Creating Writers

A Creative Writing Manual for Schools

James Carter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000153811
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

This unique and comprehensive text offers an original approach to teaching creative writing by exploring ideas, giving advice, and explaining workshop activities and has many contributors from some of today's most popular children's authors including: Jacqueline Wilson, Roger McGough, Philip Pullman, Malorie Blackman and David Almond.Creating Writers is a practical writing manual for teachers to use with upper primary and lower secondary level pupils that covers poetry, fiction and non-fiction.

1	Write from the start Ways to approach creative writing and writing workshops

A positive writing environment

In practice, a positive writing environment must surely be one in which each and every person in a writing workshop feels that their ideas and contributions are valid and valued. The writing environment is very much the responsibility of the teacher or the workshop leader. A healthy and positive workshop ethos can be achieved in a number of ways, including:

• listening with genuine interest when children make contributions or read their work aloud;

• creating a warm and positive environment in which children grow in confidence and ability;

• writing alongside children on a regular basis, and sharing writing with the group;

• publishing work on a regular basis (see ‘Publishing’ section on p. 13);

• making supportive and sensitive but critical comments on students’ drafts;

• allowing pupils to work at their own pace and to spend time thinking about their writing (see ‘Time to think’ on p. 5);

• keeping an open mind on the length of a piece, as creativity should ideally not be quantified;

• asking only volunteers to read aloud a first draft; there can be set times when all pupils can prepare for a reading of their pieces;

• taking time to read children’s drafts on an ongoing basis;

• being flexible as regards the content of workshop activities — at times allowing pupils to take their writing in directions of their own;

• recognising and accepting that some activities will inevitably work better with one group as opposed to another;

• encouraging pupils to be supportive and attentive to each other;

• organising the group into ‘feedback partners’ or small groups on an ongoing basis (see below);

• above all, generating real enthusiasm for/confidence with creative writing.

Feedback partners

Feedback partners work together on a regular basis to read each other’s work and to offer useful support, advice and criticism. When a piece of your own writing is still fresh, it is hard to be objective and to distance yourself from the piece — so having a feedback partner is ideal. When you are giving feedback to a partner, it is important to be sensitive and polite at all times. As Brian Moses suggests, it is best to start with a positive comment and then make a suggestion for developing the piece, for example, ‘Your main character seems quite interesting, but do we know enough about her yet?’ or ‘This poem has a lovely rhythm, but I’m not sure about the last line — do you think it has too many words?’

Make sure that you read your partner’s work slowly and carefully. You could even ask whether your partner minds if you make notes in the margin in pencil. You may choose to discuss your ideas for a new piece with your partner before you begin writing. Sometimes you could ask your partner to read your piece of writing to you, as this may highlight anything that is not quite working and may enable you to find what needs to be done next.

The ‘Poetry checklist’ in Chapter 2 (p. 66) and the ‘Fiction checklist’ in Chapter 3 (p. 139) provide a range of issues to consider when reading your own and your partner’s writing; these can also be used by teachers when commenting or responding to pupils’ pieces (see ‘Drafting and editing’ on p. 7).

Time to think

We all need time to mull over and explore our ideas, to ponder over how we are going to start or even develop our writing. Thinking and daydreaming are vital to creativity, as these authors emphasise:

MICHAEL MORPURGO: The first stage of writing a book is the looking, the listening, the researching, the collecting of ideas, the reading, the learning, the feeling — the living. It’s the most important time. Before I start the actual writing I will make little notes of various ideas that I don’t want to forget. I’ll then focus on an idea and go into my dreamtime. My dreamtime can and does take place anywhere — even, I’m afraid, when I’m talking to people — which I shouldn’t do! More often than not I do it lying on the bed, and if that doesn’t work then I’ll go for a walk. I’ll walk the lanes around us and talk it out loud to myself as I go — entertaining the sheep!

