Teachers sometimes receive stories from their students which drive them to distraction. They may go something like this:

Once upon a time I met a monster so I punched it on the nose and then I chopped its head off with my machete and then I machine gunned it with my Uzi and then I went home for my tea but it was all a dream. The end.

Why does this story fail? There are so many reasons. It starts with a clichéd opening. It is chronologically organized by the connective and then, which dispenses with the need for sentence breaks. It relies on action for plot development and ends with another cliché. This kind of storytelling is increasingly common because of the way society is developing in the industrialized countries. Children view a lot of television programs, which are visual or constructed as a sequence of simple events. Many computer games follow this simple pattern. This reinforces many other features of modern life that can get in the way of good creative writing:

• The pace of modern life means there are fewer opportunities for extended, discursive talk (many households don't have an evening meal together where adults and children swap their stories).

• Electronic media increasingly challenge reading as a recreational activity.

• Schools are forced to adopt ever more prescriptive tracking and testing regimes.

Encouraging good writing

To write well, students have to recognize that a story is not simply a matter of narrating events. It is a sensory interaction with human experience. The writer who wants to make the reader feel engaged in the narrative asks these questions: what do you see; what do you hear; what do you feel physically and emotionally? This is where metaphor, simile, description, telling dialogue, and internal monologue come into play. They reconfigure human experience in the reader's consciousness. In the words of Stephen King, "Description starts in the head of the writer and ends up in the head of the reader."

Teaching good writing

So how do we teach this?

I scaffold the writing process, breaking it into bite-sized ten to fifteen minute sections, modelling sample sentence structures and brainstorming potential vocabulary. This provides a pathway into the activity and allows the young writer to feel secure. It is equally important not to over-model. Once my students are focused on writing a particular section, I step back and allow them to explore. If they do not have the chance to play with language and try new things, they become almost completely dependent on me, the teacher. It is their story, not mine. I can stimulate their writing and structure its possibilities, but it would be wrong to turn story writing into a glorified form of copying.

Usually, I scaffold the opening few paragraphs and then gradually loosen my hold on the lesson, instead suggesting pathways the writers might take. In this way, they begin to take their own decisions, pointing the narrative camera in whatever direction they wish. The teacher's job in this part of the teaching process is to demonstrate a number of points to aid the student's planning of the narrative:

• You plan your ending somewhere in the opening or middle of the story so that you can give a shape to it

• You don't allow an ending which just 'dribbles away.' You recognize that the ending is what stays in the reader's mind. Make it tell!

The other piece of advice for the young reader is about structure. Most good writing follows this pattern:

• anticipation (what's it going to be like?)

• experience (what is it like?)

• reflection (what do you think/feel about it afterwards?)

It is the failure to understand this that makes many young writers jump straight into a chronological sequence of poorly developed action scenes.

Examples of good student writing

Here is the opening of a time-slip story by a ten year old. It uses tension and the age-old principle of show, don't tell:

I stumbled over a blunt, metal object, brutally poking out of the ground. Spinning round, I stared at it thoughtfully. It was bronze and sphere shaped, which glistened blindingly in the sunlight. I quickly bent down, straining my arms out in front of me. Resting on my knees, I used my fingers to chip away the mud around the object. With one hard tug it smoothly slid out of the ground. As I carefully inspected it, I noticed that I had seen one of these in a book at school. As I ran my fingers over the rusted cheek guards I realised it was an ancient helmet, maybe Roman. My heart started to beat out of my chest as I wondered what it was worth. Scooping out the crusted mud out of the inside of the helmet, I proudly put it on. I soon found that a big mistake as it started to tighten. As hard as I tried, it wouldn't come off. Suddenly, I felt myself falling into a deep sleep, it grew darker around me as I started to fall. There was nothing I could clutch hold to.

Here is another from the same lesson (both students responded to the same prompt):

I stumbled over an object that was bursting from out of the ground. Turning round, I gave a quick glance back behind me to see what it was. It was shimmering in the light and as I looked closer I saw it was a rounded shape.

Suspiciously I started to scratch off the dirt, making it more visible to me. I yanked ..... yanked it until after what seemed like a 100 years, it broke off from the ground into my sweaty palms. Carefully I observed the mystery object. What could it be? It had a dome and cheek guards. Now I knew – it was an ancient helmet. Of course! It looked Roman to me. All of a sudden my heart started beating so hard I thought it was going to come right through my chest.

The teaching has helped both children become more confident writers. It hasn't made them clones of the teacher. Good creative-writing teachers help their students develop their own individual styles. Children should be the subject, not the object, of the education system.

Alan Gibbons is an award winning children's writer based in the UK. A winner
of the BBC TV Blue Peter Book Award, he was a teacher for eighteen years before becoming a full-time writer.

website: www.alangibbons.com

blog: www.alangibbons.net

Below is an example of Alan Gibbons teaching: