How can I help my Year 5 son who hates creative writing with every fibre of his being?

[IabsolutelyhateteachingEnglish]

How can I get DS9 to be better at creative writing?

He is homeschooled, nearly at the end of Year 5 curriculum with a fairly well known UK-based correspondence school (doing the English/ Cambridge curriculum). He's on target or ahead or well ahead for everything except the creative writing tasks in English.

When faced with any creative writing task he baulks, procrastinates, makes a mess scribbling on the page, throws the pen down, stares out the window. Every tiny bit of the writing process has to be broken down and heavily prompted by me. He won't do any of it without prompting and takes forever to do a terrible job. He can't come up with anything orally, or in writing.

Today's task is "show rather than tell" - writing longer descriptive sentences, rather than bald description of basic actions. HOW do I teach him to think of images or actions and write them down? He just refuses. He says there are only basic pictures in his head and he can't elaborate on anything. He says he can't do what all his favourite authors do (he reads loads, but can't reproduce what he's read either orally or in writing).

It's probably relevant that he's AuDHD. He was tested for specific language disorders earlier this year - I thought he was probably dysgraphic* - and came out with no diagnosis and everything being very advanced (frankly their testing seemed weirdly trivial, but they used the standard tests).

*Dysgraphic in the sense of being hopeless at organising information - rather than in the sense of having terrible handwriting. His handwriting's not great but it's a lot more age-appropriate than the creative writing.

It's also probably relevant that I loved making up highly descriptive stories as a kid. So I genuinely don't get where he's coming from, and i need to, in order to make him function in English and in all the places where he has to be able to write or talk spontaneously.

Could you go from the opposite angle and get him to write more expansively about a historical event. Get him to do some basic research then describe the event vividly.

He probably genuinely doesn't have any ideas in his head, but the more real events he can describe vividly, the bigger his bank will be for adapting that to an imaginary scenario.

Can you start by doing it verbally? As a game, perhaps. There’s a game called “Yes, and” where two people make a story together. The first person starts telling a story, with a sentence or two, then the other person has to respond with “yes, and” and add to the story with another sentence or two, then it goes back to the first person. The idea is that the story gets more outrageous as it goes along. It’s fun and funny for kids. Then you can try to do it with written sentences taking turns.

My DS was like this. He went all the way to GCSE (Cambridge IGCSE) having never written a single story in his life. He did the descriptive passage instead. He got a 7 and it didn’t hold him back with uni applications etc.

I didn’t force him, I felt and still feel that he couldn’t write a story if I put a gun to his head. Some kids’ brains don’t work like that.

As long as he’s writing in other contexts I really don’t think it matters at this age.

My other son was similar, but slightly less reluctant. We used to play a game where I’d suggest the title of a mini story. Eg The Treasure, The Dungeon, something that will appeal.

You both have a notebook and pen. The first stage is that you write three adjectives to describe the object in the title. Then you write where it is and who is there. Just in list format, it as proper sentences. The last question is “what happened?” And then you basically write a little mini story except they don’t realise they’re doing it. Then you take it in turns to read out your answers to the various questions.

It’s fun, it’s about the process not the product, you do it together so they can enjoy your ideas as well.

Good luck.

Sometimes, teachers ask students to take the characters and settings of their favorite books and create new adventures/experiences for them. You can help them. “What would happen ifhad to
rescue his friends and_from bad guys? Who are the bad guys? What do they look like? What do they want? Where are his friends? In the basement? A cabin in the woods? What might be in the cabin that could help them survive or overpower their captors?” So, he could build on what he is already familiar with. It works well with some kids. The hardest part is often the first sentence. “Joel and Gareth were his best friends since first grade and he would do whatever it took to save them”.

Show not tell could be hard for someone with Autism as they sometimes have problems picking up on emotions / reasons, so perhaps it is hard for him to work backwards?

I'm thinking show not tell means
Tell - Susie was very upset.
Show - Susie had tears streaming down her face and she sat down and put her head in her hands.

Tell - it was autumn
Show - the mist was covering the golden brown leaves on the trees

Perhaps you could practice what I have just done? Give him some 'tells' and work with him to understand ways to 'show' instead?

Creative writing is notoriously difficult for kids with autism.

do the descriptive passage instead.

That's fine when he gets to GCSE, but this DC is only y5.
Also the show not tell concept is still needed in descriptive writing.

(Though I agree 'story writing' is not an essential skill in and of itself.)

You could try a Jane Consadine (The Write Stuff) unit of writing. It's very, very heavily guided. I'd go for a Y3 or Y4 unit to start. I think she has a few that you don't have to subscribe to get.

Edit for typo

Could you make a game out of describing things - get him to choose a photo of something, and he has to describe it to you so that you can draw it as well as possible without having seen it. How accurate can you get the colours - can he find a word that tells what kind of blue, or can he compare it to something that you know etc.

Or coming up with synonyms for a single word - not walked, but hopped, bounced, sauntered, meandered, zoomed, hobbled, etc., and try to think about how that would change just that one sentence, what else does it tell you about the character without you having to say so explicitly, which word would you pick to show happiness, or illness, or boredom, or joy or old age, or whatever.

These don't have to be part of an actual writing process, just games or exercises to get him thinking. (These are for the description part of 'showing not telling', rather than the story development)

Also a book called "Descriptosauras" by Willcox is good for giving sentence ideas. Sometimes it can help reluctant children to just pick a few exact sentences they like on a similar theme from the book and put them together, just to see the power that the words can have, before they consider changing and adapting them for their own stories.

