For students assigned to write a story, the following activities can help kids to stop staring at the blank page and start writing. Even children who like writing can use these exercises to warm up their mind and their fingers and write a story whenever they have the time.
Help out kids who don’t like to write with other open-ended assignments that show kids the real-world applications of writing. The activities below can be done by one child at home or in school. Group story telling with friends and classmates can expose children to oral storytelling and get creative juices flowing.
What’s Going On?
Take a picture from a magazine and write a story about what the people or animals in the picture appear to be doing. The image could prompt an entire story or it could end up being just a small part of a larger story.
Front Page News
Either handwriting on newsprint or typing things into a computer, kids can create their own front page of a newspaper. Look at a newspaper to see how it is formatted. At the top of the first page are the newspaper’s name and the date. Notice how the headline, the title of the main article, is written. The headline often isn’t a full sentence but instead just a few words, sometime incorporating a pun or play on words.
Kids then write about an event in their life. Like a newspaper article, explain the who, what, when, where, and why of the event. If there is space for smaller articles on the “front page,” kids can include other events in their life.
Story Starter Card Pack
Cut ten 3” x 5” index cards in half. On five cards write different occupations or jobs – one job on each card; on five cards write different locations (forest, city, Disneyland); on five cards write details about the weather or the time (noon, tornado); on the final five cards write different kinds of stories (mystery, romance, fairy tale).
Decorate the back of the cards with a different design for each of the four packs. Kids can also use stickers or rubber stamps to identify each pack. Keep the design the same for each category (tree for locations, sun for weather and time cards). Shuffle each deck individually and set the cards in four stacks. Draw one card from each deck and use these details to create a story.
First Sentence Story
Go through a bunch of novels and write down the first sentence – each one on a separate index card. Don’t reveal the source of the sentences. Shuffle the deck and select a card. Use this line as the first sentence of an original story.
Shopping Story Starter
Go through the cupboard or a magazine and list the brand names of different product (so, not “crackers” but “Ritz”). Create a list of at least twenty different names. Then, try to use as many of these words in a story. Forget what the product was, just look at the name – is it the name of a person or animal? “Joy” dishwashing liquid becomes “joy,” an emotion.
Try this just using car or cereal brands. Write the story trying to incorporate as many of the twenty different brand names as possible. When people read the story, they may not even realize what prompted the writing of the story.
Tall Tale
Kids list five common things that happen every day that they never give much thought. Explain why cats “meow,” ants visit picnics, kites get caught in trees, etc. Select one of those occurrences and explain how or why it happens. The tone of the story can be serious or it can be wildly exaggerative. Kids can read or listen to a legend that explains how something came to be so they have a sense for how a story like this can be told.
Kids can use a variety of methods to inspire fictional stories. For children who never know how to start or where to get ideas for stories, one or more of these activities will help spark imagination. Word games can help get kids thinking without the strain of creating a long piece of writing.
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