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.

IIRC when my kids were in year 1 and 2, school had them write stories that they knew well- fairy stories like Goldilocks. That way they could focus on how to write better rather than procrastinate about what to write. So “Goldilocks went through the woods.” Could become “Goldilocks wandered through the creepy woods.”

They also practiced writing recipes and instructions like “How to get ready for school” or “How to make a cheese sandwich” This is obviously numbered sentences rather than paragraphs but intended to make it easier to focus on quality of writing rather than what to write.

Is there a familiar programme or story that he could start with if the ideas above are too basic or don’t appeal? He would be able to focus on beginning/middle/end.

Have you taught him how to brainstorm ideas? My kids’ school did Big Write where they planned Monday to Thursday and ended up writing the final thing on Friday. I know they discussed some formulas of stories like character has a dilemma then has to solve dilemma which might appeal to a logical AUDHD mind. Maybe his favourite programmes or films follow a formula like character needs to find something or go somewhere and makes friends on the way which he could use to make his own story. He’d might need you to come up with a formula like name the character and describe them to help him along.

This was my DD (still is) who is also autistic. We worked with a formula based on the little ditty (Kipling, I think) -
I have six honest serving men
They taught me all I knew
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

We used that to give her a framework. If she had answered all of those questions in the piece of writing, it was a pretty good start. Adjectives, similes, etc came later!

For heaven's sake! Just get him to tell you a story - give him some triggers, e.g. a dragon, a lake, a packet of biscuits ....... give him some props.

If he is doing this sort of inward-facing activity when being HS, you might as well send him to school!

Surely the whole point of Home Ed is not to force them into ‘failing’ at things they have zero interest and aptitude for?
Drop it and let him follow his interests.

I'm not sure that is the 'whole point' of Home Ed.

But anyway, the OP is right to be thinking about it due to the creative/descriptive writing requirement of the current English Language GCSE. Passing this GCSE is generally a gateway for various college / higher ed courses, apprenticeships and jobs.

You can do an exercise where you start with one sentence and he does the next. Then you, then him. Create a story together; it’s good practice.

I might be being naive here but isn't the point of homeschooling that you can adapt what your child learns and not follow a curriculum?
So he doesn't like creative writing.
Does that matter?

In the first lesson of A level Lit and Language we were each given a picture of someone and asked to create a story around that person. Is that something he might like to do?

Yes for GCSE English Language, see above.

Yes but he's in Year 5 🤷

Some people genuinely don't have a "minds eye". It is on a spectrum with 0 minds eye at one end . It is called aphantasia. There's a Curious Cases Podcast on BBC sounds about it.

So I would start with descriptive writing from photos.

Eg - a photo of a rainy autumn day in the woods.
How can we describe autumn, rain and woods without using those words. What senses would be affected if we were in the photo, ie what would we hear see, feel, smell.

Then I'd actually gets some " formulas" worked out for different types of creative writing that he can apply.

Eg descriptions. I write about 3 things that I or the protagonist can see, two things I can hear and one I can smell. I use interesting adjectives and verbs rather than basic ones , eg dripping or soaked rather than wet etc

First of all the concept of show not tell is very abstract (no matter how much they read). So he should be given concrete examples as scaffolds , then he should try making his own. Memorising them is good if they don’t come naturally.

Picking a few books/stories/tv shows he loves and just writing about it can help, as long as he skips little bits here and there. Story maps can help as well, characters, setting, what happens, what’s the problem, what’s the fix, what’s the end? Then build up on it. Add sentence starters, descriptive language, figurative language etc. To get a good piece of writing (quality over quantity) can actually take several sessions. The aim is to learn, remember and eventually accurately use all the linguistic skills he’s learning.That can take time, I’m talking years here.

Can he try poetry or drawing a comic instead of writing sentences?

I struggled with creative writing at that age: I too would write “this happened, then this happened, then this happened”. I didn’t see the point in describing things - a bus being red was obvious to me. One thing that helped me a little was to observe how authors I liked (eg Roald Dahl) described things, and a realisation that they had imagined what they were writing about, and were trying to make it come alive in someone else’s mind.

Thankyou everyone, really good ideas here. Yes, aphantasia had occurred to me, but since it hasn't occurred to GCSE examiners yet, he'll need to develop strategies to get around it.