Yep, family here full of haters of creative (and extended in general) writing.
And most of the suggestions above have the same issue - why use 20 words when 5 conveys the whole meaning?

Biggest breakthrough we had with DS2 was that it doesn't need to be true! If you are asked to write about the best day out - it doesn't need to be your day out, you can lie about things, or merge together several events and ideas.

What happens if you get him to write about sonething he likes? And expand sentences from fact?

In terms of breaking through a kids’ mental block about not feeling creative, my personal advice would be take it out of the realm of lessons all together.

Do you still read bed time stories out loud? If not, try and read the same book in parallel to him, so, between chapters you can chat about it: what you loved, what you imagine might happen next etc. (ideally a book you’ve not read before either, so you’re discovering it together). You can do most the talking and leave space for him for join in - don’t make it feel like a grilling. Do the same watching a TV series together - find a kids TV drama he’s interested in with an ongoing narrative and between episodes, chat about what you hope might happen next and why. Watch adaptations of books or stories he’s read and talk about which characters or parts of the story he pictured differently and why. If there’s a theatre near you, take him. Basically, immerse him in stories and story telling in a way that doesn’t feel like a test.

Word and story games too - word association, silly one word story games, good news/ bad news (where you take turns building a story - one sentence by one player starts good news, the next by the next player starts bad news e.g “good news, I won a thousand pounds, bad news I had to travel to Antarctica to collect it” etc etc

Or don't worry?

He doesn't need it, it is irrelevant to many jobs, and you can't worry about university whilst he is on y5

I hated creative writing at that age. I just don’t have the imagination to create stories.

A friend is like that - very good at IT, but ask him to do anything even vaguely imaginative and he hates it.

Can you get him to write interesting and engaging 'blogs' about things he's axctually done, rather than making up stories.

Does he like drawing? Try giving him a blank comic strip and getting him to draw a story then write it. (Superhero adventure often popular) Used to work for the reluctant writers in my class. Although more time consuming obvs

Look at The Drawing Club by Greg Bottrill.
Starts off for younger children but takes all the pressure off the writing process. Examples of work produced by young children that I’ve seen are very encouraging.
Deliberately named The Drawing Club to draw children into the feeling of being in a club, and using drawings to feed the imagination and eventually write about their ideas.

I was your DC. I hated creative writing with a passion. What worked for me was a outline or structure to follow and someone to help scale back my ideas. I could have written a 3 book novel series, but not 400 words...

Would he do it typed?

Ds hated creative writing, but his thoughts on it improved greatly when he was allowed to type.

I'm not sure if that was his ASD, or whether he just took after dh. Dh's creative writing was along the lines of
"He went to catch the bus number 11. It cost 55p for a single and £1 for a return. He bought a single. On the bus he ate his packed lunch. His packed lunch was a cheese sandwich, a piece of chocolate cake and an apple. The bus went 16 miles and took 34 minutes and stopped 4 times.
He got off the bus."

On a good day he might have added that the bus was red...

Send him to school to mix with other children and hear all their ideas, fantasies and stories. It will add to ideas from books, TV etc.

I think it's best to take a step back from the writing aspect and first focus on having fun creating stories together in a relaxed way (not as a school/learning task).

If he likes drawing, I think that can be a good place to start. Forget about the writing and first try creating characters or scenes together. You could cut out the character and place them on different backgrounds - or his character goes on your background or vice versa.

Or make up a story together but to start with you do the majority and he contributes small ideas e.g. you say 'The boy's bag was full of all the things he wanted to take to the beach, including......' and then your son gives some ideas that you then incorporate into the story. The aim being that over time he contributes more to the story e.g. you say 'The next day was even more exciting because the boy was going to.....' You could type up the story you create together and print it off, he could add some pictures.

Has he read any of the type of books where at the end of a chapter you decide which decision the characters are going to make? I think back in the day the ones I read were Famous Five and You (showing my age there!). But they are a good way of getting the child to think about what different scenarios might happen next - they could try writing their own option (less daunting to add a bit to an existing story than to write one from scratch). You and other family members could also do one.

But I get where your son is coming from - I remember a homework task in secondary school was to write a poem and i just couldn't do it. I really tried but wasn't able to write a single word. The teacher would usually have been cross if homework wasn't done but was very understanding that day when me and a few others said we hadn't written anything. To this day, I've never written a poem. I write a lot in my job now, but its factual reports - much more my style! I think creative writing comes much more easily to some people than others.

Thankyou everyone, some great ideas here.

@MargaretThursday haha, that's great - we have just watched Ludwig... sounds like him!

My sisters daughter was like this, not just with writing she hated school aswell, she just never settled with school or any writing or any lessons for that matter, the only lesson she liked was crafts and knitting club i think it was the teacher teaching that class made her feel comfortable.
Awfully bullied by students and teachers.
Fast forward 20 years.
Guess who now owns and runs 3 knitting / craft shop.

@NeedAir yes, that's my DS. If i can just get him enough qualifications to get into his (very firmly) chosen area he'll be OK. And that definitely won't be writing stories for a living!

Lots of story writing resources on Twinkl. Look at Story cubes.

https://www.twinkl.co.uk/search?q=Story+writing&c=244&r=parent&fco=0&fa=6