Melanie Weiss's Blog - Posts Tagged "creative-writing"
THE SIX-WORD STORY IN THE CLASSROOM: BRILLIANT!
Flash fiction is a genre of fiction that involves telling a story using between 5 and 1,500 words. Today, we are going to focus on the smaller side of that scale:
Flat tire.
New Job.
No Job?
This may be just six short words but in the right combination it says everything you need to know. Writing a six-word story can be fun for every age and makes an excellent creative writing assignment that encourages students to use precise, concise language. It's wonderful, isn't it, how six little words can be strung together to say something so much BIGGER.
Six-word stories are a great way to help students get more comfortable with writing short stories and poems. Since April is National Poetry Month, start with a six-word story assignment before moving into haikus and other forms of free verse poetry, such as spoken word poetry. Prompts for six-word stories are endless. (You can find countless examples online.)
Adding the six-word story to your curriculum offers students an interactive exercise in thinking creatively as they share these stories with their classmates. The stories are often goofy, usually fun, sometimes serious or head-scratching, but always entertaining.
I knew I had to work the six-word story into my Young Adult Novel, Spoken, because the novel takes place partly at a fictionalized version of Oak Park and River Forest High School in Illinois, which has a robust Spoken Word Club, and is the high school that Ernest Hemingway attended and graduated from in 1917.
Ernest Hemingway has been credited with writing the first six-word story, though this is one of those myths that continues to live despite being debunked.
The weight of connecting six well-thought-out words cannot be denied. We ALL have it within us to unleash that power and create our own six-word masterpiece.
I thought it may be easiest to borrow from Spoken and allow the novel's Spoken Word Club Teacher Patrick Collins to explain:
Mr. Collins walks in the room and strides up to white board at the front of the classroom. He turns to us and bows slightly. “Today we will be writing flash fiction. Does anybody know what that means?”
Mr. Collins points to a student in one of the front rows who has her hand straight up in the air.
“It’s telling a story but with not a lot of words.”
“Yes, that’s pretty much it Gina,” says Mr. Collins.
He turns to the whiteboard and writes:
For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn.
“This has been attributed to Ernest Hemingway. One of the greatest writers of the 20th century. It’s an extreme example of a story packed into just six words.”
“Your mission today is to write just six brilliant words that tell a story. Think about the message you want to convey and what imagery you want to represent.”
...
“Now let’s spend about ten minutes and I want each of you to write your own six-word story,” he says. “Make each of your six words shimmer, like a brilliant piece of art.”
“No pressure, right Mr. Collins?” jokes Jordan.
We bend over our desks, pens in hand, diving down into our thoughts. The room is pure silence except for the scribbling, the scratching out of phrases, a few toes taping.
After the ten minutes, students start sharing their stories with Mr. Collins as he captures the musings on the whiteboard.
There are ways to stretch this assignment further. Students could illustrate their short stories. A student could pass the story to another classmate and that classmate could draw what the story is telling them. Consider assigning a six-word memoir, which offers students the opportunity to find a concise way to share who they are with their teacher and classmates.
The beauty of the six-word story is simple: One classroom, countless stories, students soar.
__________________________________________
Melanie Weiss is the author of the Young Adult Novel, Spoken, which is a winner of the Readers' Favorite International Book Award for Young Adult-Social Issues and the Young Adult Novel, Crossing Lines, which was published in July 2020.
Flat tire.
New Job.
No Job?
This may be just six short words but in the right combination it says everything you need to know. Writing a six-word story can be fun for every age and makes an excellent creative writing assignment that encourages students to use precise, concise language. It's wonderful, isn't it, how six little words can be strung together to say something so much BIGGER.
Six-word stories are a great way to help students get more comfortable with writing short stories and poems. Since April is National Poetry Month, start with a six-word story assignment before moving into haikus and other forms of free verse poetry, such as spoken word poetry. Prompts for six-word stories are endless. (You can find countless examples online.)
Adding the six-word story to your curriculum offers students an interactive exercise in thinking creatively as they share these stories with their classmates. The stories are often goofy, usually fun, sometimes serious or head-scratching, but always entertaining.
I knew I had to work the six-word story into my Young Adult Novel, Spoken, because the novel takes place partly at a fictionalized version of Oak Park and River Forest High School in Illinois, which has a robust Spoken Word Club, and is the high school that Ernest Hemingway attended and graduated from in 1917.
Ernest Hemingway has been credited with writing the first six-word story, though this is one of those myths that continues to live despite being debunked.
The weight of connecting six well-thought-out words cannot be denied. We ALL have it within us to unleash that power and create our own six-word masterpiece.
I thought it may be easiest to borrow from Spoken and allow the novel's Spoken Word Club Teacher Patrick Collins to explain:
Mr. Collins walks in the room and strides up to white board at the front of the classroom. He turns to us and bows slightly. “Today we will be writing flash fiction. Does anybody know what that means?”
Mr. Collins points to a student in one of the front rows who has her hand straight up in the air.
“It’s telling a story but with not a lot of words.”
“Yes, that’s pretty much it Gina,” says Mr. Collins.
He turns to the whiteboard and writes:
For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn.
“This has been attributed to Ernest Hemingway. One of the greatest writers of the 20th century. It’s an extreme example of a story packed into just six words.”
“Your mission today is to write just six brilliant words that tell a story. Think about the message you want to convey and what imagery you want to represent.”
...
“Now let’s spend about ten minutes and I want each of you to write your own six-word story,” he says. “Make each of your six words shimmer, like a brilliant piece of art.”
“No pressure, right Mr. Collins?” jokes Jordan.
We bend over our desks, pens in hand, diving down into our thoughts. The room is pure silence except for the scribbling, the scratching out of phrases, a few toes taping.
After the ten minutes, students start sharing their stories with Mr. Collins as he captures the musings on the whiteboard.
There are ways to stretch this assignment further. Students could illustrate their short stories. A student could pass the story to another classmate and that classmate could draw what the story is telling them. Consider assigning a six-word memoir, which offers students the opportunity to find a concise way to share who they are with their teacher and classmates.
The beauty of the six-word story is simple: One classroom, countless stories, students soar.
__________________________________________
Melanie Weiss is the author of the Young Adult Novel, Spoken, which is a winner of the Readers' Favorite International Book Award for Young Adult-Social Issues and the Young Adult Novel, Crossing Lines, which was published in July 2020.
