Three Creative Writing Tips

Boost your child’s creative writing skills by following these three tips:

Ideas for stories are everywhere.  Some people find it easy to connect to their creativity but for others – it’s a battle or a bore.  Children don’t have to be brilliant at languages to be good at writing stories.  They just need to learn to unleash their imagination and have fun. Use these 3 easy tips to help children write creative stories or essays. 

1. Get Dramatic

If you have children who love making up stories, encourage them to put on their own plays or movies.  Once they start imagining who their characters will be, get them to add in details, like what they should look like, how they should walk, what they will wear, and how they will talk. This is how they learn to ‘flesh out’ a character and make them interesting to a reader.  Encourage them by telling them to find pictures in magazines and describe people they see.  Search for new descriptive words in the dictionary, such as decrepit for weak and old, or gleaming for shiny hair.  Reading is the best way to build a vocabulary, so keep a look out for interesting words when you read together.

2. Write what they know

Sometimes coming up with ideas of what to write about can be intimidating, so get them to start with what they know and love.  Are they good swimmers?  Do they love playing video games?  Are they fascinated by animals or kung fu or ice cream?  Get them to describe a day they loved – was it a trip to the beach or a visit to their best friend?  Encourage using new words and write them down in a little vocabulary book.

3. Touch and Taste your Words

Tell your children to describe an ice cream to a person who has never seen one before.  Get them to describe a word you pull out a hat without saying the word.  If the word is biltong, tell them to use their senses to describe it.  It smells like, it tastes like, it feels like… Write a whole lot of words and pop them into a hat to make a fun game, similar to 30 Seconds.

Take it further:

  • Sometimes a prompt can help when they’re stuck for ideas of what to write about. Check out our 8 Creative Writing Prompts here.
  • Let your children make their own mini books once they’ve written their story.  

 

 

 

 

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