Getting started

Starting a story is the easiest thing in the world for some people, impossible for others. Sometimes my students will pick up a pen, open their book, and immediately start writing. Then there are days when they drum their fingers, stare out the window, or sigh and slump in their seat. Nothing is coming to them!

On those days, we have a few little tools and tricks to kickstart an idea. One of them is story dice! These sets of dice with different pictures on each side can wake up your imagination. I have some that are fairy tale themed, with magic wands, frogs, storms, castles, and dragons. Another set is more random with a treasure chest, lightning, a flower, a rainbow, or a fire. Whatever you roll on the dice, you have to put in your story somehow. Or maybe you’ve already started a story but you hit a dead end: roll a dice and insert whatever comes up as a new character, problem, or obstacle.

But even then, you might roll the dice twenty times and not be inspired by any of the combos. What do you do?

Well, if you’re just trying to get your pen moving and get words on paper, you can free write. That just means you start writing whatever comes into your mind (and pen). Maybe it starts as, “I don’t know what to write, I don’t know what to write…” But then you look out the window. “I don’t know what to write and there’s a bird sitting on a very wobbly branch and it looks like it’s going to break,” and suddenly you have the beginning of a story.

Not every writing session has to end with a fully finished story! Sometimes you just need to get one single idea down on paper. Sometimes you’re just scribbling random words. But every time you sit down and get that pen moving, you’re doing SOMETHING. And out of those scribbles might just come the littlest seed of an idea that you can plant and water and grow into something much bigger.

Here are some ways to get your pen going! If you feel like you need to write, but you don’t know what, try:

• Picture prompts can kickstart lots of ideas! Look for pictures of weird, silly, outlandish things. A flying whale! A baby driving a bus! What on earth is going on, and why?
• Use writing prompts. You can find lots online. I recommend searching for writing prompts on Kiddle for kid-friendly websites.
• What if? Think about a book you’ve read lately. Choose one thing that happened — a problem, an obstacle, an interesting character — and think about how someone else might deal with it differently. For example, if the person who climbed the beanstalk was a grouchy old lady, how would that story go?
• Think of a big exciting action moment in a TV show, movie, or book, and make that action the start of your story. Keep the action, but change everything else. Maybe start your story with an accidental time-jump into medieval France, or begin right in the middle of a huge fight with the school bully. What will happen next?
• Go outside! Seriously. Put the pen down and spend 5-15 minutes outside watching people, looking at trees, listening to the world around you. Fresh air and a break from feeling pressured to write can be a big help, plus you might see something that inspires you. Look at what the people around you are doing. Are they playing, fighting, being kind, solving a problem? I do like to sit quietly somewhere and listen to what people are saying. I might hear a funny little snippet of conversation that gives me an idea…
• One bite at a time. The idea of writing a whole story is scary today? Don’t! Write one good sentence. Maybe then you’ll want to write another. And another. If not, that’s fine. But if you like what you’ve got so far, keep going.
• Keep a list of ideas. If you have an idea but you don’t know where to start, write the idea down somewhere safe, like the back of your notebook. One day you might be ready to take that idea and run with it.
• Pick a person or object and describe it with lots and lots of detail. Really study it or them hard and write it all down. If you don’t find a way to make a story from it, whatever! But writing good description is a good skill — and maybe you can use that description in another piece of writing in the future.
• Write some bullet points. If you have an idea but don’t know where to start, make a few short notes. Give yourself time to sit and let ideas come to you about your story, and jot them down in a few words. Then when you’re ready to write, you already have some things to include.

What else have you tried? What works for you? Talk to your classmates about where they find ideas for stories, or ask your teacher for more great tips.