesson started with a slide full of stills from famous film openings. There were shots from James Bond films, Star Wars, Jaws, Harry Potter and some other films. Students had to decide what the connection was. I think I played the opening music to Star Wars too, just to release some stored emotional memory linked to music. I could have cooked up some popcorn too to focus on the memory linked to smell, but I thought that was a bit too much.

Anyway, they saw the idea of openings and how they were good openings. Then I provided some examples to them. Now, these were not the best, or even A grade quality, but they were openings that responded to the following task:

Write a magazine article persuading teenagers of the dangers of smoking.

Students had to grade each one and decide on what makes it so good or bad, depending on the grade they awarded it.

 

1.       Cough. Cough. Sorry, I am struggling to say this as – cough, cough – I find it difficult to talk as I have had one lung removed due to cancer.

2.       Smoking is bad. It is the cause of millions of deaths every year.

3.       I know you can’t help it, but smoking is terrible and it makes you stink.

4.       £5000 is exactly how much money you waste on smoking each year.

5.       I am going to teach you about the dangers of smoking. In this article, I will give you the reasons as to why you shouldn’t smoke.

6.       Imagine you are on a date. Your date arrives. In the distance, they look gorgeous and worth the hours it has taken you to get ready. As they get closer, you notice something – a smell. The scent of an ashtray.

 

At this stage, I don’t go for the A* examples, as I find it works better if you start with an achievable introduction for most and then build up to the A* quality. However, I got some students that say ‘I am going to teach you’ introduction is the best one, and then I probed this further and found that students liked the directness of it. Eventually, we got to the point about engaging the reader.  Mostly, students prefer the first and last one as they show a more creative approach. Depending on the time, I might do some quick analysis of the lines. Which techniques have been used?

LAST IMPRESSIONS

I then got students to look at some possible conclusions to the same task.  

1.       So, if you want to be another statistic on a long and ever expanding list, then carry on smoking.

2.       Finally, the reasons for not smoking are clear – it is bad; it causes cancer; it stunts your growth; it costs a lot of money.

3.       Act now and stub it out or expect to be ash quicker than you think.

4.       Smoking costs. Smoking Smells. Smoking kills.

5.       To conclude, smoking is very bad, so to save your life, do something now. 

I repeated the activity I used before of ranking and analysing lines, or I got students to match up the conclusions with the writers of the introductions. Which writer wrote which conclusion? This makes for some interesting group or paired work. We then recapped the features of a good introduction and conclusion.  Hopefully, students come up with something like this:

Conclusions:

·Make the reader think 

·Leave a lasting thought or idea or question

·Try to make the reader remember something about it

·Link to the opening in some way

 

After this I got students to rewrite an introduction of a writing task they have previously written. This time, however, I stressed to them the importance of engaging a reader and being creative. Cue eight to ten minutes of scribbling. If any finish before the allotted time, they have to write the opening line of their conclusion, but it must be linked to their introduction somehow. If they haven't got a piece of written work, I give them this average introduction for a magazine persuading teenagers the benefits of healthy eating:

Recently, when I did this activity with a class, the students produced some excellent and creative approaches. I had students adopting a voice, using lyrics from a song, creating a call-to-arms war speech, writing a response to a Daily Mail letter and many more. Now, I could have taught students to do this, yet I don’t think it would have really stretched their creativity and playfulness. I loved the problem solving aspect of this kind of writing. How can I make this ‘dull as dish water’ writing task engaging and creative? Some get it quickly; others get it when they see the photocopied examples. And, failing that, they can adopt some of the approaches used in the examples. After all, all the best writers beg, steal or borrow.

 

Gifted and Talent Students

To step up the writing to a higher level, I focus on parody. Usually, I show an example from ‘The Simpsons’ to give students the idea of what parody is and the overall effect of its use. Then, I play a nice little game of 'name the source of a quote'. Obviously, this works best with top sets, but I have adapted it for other sets too by using song titles. I find that the A* students need to demonstrate a much wider understand of texts and the world around them than their peers.

