Let’s face it. Writing is fun. It’s the revising we avoid. When we first write, our pen goes wherever our ideas lead; we create characters and situations, mold them and direct them at will. Then we sit back, marinating in the satisfaction of our finished work. Enter the dreaded voice of revision, whose sole purpose is to highlight all that stinks about our wonderful composition. Of course we don’t want to deal with it, and children are no different in this respect. But as Katherine Patterson says, revising is the process when spilled milk gets turned into ice cream. It’s necessary if our children are to become better writers. Even though the revision process isn’t always a child’s favorite part of writing, it doesn’t need to be a chore. With the following tips, it may even become an interesting, dare I say enjoyable, activity. 1.) Step back: After your child finishes a first draft, let her bask in her greatness. Don’t mention revising right away. Let her read the draft to you and talk about it. Then just have her put the draft aside for a few days before she takes it out again to revise. The extra time will allow her to wind down from all that energy she just spent writing it and will put the draft out of her mind. In turn, she will come back to her work with fresh eyes and a clear, less biased, perspective. She will not only be better able to identify weaknesses but she will also be more open to fixing them. 2.) Collaborate: A completely different set of eyes is always helpful in the revising process. If you don’t have other children in your home with which to workshop, get your child together with another homeschooler who is also working on a writing project. Teach them how to read and constructively comment on each other’s papers. Working with other children will help your child get feedback from a real audience and evaluate her own work through her readers’ eyes. 3.) Read aloud: Though often overlooked, it’s one of the most effective revising strategies. Reading a paper aloud helps the writer hear rhythm and voice. She will get a sense of where the piece flows and where it is stunted, where ideas are unclear or wordy, and where it goes off topic. When your child returns to her draft, have her read it aloud (alone if she is uncomfortable reading in front of others) and take notes when she finds something that needs to be changed, added to, or removed. 4.) Type it: If your child does not know how to type, it’s worth teaching her. It’s a skill that can be learned at a young age and will make revising and editing easier. Unless your child is a fluent typist, she should write the first draft, and then type it in a Microsoft Word document. The act of typing will itself highlight areas in need of change, but more than this, it will make revising and editing less tedious. If a sentence needs to be moved, she needs only to cut and paste to change it. If she needs to add a sentence or even a paragraph, she won’t need to rewrite the whole paper; she can just insert the new information. 5.) Work from paper: After your child types her draft, print a hard copy to work from when revising and editing. Often what gets overlooked on a computer screen will stand out on a hard copy; however, it will still be easier to change since the original is easy to access and manipulate on the computer.
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Everybody Is Different: Varied Characters Make For Believable Characters
No two people are alike. For that matter, no two animals are alike either! One mark of a great story is believable characters, each with his or her own distinct personality and habits. Author Kaley Birchfield is only eleven years old. Her story, “A Home for Barney” (the featured story from our March/April 2014 issue), is only six pages long. Somehow, in those six short pages, Kaley manages to bring to life a whole host of human and animal characters. How does she do it? There’s the narrator, Christy, a young woman who works at a goat farm. From the first sentence, we see that Christy loves nature. As the story goes on, we learn that she is emotional, loving, and a bit of a worrier. Christy’s co-worker, Marla, seems kind of slow at first. Little by little, we see that, while Marla may not say much, she is wise, and she feels things deeply. Their boss, Jenny, is a take charge kind of person, full of confidence. But she has a soft side and feels sad, like Christy does, when Barney the goat has to leave. Then there’s Barney and another goat, Mocha. They couldn’t be more different from each other. Barney is gentle, calm, and affectionate. Mocha is unfriendly and moody. Even the family that arrives at the end of the story has well-drawn characters, especially the bubbly, impulsive youngest sister, Autumn. It would be boring if Kaley simply listed each character’s distinguishing qualities. Instead, she shows us what each character is like through their words, actions, gestures, and speech. Marla seems unemotional, but the goodbye hug she gives Christy speaks volumes. Christy’s emotions are up and down as she and Barney are separated and reunited more than once. At different times Christy’s shoulders sag, she can’t sleep, she has a lump in her throat. She is overjoyed when Barney runs up to her after their separations. When Autumn realizes how sad Christy is to lose Barney, she blurts out her family’s address and tells Christy to come visit. Why do we write stories? Why do we read them? You can probably think of many answers to these questions. Maybe we like to leave our own lives for a little while and lose ourselves in the lives of others. Maybe we have feelings of sadness that we can’t express, and a sad story helps us tap into our own feelings and get them out. And no matter how young or how old we are, we can always learn. We can learn how to be better people, more loving toward each other and our pets, more understanding, better able to cope with loss and change. But before we can get all these benefits from a story, we must believe in it. We must believe that the characters are real.
Art Inspired Writing
“But I can’t think of anything to write about,” my kids cry as an excuse for daydreaming out the window. Then in an attempt to divert their attention from the window or to prevent a breakdown, I end up struggling along with them in the quest for a great idea. I’ve heard that the best ideas are often right in front of you, but it wasn’t until after I had fenced far too many complaints of writer’s block that I realized I had the answer to this problem all along. Over the years, I’ve used art to inspire my writing, creating an ekphrasis based on a Remedios Varo painting, or a haiku inspired by a photo of my grandpa as a boy; however, I had never thought to incorporate art right in my own home, in my children’s writing lessons. Who knows if that light bulb would have gone on had I not stumbled upon the article, Ten Ideas That Get Kids Writing, which relates the story of a Chicago-based teacher who used sculpture to inspire her students’ writing. “Of course, why didn’t I think of using art before?” Painting, sculpture, music, photography, dance, the arts are a wonderful way to get a child’s creative juices flowing. Where is this boy going? Now when ideas are slow to come, I have a supply of photos on hand that often help solve the problem. The photos include shots of family, friends, previous vacations, and nature; pictures of paintings and sculptures from galleries or the Internet; as well as clips from children’s magazines. I give them three or four photos to choose from so as not to overwhelm them; after they choose a photo, we talk about what’s happening in it, how it makes us feel, and what it makes us think of. Many times this process alone sparks an idea, but if not, I’ll provide an additional prompting question based on the photo, like “Where is this person going?” “Why is she happy/sad?” “Why did the artist use… (Fill in the blank)?” These questions may lead them in various directions from making up a story about someone in the photo to writing about the artist or creating something seemingly unrelated to the photo altogether. Not so long ago, my daughter struggled to come up with a poem using a repeating pattern. After looking through some photos, she chose one of our cats, and here’s what she came up with: My Calm and Gentle Cat As I wander around the house, I see my cat lying on the bed. As I gently pick him up, I feel as if I’m holding a cloud. As I rock him side to side in my arms, love rushes through my heart. As I see him close his eyes and fall asleep, I gently lay him down, and his soft purring fills me with peace. Art doesn’t have to be saved as a last resort. When you have more time to plan, why not develop a lesson around a trip to the local art gallery, symphony hall, or dance performance? These are great opportunities not only to help children appreciate other art forms but also to inspire their writing. What emotion do you feel when listening to the violinist? Write a lyrical poem about it. What story are the dancers telling? Write a fairy tale about the lead dancer. Whether it’s pre-planned or off-the-cuff, art in various forms not only inspires ideas but it can also help you teach genre, such as poetry and short story, as well as specific writing techniques. If you’re not sure how to start, Literacyhead is a helpful site that offers numerous writing lesson plans using images. So let the arts move you.
