This document provides guidance on developing creative writing skills. It discusses different types of creative writing like fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. It then offers tips for getting started with writing, including planning, using precise verbs, imitating admired writers, and surprising readers. The document also suggests activities for developing fiction and non-fiction writing abilities, such as character sketches, describing settings, and writing from a journalist's perspective. Finally, it provides prompts to inspire creative writing in various genres.

1. Practical Approach to Creative
Writing Skills

2. Why to Write?

3. Types of Creative Writing to start with
Fiction
Poetry
Non-Fiction

4. GettingStarted
Motivateto Read

5. GettingStarted
•Planning
•Mind-map
•Outline

6. GettingStarted
The Living Ship
Monty’s Promise
The Sixth Sister

7. GettingStarted
•Keepit simple
•Coherence
•Cohesion
•Don’t overuse verbs or phrases
•Bite sized chunks or paragraphs
•Proofing/Editing
•Don’t Force. Not everyone is Creative.

8. GettingStarted
•Eliminationof Fluffwords
•No rambling:Stick to the topic, give associated
detail
•Start witha winningquery
•Ask them to write summary of a poem in their
own words.
Non-Fiction

9. Suggested Activities for Non- Fiction
•Character Sketch : Cut photographs out of paper and use as basisto
create character. Create profile in sections.
•Basicdetails – name, age, appearance
•Personal details – family,hobbies
•Secrets – a secret from their past no-one knows
•Napoleon’s Bedroom: Imagine the bedroom of a historicalfigure or
celebrity. Describe bedroom in 3 sections.
•Physical Details-what it looks like
•Sensory Details- sounds, smells, feel
•Emotional Details-feelings about room, atmosphere
•Alternative: Describe Their Own Bedroom and Views of It

10. Activities for Non- Fiction
•Be Your Own Journalist: Tell them to read anarticle or news story from a
newspaper and recreate in their own words. You can also read out the
news story in the class.

11. GettingStarted
•Use precise verbs
Fiction
Run
Scuttle
Gallop
Hasten
Charge
Dart
Sprint

12. GettingStarted
•Be Specific
•Imitatewriters you admire
Fiction

13. GettingStarted
•Bait Your audience: Begin with a little personal or historical story,
Ask aquestion, Share a funny incident, Start with aninteresting or
funny thought
Eg. "One October afternoon three years ago while I was visiting my parents,
my mother made a request I dreaded and longed to fulfill. She had just
poured me a cup of Earl Grey from her Japanese iron teapot, shaped like a
little pumpkin; outside, two cardinals splashed in the birdbath in the weak
Connecticut sunlight. Her white hair was gathered at the nape of her neck,
and her voice was low. “Please help me get Jeff’s pacemaker turned off,” she
said, using my father’s first name. I nodded, and my heart knocked." (Katy
Butler, "What Broke My Father's Heart." The New York Times Magazine, June
18, 2010)
Fiction

14. GettingStarted
•Surprise the reader: aska question and answer it in a way that
your readers don’t expect you to.
Eg. ‘What would you do if you see a homeless child on the street? I would
wonder what a marvelous life he must be living…beyond the boundaries set
by a home or family…free…free to roam anywhere, free to be as naughty as
he wants, free to not- eat anything……’
•Make your main character a child
•Give the child a big (age- appropriate) problem to solve
•Climaxis important
•Dialogues are important
Fiction

15. Suggested Activities for Fiction
•Chinese Whispers : Based on game Chinese Whispers.
•Give set period of time to write first paragraph of story
•Pass copy to person three seats away
•Student receives another copy and continues story in that copy
•Pass on again,bring story to an end
•Setting the Story: Give the students the two main characters, unusual
combination and an unusualsetting. For eg. A childand a man(who is
actuallya thief) sitting next to each other on a bus..

16. Suggested Activities for Fiction
•PicturePerfect:Use pictures as prompts.

17. Prompts
1. Your main character is a mobile phone. The story should be about
the various things it sees and observes, about how it’s being
interacted with. Give it a personality that you think ismost
suitable for a perceptive mobile device.
2. The main character of your story lives on a remote island.It has a
unique landscape, food, culture and dress. A boat with a
wounded man crashes off shore. What happens next?

18. Prompts
3. What is your favourite mythical being or fantasysuperhero? They
have lost their super power. How do they get it back?
4. On the way to school, allthe cars are stopped on the road.
Suddenly, there’s a massive explosion in the distance. What next?

19. Prompts
5. You are travelling with your brother backto town after a day
long excursion. Your car broke down. You both are allalone
on the deserted road with no cell phone service at midnight.
What happens next?
6. It’s Halloween. Everybody is on the street wearing costumes
when a man suddenly drops dead.

20. Prompts
7. An outbreak of a mysterious disease has killedseveral people
in a smalltown. One scientist will do whatever it takes to find
out what’s really happening.
8. You with your family went for camping into the woods. You
and your brother hear mysterious sounds. Go to check, your
brother disappears. What happens next?

21. Prompts
9. You’re a human bird living in a castle in the air. You’ve always
been anoutcast but don’t care because you are happy flying
and exploring the land. You discover a new tribe.
10. A teenage witch who just discovered the most powerful wand
in the wizarding world. How willshe use her new power?

22. Getting Started
•Thinkof a Topic
•Choose words carefully
•Choose rhyming words(for
beginners)
•Write the poem
•Give linebreaks deliberately
•Edit well
Poetry

23. Suggested Activities for Writing Poems
1. Write a poem about yourself in which nothing is true.
2. Write a poem about Rain. (Choose topic specific words and
their rhyming words asa prompt)

24. Workshop Activities
1. Make two story prompts for students of Class IV and V.
2. Make one poem prompt : choose the topic/title, provide 10
sets of rhyming words related to the topic.