Some time back, I taught a fanfiction workshop for the fifth and sixth graders at my kids’ elementary school. Disclaimer: I have no formal education in teaching. Now that everyone is homeschooling for a while, it seemed like time to dust off my work and send it out. This is made for elementary school but could also work for middle and high school. The important part is: Writing ought to be fun.
When planning a fanfiction workshop, I thought about what would have helped me as a young writer. I was constantly writing stories, but I felt like they all had the same character in them . . . a girl with an embarrassing similarity to me! There’s nothing wrong with that, but it made me feel self-conscious about my writing. I was also self-conscious about writing stories featuring my favorite book characters. I didn’t realize that authors are always borrowing characters and plots and then reworking them. Why not just make it explicit?
Here are links to my posts. Use these because it looks like the links internal to my posts are broken. . . and I don’t have time to fix it.
- Day One: Introducing Fanfiction
- Day Two: The Prewrite
- Day Three: A Flurry of Activity
- Days Four through Eight: Rough Draft Beginning and Middle
- Last Day: Getting to the Ending
And here are links to some of the materials I made, including worksheets, overheads, and a booklet I wrote as a kid.
- All About My Character
- Wheres The Story
- About the Setting Worksheet
- More About Setting
- Setting and the Five Senses
- Some Ways to Start Stories
- six into adventure booklet
-Kristin
Kristin Ann King 