CELIA REES: It took me a long time to realise that writing is not just about sitting at a word processor or a pad of paper and getting things down. Writing is everything: reading, going to the library, visiting places, researching, taking photos and even thinking — thinking is an inherent and very important part of the writing process.

Though daydreaming can be very creative and productive, actively thinking too hard and for too long can often lead to a blank sheet of paper or computer screen. Many authors say that their best writing occurs when they have stopped thinking intently and the piece just seems to write itself, as Malorie Blackman believes:

MALORIE BLACKMAN: When you sit down and begin to write, don’t think too hard about it. If I think too hard about what I’m going to write, I get really stuck. When I just sit down and do it, even if I eventually chuck away ninety-nine per cent of what I’ve done, at least I’ve got something to work on. If you get to a difficult bit, just do it — you just write through it. There have been times when I’ve written a whole chapter and later I’ve deleted all of it and only kept a page, but at least I know where I want to go once I’ve done that.

Time to explore

As Pie Corbett comments, we need to be flexible in our approach to creative writing and give children freedom to explore:

PIE CORBETT: There are times as teachers and workshoppers that we need to let children follow their own creativities. For instance, I was working in a rural school using Kit Wright’s ‘The Magic Box’ as a structure. One girl, Molly, who was nine at the time, wrote her own poem. It was clearly inspired by ‘The Magic Box’ but it had its own form and structure. It went something like ‘I’ll ride away on a journey to a dream / and capture midnight magpies’ wings’. It was one of the most fabulous pieces of writing from a child I’ve ever heard. It rhymed and it was beautiful. She wouldn’t have written that if I had asked her to stick to ‘The Magic Box’. You can start children off, but sometimes they’ll need to follow their own path. A writing frame can actually restrict some writers. Teachers though, will know their classes well, and know who to let loose and who to rein in. We have to develop children as creative, innovative writers. We do not want classes full of automatons that fill in gaps and do exactly what you tell them to do. But at times, this is the way that children learn to write. So it’s a fine balance. Children need opportunities to do both.

Freewriting

Many people find it hard to go into a writing activity cold. Freewriting allows pupils time to adjust to the creative demands of a workshop. Tony Mitton has used this method himself:

TONY MITTON: I used to do freewriting exercises — which involved sitting down and writing for ten minutes per day. The intention of the exercise was to keep writing non-stop for ten minutes. It didn’t matter if you got stuck, or if you wrote rubbish, just so long as you were writing something, anything, and the words were coming out. I discovered by doing that what a torrent of creativity the human brain is.

It is best to avoid going straight into a workshop activity. Even a couple of minutes of freewriting will help pupils to focus and allow ideas to start flowing.

Workshop structure

A workshop ideally needs a coherent structure, something along the lines of:

• Opening — informing the class what they will be writing later.

• Freewriting — as an occasional warm-up-or even a quick writing game — say, writing an alliterative phrase or a tongue twister (see ‘Writing warm-ups’ on p. 15).

• Discussing the writing activity or reading a text as a model.

• Teacher modelling — writing on the board with contributions from the class.

• Class writing — doing the writing activity (and this may even be ‘free choice’ —occasionally allowing children to choose their own writing activity).

• Sharing writing — with partners, small groups or the whole class.

• Concluding — where to take writing next — discussion of developing, revising, drafting and editing.

With regard to the forms of writing to be covered over a period of time, balance and variety are important. Interspersing different forms and genres will also serve to highlight the similarities between the various literary forms. Some workshops need to be ‘free choice’, allowing pupils the opportunity either to develop drafts produced in previous workshops or to explore areas of interest.

The workshop leader will need to have a good supply of appropriate texts that can serve as models to show to the class. Changing text models from year to year will help to keep workshop activities fresh. There can also be times when pupils source their own books or p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: where do ideas come from?
• 1 Write from the start: ways to approach creative writing and A positive writing environment
• 2 poetry
• 3 Fiction
• 4 Non-fiction
• Appendix