How to begin a Creative Writing?

From time to time, a concerned parent or a diffident young student would ask me, "Ms Teo, how to even begin a story?"

I can fully empathise when a child, who has never written a paragraph in his life, suddenly finds himself staring at a blank A4- page beckoning him to fill it with his own "creative" words--all because he has "come of age". That is a daunting task! Yet he really wants to do his best.

Then, inevitably, his parents begin to feel the pressure...

Truth be told, even a "veteran writer", ie. a Junior College General Paper student, would also be filled with anxiety and doubts. "How am I supposed to come up with an attention-grabber, a solid argument and ace this thing?"

In my course of teaching, I try to make Creative Writing an organic process for my young students, that is, to make it into something they can visualise and play with!

Of course, there are good days (writing successes!) and there are not-so-good days (work-in-progress).

And thank Lord Jesus! In 2017, the good days have certainly outnumbered the bad days by a Pacific Ocean [analogy!]

Here, I would like to share what I have worked on with my Primary 2-3 students recently.

Hallloween had just come and gone. So, I began the Creative Writing class by introducing the "Witch's Hat". The students were intrigued.

"What has a witch got to do with my writing?"

"Harry Potter? Gandalf? "

Then I revealed the following picture of mine :

"Oh wow! That's the WITCH'S HAT!"

"No! It's Narrative Arc!"

And a debate ensued. If they could argue about it, it meant they had got it--through their mind's eyes.

I would spend about 30minutes to go through the different stages of a Narrative Arc, starting with "Introduction".

(i) Introduction:

*Who (Protagonist & Antagonist),

*Where (Setting),

*When (No more "One fine day" please!),

*Weather ( Balmy? Wet? Scorching?) ,

*Whether (Choice? Dilemma? Similarities? Differences? Personality Clashes?)

(ii) Conflict/Problem: Simply put, what is the main problem/quarrel/flashpoint between the parties concerned?

(iii) Rising Actions: Escalating tension. Think of the war of words ("fire and fury" versus "barking dog" ) between DJT and KJU, and the firing of missiles by North Korea in 2017 alone.

(iv) Climax: When and if North Korea fired the missiles into the United States and the latter retaliated, that would be considered the "Ka-Boom!" climax.

(v) Falling Actions: De-escalating tension. Think of what happened after the "Battle of the Five Armies" in "The Hobbit".

(vi) Resolution: How was the problem/conflict resolved? Avoid the "war that ended all wars" kind of scenario.

(vii) Conclusion:

More often than not, most students would stop their writing at Resolution stage.

"No time ah, Ms Teo!"

However, I often encourage the students to consider the following two questions:-

* What have the characters learnt from this story experience?

* What have you learnt from this story experience?

When they could come up with some reasonable answers for the above two questions, they would most likely come up with a pretty good conclusion for their stories.

A word for teachers guiding emergent writers. Do talk through the writing process with the young writers. Scaffold their writing experience. Help them phrase their expression first before insisting that they must write it. Write it for them if it is helpful for both teacher and students to facilitate the entire learning process.

For more on Creative Writing, read the next few posts!

Happy Writing!

#CreativeWriting #NarrativeArc #WitchsHat