Using parody in your writing to get an A*

 

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a bright student in possession of wit and a pen must be in want of an A*.

 

 

 

	Line	Who? What? Where?
1	It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.
2	It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. Jane Austen.
3	One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
4	I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.
5	I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart of a king, and of a king of England, too.
6	I stand before you today, the representative of a family in grief, in a country in mourning, before a world in shock.
7	Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
8	We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
9	Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."
10	The quality of mercy is not strain'd, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest.
11	In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
12	Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
13	To be, or not to be: that is the question
14	Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him
15	Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon. The little dog laughed to see such fun And the dish ran away with the spoon!
16	And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Students then attempt to use one of these famous quotes in their writing for comic effect. It is quite a challenging task, but I think it adds something original to their writing that separates them from other students.

As an extension task, I get the class to suggest some new quotes to add to this list. Or, I get them to write down as many as they can remember from the sheet.

Finally…

This week I applied for the ‘Coordinator of Literacy Across the Curriculum ’ role and I was faced with writing an application letter.  That opening sentence stumped me. Do I go for the clichéd ‘In this letter I am writing…’ or do I go for something creative and original? What do you think I did? I went for the safe option and presented myself in the traditional manner, and it pained me. I so wanted to be creative:

Dear Headteacher,

I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble male; but I have the heart of a giant and I am a giant of Literacy too...

 

Only time will tell if playing the safe option worked. However, if I was writing for an examiner, I would be sure to be creative. I would want to be remembered as the breath of fresh air in a pile of predictable and mundane writing. I’d want to be the one remembered for putting a smile on the examiner’s face. I’d want to be the one that impressed the examiner. Failing all that, I just want to be the one he remembers.

 

Thanks

Xris32

 

 

 

 

In the beginning there was .... a sentence.

This week has been a very busy week for me as it was the school’s talent competition. I organised and hosted the show with the help of some brave and excellent colleagues. We had some judges. We had some brave acts. We had the audience, but how do you start a talent competition? Pyrotechnics are too expensive and too dangerous. Starting with an act would have been too cruel. Therefore, we took inspiration from ‘The X-Factor’; we had some music and some 'Dermot dancing'. So a colleague and I strutted our stuff to Taio Cruz’s ‘Higher’ for a minute.  I think the most accurate way to describe the crime to dancing would be ‘dad dancing’. It was funny, embarrassing, engaging and a whole host of other things. I wasn’t taking myself seriously and it was a kind of message to parents and students: look, this is fun and you’ll never make a fool of yourself compared to your dear teacher on stage.

The opening of most things is important. The opening of a book. The opening of a film. The opening of a lesson. Get it right and you have people hooked and on your side.  Get it wrong and you struggle to keep them looking in your overall direction. It is interesting that there are loads of books on ‘starters’ in teaching, yet very few books on ‘middles’ and ‘plenaries’.  Now, I am not going to bore you with loads of starters I use as there are plenty other, much better, sources for that. No, I am going to share one starter that I use over and over again with different classes. Oh, and it is about openings.

This activity is usually used as a way to start a piece of creative writing. It saves you from those annoying questions about how to start a story after two lessons dedicated to planning it. Also, I use it to look at the opening of a class novel. I print out a sheet with the following sentence openings. Then, I give each student one. It doesn’t take long before they are heads down intrigued by each line.

It winged its way across the blackness of intergalactic space, searching.

(World-Eater, Robert Swindells)

 

The knife that killed me was a special knife.

(The Knife That Killed Me, Anthony McGowan)

 

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.

(I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith)

 

I shouldn’t have done it.

(The Monster Garden, Vivien Alcock)

 

Jimmy knew what was coming, but he was too late to dodge out of the way.

(Jimmy Coates: Killer, Joe Craig)

 

When I was nine I was an owl.

(The Seventh Raven, Peter Dickinson)

 

The first time I only saw its face.

