Children are imaginative
by nature. Childhood is the only phase of life that
is never prejudiced by the complicated dynamics
of life. This is the phase of life where imagination
is in its purest form. Hence, the habit of creative
writing is acquired better at childhood rather than
in latter phases of life. With some guidance from
the parent, a child would often blossom into a better
creative writer compared to many adults.
Why would you want
to teach your kid creative writing?
It is not simply
because a child has a pure imagination without stain
marks or because a child is capable of imagining.
You would want to teach the child creative writing
to get into the process of logical thinking and
to assist the child in attaining the capability
to freely express his/her thoughts. It has been
observed that children who successfully learn the
art of creative writing early on tend to do well
in many professions that involve expression and
imagination. Also, such children tend to have better
academic record compared to other, including academic
subjects that need the student to have good expressing
capabilities. This need not be necessarily subjects
related to language such as English, but they can
even be the physical and biological sciences. In
a nutshell, it is not only the capability to write
creatively that helps, but additionally it is the
thinking capability powering the creative writing
that also helps.
Teaching a child
how to do creative writing involves a lot of fun
and enjoyment. And once the kid starts to show signs
of having learned the art, it gives the parent a
great mental reward. Kids, by default, tend to love
stories. In fact, many kids find eating and sleeping
easier if the parent tells a story while the kid
is trying to undertake these activities. It is easy
for the teachers to build a creative writing program
in school to stimulate the children's brains and
form a desire of creative writing inside them. If
you are homeschooling your kid then you can develop
a similar program. While making such a program,
one must stick to some fundamental principles to
ensure success of the program.
- Start small.
The child does not
require producing great novels from the first day.
Rather, find a common topic that would be of interest
to the child. Get the child to write a small paragraph
of around 5-10 sentences on the topic. The writing
can be purely imaginative or it may contain description
of the real life. For example, if you have chosen
a summer afternoon as a topic, you would expect
the child to mix his/her imagination with facts.
On the other hand, while writing about his/her grandmother,
you expect more facts rather than imaginative fictions.
While repeating the process to get further small
writings from the child, make sure to put a mixture
of topics that involve both describing facts and
exercising imagination.
- Dictate and
recapitulate.
You may want the
child to dictate a story to you and make a note
of the story. If the dictation is too fast then
you may want to take help of a recording device.
On another day you may want the child to read out
the story or play the tape recorder and hear the
story. That way, the child will be able to connect
what s/he tells, writes and hears. This connects
creativity with reusing created assets and is extremely
important from the view of providing the child with
further motivation to write.
- Use the idea
box approach if you have access to multiple children
- works great if you are a teacher. In this case,
you may want to bring a physical box to the class.
The children would
write down a piece of idea that they would have,
in order to write stories. They would write the
idea on a small piece of paper and drop the paper
into the box. Latter on, each child can pick up
a piece of paper from the box, which would in all
likelihood be someone else's idea. Then they would
have to write the story. If Tom pick's an idea that
Jenny had dropped in the box, then he would be permitted
to approach Jenny to better understand what she
had in her mind before he starts writing the story.
Jenny may have picked up Mary's paper and hence
Jenny may approach Mary to understand the idea better.
And if Mary has picket up tom's paper, then she
may approach him to understand what he has in his
mind before she writes her story. This sort of idea
swapping usually goes well. There may be some kids
who would not feel great about others writing on
their ideas, so ask the kids to have their own idea
box if they prefer individual writing activity over
group.
- Generate characters.
Get the child interested
in writing on different characters. You may help
the child in developing the imaginary characters,
but make sure that every character that the child
illustrates has its own flavor. The child may opt
to write a story involving multiple characters with
each having its own specialties, which makes the
entire scenario much more complicated and challenging.
- Use software
tools.
The software
packages available today makes writing a much
more relaxed and friendly task compared to writing
with a paper and pen. Word processors greatly assist
in the process. Kids these days tend to learn computers
almost effortlessly and tend to type quite fast
and easily. In addition, word processors would help
the child both in spelling and in grammar. As a
result, the child would tend to learn writing creatively
in correct language faster than learning in the
classical ways.
While all this might
sound a stiff challenge initially, a step-by-step
approach mixed with the right guidance and application
of common sense would tremendously ease the task.
The child would start showing signs of creativity
before you really know it. And you would be surprised
to know that more than 9 out of 10 children would
show enough creativity to encourage you to move
further ahead with the process. Start with the basic
story writing that kids would find easy; and once
the ice is broken in the kid's mind, aim higher.
If the kid finds it exciting, publish the stories
on the Internet. Make a blog. The child is going
to blossom in the longer run.
