Creative writing lesson plans

If you are keen on doing a creative writing self-study course or then want to create your own creative writing improvisational course, then you need to begin by setting the creative writing lesson plans. Once you have that in place then you need to set-up a schedule to your convenience. Once everything is systemized then only should you set yourself on the mission.

The creative writing lesson plans given here can be used to train at home young students, as well as adults. In fact, there are many writers overflowing with creative talents, but are not too confident about conducting courses to further their knowledge and experience. However, if you do belong to this category then here is a skeleton creative writing lesson plan, upon which you can build and commence a parallel career in training aspiring writers.

The most important aspect is to determine how much of theory and how much of practicals are you going to use in the lessons. The fact is that theory is the basis of all learning, but it is not an end in itself. There has to be a hands-on experience, which implies that students have to be a part of the lesson. Each lesson should consist of exercises so that they implement all that they have learnt.

Given here are some creative writing lesson plans that are innovative, that is moving away from the typical writing exercises that would in any which way be a part of the course. These lessons here are to enable to enhance the aspiring writer's creative abilities.

• The lack of vocabulary generally becomes a stumbling block for many writers. It is for this reason that there should be some exercises that should be encouraged to become a regular feature in a writer's life. In this lesson, you could have each student pick up five words from the dictionary, write them in a journal and use them in sentences. The words should differ for each student
• Adjective-building. This is an important lesson, as writers tend to fall short of words to describe. With this lesson, you present nuns to the students and they are to list of all possible words to describe the noun.
• Picture description. Ideally take paintings of abstract modern art and have the students describe it according to their respective mindset, along with their analysis of the artist's mindset
• Photo description. Ask students to bring photographs of their family members, relatives or friends. Have them exchange the photographs with each other and have students write character sketches of the photos they have received. Have them read their character descriptions out so that they can know how close they are to understanding the actual person. The description is not only physical, but also the other personality aspects they can figure out from the photograph.
• Group story construction. Give the study group a topic and have them together create a story.
• Give the students five to ten unrelated words and ask them to create a passage of about 250 words containing all the words, as creatively as possible
• Have them rewrite original works of literature according to their own imaginative renderings.

Given here are some creative writing lesson plans. Like this there are many more that can be conceived and given to the students. After all creative writing is about writing through fun and joy. It is only when the writer enjoys his/her task that he/she produces the finest pieces of creative literature.

 

Creative writing prompts

Creative writing prompts are basically creative ideas for you to practice becoming a good writer. These prompts are like topics, but strange ones for that matter, calling for a thorough stretch of your mental abilities. In fact it is like entering a mind gymnasium and letting it work on its word acrobats.

By constantly practicing to write on the basis of creative writing prompts you are actually training yourself into better writing skills as well as providing an opportunity to constantly and consistently improvise your skills.

Given here are some creative writing prompts you could use to create some interesting pieces of literature:

• Begin a story with the sentence, 'I was extremely tired and yet I was forced to…'; ending it with the same line.
• Write a paragraph using the following words rough, terrible, tough, weird, occupation, scrub, walk, exaggerate
• Go through an album of pictures and pick up anyone randomly and write a story in two hundred words about the picture
• Open any picture book, choose three pictures and connect them into a tale
• Select three pictures of people in the newspaper and create character profiles for each one of them
• Select a poem and using the fifth line of the poem start a story
• Keep a water bottle in front of you, observe it for two minutes, then close your eyes and think of the bottle for three minutes. As soon as you open your eyes write all the you can think about the bottle
• Re-write an episode from history giving it a humorous tilt
• If suppose you had to continue the fairy tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs from where it ended, how will you take it forward with a plot - 400 to 500 words… write it
• You are a psychoanalyst and asked to write the mindset of a psychic killer
• Using the words balloons, fair, beauty, mountains and joy create a poem of ten lines
• Write a horror story beginning with the sentence - "The door yanked open and I was in the midst of finding my keys…"
• Write a dialogue that would ensue between a hair dresser and her client after chopping the clients hair too short
• Write about the frustrations of a man whose half moustache was accidentally shaved off by the barber
• Write a dramatic story about the boy who hated Algebra class
• Using the following emotions write a fiction story - happiness, sorrow, stress, anger and jealousy
• Write a conversation that could possibly happen between the pen and paper
• Re-write a newspaper headline story giving it a comic twist
• If you were to re-write India's freedom struggle what would it be?

Creative writing prompts can be created by you at the spur of the moment. The more out of normal the idea, the better it is for enhancing your creative writing skills.

Creative writing software

 

For those of you who have a passion for creative writing but are two busy to take up a course - short term or otherwise - and also cannot give complete commitment to an online course, or distance study course, then there is the alternative of the home study creative writing software. This kind of software has been created to be able to self-educate an aspiring creative writer.

There are many people who have an ambition of bringing out a book of inspiration for other people, or feel that they have a lot to share with the reading public out there. For them money is no constraint but time and ability to attend classes is out of the question, that is where the creative writing software comes in. 

The software for anyone aspiring to be a creative writer is completely educative and consists of plenty of exercises and tests, with myriad topics, ideas and prompts. This software may also contain e-books, as well as recommended readings. The self-explanatory pattern of the creative writing software makes it user friendly for all kinds of people.

The major shortfall of using the software is that while practicing to write there is no guide easily available, as these are self-study lessons. And the problem arises here as you lack a sounding board, who can make suggestions to improve your skills. For this reason you would need to hire the services of a guide who can make it at your convenience and go through the course with you.

The other alternative to bring together a group of people keen who are more than keen to delve into creative writing whether as a hobby or otherwise, each member functions as a sounding board for the other.