By Suzy Pett, Head of English.
With imaginative writing now a significant part of the Edexcel English Language IGCSE exam, Head of English, Suzy Pett, takes a look at how to teach creativity.
Creative writing for many young people can seem scary. Whilst it was enjoyed at primary school, it can be hard to squeeze it in amidst mounting homework and social media. In a world of 9-1 exams, assessment objectives and mark schemes, Somerset Maugham’s witticism (above) might strike fear into today’s young person. How to do well at something in which methodology and success seem so elusive?
However, Maugham is not suggesting that imaginative writing is a quagmire of subjectivity. Nor am I suggesting that creative success can be measured by exam mark schemes. But, we can certainly differentiate between good writing and that riddled with hackneyed phrases, lazy grammar and bland vocabulary. We can certainly smell a mile away desperate formulae – the gratuitous simile, forced adjective or unnecessary alliteration. And, we can certainly enthuse, excite, inspire, prod, cajole and galvanise pupils into gaining the tools to become discerning creative writers.
So, while Maugham declares the illusory nature of three rules for novel writing, here are three things we do to nurture imaginative writing here at WHS.
1. Play with voice/style
Adapting writing for purpose, audience and form (PAF) is the cornerstone of how we teach creative writing. Being alert to the nuances of tone is essential. You don’t want to bore the pants off your readers with prudish sincerity. Nor do you want to offend with flippancy in the wrong context. But how to get pupils to enjoy the playfulness of this code switching?
• Bring in the clowns (well, sort of)! In March, comedian Dave Smith – regular guest on Radio 4’s Home Truths and various TV shows – will help our Year 10s cultivate a wry, humorous and satirical voice in their writing.
• Bring in the performance poets! Deanna Rodger and Cecelia Knapp are coming to WHS to perform and lead workshops with our pupils. Hearing their raw, immediate, confessional first person voice combined with the performative quality of their language allows pupils to be alert to the negotiation of style, content and audience.
Activities to try yourself/with your daughter:
• Regularly read columnists with strong sense of voice: Caitlin Moran, Hadley Freeman, Marina Hyde…
• Try rewriting a section from a novel from a different character’s voice. How would language, tone and perspective change?
2. Be alert to grammar
On first look, grammar might seem anathema to imagination. However, rather than being starchy and puritanical, grammar in fact unlocks creativity. It allows pupils to write with craft and intent.
A few weeks ago, the WHS English Department had training with Ian Cushing, a teaching Fellow in English Linguistic at UCL (and co-author of the AQA English Literature and Language Student book among many other publications). We unpicked the way grammar was a meaning-making device in texts, having fun playing around with similar grammatical techniques in our own creative writing and assessing the effects. It was an absolute blast and we genuinely had great fun with verbs!
Activities to try yourself/with your daughter:
• Take an extract from a novel/magazine/newspaper. Look carefully at how it is put together. Are there lots of verbs (-ing verbs? Past tense verbs)? Are there lots of abstract nouns? Or concrete nouns? Or prepositions? Ask yourself what effect they have. Then, try to create your own piece of creative writing using the same grammatical devices to create similar effects.
3. Read (novels, newspapers, articles, blogs)
Reading is a given for any creative writer. It develops our worldview, empathy, vocabulary and awareness of narrative structure. We start every KS3 lesson with reading. Over the summer, we asked pupils to become word magpies and collect all the new vocabulary they came across in their reading, allowing them to build a store of unusual vocabulary to replace weary idioms.
Activities to try yourself/with your daughter:
• Take a writer you love and try to mimic the language, sentence structure, figurative/literal images in your own work. Create a pastiche!
• Have a vocabulary jar in your kitchen. Pick out new words every so often and make sentences out of them over breakfast or dinner: create characters and settings. The more wacky, original and imaginative, the better.
So, there you have it. Three ways we can nurture creativity.
• Want your daughter to develop her creative writing outside the classroom?
• KS3: come to Scribblers club!
• KS3: Read Scoop magazine (in the library)
• KS3/4: come on the annual Arvon residential creative writing trip to spend a week workshopping with published writers
• KS4/5: come to ‘It’s Critical!’ to be immersed in a wider ranges of writers beyond the curriculum
• Enter the many competitions we advertise
• Write for Unconquered Peaks (get in touch with Year 13 Editor-in-Chief, Olya)
• Write a storybook for Ghanaian children with Akenkan