To those saying "Why are you making him do things he doesn't like if he's homeschooled" - because (1) it's not an unreasonable thing to be asking him to do, it forms part of the language arts curriculum in most places in the world; (2) he wants to go to university to do a specific subject (only available in very few places), which means he's going to need qualifications, including at the very least a good mark in GCSE English Language; and (3) frictionless education isn't particularly good preparation for lifelong learning.

If he’s struggling to find ideas he will find creative writing a chore. Start him off with retelling stories. That’s how children learn the fundamentals of structure and plot without having the pressure of having to think it up! Choose a well known story to start with and read it together lots of times. Then draft out the plot - use a few pictures from the story to sequence it or get him to draw them. Always start at word level - do a big brain dump of all the interesting words he will need (select freely from the text you’ve read, don’t expect him to invent his own) and then sort them into categories - character names, interesting verbs, important adjectives etc. You can scribe some or all of this for him, or he can use a computer to do it. To start with let him
retell the story as is, then go back in and choose a couple of things to improve. To start with just ‘can we find an even better adjective than this?’ Or can we improve on this verb? Just two or three to start with and be clear that all writers edit their work so it’s a normal part of the process. Once he’s familiar with retelling, get him to come up with an alternative ending. To do this you can do lots of shared ideas together and come up with five or six then get him to choose his favourite, talk about the vocab he will use and let him have a go. When children don’t like creative writing it’s usually because they haven’t got enough scaffolds in place. As an adult I’d struggle to come up with a very creative story off the top of my head!

Writing emerges from reading so is he getting submerged in really good literature and doing lots of discussion and fun activities around that? Are you making the stories come to life by doing adjacent activities? If he’s not getting the reading input and enjoying stories for their own sake he will find it harder to write creatively.

There is always the senses. When he has a plot in mind, tell him to write what does the character see? What to they hear? What are they feeling on their skin? What do they smell?

So the knight is going into the cave to fight a dragon. Then write something about what the knight (or poor about to be attacked dragon) sees, hears, feels and smells.

@CountryGirlInTheCity he reads loads. Current authors on the go are Katherine Rundell, Mary Shelley, John Wyndham, Emma Carroll, Noël Streatfeild. I try to discuss the books with him, and if I'm reading to/with him I'll slip in comprehension questions (which he always answers correctly). However, he's not particularly forthcoming about the books himself - he needs to develop that side of things. But somehow, it needs developing without him learning to hate reading.

Accept its just not his thing and you can't be good at everything. I hated it. I have aphantasia. I'm very much not creative.

I learnt the structure of what got the marks. No point focusing on the creative side when I hated it and just didn't get it. At the end of the day the marks is a checklist of points.

It didn't hold me back, I got a first at uni, and got a PhD in my chosen area. Still can't creative write to save my life.

Could you print out a brief short story and have him circle the descriptive words? Fast, orange, cold, stinky, cherry-flavored…maybe he’ll be able to use those or similar words in his own story.

I remember a realisation that as many children’s books have pictures, I didn’t even notice the descriptions when reading them: I just skimmed over them. I didn’t even take in the value of “the BFG’s pale wrinkly face, with nose as sharp as a knife”; I was only interested in what he did. I also had a lot of the “retold for easy reading” Ladybird books of classic stories, which had minimal description, and I wrote my stories based on them: anything else was too much like hard work. My mum was also very big on diary writing, and unfortunately that turned writing into a chore for me - every outing (especially on summer holidays) would be followed by having to write about it. She was probably trying to hone my writing skills, but this put me off writing when she overdid it.

I agree about taking a story that he likes, and looking for the descriptive words, and if possible, from a book without pictures.

I had a year 5 child like this. He could write about history or geography no problem but give him a creative writing task and a blank page - no idea where to start and then tears. The underlying problem seemed to be having no conception of what the “correct” answer was. Crating some rules (x sentences, x adjectives, x adverbs, a simile etc) enabled him to focus on ticking those boxes and helped remove the barrier to starting the task. Some rules can be negative eg no two consecutive sentences can start with “the”, don’t use the same noun or adjectives more than twice in a paragraph. You’re trying to get over the fear factor. Worked for us anyway.

Would a reading / book journal help?

He could have illustrations, a copy of the cover, a bit about the story and then something about how the author told the story. It only needs a sentence or two.

It could become a resource for him when it comes to writing, but don't tell him that yet.