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Creative writing
The document provides information about creative writing exercises and strategies that can be used to teach creative writing to students. It discusses approaches like exquisite corpse, where students take turns writing lines of a poem without seeing previous lines; grab bag, where students draw random prompts to inspire their writing; and mixing metaphors. It also outlines the writing process and provides examples of prompts like writing letters to past or future selves. The document aims to give teachers ideas for engaging, interactive exercises to help students learn and practice different forms of creative writing.
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Creative writing
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- 2. EXQUISITE CORPSE a. Eachtable will be given a blank piece of manila paper. b. The first person holding the paper will write a single line of poetry at the top and folds this part of the paper. c. He then passes the paper to the next person. d. Without unfolding the paper, the next person will write his own line of poetry. e. The procedure repeats until the last person in the group has written on the paper. f. Once the poem is complete, each group will read their work to everyone.
- 3. Creative writingis “theact of writingfictionor poetry, often asan exercise.”
- 4. Any writing, fiction,poetry,or non- fiction,that goes outsidethe bounds ofnormalprofessional, journalistic,academic,and technicalforms of literature.
- 5. Creative Writingexpresses the writersthoughtsand feelingin an imaginative often uniqueand poetic way.
- 6. Creative writing isguidedmore by thewriter’s need to express feelings and ideas thanby the restrictive demands of factualand logical progression of expository writing.
- 7. The best wayto define creative writingis to give a list of thingsthat are and thatare notconsidered creative writing.
- 8. Things that are“Creative Writing” Things that are Not“Creative Writing” novels, poems, epics, short stories, screenplays, songs, television scripts, etc. academic writing, textbooks, journalism, and technicalwriting
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- 10. Makethe creativewriting unitas relaxedand informalas possible.
- 11. Pickapproachesto writing thatyour high school students may havenot triedbefore.
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- 15. Teachingcreativewriting tojunior high orhigh schoolstudents willbe different from teaching acollege-level or adultcreativewriting class.
- 16. Whenyou first startteachingthe class,it isbetteroff givingthe students a short quizto determine what they know andwhat you must teach them inorder for them to succeed.
- 17. You should becareful about how you issueassignments.
- 18. Start with thesmall projects and then work your way up.
- 19. Allow your studentsto mimic the examples you give.
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- 25. grab bag the lastshall be first
- 26. bait and switch lifeis not like a box of chocolates red bicycles, blue seas
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- 28. no-send letters in transit thisi believe
- 29. something beautiful, something ugly writeabout names
- 30. write a letterto their future self write a letter to their past self
- 31. how the worldbegan write about an emotion without stating the emotion
- 32. Choose two topicsfrom the curriculum guide. Create an activity for the topics reflecting any of the strategies or prompt presented. Create also an assessment to measure the performance of your students.
Editor's Notes
- #5 Memoirs Feature Essay Coz of description, vivid imagery and that calls for creativity
- #11 High school students in particular will feel more comfortable expressing themselves in an informal environment. Set up the desks in a circle. Allow your students to choose whether or not they want to share their writing. Let the students lead the discussions as much as possible.
- #12 For a fiction assignment, you could have your students rewrite a favorite story from the perspective of a different character. For a poetry assignment, you could have them describe a favorite place by its smell, sound and texture
- #13 Bring in a favorite poem or an excerpt from a story to demonstrate the kind of writing you assign.
- #14 Do the assignments yourself, and share your own writing with the students. By opening your own writing to the students, you can make them feel more comfortable sharing with you. They will also benefit from having the voice of a more seasoned writer.
- #15 When the class is first starting, the goal is to make your creative writing students feel comfortable expressing themselves. Once they feel comfortable, you can teach them lessons about writing tighter prose, using more creative imagery or whatever other writing techniques you may want to include.
- #16 Your curriculum and lesson plans should reflect the age and comprehension levels of your students so that you don't over-challenge them or fail to challenge them enough. Adults can have more freedom with what they write about while high school students will need to be monitored more closely.
- #17 One of the biggest mistakes you can make when teaching creative writing is assuming that everyone in the class knows what a dangling modifier is -- or, even worse, what a noun is.
- #18 If you give your students specific assignments -- such as, Write about your favorite summer vacation -- you're going to stifle that creativity and your students won't have as much fun. This doesn't mean that you can't have any structure.
- #19 Even if the course is supposed to be geared toward writing short stories, you might want to begin with short-shorts to cover the basics of structure and storytelling. From there, you can make the assignments more complicated so your students can grow. Word of caution Keep the assignments flexible but not too open-ended. If students are given too little writing guidance, they will have trouble starting. If, on the other hand, they are given too formal a structure, they will not be able to loosen up and get creative.
- #20 Although plagiarism is never acceptable, derivative writing is. Some students may need to feel comfortable with a style of writing before making it their own.
- #24 1) Literary Telephone: Have each student write a brief descriptive paragraph, then pass it to the person on their left. Have that person translate the paragraph into boring, non-descriptive language, and fold the sheet down to cover the original paragraph. Pass to left; have the person fill in the descriptions. Wash, rinse, repeat, etc until it’s gone around the entire circle and is back to the original author. Have them read the first paragraph and the last one, and see how things have changed. 2) Mixing Up Metaphors: As a class, put every overused metaphor or simile you can think of on the board (quick as a fox, strong as an ox, cold as ice, swift as a river, etc). Then, erase the last word and replace it with something unexpected (quick as an ER waiting room, strong as a diamond, cold as a doctor’s hands, etc). It’s a fun exercise and teaches students to avoid cliches. 3) Raising Voices: Write down a character’s name, age, and occupation; give a character to each student. Have them write a first-person monologue in the voice of that person. (Example: Lisa Topaz, 46, Green Peace Organizer; what does this character sound like? What about Susie Johnson, 4, preschooler, or Jonathan Miller, 63, preacher?)
