Improve Your Child's Creative Writing Skills

The ability to write well is vitally important to your child's success in life. Writing well can help your child succeed academically and professionally. Moreover, creative writing can be an important therapeutic outlet for your child to imagine new worlds and to express his or her feelings. Help your child improve her creative writing skills by supporting her creativity, playing word games, and sparking her imagination with clever writing prompts.

Steps

Encouraging Your Child to Love Writing

1. Read to your child every night. Reading and writing go hand-in-hand. Good writers are well read in various subjects and writing styles. Your child's teacher and local librarian can help you select books that are appropriate to your child's age and interests.
   • In addition to reading to your child, have your child read to you if she is old enough.
   • Ask your child questions about her favorite books. Why does she like some books and not others? Help her to develop her tastes as a reader and to be thoughtful about words, characters, settings, and plots.
   • If your child has a favorite author or book series, you might also consider taking your child to see the author speak or sign books in order to inspire your child to write.
2. Create time for reading and writing. Make sure your child's schedule isn't packed with other activities. Reading and writing take a lot of time and mental energy, so you cannot expect your child to write a story in between soccer practice and piano lessons. Let your child explore the world of words during times when she can relax, breathe, contemplate, and think freely.
3. Provide your child with a place and materials for creative writing. Just as children should have a quiet place to study and do their other homework, the same is true for their writing assignments. Ideally, this would be a desk in the child's room, away from the television. If your child wishes to have privacy, be sure that you afford that to him: do not read over his shoulder unless he says you can. A child's writing area should include the following materials:
   • A notebook or journal
   • Pens, pencils, and erasers
   • A bookshelf to keep inspiration nearby
   • An age-appropriate dictionary
   • A thesaurus. A thesaurus isn't necessary for very young children, but it can be helpful for older children who wish to expand their vocabularies.
4. Focus on creativity, not grammar. If your child is to succeed as a creative writer, she must learn how to experiment, take risks, and think outside the box. Don't discourage your child's creativity by harping on her spelling, grammar, or punctuation. Feel free to gently correct these mechanical errors, but do not make your child feel like she has failed a homework assignment. Instead, praise her creativity and talk to her about her ideas.
5. Show interest in your child's ideas. You might be your child's sole audience for her stories for quite a while. Encourage her to love creativity and writing by demonstrating your keen interest in her ideas, thoughts, and stories. Ask her questions about her stories that show that you were paying attention. Compliment your child when she has done something well, such as come up with an interesting character, write a funny plot, or use a difficult word correctly in a sentence.
6. Display your child's work. Children love it when their own drawings, stories, and paintings are displayed for the whole family to see. Keep your child motivated to write by putting their stories up on the fridge or placing them on a bulletin board.
   • You can also work with your child to make a special "book" out of her stories, including homemade illustrations and decorations. Stitch the book together with ribbon or yarn to create a special venue for her creativity.
7. Play stenographer. If your child is too young to write and spell out long stories, ask your child to come up with stories out loud. Write down your child's thoughts and read them back to her. You can do this with very young children to help them learn to connect spoken and written words or with older children to help them focus.
8. Write and read along with your child. Be a model reader and writer for your child. Demonstrate to her that reading and writing are valuable and fun activities. The more your child sees you reading and writing, the more likely she will be to continue the practice on her own.
9. Correspond with friends and family often. Sometimes the most valuable writing activities are those that build and maintain important personal connections. Develop email or letter-writing correspondence with friends and family members and ask your child to assist you. If your child is excited to receive and send letters, your child might apply this excitement to other writing activities.

Playing Creative Writing Games

1. Incorporate writing activity into imaginative play. Your child likely already plays a number of fascinating, imaginative games. Perhaps he likes to pretend that he is someone famous or enjoys playing "cops and robbers." Figure out a writing activity that fits into your child's interests and enthusiasms to spark his creative writing talents. For example, you might:
   • Ask that he write a letter from the perspective of a character he likes to play
   • Suggest that he write about "a day in the life" of his imaginary friend
   • Help your child invent an imaginary country and ask him to write about what people do there
   • Ask your child to create a "mashup" story that includes his favorite characters from completely different worlds
2. Play word games. There are a number of games and toys that can help build your child's vocabulary. These can all help your child develop a love of words and learn how to use different words appropriately. Some popular word games and toys include:
   • Scrabble
   • Mad Libs
   • Magnetic poetry
   • Boggle
   • Balderdash
   • Catchphrase
   • Taboo
3. Play a collaborative story-writing game. If your child is shy or uncomfortable coming up with her own creative writing ideas, propose a game where the two of you can write a story together. Try to keep the story silly and light-hearted in order to keep your child interested and engaged. A few game ideas include:
   • Write a story by switching off each sentence. First you write a sentence, then your child continues with the next sentence, then you take over again, etc. Try to add unexpected surprises and goofy twists to keep the story fun and exciting.
   • Draw a picture and ask your child to imagine a story behind the picture.
   • Make a list of words by having you and your child point to random words in a dictionary. Then brainstorm a way to use all of those words in a single story.
4. Keep the games short. Depending on how old your child is, your child might have a limited attention span. Keep the games age-appropriate and brief in order to keep your child from becoming discouraged. Limit these games to 15-30 minutes and allow your child to quit early if she seems bored, stressed out, or tired. Remember that these games must be fun in order to work.

