How to Write Creative Essays Using Boring Narrative and Expository Essay Prompts

Hey, Mr. Butt, what happens in your class when you give them a commonplace writing prompt like “Everyone has a favorite toy. Explain why it is your favorite toy.“

Well, if I don't give my students permission to use their imagination, I get a bunch of essays about X-Boxes, iPads, skateboards, and Android phones.

Hey, Mr. Butt, what happens in your class when you give them a
commonplace writing prompt like “Everyone has a favorite toy. Explain why it is your favorite toy.“

Well, if I don't give my students permission to use their imagination, I get a bunch of essays about X-Boxes, iPads, skateboards, and Android phones.

Eww. Those essays don't sound like much fun to read them.

They are not. Usually, I have to use toothpicks to prop open my eyelids.

So I noticed you said these essays happen if you don't give students permission to use their imagination, what happens if you give them permission to use their imagination?

Suddenly, I start reading essays about favorite toys like a robot that takes the author on trips to other planets, makes gourmet hamburgers, and turns bullies into bunnies or I read essays about magical board games that grant wishes or skateboards that take the rider back in time.

Those essays sound much more interesting to read.

Indeed they are. Now imagine that you are a reader for a standardized testing company who reads hundreds of boring essays about common toys and then you encounter an imaginative one about a robot that does wonderful things for the author. Might you score that essay a little higher than the umpteenth one you just read about the iPad?

Sure you would. But how do you make a boring prompt exciting?

Ah, it is quite simple. First I give my students permission to write about the most wonderful, exciting subject they can imagine. By giving them permission to imagine, you break them out of the ingrained “factual’ thinking mode of the student and allow them to enter the free thinking, “imaginative” mode of the creative writer. At first, it will be tough to break them out of this factual thinking mode and enter imagination mode, especially today’s “imagination-challenged” kids accustomed to being entertained, but keep at it and you will see more interesting essays especially from the best writers in the class.

Then what?

Then you change the way they think about the prompt. Say you give students the following prompt.

"Most of us have a special place we like to go. Think about a special place where you like to go. Explain why you like to go to that special place.”

Now modify the subject of the essay by inserting the following adjectives: magical, exciting.

"Most of us have a magical and exciting special place we like to go. Think about a magical and exciting special place where you like to go. Explain why you like to go to this magical and exciting wonderful special place.”

Wow, that changes how you think about the subject. It starts your imagination working.

Indeed. But first, give your students permission to make up a special place where they would love to go. It could be an undersea cave, a magical forest, etc. To practice coming up with ideas, you could do a classroom brainstorming session to demonstrate how ideas form or you could do an individual lesson focused on idea formation and pre-writing. By sticking to idea formation and pre-writing, you can practice lots of different prompts without burning kids out writing essay after essay.

Sounds like fun.

It is. If you are a fellow teacher, try it. You will be surprised by the results.

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Learn how to use Similes to Create Metaphors

So, Bonefish, remember last lesson, we learned that metaphors compare two things that are not alike in a way that makes them similar. They usually compare things that you can’t touch like emotions to things you can touch like concrete nouns. Now we are going to creates some metaphors for the emotion happiness. I find that it is easier for students like you to think of similes first and then to convert them into metaphors. To make it easier, I will give you one of the five senses to use when you create your simile. 

Okay. Mr. Butt. Silly me will create a simile.

Then get to it. Give me a simile for happiness that uses the sense of touch.

Roger.  Here’s my example: Happiness feels like snow.

How does happiness feel like snow?

Um, snow is cold and fun.

Your simile isn’t clear-cut. Snow falls from the sky and sits on the ground. How is that fun?

When it snows, you can ski and go sledding and throw snowballs.

So: Happiness feels like a fast sled gliding down a snowy hill.

Hey, the adjectives fast describing sled and snowy describing hill add details that paint a picture. That’s good, Mr. Butt.

That’s why I’m the teacher and you’re the student. Details in your similes and metaphors make them stand out. So, how does happiness sound to you, Bonefish?

Happiness sounds like a baby.

What kind of a baby? What is the baby doing that relates to happiness? Describe it in more detail.

