Writing a story is a wonderful way for a child to develop his or her ability to create and communicate. It helps children to organize their thoughts and find appropriate words to communicate it in an effective manner.
To start with, children can write a small paragraph about anything they wish. As parents or guardians, we need to find time to give them a constructive feedback and inspire them to develop their interest. Once they learn the fun of sentence structure and the fundamentals of writing, they can start writing small stories on topics they are comfortable with. Allow them to write independently and once they feel they require help, support them.
Focus on creativity – Don’t crib if you find any grammatical mistakes. As children they will make mistakes. But you must take care to identify what they are trying to communicate and guide them accordingly. As they start writing regularly, their will gradually improve their grammatical skills.
Structure of story – Read out some short stories to them during leisure time, so that they know what exactly is a short story about. They should also understand what is the structure of a story like it needs to have an introduction, a middle and an ending. Help the child to create a storyboard so that he or she is not stuck or feels uninterested.
Define characters – Every story has some characters and one or two protagonist. Each character has a definite role to play and they are all interlinked. Children should understand not to create unnecessary characters who don’t fit into the story. They must also understand how to make the protagonist stand out, or how to weave a story around the protagonist.
Central theme and location – Children need to know that each story has a theme and the situations take place in some locations. They should learn to picturise the situations, so that they become more involved while writing. They also should know the importance of sticking to the central theme so that the story does not shift directions.
Good ending – In the course of writing the story, be careful not to create any situations which has no answer. While developing a plot, children should know how to address the issues or else, they will be stuck. So create less complicated plots and give the story a good interesting ending.
Purpose of the story – It would be better if children know the purpose of their story. What are they trying to tell, is it a moral story or a scientific story or a comedy, a tragedy, is the story trying to communicate some contemporary issues, they need to be clear on the purpose.
Make it interesting – Discuss about some story starters, or read some starting lines of well-known stories. This will help children to analyse or contemplate on how to make the beginning as interesting as possible.
Connection between beginning and ending – A story will make a better reading, if there is a connection between the beginning and ending. If you find some missing information, try to help the child to fill it up. The more they think, the more creative they become.
Encourage the child to read and re-read the story to find his or her mistakes if any, and finally ask the child to make a final version, with a title, cover page, name of the author, a forward and in the back page you can give a small write up about the author to make the child feel special.
Story writing helps in making a child self-discipline, improves language and grammatical skills, enables a child to think critically and become more creative besides broadens their understanding towards life in general. As a parent or guardian never disregard your child’s interest for writing, rather support and encourage them to make their interest their passion.
