WRITERS WORKSHOP

IERG Conference

Imagination in Teaching

15 July 2005

Vancouver

Topic:  “A Writer’s Bag of Tricks:  Unblocking the Imagination”

Presenter:  Susan Barber

Affiliation:  Doctoral student, Arts Education, Faculty of Education,

                        Simon Fraser University

Abstract:  “I want to be a writer!” Many students at one time or another imagine their names displayed on the cover of a novel. What they might not grasp is the enormous gulf between wishing and actually writing the book. When faced with the blank page, their enthusiasm begins to fade. And yet, young people often have startlingly original ideas and new ways of seeing life in our modern times. How can teachers inspire them to get beyond writer’s block and achieve their creative potential?

In this workshop, participants will discover how to spark the most reluctant writer’s imagination. Bailin, Weisberg and others have identified not “genius” but mastery of skills and knowledge as the steps leading up to significant creativity. Mamchur cites the importance of setting a safe and caring tone in the classroom. As fitting the subject, the teacher will convey that the creative writing classroom is a different kind of place, one where “life” is foremost – the life of the students as well as that of the characters and themes in their stories.

We will look at several “jumpstarts” that encourage student writing: how to find interesting ideas in literature, design writing games, make partnered activities useful and how to play with language, employ poetic devices, drama and film ideas. After reviewing elements of basic story writing, participants will be invited to work in groups to create a few simple pieces that will later be shared in the workshop. We will brainstorm the resulting ideas and then take home several unique short stories to add to our “libraries”.

Hello and welcome.  I would like to ask you to use your imagination – right now, for a minute! – and I later I will explain why.  Loosen up and relax, close your eyes if you would like.

Think about a story you know well.  It could be something from a novel, a short story, even a film.  Something that you know fairly well and can trace the plot.  Choose something and stay with it.

Try to remember how the story starts.  Maybe you meet the main character first, watch him or her for a moment, find out who s/he is.   What does s/he want?

Then think about how the problem begins.  What obstacle is thrown in his or her path?  Find the conflict that disrupts your main character’s life – either another person, an opponent, an evil character, or a dangerous, threatening situation that must be dealt with immediately. 

Next think about how things get worse for the main character.  What does the character do?  How is the tension building up?  Now think of the climax, the big showdown.  Your character vs. the oppressor.  How do they clash?   Who wins?  What happens later and how does it all end?

The reason I asked you to do this is to get you back into the writer’s state of mind.  We have to think in terms of characters and plot, recall the way traditional stories are organized or structured into beginnings, middles and ends.  Welcome to the writer’s world.

I am a writer – I love writing fiction and I’ve written a novel, dozens of short stories and some plays.  I also teach creative writing at SFU and have taken creative writing courses at UBC.  Right now I’m working on my PhD in Arts Education at SFU.

I feel very lucky to have had two experiences in my development as a writer.  I began writing seriously as an adult and I basically taught myself to write through studying literature.  In this way I learned what I loved to write about and worked out my own voice and style.  But this only took me so far.  All writers need an audience and also feedback from other writers.  This is when I began taking courses and later studying theory. 

I think this is what we aim for in Education – a balance between encouraging writers to just keep writing, develop their own method of writing and find out what they need to write about.  But at the same time, students need to improve their skills and knowledge so as to improve the technical side of writing and also notice why literature is excellent writing.  My research for my Master’s thesis centered on the relationship between literature and writing.  I sincerely believe that literature matters more to students who are creative writers.

That’s the main idea – but what does it look like in practice?  All people have incredible stories to tell and young people in particular have new ways of seeing modern life.  Some students have a burning desire to become authors but then lose their enthusiasm when they have to get words on the page.  Often they just don’t know how to start.  Others are convinced they could never put a story together.  How can we get them to write?

Today we will do a few exercises that can help ease new or struggling writers into a more comfortable mindset that will allow them to write.  Because we only have an hour, we’re going to keep it light and fun, but these exercises can be used very seriously to help these writers overcome different obstacles to writing.

Part of the problem with beginning students is that they expect the writing to come out of their heads complete and polished.  That’s why it’s crucial to state that this is a Rough Draft – it’s so rough, it’s not even a first draft.  We lower the stakes and remove the pressure.

