‘How do you start a story?’ It’s the question I’m most often asked when I visit schools and festivals. Also, ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ and ‘How much do you earn?’ Writing is challenging, for kids and adults. There are so many moving parts.
Teachers are tasked with motivating both keen and reluctant writers, using a multi-modal approach to cater for all kinds of learners. At school, time can be a major obstacle. There is so much to learn! But writing a decent story or essay takes time. In a standardised test students are given 40 minutes to plan, write and edit a narrative – an almost impossible task. The truth is that writing is best when it’s done consistently over a long period of time, allowing for new ideas and fresh perspectives on the topic or story.
5 Key Writing Prompts for Kids
After thirteen years of visiting schools and working with young writers, I have put most of what I know about writing into Young Writers’ StorySchool. It’s a series of 24 punchy online videos sharing insights from the writing of my books Two Wolves, The Fall, Detention, Tom Weekly and Ginger Meggs and providing short, sharp, fun challenges for writers aged 9+. Perfect for use in the classroom and for keen young writers at home.
Here are five writing prompts for kids with video excerpts from StorySchool. For more, you can check out the website. The first full video lesson – Anything Goes – with teachers’ notes and activity sheets is free. (And, for the month of January, readers of this post can use the discount code TB20 for a 20% discount at checkout.)
1. How to Create a Vision Board
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2. How to Build a Book Soundtrack
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3. Outdoor Writing
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4. An Important Artefact
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5. How to Rewrite a Story
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