creative essay ideas

[WeAllHaveWings]

1000 words, fiction, 1 character, 1 scene, 3rd person.

Unimaginative Ds is struggling for ideas and I am struggling to suggest!

Teacher has asked them to email topics over weekend and he's (slowly and painfully) come up with 3 ideas and teacher has rejected all 3 as being too cliché, too long, too common. Have sent him out with friends to get some air.

Once he gets into an idea he can relate to he'll get something down on paper, but struggles with the initial idea.

He's Googled essay prompts and sample essays to death (for hours), and nothing has sparked.

How do you come up with essay ideas? Or can you suggest one?

How old is he? I'm surprised the teacher can just dismiss the topics if he doesn't know how the pupil is going to execute them.

1 scene, 1 person - get your son to think about what kind of scenes might involve one person by themselves - locked in somewhere? Hiding? Lonely? Waiting for someone? Or was there someone with them before? Etc

Simple is always best for this type of thing - a short scenario, explained in detail.

Does he have any particular hobbies/interests - could he draw on those?
Has he travelled to see a sport/spent time in nature/witnessed some exciting or dramatic family news/overcome any challenge - such a complete an exam, done something sporty, made something special to eat etc?

Does he have a pet? Could he write about that?

1. A mouse that's trapped in a jar thinking about its life.
2. A boy who is being bullied is hiding in a tree from the bullies.
3. A mother bird in a nest, watching the last of her babies flexing its wings ready to fly away.

An arachnophobic trapped in a room with a spider
At the top of a mountain when a plane crashes
Lost in a wood at night with a light in the distance
Scuba diving a wreck alone

Locked in a department store overnight
Trapped in a car after an accident off road
Confined to your cabin whilst a virus ravishes a cruise ship...

He is 15. They've been told to avoid anything with animals, ideas he's had and been rejected:

hospital appointment nerves, but its an interview for a porter job - cliché
injured while hill walking alone (if he doesn't like that he might not like car accident, plane crash type scenarios either)
aftermath of being attacked by bullies in school toilet - been done before
burning down school (as fed up trying to come up with essay ideas!!) - too long

Teacher says to try to find something more inventive...

I thought the burning down the school one was inspired!

I thought an essay was non-fiction (effectively thoughts on a subject).

If it's fiction and your DS likes crime then how about a police detective planning (or writing the press release about) the arrest of a suspect for a murder and over the course of the thousand words, the reader realises the detective is framing the supposed subject for a murder the detective committed?

For what it's worth, I don't think the hospital appointment nerves but it's about an interview rather than a health outpatient is necessarily cliched. I think it would be a good idea for a school creative writing project.

What about a scenario where you think the main character is a stalker but actually it's something different, eg he's trying to protect someone?

I think it's a bit unfair for his teacher to complain about common plots - even two stories following the same plot will be completely different.

Maybe essay is the wrong word, they have 2 pieces of writing to do one is a persuasive essay which he has done, the second creative writing which he is struggling with ideas.

Simple is always best for this type of thing - a short scenario, explained in detail.

I think this is what they are looking for. Examples given were one on OCD which covered someone getting out of bed and realising when they got on the bus they hadn't done something important , or a girl going into loft to find monopoly, finding family secret and keeping the secret. Simple one scene and no extra characters.

80% thoughts, feelings, reflection (or more); 20% action (or less). Time scale 15 mins (or fewer). Find a picture: for example 'Rain, steam and speed'. Describe the picture (usually weather) using extended metaphor then gradually zoom in. In this case to the battle between the train and the hare.

Then into the observing character's head - the conflict between natural and industrial. External again - what happens to the hare?

Return to beginning but something's changed. The landscape transformed, train gone, hare returns/splatted/no one knows...

Works with any picture and usually ideas keep coming once started.

Ooo I love @tararabumdeay 's idea.

If you don't want to do industrial/vs/pastoral countryside, you could do a change of season - Autumn vs Winter - the battle between life and death.

Describe the flourishing fruits of Autumn and the excess energy of everything (using imagery from Keat's 'To Autumn' would make a nice reference) - then, observe in the characters head, (or perhaps in a dream) the decay - the death of flowers and plants, and the hibernation of many species.

then the character awakes - and begins to notice the small changes - the beginning of brown leaves ect.

Or, one more idea as an extension of @tararabumdeay 's idea could be considering the divide between the rich and poor.

Eg. He's in a foodbank, is financially poor. Has a dream about shopping in waitrose.

Character awakes and goes back to the foodbank - realises his good fortune that people from waitrose have donated to the foodbank despire being time-poor.

80% thoughts, feelings, reflection (or more); 20% action (or less). Time scale 15 mins (or fewer). Find a picture: for example 'Rain, steam and speed'. Describe the picture (usually weather) using extended metaphor then gradually zoom in. In this case to the battle between the train and the hare.

I've been a writer for years and can't imagine this would be something that a 15 year old would want to write or even be able to write.

Works with any picture. Just so happens I was challenged to write for a railway magazine and someone said I couldn't do it. So I did. A ghost story set on the London Underground which ends happily ever after.

The most successful I had in my creative writing classes are based on what the youngsters know or are into. I've had magical glades; lakes and mountains; an abandoned deckchair, shed, car - and more. Two of the biggest surprises, however, have been about railways.

80% thoughts, feelings, reflection (or more); 20% action (or less)

exactly... and a brilliant idea, but a bit outside his abilities.

he is thinking back to the arson idea, making the story much shorter by focusing in on a small part from lighting the fire to watching the flames start to grow (and feeling elated, strong). Then he thought about it raining, but not hard enough to douse the flames. Then something around the flames gaining strength and the rain being weak (like him). Then walking away.... but cant quite get the ending yet so about to give up on this idea. Needs an idea for school tomorrow 🙇‍♂️

Character awakes and goes back to the foodbank..

I suggested at the end the character wakes and he put the matches back in the kitchen/beside the candle, but seemingly waking from dreams is cliché and not allowed either 🤷‍♀️

I liked the hospital idea.

What about - a boy is visiting the grave of his deceased brother, and the narrative is of him having an imaginary conversation with the brother, talking about the things he wished he'd said to him, things he's sorry for, things he would do differently. At the end, it's revealed that the narrative voice belongs to the dead brother, not the visiting one. Lots of opportunity for atmospheric description of the surroundings - the sights, sounds, weather at the time. As only one person is alive, hopefully it would 'count' as a single person.

Beginning a cold dark place with just a glimpse of sky Character is solitary and regretful implying a long journey to get there. Middle - flashback the arson attack.
Ending a short walk from the implied 'prison' to the gallows. Old Mr Kelly, the caretaker, was still in his room.

If he likes the arson idea and wants a different ending, could the ending reveal the protagonist is a firefighter who needs to hurry for their next shift? They know the investigation methods and forensics so won't get caught or even have the arson discovered as arson rather than natural causes?