- #25 #1 – Exquisite Corpse You will need at least two writers for this exercise, and the more the merrier. Feel free to mix ages—that can liven things up! Start with blank sheets of paper. Ask each writer to write a single line of poetry at the top of the page. You might want to remind them not to worry about rhyming. You also might want to time them. A short amount of time will encourage creativity and discourage self-doubt. Once everyone has written a single line, everybody needs to fold their papers over so that no one can read what they’ve written. They then pass their papers to the next person in the group. Receiving a new piece of paper, without unfolding anything, each writer adds one line to the poem. Again, fold the paper over and then pass it to the next person. If you have a small group, you might want to go around more than once. If you have a large group, you do not need to go all the way around, especially if you are working with young writers and short attention spans. Once the poems are completed, have someone read them aloud. This usually leads to laughter, and once in a while, you get a poem that makes some sense, eerily enough! #2 – Description and Connection This can be done with one or more writers! Choose two objects. Try to choose two objects that don’t have any obvious connections with each other: worm and crayon, cucumber and hat, doll and phone book. Show your writer(s) one of the objects, and ask them to describe the object in as much detail as possible. You might want to time them. A time limit adds a sense of adventure to the exercise. Once they’ve finished with the first object, show them the second object and ask them to do the same, beginning with a new paragraph. Then, give them a new sheet of paper, and looking at the two paragraphs they’ve just written, ask them to write a third paragraph about how these two objects are connected. This may be easy for some writers, and some writers will claim that there is no connection, but encourage them that there is always a connection! Once everyone is done writing, it can be fun to share those third paragraphs with the group, to see how many different connections two seemingly unconnected objects can have! #3 – The Last Shall Be First This is a great exercise to do with one writer, but of course, it can be done with a group too! Give your young writer a sheet of lined paper, with a single line of poetry written on about the 12th line. This line can be from a famous poem or something you make up. It doesn’t matter! Then, ask your writer to write a poem that ends with this line. He or she can work backwards, or start at the beginning and try to steer a poem toward that ending line!
- #26 #5 – Grab Bag This is one activity to keep on hand to pull out on rainy days! Write or print many words on small pieces of paper, and put them all in a hat, bag, or envelope. Use unusual words, ones that your young writer knows, but doesn’t necessarily use on a daily basis. Examples could include: axe, daisy, moon, bury, candle, skip, flicker, sting, and knot. Ask your young writer to, without looking, choose three words from the hat. Then give him or her sixty seconds to write a poem using those three words. #5 – Grab Bag This is one activity to keep on hand to pull out on rainy days! Write or print many words on small pieces of paper, and put them all in a hat, bag, or envelope. Use unusual words, ones that your young writer knows, but doesn’t necessarily use on a daily basis. Examples could include: axe, daisy, moon, bury, candle, skip, flicker, sting, and knot. Ask your young writer to, without looking, choose three words from the hat. Then give him or her sixty seconds to write a poem using those three words.
- #27 4) Bait and Switch: Write a flash fiction piece about an argument between a mother and a daughter. Almost every time, students will write about it from the viewpoint of the daughter. Then, have them re-write it from the viewpoint of the mother. 5) Life is Not Like a Box of Chocolates: Replace “chocolates” with something they do think life is like, and write about why. 6) Red Bicycles, Blue Seas: Pick a color and write about a memory associated with that color.
- #28 7) Triptych: Choose three physical objects you own, and write a flash piece about why each one is important to you. Don’t try to connect the flash pieces to one another. 8) Found Poetry: Have students bring their cameras to school and spend a class period walking around the campus (or surrounding town, if possible), taking pictures of signs, labels, notes, etc that they come across. Compile the words and phrases into a list, and have them construct poems using nothing but those words and phrases. For an extra challenge, give them a topic their poem has to be about (love, the environment, passing of time, loss, etc). Also optional: Creating a collage from the pictures they took that tells the poem. 9) Four-Sense Food Sonnets: Blindfold each student and hand them a plastic sandwich baggie with food in it. (I used kiwi slices, peanuts, chocolate-covered raisin, pickles, and stuff like that– be sure to check for food allergies and restrictions first.) For five minutes, they should taste, smell, feel, listen to their food items without knowing what they look like. After five minutes, they can take off the blindfolds and write sonnets about their foods, being as descriptive as possible but without including a physical description.
- #29 10) No-Send Letters: Write a letter (or letters) to someone (or someones) that you know you’ll never send. 11) In Transit: Write about a time you (or a character) were walking, flying, running, or biking somewhere, why it was important, and what you (or the character) were feeling as you moved. 12) This I Believe: Write an essay, fiction piece, or poem based on the NPR series.
- #30 15) Something Beautiful, Something Ugly: This one takes about three class periods. For the first one, freewrite on what you think makes something beautiful and what you think makes something ugly (half the class period for each). For the second one, let loose in the school or go outside, and turn on your “macro” lenses to look at as many tiny details as possible, taking extensive notes as you do so. For the third, focus on the objects you took notes on and write two creative responses, one on something beautiful and one on something ugly that you found. 16) Write About Names: Where yours came from, or where you wish it came from. Who you’re named after. Who your father, mother, neighbor is named after. Odd names. Nicknames. Street names. Family names. What you wished you were named. Why they’re important, why they’re not important. Write about names.
- #32 23) How the World Began: Peruse animated creation myths from around the world via The Big Myth website, then write your own. 24) Write about an emotion without stating the emotion. Avoid stereotypical responses to the emotion as well; if you character is sad, convey it in a different way than making them cry, or if they’re happy, show it some way besides them smiling or laughing.