(The Ghost Dog, Pete Johnson)

 

It starts and ends with the knife.

(Jackdaw Summer, David Almond)

 

It was sick, hungry and a long, long way from home.

(Hydra, Robert Swindells)

 

Peter Bishop knew that he couldn’t hang on to the icy rock of the crevasse any longer.

(White Out, Anthony Masters)

 

Lonely, invisible, and still wearing the clothes they had died in: the ghost of four children were in this house.

(Breathe, Cliff McNish)

 

As Matt watched the rain through the window, the rain watched him back.

(The Chaos Code, Justin Richards)

 

When he awoke, the room looked different somehow: there was a window where the door used to be.

(Are All the Giants Dead?, Mary Norton)

 

The horror always came with waking.

(The Visitor, Christopher Pike)

 

In the middle of the night they came for me.

(The Frighteners, Pete Johnson)

 

I am afraid. Someone is coming.

(Z for Zachariah, Robert O’Brien)

 

It would happen again today, Kerry knew it.

(Bully, Yvonne Coppard)

 

I found him in the garage on a Sunday afternoon.

(Skellig, David Almond)

 

I thought werewolves only existed in stories and late-night films.

(My Friend’s a Werewolf, Pete Johnson)

 

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

(Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell)

 

Funny things were going on inside my school locker.

(The Boy Who Reversed Himself, William Sleator)

 

The desks were moving.

(Bullies Don’t Hurt, Anthony Masters)

 

It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.

(Mortal Engines, Philip Reeve)

 

I never had a brain until Freak came along and let me borrow his for a while, and that’s the truth, the whole truth.

(Freak the Mighty, Rodman Philbrick)

When I opened my eyes I knew nothing in my miserable life prior to that moment could possibly be as bad as what was about to happen.

(The Black Book of Secrets, F.E. Higgins)

 

When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.

(The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham)

 

Then, I simply ask them: ‘Which is the best opening line to a story?’ There has yet to be a class that has all come to the same answer.  Some love the funny ones; others are interested by the violent ones. Overall, it creates a great discussion.

 

The next stage is to explore what makes them so effective. As a class we come up with a rough set of rules:

·         Refer to something as ‘it’ or ‘they’ to create mystery and hide the identity of person or creature

·         Suggest something bad has happened or is going to happen

·         Use a narrator

·         Describe something ordinary and make one thing odd about it

·         Raise lots of questions

 

Students then create their own on a post-it note and we read them all out. Thankfully, it stops that annoying ‘How do I start it?’ phase of story writing.  Plus, it gives students a range of sentence structures to copy or adapt for their own writing, saving us from some pretty dull writing.

Depending on the rest of the lesson, I might leave this as a starter or do some of these things to extend the learning:

·         Categorise the openings by genre, impact on reader or effectiveness.

·         Write the next few sentences to one of the openings.

·         Based on one of the openings, write the last sentence of that story. How will they link together?

·         Take one opening and analyse it in great detail.  What questions does it raise? What techniques are employed to hook the reader?

·         Watch an opening to a Doctor Who episode and write down the questions created to hook the reader.


 

If I have time, I might take them to library and get them to find new openings to add to this list. It gets students to engage with different books and, occasionally, they might even be persuaded to read the whole book.  
 

I do something similar with the openings of non-fiction texts with Year 11. However, I always mention how writing in an exam is a bit like a date. The first impression is a lasting impression. If they opened the door to some dishy date who’s dressed to impress, then the date will probably go well. If they opened the door to someone scruffy and bored, then there is a big chance things will not go too well.  Therefore, there first sentence must be impressive and free from mistakes. It sets the message and the tone of what they are doing. It hooks people in and keeps them: I am interesting so you can't help being interested in me.

 

In the beginning was the word. Yeah, maybe. However, I like the image of God looking at an empty nothingness and muttering the immortal words, ‘How do I start this?’ He looks up and there is no English teacher to direct Him.

Xris32