There are a lot of science-based ideas expressed in everyday speech. This activity challenges you to identify some of those expressions, think about what they mean, research them to find out the science behind them, and then write about some characters experiencing those phenomena or expressing the emotions they describe. You might literally put a character in a situation governed by a scientific effect, or you might use the science as a metaphor for the person’s behavior. We often speak of people “having chemistry.” When you get to the stage in life where you start falling in love you may tell your best friend about this new love in your life that “I felt this chemistry!” They mean, they felt a strong reaction to the person, like bubbling chemicals in a test tube. People say of some couples that they are “so different,” but “opposites attract.” This is a reference to magnets. The plus and minus sides of the magnet are tightly drawn together, whereas you cannot get either plus/plus or minus/minus combinations to attach however hard you try. They “repell” one another. People will say of someone who shows big emotions that they “erupted like a volcano.” When an audience is sitting waiting for a speaker who they really want to hear they might say, “there was electricity in the room,” or “the atmosphere was electric”. This is the idea that the room feels full of pent up electrical energy—like everyone’s hair is standing up on end, or the pressure is high, as if there is about to be an electrical storm with all the drama of thunder and lightning. I want you to think of other expressions, like, “they don’t mix, they are like oil and water” and then do some research into the science behind the expression. Why don’t oil and water mix? What is really happening in a volcano? How do storms work, and what stages do they go through? Choose your science-based expression, gain a clearer idea about what the science is through some research, and then use these details to inform how you set your scene and portray the motivations behind your characters’ actions. As an example, under a volcano (which might look like a big silent hunk of rock most of the time) there is a molten pool of magma. You might think of this as a pool of tumultuous emotions. You will learn that before an eruption there is usually an increase in earthquakes in the surrounding area as the ground starts to shift. We usually can’t feel these shifts, but they are important to the science of volcanos, and helpful to a writer using volcanic activity as a metaphor. What is the role of the these earthquakes, what do they mean, and how might you show characters or a situation that is about to erupt like a volcano experiencing or displaying these more or less silent signs? To see an example of writing informed by well-researched knowledge of woodland animals and weather, read “Autumn Thunder”; or another, “The Highest Football,” that uses the idea “opposites attract” as a springboard for the rest of the story.
Teaching Writing
Writing Activity: Using the power of “show, don’t tell”
Writers often hear the advice: “show, don’t tell.” But what does it mean? Read and study a story from the Stone Soup archives to see the power of this technique, and then try it for yourself. Activity Eleven-year-old Ari Rubin’s story, “Lindy,” was first published in Stone Soup magazine in 1993, and it has been included in all the editions of our anthology, the Stone Soup Book of Friendship Stories, since then. To prepare for this activity, read “Lindy.” Consider the way that the story unfolds. You’ll notice that the whole story is “told” to us by a strong narrator’s voice. But he doesn’t explicitly tell us the real story underneath the story. He shows us the various events as they happened to him, so that—like him—we don’t understand Lindy’s bigger story until the very end. Then, we notice all the hints dropped along the way. We see the journey the narrator has been on, and how he got to where he is now in terms of his feelings about Lindy. This approach makes you want to read the story again. And then you see that the clues were there all along, cleverly laced in to the narrative. In “Lindy” the author brilliantly controls what he shows us, what he tells us, how, and when. This mastery of the content makes a complex emotional tale come across in an authentic voice that sounds simple and matter-of-fact. The author demonstrates how much more powerful it can be to reveal things to the reader through action and dialogue, instead of listing and explaining all the underlying thoughts and feelings in the order they happen. Read “Lindy” again with a pencil in your hand, and mark the points in the story where something happens, or a clue is dropped, that you only recognised as a clue when you read the story the second time. Now, take a look at one of your story ideas; one that you have developed enough that you know everything about your characters, where they are going in the story, and what happens in the end. Think about when you want the reader to know all those things. Think about how you might structure your story and what clues you might be able to give along the way, and where you might drop those hints. Try to identify the crucial events or moments in the story that relate to the ending, and think about what might your characters do or say or observe at those points, without the words that literally tell us ever coming out of their mouths. How can you give your readers just enough information to mean that the truth revealed right at the end has been signposted, but never explicitly given away, in the course of the story?
