Interactive Creative Writing Club

[Daniel Hollander]

Greetings poppers! Starting this fall, I am going to be teaching a club at the Tuscaloosa, AL Magnet Middle School that focuses on interactive creative writing (like a 'choose your own adventure' book).

The general blurb sent out to build interest from parents and students went like this:

-Students in the Interactive Creative Writing Club will read and write short stories that take twists and turns based on the reader's choices. Activities will include individual and group writing exercises, discussions about actions and consequences, and exploring the potential of interactive fiction as a medium for telling stories.-

The ultimate goal is to get the students to really think about not just one potential outcome to an action, but multiple outcomes that can have effects on their lives and others both immediately and later on down the road, while also being fun and teaching them a few of the creative writing basics.

I like to call it consequential thinking. Pop star Ryan Goble has suggested causal thinking or sequential thinking as well.

I originally intended to perform a lot of research before starting the project and then gather data/surveys from students to culminate in an academic research paper, but time got away from me. Instead, I'm going to treat the club as a free form, malleable pilot program where I can see what works, what doesn't, and what potential this thing has to be a vessel to teach kids about consequential thinking.

So, I'd like to keep this thread open to not only update poppers on the progress and status of the club, but also to solicit feedback, advice, and ideas for potential stories to read, exercises to do, discussions to have, etc.

I don't have an educational background in...education, so one of the big initial challenges for me is going to be content. What kinds of topics are appropriate, interesting, and challenging for middle school students? Any and all insight into this area would be greatly appreciated.

When explaining my project, I like to use the simple example of credit card debt. A lot of individuals don't have the foresight to think about if they can really afford that shiny new object because they can just throw it on their credit card and worry about it later, and while that scenario may be somewhat applicable to middle school students, I'd prefer more targeted content.

Let me know what you think!

[Jan Foughner]

Daniel, this is an awesome idea. I once taught a class on decision making and you might want to look into materials for your club published for decision making teaching. Check with the school for age-appropriate and reading level-appropriate short stories that they may have. I now teach English to 8th graders, so I am really interested in the way you are taking this club.

[Mike Gange]

Have you read Stephen King's book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft?
I think it is fantastic, and I used it to start my writing class. I read the book to the kids, five minutes at a time. It took a while to process the information but sometimes two weeks after a chapter, they asked specific questions that related to what I had read to them. I think it is in there that he describes how he writes now: lots of ideas on yellow sticky notes that he puts on the wall, and then orders them as to how he wants to shape the story. Now, for your own sake, read the book yourself before you read it out loud in the classroom. There are somethings you want to be prepared for. You might be able to help shape the kids writing if they are allowed to pick the yellow sticky note of their choice, then get at writing the story. This would also help those who say, I don't know what to write about....

[Susan Stephenson, the Book Chook]

It sounds like a great idea, and a lot like those Choose-Your Own Adventure books! I don't know if you are interested in choose-your-own-adventure style software that makes the process easy, but Twine is good. Plus, Larry Ferlazzo has an excellent post with places to let kids read examples online before they start, and also tips for writing.

I won't try to help out with ideas for Middle School as my field is elementary, but hope the above might be useful.

[Daniel Hollander]

Jan, good call, looking at materials the school already uses is a great place to start. What grade-level was your decision making class? Do you have any specific suggestions of materials you liked? How did the class turn out?

Mike, I'll have to check out King's book. The sticky notes are a good idea regardless. The ability to physically move the notes around will definitely help the kids visualize different paths and get them to start thinking laterally.

Susan, Larry's post is indeed excellent, thanks for sharing. I'll have to mess around with Twine, but it looks very promising. I definitely want to be able to share the stories digitally as I think it will be fun for the kids and parents, and it's also the direction interactive (or 'hypertext') fiction is headed.

Thanks for the replies, keep them coming!

[Jeff Osborn]

Agreed- this sounds like a great idea. I teach 7th graders in CA and they love the choose your own adventure type stories... I even saw a girl reading a similar style book - see review here

I also taught a creative writing class over the summer and used a wiki format to have hyperlinks the students could use. pbworks.com was a free one that accomplished what I wanted. I made student folders and they made folders for each story and pages inside each folder... they really enjoyed it.