February 2020 – The Writer's Corner

5 Ways A Parent Can Improve A Child’s Creative Writing Skill

By thewriterscorner | February 20, 2020 | Comments 0 Comment

Creative Writing shouldn’t be left for children who are art inclined, it’s helpful to every child irrespective of age or department. It doesn’t center only on academics.

For some children writing can be very therapeutic and a way children get to express their feelings.

As a parent, you can also improve your children’s creative writing skill by doing some of these things below

Read Bedtime Stories To Your Children

A good writer is also a good reader. As a parent who wants to improve his child’s writing skill, you could start by reading one of your child’s favourite books to them before they go to sleep.

If they’re old enough, they could also read to you. Ask about their favorite books, why they like some and not others. Check this out

Improving a child’s creating writing skill

To inspire your child to write, you might consider taking your child to see one of his favorite authors speak or a book signing.

Create a Reading And Writing Timetable

A special time can be carved out for this exercise in the midst of your child’s schedule. It shouldn’t be paired with other activities that can be draining.

This is so because reading and writing takes a lot of time and mental energy. Your child needs a cool environment where they can think freely, relax and contemplate.

Provide a Reading Environment And Writing Materials

In order to improve a child’s creative writing skills, he’ll need to have a place where he can do all his writing assignments without distraction.

Such a place should include a desk in his bedroom which had no television in it. It should also include writing materials like.

Notebooks
Pens/ Pencils
A bookshelf containing variety of books
An age appropriate dictionary (thesaurus) which a child can use to expand his vocabulary. Check out some reasons why writing should be taught in schools

Always Show Interest In The Child’s Work

Always encourage your child by showing real interest in stories, thoughts and ideas. You might be the only audience your child has for for some time.

To show that you’re paying attention, ask them questions about their stories, compliment them when they have done something well.

It could be when they come up with interesting characters or used a difficult word appropriately, whichever it is, encourage them by showing interest in their work.

Focus On Their Creativity Not Grammatical Error

Don’t discourage the creativity of your child by always pointing out a misspelled word, wrong punctuation or grammar.

For him to succeed he needs to learn how to experiment with different ideas think outside the box.

It’s okay to correct some spellings but at the same time praise their creative minds and talk to them about their ideas.

5 Helpful Tips For Teachers To Help Children Overcome Challenges In Creative Writing

By thewriterscorner | February 19, 2020 | Comments 4 comments

When you get lost in your writings and start feeling the flow of words in you, you’ll agree with me that creative writing can be so much fun.

It also doesn’t negate the fact that some children are trying to overcome some challenges in creative writing.

The purpose of creative writing is to spark up a story or idea and make writing natural for children and writers. In this article I’ll share 5 helpful tips for teachers to help children overcome challenges in creative writing.

No Rules To Writing

I don’t subscribe to a set of rules when it comes to writing, so I always tell my students that can write whatever they like. All stories must not have a hook at the first paragraph or a twist at the end.

As a Teacher, whose aim is to help children overcome challenges in creative writing, you can encourage them to follow two simple rules.

First, they should be able to show, not tell what happens in a story. For example, instead of writing “the woman was angry” they could replace it with”the woman paced the floor and hissed under her breadth”.

Secondly, they should also employ the use of Wow words. In this way they’ll be giving power to verbs, for example, “John ran quickly could become John Sprinted”.

Check this out.

Story Prompts

This is probably not news but the difference is how you use this tip in helping children overcome their challenges in creative writing.

You can many writing prompts and tell a pupil to pick one at random, most importantly write along with them as they write.

You all can agree that by the time 5 minutes is up, everyone should have written up to at least 50 words, including the teacher.

But doing this exercise together, it gets the whole class writing happily and gradually it’ll get to a stage where they can be free to write on their own without occasionally checking up on them.

Short Video Clips

Some pupils think the life or Writers are glamorous, that they just sit down and have the words flow out to their pen, all of which gets to be published without much stress.

Some don’t understand the hours of editing, self promotion and rejections these writers face at times.

As a teacher, you could get video clips of writers talking about their writing, sharing the pain and rejection they’ve being through and their daily processes.