Happiness sounds like a giggling baby waiting for her daddy to tickle her again.

First-rate. What does happiness look like?

Happiness looks like Billy Fernowicz.

Billy Fernowicz?

Yeah, Billy was my roommate at Caretaking School. He was always humming and dancing. He loved yanking weeds out of old gravesites. Happiest caretaker I ever met.

But do most people know Billy Fernowicz?

No, he was a peculiar fellow.

So clarify your simile so that people will understand. How about: Happiness looks like a caretaker pulling weeds from an overgrown gravesite?

Sounds like Billy to me. Now, for my next two answers, I wrote:

Happiness smells like fresh baked pizza coming out of the oven. 

Happiness tastes like fresh baked pizza coming out of the oven.

Wait, those two similes compare happiness to fresh baked pizza.

I know. I sure would be happy if someone gave me a slice of fresh baked pizza. I’m starving.

We’ll order a fresh baked pizza for lunch after you change your similes into metaphors.

And just how do I do that?

Easy. In your lesson cross out the guide words feels like, smells like, etc. and use a form of the verb “to be” in place of the x-ed out words. Like this:

Happiness looks like a tawny cat sitting in an empty canary cage.

Cross out "looks like" and substitute "is.”

Happiness is a tawny cat sitting in an empty canary cage. 

Happiness is cold like a bowl of pistachio ice cream.

Cross out "cold like" and substitute "is.”

Happiness is a bowl of pistachio ice cream.

You're changing similes into metaphors.

So I would write:

Happiness is a fast sled gliding down a snowy hill.

Happiness is a giggling baby waiting for her daddy to tickle her again.

Happiness is a caretaker pulling weeds from an overgrown gravesite.

Happiness is fresh baked pizza.

And I’ve got one more, Mr. Butt.

Happiness is learning how to write scary good metaphors.

And scary good metaphors keep a reader reading and that's the main goal of Scary Good Writing.

Improve Your Student's Writing by Reading this Story.

I'd like to begin our next blog post with a question, Bonefish. What's a metaphor?

I don't know, Mr. Butt. I've never used a meta. I have no idea what it's for.

No, Bonefish, metaphor is one word. A metaphor compares or describes two things without using the words "like" or "as." Metaphors are dandy way to make your writing scary good. And metaphors can save your life.

Save your life?

Yes, if you happen to find yourself lost in an enchanted forest where trees talk and danger lurks in every shadow.

The Third Thing.

“I should have listened to my father," the little girl muttered. She looked around her at the vast sea of trees and closed her eyes to dam up the tears. She was lost. Her father had told her not to go too far into this forest. He said this forest was full of dark enchantment.

She looked up through the canopy of trees trying to find the sun. She knew it fell to the west and that her home lay in that direction. But the branches of the trees entwined like the top of a woven basket in which she was trapped.

“Help me!” She cried out. The desperate sound of her voice only underlined her isolation.

The branches of a nearby tree stirred. She found this curious since there was no wind to blow them.

“Who’s there?”

She heard a creaking sound like a wooden bow being drawn to fire an arrow. Thinking she was the target, she ducked into a nearby bush. She peered through the leaves, but saw no sign of a hunter. She saw something much more frightening.

A face was forming in the bark of a mighty oak. The wood groaned as two knots in the tree blinked open to form eyes. A mouth grew from the claw mark of a bear. A nose rose above the gaping maw.

“You are a blinded bird flying in a snowstorm," the oak tree said in a rasping voice.

The girl knitted her brow. “No, I'm not a bird. I'm a girl.”

“You are an Eskimo wandering in the desert.”

“No, I'm a little girl,” she replied. “I'm lost.”

“Is that not what I've been saying?” The tree said.

“No, you said I was a blinded bird flying in a snowstorm and an Eskimo wandering in the desert.”

“And so you are.”

The girl wondered if she had changed into a bird. She looked at her arms to see if they had become wings. They were unchanged. She checked her clothes to see if they had become the sealskin an Eskimo wears. They remained a simple blouse and skirt.

The girl pondered the two statements. “Wait a minute. A blinded bird in a snowstorm is lost. An Eskimo wandering in the desert is lost. You mean I’m lost.”

