Are you on the hunt for a step-by-step guide to help your child craft their own creative writing story? Say no more as we’ve got our own guide to assist you.
Are you wondering how to go about helping your child to craft their very own creative writing story? Perhaps you’ve looked over the basics of storytelling but you’re now looking for a step-by-step guide to help you get from idea to full story.
Review the five main steps your child needs to go from planning to producing a uniquely written piece of creative writing.
1. Planning the Plot
The plot of the story is completely up to your child, but here are a few examples for you to help your child get started:
- A spider diagram is our favourite way to write a plan. Include: who, what, why, where, when and how.
- A storyboard.
- A mind map.
- Bullet points – this is one to be careful with as some children can get carried away with the planning and start wiritng parts of the story when using bullet points.
More typically, these planning tools will help your child to get the ideas on page. Once this is complete, then they can move on to thinking about the details they need to bulk up the story. This includes: - The setting.
- The characters.
- The obstacles the character faces.
- How the story ends.
2. Characters
Ask your child to create characters they want to include in their story. They can think of names, personality traits, and talents their character might have.
Of course, they can build multiple characters and include, how they look, their relationship (for example, are they friends, siblings, neighbours, etc. ?).
3. Special Words or Language
Are there any words your child has learnt recently while reading a new book, for example, that they may want to use in their story? This would be a great time to add them to the list of words. This way, they will have a bank of words they can draw from when building up their story.
4. The ‘WOW’ Technique
The WOW technique is an acronym that stands for ‘what’, ‘open’, ‘win’ or ‘lose’. You can read through it here. In using this technique, your child may decide they want the story to begin in the middle of some action, or they want to rewrite their version of their favourite story.
5. Ordering the Structure of the Story
Once your child has gotten the bare bones of the story planned out, including the main plot, the characters, and the language they want to use, they can now think about how their story will unravel.