When you play this video clips of writers whose work you’re studying in class, it can help students overcome some of their own challenges in creative writing and engage more with their work.

Use Common Stories

Most of the pupils in your class would have read a particular story or watched a common movies with a storyline they wish had ended differently.

You can encourage then to pick one of those stories they remember clearly and ask them what they liked about it and what they didn’t like about it.

Then they now have the opportunity to rewrite that story in a way they like and wish it would go or end.

In this way they get to rewrite the story in their own unique and powerful way. Here’s one of the reason why writing should be taught in schools

Encourage writing from someone’s perspective

Encourage your pupils to write from someone else point of view, preferably a close friend or a classmate.

They could start by imagining waking up in this persons bed, what it’ll feel like to walk in this persons shoes, react the way this person usual does and feel as they would.

Engaging pupils in this writing exercise will challenge them to develop a real life character and also help them develop more empathy and understanding which will help they become a good creative writer.

If you’ve found this tips helpful, please share with us in the comments box your experience and other helpful tips

Do These 5 Things If You Want Your Child To Develop Great Creative Writing Skill

By thewriterscorner | February 19, 2020 | Comments 1 comment

At the Preschool level, pupils are introduced to stories through Picture books or Storytelling. It requires a child to be very imaginative so as to develop a creative writing skill.

When these stories are read aloud to them they tend to interpret the meaning of such stories more especially with pictures. It becomes easier for them to share their own stories in words. One of the reasons why writing should be taught in schools

Most times when it comes down to putting these thoughts into writing, they begin to struggle with words and making complete sentences.

Let’s look at 5 things we can do to help these children develop a creative writing skill.

Encourage Children To Speak About Their Thoughts

In this way you could start by talking to your child about the events that happened in school or during any outings with families or friends.

They’ll learn to describe events as it happened in real life and get creative when put in writing.

You could also get pictures of different events or a place, arrange them in a particular order and ask them to describe them as they see it.

Their ability to arrange these stories in a logical order will help them develop their creative writing skills when you tell them to write a story about a particular scene.

Start With 5 Words Sentences

Most time these children have so many stories and ideas to share, but might have problem putting them in writing.

Just like the first point above, children can be encouraged to share their stories verbally.

Instead of writing the whole story at once, they could write short sentences about parts of the stories, such a their favourite part of a place, their best place of fun, etc.

For example, The beach water was wide, etc.
When these children are encouraged to use drawings to put their thoughts down before writing, it also strengthen their creative writing skills.

Expose Your Children To More Storybooks And Educative Programs

Get more storybooks and read out to the children. It’ll expose them to more creative storylines and get them to imagine how these stories will end.

Children need go watch more educative programs on television and encouraged to talk more about them. They can develop any characters they imagine.

They always have fun imagining how these films will end or what will become of the bad guy. After this you can engage them into saying what they learnt and encouraging them to put those thoughts into writing.

Map Out Time For Spelling New Words

When children struggle with spelling they almost often get discouraged when it comes go writing.

Children learn new words everyday as their vocabulary expands but it should in no way discourage them from writing stories even if the happen to misspell any word.

At the preschool level they’re bound to do this a lot, you only have to show them the correct spelling and how they can be used

Developing great creative writing skills

Guide Them On The Use Of Punctuation

It’s common for these children to misplace their punctuation marks, but it would take away the fun out of writing if they’re always being pointed out.

Instead when reading storybooks with them, draw their attention to the use of full stops in every story and the use of the comma for a pause.

When writing encourage them to make short sentences and place a full stop in front of every idea the put down.

What other ways do you encourage your child to develop his/her creative writing skills?

Have you tried this methods before?
Share with us in the comment box.

NOW I’VE FINISHED WRITING A BOOK, WHATS NEXT?

By thewriterscorner | February 18, 2020 | Comments 0 Comment

After working hard, staying up late at night, waking up early to go to work, battling with Writers block and at long last, you’ve finished writing your book.

I know you’re eager for the next phase, because you’re like, “Now what?”. The fact is that when you finish writing a book, it’s only just the beginning.

