Friday, October 9, 2009

Short Story Tips for Middle Schoolers

Begin your short story close to the end. This cuts your journey in half and makes your story a SHORT story.

Focus on one SCENE at a time! Make each scene as strong as possible.

CONFLICT CREATES STORY. Put your character in a tough situation and have them get out of it in a fun, smart, entertaining way.

SURPRISES (and plot twists) are effective, only when they make sense.

Use strong VERBS. Stay away from adverbs (quickly, sarcastically, flatly, happily, joyously, apologetically, YUCK!). Adverbs slow and interrupt narrative; they also weaken your writing.

USE RECURRING ELEMENTS. If your character wears a silver heart necklace, you should mention it more than once. This makes the world you've created more complete. It's okay to repeat!

I passed along this bullet point sheet to my creative writing students (7th & 8th graders) this week. Of course, these points can be used when writing more than short stories.

Any more you would like to share? I'll take and use.
Posted by at 10:16 AM
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5 comments:

  1. Write like you speak :)? I find that the shortest way to get to the point.

    Thank you for the tips, they are not only helpful but spark desire to write short stories.
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  2. I like the scene thing a lot and think middle schoolers can really get that, since they see so many things in scenes. In my own ms, each chapter is a scene. Thinking of it that way is a big help.

    You sound like you're a great teacher.

    "kurse"
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  3. Good stuff!

    I love the conflict, scene and verb advice! I've only learned some of this stuff in the last few years.

    The adverb info was mindblowing to me when I first heard it. Also - don't forget to make things simple. Wordy sentences can become a mess and lose the reader.

    I mean really, I used to love to write extremely long and detailed sentences with tons and tons of incredibly long words and vocabulary to show the reader how great of a writer I am.

    Whoops. ;)

    peace,
    Donna
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  4. This may be too simple for your older students, but it helps my third graders to notice that stories are mostly composed of four elements: action, dialogue, description, and thoughts/feelings. When I have a student whose writing doesn't work, I give them four different colored highlighters and ask them to identify the four elements above. Usually, one of the colors is missing completely or nearly so. (Most often, it's thoughts/feelings) Students then have an idea about what they need to add to their stories during revision.
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  5. Thanks, Chalkheads. I just wanted to say Chalkheads.
    ReplyDelete

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