The Why and How of Writing Prompts

This blog offers writing prompts each month, ones for teachers and students. I also include several journal prompts in my three books, The Compassionate Classroom (with Jane Dalton); Teaching Romeo and Juliet (with Delia DeCourcy and Robin Follet); and Teaching Julius Caesar. I provide these because teachers need and request them. I've always assumed we know why writing prompts are worth the time, but that's not always true. It's good to revisit why they matter in the classroom.

Still ringing in my ears is the only parent complaint I've ever heard on the subject. "What's this touchy-feely stuff? What's this got to do with academics?" While I did convince this parent I wasn't wasting his child's time, the complaint gets to a misinformed opinion--that writing prompts are a flights-of-fancy indulgence we can't make time for. I figure it may also help teachers to have this argument in their back pocket should parents, administrators, or pacing guides approach.

(This image found at Darton College's Writing Lab site.)

Why You Should Use Writing Prompts in Your Classroom

-- Writing prompts are great dress rehearsals for deeper thinking, the critical analysis required by most literary interpretation, argumentation, and research.

-- Writing prompts tap into what I call the Big Ideas--the concepts and abstract topics that need fleshing out in an essay. In the low-stakes dress rehearsal area that is a journal, students can discover what they think as they see what they writeSo Romeo and Juliet is about the Big Idea of Love; that claim is no thesis statement yet. Do you believe in true love? Love at first sight? Platonic love where there's once been lust? What is more important--the love of family or romantic partners? It's these interesting questions that come from journaling on a Big Idea.

-- Students need to make affective, personal connections with the literature before they can delve deeper into analysis. Why are we reading this? radiates from every student pore, every adolescent 'tude entering your classroom. When students write journals on prompts that at first glance seem to be all about them, that thinking leads to better, deeper conversations when you put the lit front and center. Big Ideas are always relevant to students' lives: Love, Justice, Jealousy, Revolution, Change...

-- Writing prompts tap into metacognition, sparking reflection about the writing process. They allow students to mull over the complex stages of thinking that lead to a finished draft and develop a perspective on their own writing strengths, weaknesses, and methods.

-- Writing prompts allow creative forays into personal, imaginative writing such as short stories, novels, poetry, even lists--every genre and type--that again, serve as great dress rehearsals if not companions to the academic writing we teach. Some schools assign creative writing before assigning literary analysis. If a student can develop a character, create a narrative thread, or craft a symbol in personal writing, isn't it that much easier for students to approach literature where they must analyze character traits, track a plot's trajectory, or explicate the connotations of an image?

-- Writing prompts help our kids access difficult texts, from Twain to Shakespeare to Swift. Old school becomes new school when our kids realize that these authors grappled with very modern problems and timeless emotions. In some ways, not much has changed with humanity, and journaling can get our kids seeing that.


How You Should Use Writing Prompts

How do we integrate this type of writing practice into the average class period, burdened as it is with other reading and writing tasks and the demands of pacing guides and standardized tests?

-- Opening & Focusing Activity. When students hit the door certain days, they can see their first task--that writing prompt on the board--to focus their thinking. Allow 7-10 minutes. This can be followed by a pair-share or a brief class discussion where students share thoughts. You might collect these journals randomly.

-- Anchoring Activity. This is a go-to assignment when students finish a task early in order to prepare for the two uses described below. Journal prompts can be listed alongside other tasks that students can pick up for ten or twenty minutes and return to at any time. They are particularly helpful when you have a range of abilities in your classroom and are trying to conduct mini-lessons with tiered groups, conference with students, and interact with several students within a class period.

-- Essay Preparation. These journals allow students to explore and experiment with a range of essay prompts before making a final selection. Students can contemplate the entire work just read and call up evidence in a more casual writing foray to see if they have enough ideas, supporting examples, and passion about the topic to commit to it. Assign at least two of these before students conference with you or before they identify their choice. This task also allows you to offer more than one or two essay prompts and give students a wider choice.

-- Pre-Socratic Seminar. Planning on an intensive discussion? Writing on the discussion topics before speaking aloud is important rehearsal for more retiring students as well as those who speak extemporaneously and fearlessly.

-- Homework. Journal writing on Big Ideas or creative writing prompts offer great homework options. Students are more likely to be alone and more reflective, and, after a busy school day, their minds are freer, rambling, and needing open expression rather than serious drill assignments.

There are many other places to integrate prompts; these are just a few of the most obvious times to integrate them.

Other General Tips:

-- If you use hard-copy composition books, allow students to fold over pages of their journal that they don't want you to read. I always say, "Please don't fold over every page; I've got to read something." This offer does make the journal the student's domain first and foremost and encourage ownership.

-- Don't spend a lot of time grading journals but do focus on whether students have done one or two of the following: offered specific and rich examples or discovered some interesting insight or interpretation. I usually give 10 out of 10 points, with one or two points deducted for poor effort. We know a half-baked journal when we see it.

-- Tell students that if they do tackle tough subject matter, such as personal dilemmas or crises, that you will feel compelled to assist them by referring them to a school counselor. If students hint at eating disorders, abuse, and other trauma in their lives, it's impossible to turn our heads.

The best reason for assigning writing prompts is getting to know your students better. I've formed better relationships and understandings with my students because of what they have shared with me in their journals.

How to Cut 40,000 Words

I find myself staring at Teasdale’s Zeffirelli poster where an animal Romeo clutches a buxom Juliet; she’s looking serene as Mary, mother of God, while he looks like he might squeeze her to death or kill the next thing that moves. Tell me why I can relate to him more than her.
- Wendy, in my novel St. Michael, Pray for Us: How Wendy Redbird Dancing Survived the Dark Ages of Nought

(This image courtesy of the film Supersize Me.)