Guest Post: Creative Writing Activities to Engage Young Writers
Every young writer is looking for an outlet. Some will choose to write stories. Others will try poetry. Some will even have a go at fanfiction, short stories, blogging, script writing or something else entirely. But each of them will have their own unique ideas and writing voice that they’re developing; you only need to look at the number of teens that publish their writing in online communities like Wattpad and Archive of Our Own to show that there are countless teenagers out there with overflowing imaginations and the urge to connect with others through the art of storytelling. Of course, online communities have their pitfalls as well as their benefits. So what about writing as a group, sitting together face to face with other like-minded aspiring writers? Trying out new writing styles, building friendships, sharing story ideas – sounds great, right? But what sort of writing activities work best for getting teens to write together in a group? If you know some friends that love writing and you want to try it together with them, here are three ideas to get you started. Thinking on your feet Prompts drawn at random from a hat are a surefire way to generate great ideas for one key reason; they give writers direction. Every writer out there knows the horrible feeling of staring at a blank piece of paper with no idea what to write. Prompts from a hat avoid that problem by providing a rough outline, but simultaneously the freedom to explore it in your own way and tell a story unique to you. Random prompts also encourage writers to adapt quickly and put aside any preconceived notions they have about the topic, with the random selection having the potential to lead into some fantastic discussions with other group members as everyone shares their prompt and their initial ideas. For example, if you were doing a creative writing group session on dystopian stories, you could come up with a series of prompts for everyone to draw that focus on an element of society that the dystopia is centred around (eg one prompt could be something along the lines of, ‘Society becomes obsessed with physical appearance – plastic surgery is seen as not just normal but a necessity to ‘fix’ people, with even the slightest physical blemish or deformity looked down on as being horrifying and disgusting…’ whilst another could be something like, ‘Conformity is so deeply engrained into the social norm that everyone acts almost identical and follows a strict regime – even wearing bright colours is enough to make you an outcast in your community…’). The prompts don’t need to be long – a sentence opener, a title, even a collection of random words will do fine – but whatever writing style or genre you’re focusing on they can plant the seeds perfectly for young writers to flourish. Writing and Gaming – when worlds collide… Ever heard of a concept called ‘gamification’? It sounds complicated, but basically it means applying typical elements of games (eg point scoring and rules of play) to other activities. It’s an idea that fits perfectly with writing activities – rather than just getting everyone in a group to sit quietly and write to the same theme or prompt, get them to engage through roleplaying and similar styles of performance based games. Fantasy is a genre that is perfect for gamification – imagine that everyone in the group was all given the same task of writing about a magical quest, but each had to write about a different path? For instance, say your quest was to collect ingredients for a potion – each person in the group could write about collecting a different ingredient and have a different magical spell or weapon to help them on their quest. It’s like Dungeons and Dragons come to life! Making it silly? Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it… Making a writing task deliberately silly and nonsensical might sound counter-productive, but there’s method to the madness. For a start, it’s a great way to make the writing activity interactive – laughter is a great method to break down those barriers of social awkwardness, shyness, uncertainty and so on to get everyone in the group feeling easygoing and friendly. And it can help with the actual writing too. For example, a horror writing session could focus on having everyone come up with a silly title to a cheesy, low-budget horror movie – inevitably everyone would come up with corny, laugh out loud titles like ‘Curse of the Evil Lawnmower’ or ‘Attack of the Undead Pandas’! When everyone comes up with their title, they would then have to share it with the person next to them, who would be tasked with writing a horror story based on their ridiculous title. But even though the title would be silly, the regular ‘rules’ of horror, such as building suspense and creating frightening scenarios would still be in play – just think of all the creative ways in which lawnmowers or pandas could be written to make them genuinely creepy or threatening! Those are just a handful of ideas on how to make writing in a group both entertaining and inspirational. Got any suggestions of your own? Get in touch to share your ideas. Find out more about Igniting Writing here. Plus, check them out on social media: Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr.
