Writing stories is a fun way to practice your vocabulary and grammar. It doesn’t matter if you are a literary genius; what matters is that you have fun with it. Explore the possibilities!
The best way to get your ideas from your head to the page (or screen) is to do a freewrite. Take a topic, write for 5 minutes without stopping–no editing. No self-correcting. No blaming yourself for what you don’t already know. Just write. Once you see what you have to say about a topic, you can go back and edit. Fix the grammar. Develop the story.
Writing teachers use prompts to get your creative juices going. They can be serious or silly. They can be one line, or a paragraph. The idea is to create.
The post, “Put a Sock in It” was based on this prompt: A clean sock is thrown into the dirty laundry.
Here are some other prompts to get you started (check back–these can change!)
You hear a strange sound in the house. Describe it. Is it really the house, or is it your imagination?
Describe a hot day without using words that designate temperature (no words like hot, humid, sweltering, etc.)
Start with quote from a news story, an overheard conversation, tv show, or book and use it as a launch point. For example, here’s one from a news story about the 911 attack on the US: “Initially it was just an absolute kind of stillness. It was probably only a second. And then all hell broke loose.”
Use a little-known (and little needed) fact to start your piece. Tie it in with a “higher meaning” within your story. I once used a fact about crocodiles to talk about my teaching philosophy in a performance review! (See the “Crocodiles” post.)
Rewrite a dream as if it were a story. [Careful not to share anything too personal here!]
Feel free to share your stories with your teacher or with Cheryl on Conversation Exchange (see “About Us” page for links).