The above quotation is what one might call a "killed darling." Specifically, it's a nugget I added with Draft #4 or #5 to better describe setting and better characterize Wendy in all her rage and confusion.

In the course of writing a novel, some authors generate a lot of words. It's how we purple prosers find the story. Sometimes, with as many as 100,000 too many.

Right now, I'm in the process of applying some very good advice: cut a 125, 000-word novel down to 85,000 words. This is because the YA market prefers slimmer models, not the supersize version I've created.

It's on. Let's do this. These last two weeks, I've cut 22,000. 75 pages left to cut to get to my goal.

When I began, I tried to sweeten a challenge quite daunting. Only 80 words per page--that's not so bad, right?

I also respond well to this self-coaching: Cut the detour scenes, those descriptive moments with lots of characters but no one seeking any particular goal, or scenes that repeat prior moments with different dialogue. Revising with this pair of eyes has probably yielded the most fruit, or rather, pruned back the riotous growth.

Or I can put on my Soapbox Lens. That's for commentary sounding more like Lyn on a soapbox than Wendy holding forth. We all identify with our characters and sometimes speak for them in strident, overbearing tones.

The two toughest revision methods are a) finding the essence of each scene and cutting all the rest or b) grappling with that global question, the story's structure. Somehow I have to see all the novel's pages at a glance and lift from them the narrative thread--the through line of Wendy's heroic journey. I wish I could say I already have a perfect outline sitting on the shelf, waiting to aid me in this very process, but alas, the story did not create itself that way.

My friend and author Bob Mustin gave me this encouragement as I embarked last week on my own hero's journey, facing the beasts of revision:

"Remember the upside down checkmark? Rising action that reaches the climax, then a short bit of falling action and the denouement?"

Of course I do; I've taught that for years, should know it by heart, right? But why all of a sudden in the context of my own challenge did these bits and bytes of plot data suddenly take on a whole new meaning?

I've berated, cajoled, encouraged my students year after year to revise, but the advice only hits home when an author is ready to revise. Why did Bob's reminder about story structure strike a chord? Because this boot camp is about the agents and market waiting on the other side, and I suddenly hear them loud and clear.

In even those negligible 58 words I cut, I really liked how Wendy expresses her sassiness, irreverence, sexual frustration, and anger. But I cut it because it slows the narrative momentum and repeats what's been said before. It doesn't matter if I find the image striking or clever; it's gotta go.

My last tactic to outwit my wordy self? An Out-Takes folder. There I throw every slain darling, every rejected scene. There will be a day when readers want to see what hit the cutting-room floor, because by God, I'm making Wendy so real, her story will go on, and on, and on--just not within the covers of my novel.

Writing Prompts: Please note that writing prompts should always be pursued in emotionally-safe environments with the supervision of someone who interested in encouraging good writing, self-awareness, and reflection. A wonderful resource is Pat Schneider’s Writing Alone and With Others.

© Lyn Hawks. Writing prompts for one-time classroom use only and not for publication in any form elsewhere without permission of this author.

Writing Prompts for Teachers:

-- When you teach, which subjects or activities send you into Long-Winded Land? Why? Are your lectures effective, or, do they wax poetic yet purple?
-- If you write fiction or nonfiction, pull out a piece you haven't looked at in at least a month. Read with an editor's eye, seeking fat. Identify a line or two that could go. Then write about what type of line you wished to cut. Give it a category or name--a purple-prosey tendency you have--and meditate on how you can keep an eye out for it next time.
-- What's the largest amount of words you've ever cut from your writing? How did you do it? Why did you do it?
-- How do you encourage students to revise their work? How do you encourage "less is more"?
-- The 20th century fiction admired the Hemingway and Carver-esque modes of minimalist prose, and 21st century fiction, while too new to be categorized, is being created in a Tweet-saturated world. Do you think writing is getting more expressive or less expressive in its 140 character bursts? (Though apparently technology has yet another workaround if a Tweet size doesn't satisfy you and you feel the need to super-size: meet Twitzer.
-- Find the preferred word limit for the fiction genre you write and list strategies you can use to keep your story in line.
-- Are your favorite writers lengthy or concise in style, or both? Argue the merits of either style and why you admire a certain author's approach to storytelling.
-- Attempt a short story of 500 words (or Three-Minute Fiction), of 750, of 1,000, of 2500, and 4,000; in other words, write five versions of this story. Which is the best?

Writing Prompts for Students:

-- Make an argument to your parent or guardian, your teacher, or some other adult in your life for something you want or need. Write a 25-word persuasive argument, a 50-word, a 100-word, and a 250-word argument. Which is most effective? Why?
-- Do you write long or short? If you write long, why do you think you do? What do people tell you to cut? If you write short, why do you think you do? What do people tell you to add?
-- Find a piece of writing you haven't looked at in at least a month. Identify a line or two that could go. How did you know this line should go? Do you see any trends in your writing that make sentences worth cutting out?
-- What's the largest amount of words you've ever cut from your writing? How did you do it? Why did you do it?
-- When you Tweet, text, IM, or update your Facebook status, are you a long writer or a short writer? Which types, the long or the short, get the most feedback from others?
-- Whose writing do you most admire? Would you characterize this writer as lengthy with description and plot or more concise? Why does this type of writing appeal to you?
-- Attempt a short story of 500 words (or Three-Minute Fiction), of 750, of 1,000, of 2500, and 4,000; in other words, write five versions of this story. Which is the best?