Writing Blog

20230323 Writing Lessons Part 1

March 23, 2023, 11:30am

This is in response to a request.

Here are the first four "lessons" I had with a nineteen year old would-be writer. Her father, a friend of mine, is also doing them, as he wants to write a specific book (It's personal, and I know what it is), and in Lesson 3, her mother also joined in, as she wants to write children's books. A class of three! Woo-hoo!

Okay, here goes.

Lesson One - Going over a piece of writing
In this, we went over a piece of writing by the student. I indicated what was good, what needs work, and what we really need to work on. For the girl, it was that she writes like a textbook. For her father, it was that he does not use grammar, punctuation and syntax properly.

Lesson Two - Initial Writing Exercises
I gave them 5 options, and they had to choose 3. Length was one paragraph each. All were descriptions and they had to use at least 3 of the 5 senses.
* Describe the feel of standing in the sun.
* Describe the feel of being really cold.
* Describe your/your family's car.
* Describe an animal (any animal)
* Describe a piece of furniture
We went over them in the lesson. The girl wrote lists, except for describing an animal, which she did quite well. The father wrote one list (car), and the rest he did well. He has bought Strunck & White, and is using that to help his technicalities.

Lesson 3 - Find 3 pieces of writing
They had to find 3 passages of writing that struck them as something worth looking at and explain why they feel that way. Not whole books or stories, just passages. This is where mum joined in. They found 3 easily (father used one of my works! automatic pass!), and mum easily described why. Father had similar reasons why for each tale. Daughter had trouble articulating what it was she liked; eventually we got to the fact they brought up genuine feelings in her.

Lesson 4 - Write like a piece of writing
As I write this, this was what I set for "homework" and we went over it this morning. Normally, we do this after work, but they are going out tonight so we did it before leaving for work. What a different dynamic that made! They had to take one of the pieces they liked last time, and write anything at all in that style. All managed it okay, though father did copy some of the phrases from the original.

To me, it feels like they are all getting somewhere. It's only been 4 lessons, but the homework I set was to write a conversation between two people. Mum is keen on this; this is where she feels her writing is falling down. Father is also worried for the same reason. Daughter thinks she'll be fine.

Lesson 5 - Write a conversation
This is to come.

So, what I am doing is getting them to try something, then going over it afterwards. I answer any questions, but I want them all to just try it and then we look at it later. It is reasonably self-directed. Conversation, at this stage, will last 3 lessons. Lesson 6 will be between three people; Lesson 7 will be punctuating and verb usage. At this stage. Of course, there could be an extra lesson in there if there needs to be.

I will say, because they are all readers, and mum and daughter both have good technical aspects, and father is very invested, this is proving much easier than when I used to be an adult educator.

And that's what I am doing to help this family become the writers they want to be.