Story Ideas for Reluctant Writers

Homeschool Story Starters

Mar 15, 2009

Some days, your children may have a million ideas for a story or journal entry, but other days, they may appreciate a few ideas to get them started.

Many children begin spilling their thoughts and stories happily onto paper as soon as they can hold a pencil. It takes a bit more creativity to lure other kids to the desk or keyboard. Here are a few ideas to entice your reluctant writers.

Writing Ideas For Beginning Writers

For children whose handwriting is not fast enough to keep up with their ideas, try writing the basic story for them and then allowing them to rewrite it or type it. This can result in more detailed, creative stories.

Open an art book, one that has full-color plates of beautiful paintings. (This can be by artists from the time period that you are studying in History or the place that you are studying in Geography.) Encourage your kids to write a story about one of the paintings. Who are the people? What are they doing? What happens next? Have the children illustrate their stories with your own paintings or drawings.

Make acrostics, poems that have each line beginning with a letter of a name or other word, like this one for Neal :

Have your child pretend to work at a newspaper. Tell her to write a headline and a story about a birthday party for a hamster, or a cow that paints pictures, or what happened when fifty-nine owls flew into the child's bedroom.

Start a notebook of lists. Collect your children's lists of six things that make them hungry, or sleepy, or seven things that scare them, or three things that make them feel embarrassed.

Story Starters For Growing Wordsmiths

Novel Possibilities For Accomplished Authors

Imagine riding on a bus with a really strange person. Maybe he is constantly singing oldies loudly, or petting an imaginary green ferret, or talking to dead historical persons on his cell phone.

Monty Python once had a skit about Olympics for unusual people doing strange things. There was a competition for being first to be eaten by a crocodile, hurdles for people who think that they are chickens, etc. Try your hand at making your own Olympic Events for the Odd.

Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling has has promised to write an appendix to the Harry Potter series that gives the details of the stacks of notebooks that she has written about her characters, much of which did not make it into the books. Develop a few characters yourself, even if you as of yet have no story. Include the person's (or talking animal's) age, physical description, talents, fears, birthday, favorite and least favorite things, favorite books, games, sports, ways to spend the day, friends, family, etc.

Fantasy authors David and Leigh Eddings started their Belgariad series by sketching a map of the continents of an imaginary land, and developed the stories from there. Draw your own land, complete with names of cities and geographical features. Then try writing a story sketch that could take place there.

It's a writer's cliche to end a story by having the whole drama revealed to be a dream....what would happen, though , if you woke up tomorrow and found that your current life is really a dream? What kind of world do you really live in? Who are you, really?

Open a baby name book and pick a name that intrigues you. Describe the sort of person who should have that name.

On your next car trip or doctor's office wait,a bit of creativity can add up to children who are learning instead of bored. If you have favorite games that you play with your children while waiting, please add them to the comments section below.

The copyright of the article Story Ideas for Reluctant Writers in Homeschooling is owned by Patti Miller. Permission to republish Story Ideas for Reluctant Writers in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.