Helping Your Child Find Things to Write About

1. Ask questions about the world around you. Develop your child's curiosity in order to develop his creative writing skills. Ask your child questions about the world around you in order to spark his curiosity and creativity. Having interesting, thoughtful conversations in the home will help your child develop the curiosity and vocabulary necessary to becoming a creative writer. For example, you might:
   • Ask your child to look out a car window and think about where people on the sidewalk are headed
   • Point out animals while you're walking and ask your child to think about what the lives of these animals are like
   • Ask your child to come up with a new name for his favorite park
   • Ask your child what his favorite building is and why he likes it so much
2. Ask your child to rewrite a famous story. Sometimes children might not be able to come up with completely unique characters, settings, and plots. In order to get them to practice writing creatively, consider having your child write a new version of an old classic, such as a fairy tale. What would your child change about the story to make it his own?
3. Have your child write a story around a random sentence. An effective writing prompt can be to pick a sentence out of your child's favorite book and asking her to write a story around that sentence. See if your child can come up with a story that departs from the original source material to teach her how versatile creative writing can be.
4. Have your child "read" wordless books. Wordless books can be an excellent way to have your child practice coming up with story ideas. These books have intricate, whimsical pictures that can allow your child to brainstorm an infinite number of new stories and ideas. Check out or purchase a few wordless books and ask your child to figure out what the words might be.

Building Essential Writing Skills

1. Encourage daily writing. The best way to improve writing skills, no matter the writer's age, is through regular practice. Your child might be getting a lot of good practice at school. However, if your child's school provides limited writing practice or if you're homeschooling your child, you may want to include additional formal writing lessons at home. Even having your child write very straightforward things (such as what he did at school that day or what kinds of snacks he wants to eat) can be excellent writing practice. It doesn't always have to be creative writing practice to be effective.
   • Recognize, however, that sometimes children will be reluctant to write. Let them take some time away from writing if they need to (unless they have to complete a school assignment).
2. Encourage your child to keep a journal. A daily journal can be a terrific way for a young writer to expand her vocabulary, develop a unique writing style, and learn how to express complicated thoughts in words. This builds essential skills and gives children an important outlet for sharing their thoughts and feelings.
3. Encourage your child to plan before writing difficult things. Sometimes the best writing practice is freewriting when your child simply writes whatever comes into her mind. However, if your child is a bit older and wants to write a longer or more ambitious story, encourage your child to make a writing plan first. Make sure your child has a sense of what she will write about, what the point of her story is, and (if relevant) what the assignment entails. Does she have a plan for the beginning, middle, and end of the story?
4. Resist the urge to do the writing yourself. Perfectionism can be harmful to your child's creativity and self-confidence. Rather than fixing your child's errors and mistakes, have your child reread his own writing and ask him what he thinks about it. Let him locate his own errors and encourage him to fix things himself. Never take over and rewrite his story yourself.
   • For example, you could underline the words he has misspelled without giving him the correct spelling. Ask him to look up the correct spelling in the dictionary.
   • Be sure that you provide your child with positive feedback as well as gentle suggestions for improvements.
5. Provide fun opportunities for revision. One of the most important skills your child will learn is how to revise first drafts into final drafts. Encourage your child to make changes to his story and to work hard at improving it. For example, you can ask him to use sticky notes to build off of the first draft of a story in order to add more details, clarify his language, and vary his sentence structures. Let your child know that practice and perseverance are essential to the writing process.

Tips

• Remember that, as a parent, you are a creative writing helper: not a coach or a teacher. Do not act as though creative writing is a chore or obligation. If your child is going to be an effective creative writer, she must be passionate about it.
• Stay positive. You can point out where your child has made grammatical errors, but you should keep most of your commentary positive and enthusiastic. Be honest with your compliments, but try to emphasize what your child is doing well more than where he needs to improve.
• Be aware of your child's writing training in school. Many schools provide excellent writing coaching. You can have a better sense of your own role in your child's writing skills if you know what your child's teachers are focusing on in class.

Warnings

• Don't force a particular form of writing on your child (short story, poetry, etc) if your child shows no interest in it. Encourage your child in the areas of writing he/she does show an interest in.
• Some children show little interest in writing because they happen to enjoy other activities more. However, some children are nervous about writing because of an underlying learning disability. If your child is consistently behind her peers on spelling, writing, and vocabulary, talk to your child's teachers and learning specialists to see if perhaps a learning disability is at the root of these problems.

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• Develop Kindergarten Writing Skills
• Develop Creativity in Preschool
• Teach Language Arts to Elementary School Students
• Teach Your Child Problem Solving Skills
• Improve Art Skills in Your Child

Sources and Citations

See also

• Teach Your Child Sight Words