Working with Jeff Simmons, a parent of one of our students who teaches creative writing at Syracuse University, the older students were given two writing prompts which launched them into many weeks of writing fiction.
"Not all stories have good characters, but most good stories have vivid characters that the reader feels they know almost immediately." Students were asked to develop two characters, distinguishable from each other, and were encouraged to write about them separately, using descriptions of who they are, the places they've been, the things they haven't or have done etc.
The second writing prompt was about setting. "Equally important to story is setting - that is, the time and place that the story takes place. Whether the story takes place in a mythical place like Narnia, or in our world, the reader has to believe in the place enough to want to stay there." Students were asked to put their two characters someplace where one or both of them doesn't want to be.
The children were very motivated to write their stories after having invested two weeks developing character and setting. They developed stories about a lonely boy befriending a dragon, a girl who is saddened by the sudden moving away of her best friend, a hard working father who looses his job at the mall and lies to his wife, Charlie and his friend with no name, Mart and Sam's search for the Grand Apple Tree, and Lily and Martian the iguana who escapes from the zoo.
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