On Monday, I shared my love of both teaching and writing creative writing, and offered you a tip to help your child combine photographs from a day out into an exciting story. I now add to this three super happy, super important gifts: the photographs!
As I near completion of the 11plus Creative Writing Fiction Models guide, book 3 in the Creative Writing Series, I’ve just finished a story about cakes, and am, this morning, halfway through my last story, a story about two very different trees and a villain called Lord Hardsilver, inspired by a visit to the incredible Port Meirion, a creative writing paradise!
How did I come up with the idea for this latest story? I took countless photos on the day, chose three, and then stared at these three pictures below and imagined a way to connect them.
Aren’t they spectacular? All from one place!
Your child can do the same with photos chosen from a day out anywhere. After choosing three pictures, encourage your child to plan a possible story that links the photos, with between 3-6 steps. HAPPY TIP: Your young writer could even repeat this and come up with several plans for different stories from the same photos, which is a fantastic planning exercise to build planning muscle! To help you see what I mean, here’s one of the rough plans I came up with for the fantastic photos above:
- Lord Hardsilver has persuaded/bullied the old secretive lady to sell him land on a remote peninsula.
- Ancient forest, a giver to nature – a spirit lives to tend it.
- He wants the rare wood, and to build a village on it to trap people to work for him.
- As he works, the tree screams. The men are frightened.
- He ignores them, sacks any who rebel and brings in more desperate people.
- The spirit through the tree threatens he will be made part of the land, but he laughs and starts to chop at the tree.
- All the trees scream, deafening and hurting, vines begin grabbing, soil swallows workers. Some run for the boat, but it has fused with the island – no escape.
- Lord Hardsilver is turned into a tree stump. Animals come and slide coins into him so he can feel the pain of money that he caused nature.
Feel free to use this as a plan for your child’s writing. In any case, the story your child writes for their photos will likely have a structure and connection, since the pictures you took were from the same area, as you can see in the pictures above.
Why does this power of three work? As we spoke about on Monday: “the act of linking the pictures possibly takes advantage of the fact we humans are very good at finding patterns or associations between given objects – even when there is no real link. For example, if I ask you to imagine a story or create a link that could connect a tortoise and a paperclip, your brain will probably do it (perhaps the tortoise is a jewel thief who uses the paperclip to pick locks from a Lego house, keeping the treasure under her shell), whereas, if I had asked you to think of associations that connect only to a tortoise, it’s unlikely your brain would have thought about a paperclip!”
Okay, today is ‘finish story’ day. I really hope you enjoyed the photographs. Port Meirion was a life-changing creative writing experience for me. I came back with a whole book of story ideas.
In the meantime, if you think your child would enjoy or benefit from creative writing lessons from a teacher who absolutely loves writing, please do reach out to me. With the 11plus exams nearly over for this year, I’ll be taking on five online students. I’m currently teaching Y4, Y5, Y8, Y10 and Y11 students, preparing for both the 11plus and GCSE English Language exams, from Halifax to London to Kent. Please email leemottram@11plushappy.com.
Happy Writing!
Lee, London.