So what we will do first is to look at some simple prompts that can guide us to story ideas.  None of this is brilliant or creative; beginnings rarely are.  Brilliance comes in during the fifth or the twenty-fifth draft.  I would like to emphasize that this is simply a starting point.  And if our students are already writing, this method would not be as helpful as other methods.  

Ready?  In groups we’re going to write sections of stories -- some in one way, others in another, and we’ll have a good time comparing the results.  Here are some prompts:

Poster 1:  Beginnings

1.  Start with a “hook” opening, a startling, odd or unusual sentence that will lead into the next sentence and the story. 

Think of great opening lines:  “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”  “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”  

“The last camel fell at noon.”

“There once was a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid.”

2.  In the first paragraph(s), start the “Call to the Challenge”.

Show us the main character (MC), give us a bit of a physical description:  name, sex, age, some character traits.  Give us one specific quality or piece of information about the character to make us sympathetic.  Perhaps other characters will admire some ability, special knowledge or endearing habit that will be attached to the character. 

What does this character want?

Put a big problem in front of the main character.  Show us that the MC is forced to react in some way.  The MC would like to avoid the problem but it is growing in force, impossible to ignore or threatening someone. 

3.  In the last line of your beginning, show how the problem instills fear in the MC.  Again, the MC doesn’t want to face the problem or believes he or she cannot face the problem.  But if the MC doesn’t deal with it, something important will be lost.

Poster 2:  Middles

4.  Have the main character look around the setting.  Describe it in such a way that we know what he or she is feeling at this moment.  For example, if the character feels threatened, she might see night closing in, the sky pulling down around her or a storm sweeping in.

5.  Now shift to the problem getting worse.  Give more description of who or what is causing the problem and why.  Make the conflict more complicated.  Now the MC must decide to fight.  He or she may decide to turn to another source for help, argue her case to another person.  Use some dialogue where the MC convinces another to join the cause.

6.  As they talk, a new side of the problem arises.  Both characters immediately cooperate but the problem is getting worse.  The friend character tells the MC it is hopeless, and the MC hesitates, feeling despair and fear.

 7. Almost too late, a surprise, worsening element interrupts.  (Point of No Return).  The MC remembers something about herself, the special quality she has inside and an idea occurs to her.  The MC finds a way outside to fight the evil.

Poster 3:  Climax and Endings

8.  Now energized inside and out, the MC fights with all strength (friend may join in).  Describe the setting again, using short, sharp sentences, include weather or other things in the environment to reflect the battle.  Gradually the MC overcomes the problem.  The opponent is beaten.

9. The threat subsides and the MC turns back to recover what was almost lost.

10.  The special quality is revered by others and the MC earns new respect and admiration.  The MC is sobered by a new self-knowledge yet is more confident.           The End!

Now this is the fun part.  Each person will write the beginning of a story.  You can use the story you thought about at the beginning of the workshop, change some names or other elements of a well-known story or follow the prompts on the posters.  Here are four ways you can do it.

Option #1:  Splitting the story.   In groups of three, each person starts a story.  Use the legal sheets to write the story, small sheets can be used to sketch out the beginning, or ideas.   Don’t think too much!  You’ve got ten minutes.  Then you will pass your beginning to the person on your left.  Forget about your story now.  Read the one your neighbor just gave you.  Go with what is on the page.  Pick up the story thread and now write the middle of that story.  Then we’ll switch again and you’ll do the same thing – read the story and write the ending for that story.  The last person will put a title on the story.

Option #2:  Cue cards.  Work in pairs.  Choose one opening scenario (red ink), middle (orange) and end (green).  Add characters and write a story with what you’ve got!

Option #3:  Starting lines.  Work independently.  Choose an opening line and go with it.  Finish the story.

Option #4:  Adaptation – on your own or with a partner.  Take a famous fable, fairy tale, myth, etc. and modernize it, reverse genders, or re-write the ending to suit your purpose.  Put a unique spin on an old story.

Grab a pen and start writing!  I will give you a two-minute warning before we change to writing middles and then ends. 

Sharing the stories:  Volunteers read stories, groups of three read other’s middles and ends.  In a class, the next stage would be editing the stories, getting ideas from other people.  Brainstorming how to bring out good parts, improve characters, adding suspense, foreshadowing, poetic language, and fine-tuning the overall piece.

Which do you think would work well with your classes?  How can you combine these activities with reading literature?  How will they work with different ages?