In this article we’ll talk about the next thing you should do after writing a book. Click here

Give Yourself Space From Your Book

You need time to relax after writing a book and so does your book also. This is a way to help you get a better perspective of what the book is all about.

When you give your book some weeks or months to rest, you get new insights and a fresh perspective on what the book is all about and the places that needs adjustments.

Read Your Book

A second stage of getting a new perspective on your book is reading it from the beginning to the end. While doing so you’ll find yourself asking some questions.

It could be that you need to add some extra line here or there or you find some parts are not really necessary. It might be you need to rewrite some parts in a different way. Check this article.

Edit And Reconstruct Your Book

Now you’ve gotten a new perspective of where your book is, you can now start working on the second draft. This doesn’t include typo or grammatical errors but structure.

Now is when you write out new section to fill in the gap you found when reading your book. This is when you cut out parts that aren’t necessary and rewrite some lines for bettering understanding.

5 things you can do after writing your book

After this part, the overall look will look better than it did at first when you finished writing your book. Now you can publish or hire a Publishing firm to go on from there.

Read Other Books that Are Related To Your Genre

When you read other books relating to what you’ve written, you get to have an idea of what is in the market any how the titles of these books are constructed.

The Authors of these books may also tweet or blog about their book. Network with them and find out who their publisher is and see if you can get a recommendation.

GIve Your Book Out

In this part, you can give your book out to other people to read and proofread for you. They could include your friends, beta readers or an editor.

In this way you can now build a team that will take your book to it’s next level. While this is going on you can start writing another book.

This will also help take your mind off the other book in the hands of the editor. After this you can decide to self publish or give it out to as publishing firm.

A lot of people want to write a book but only a few actually finishes one. If you decide to self publish, you can enjoy the experience but if not give it to a publisher to do a great job for you.

Have you finished writing a book? How does it feel to be called an author? Share with us in the comments section.

HOW TO START WRITING A BOOK IN 5 EASY STEPS

By thewriterscorner | February 4, 2020 | Comments 0 Comment

Now you’ve gotten the perfect idea (or so you think) on how to start writing a book and the things you’ll need to know before writing that great book.

After cross checking the things you need to know before writing that book of your dreams we can now dive into how to start writing a book in 5 easy steps.

Create An Outline For Your Book

This is one of the first step you take in writing a book. Here you want to write down all the points that’s needed in your which could include the characters , scenes, story line, event and anything that makes up your book.

You’re mainly writing down all your main ideas and putting it all out on paper before grouping them into different outlines.

Let’s see outlining as a guide that could be flexible enough for later improvement or followed to the letter thereby eliminating much guesswork.

Get Into A State Of Writing

A State of writing ensures that there’s a creative flow of words when you actually start writing a book.

Some writers tend to lock up and go into what they assume to be Writers Block. Meanwhile, its also a state that writers don’t feel creative and tend to feel frozen.

To overcome this assumed state you could try going for long walks to clear your mind, socialize with friends or families, or just read a book by another author.

After doing most of these, you’ll find yourself back in a more creative state of writing as you’ve loosened up a bit. Now you can get back into writing and even write a book in a month.

Write Your First Draft

Your first draft is where the story starts to unfold as you jot down all ideas coming into your head as fast as you can.

Here your only concern should be writing all the ideas out of the best-book idea that comes with the outline you’re working with.

You don’t need to bother about how perfect your book would be, you are going to be tempted to edit, but don’t. For now, let the words flow.

How to start writing a book in 5 easy steps

Take a Break And Rewrite

Now you’re through with writing the draft, you can take some time off to chill and think about other things.

After this, you’ll be going back to your draft with a fresh eye that allows you see your work from a different perspective.

This is when you rewrite some plots and either add or fill in a gap to add more meaning to your book.

Now You Can Edit

You might be tempted to edit and proof read your book immediately you’re through but it’s advisable to hire the services of an editor after you’ve looked through your work.

You can also share some copies to people you trust to read and give you feedbacks on it to know what your readers would love to read.

With these few tips, you should be able to start writing your book and probably have most of your ideas written down before a month. Who’s ready to start?

Share your strategies with is in the comment box below.

Month: February 2020