“You are a soothsayer who always knows the future.”

“That means I'm right.”

The branches of the tree rose and fell to confirm that she was correct.

“Can you help me find my way back home?” She asked.

“I can, but you will need to do three things.”

“What are they?”

“First, you must break the bones of the clattering skeleton that haunts you.”

“Break the bones of the clattering skeleton that haunts me? But I don't see any skeleton haunting me. I wouldn't be standing here if a clattering skeleton was nearby. I'd be running away because I'd be afraid.” She considered the phrase for a moment. "Wait a minute. That's it. A clattering skeleton that haunts me. Do you mean I’m afraid?”

“Is that what I mean?”

“Of course, a clattering skeleton stands for my fear. I must get rid of my fear.”

“Next, you must become a mother deer protecting her fawn from a pack of wolves.”

“But how do I change into a mother deer? Do you have a magic potion?”

The mighty branches shook. “You cannot change the outside.”

The girl wrinkled her brow. “Then I must change the inside?” She put her finger to her cheek. “I understand. A mother deer protecting her fawn from a pack of wolves stands for bravery. I must be brave.”

The ancient tree murmured yes.

Suddenly, the girl remembered a lesson from school.

“Metaphors! You’re speaking in metaphors. You’re comparing two things that are not alike in a way that makes them similar. You compared things that you can’t touch like bravery and fear to things you can touch like skeletons and deer.”

The tree murmured.

“I have you figured out, you tricky tree.” She grinned. “What is the third thing that I must do?”

“You must wrestle the giant slobbering ogre to earn a map of the forest to lead you out,” the tree said.

“Wrestle the giant slobbering ogre?”

The branches of the tree rose and fell.

She wrinkled her brow and put her finger to her cheek. Wrestle the giant slobbering ogre? What does wrestling the giant slobbering ogre stand for? What is the metaphor?

“I’ve got it! Wrestling the giant slobbering ogre is a metaphor for figuring out a difficult problem.”

The tree shook its branches.

She put her finger to her cheek. “What could it be?”

The tree waited.

“I know. Wrestling the giant slobbering ogre is a metaphor for wrestling with my guilty conscience for disobeying my father.”

Again the oak shook its branches. “No, wrestling the giant slobbering ogre is what you must do.”

A huge ogre stepped out of a stand of trees. A trail of slime leaked from his gaping jaws down his chin. “Best two out of three falls,” the ogre said.

“Uh oh,” the brave little girl muttered. She swallowed her fear and shot for a double leg takedown.

How did you like that story, Bonefish?

The ending pinned me to the page. 

If you read this to students, you can start a discussion about creating metaphors and why good ones make writing standout.  In addition to metaphors, you can explain the metaphor’s cousin, the simile. As you know, the simile compares two things just like a metaphor only a simile uses like or as to link them such as: The man smelled like the south end of a northbound mule or we ran as quickly as bunnies being chased by a carrot farmer. Next blog post, we will show you a way to turn similes into metaphors, then use them to create a lovely poem.

I can't wait.

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Narrative essay ideas in less than a minute.

I'll start this lesson with a question, Bonefish. What is a story?

That's easy. A story has a beginning and middle and an end.

So does an earthworm, that doesn't make an earthworm a story.

A story is made up.

So is a recipe for chicken pot pie, that doesn't make it a story.

A story has things happen inside it.

So does a washing machine - - clothes get cleaned. But a washing machine is not a story.

I give up, Mr. Butt. What is a story?

It's simple. A story is a way of telling about a character with a problem that must be resolved. CPR for short. Have you ever heard of using CPR to come up with a story idea, Bonefish?

CPR? Sounds like a good way to breathe life into a story idea.

It is. To use it, you simply think of an interesting character and give that character a difficult problem to resolve. Giving characters problems they must resolve make stories enjoyable to read.

But why don’t we just buy an idea potion instead of coming up with characters and problems? You can get an idea potion cheap at Crazy Lulu’s Potions, Curses and Chili Shack out on Haunted Lake.

Thank you, no. I once bought an idea potion from Crazy Lulu. It was terrible. That potion made me come up with the most horrible writing ideas.

Like what?

Like a sequel to James and the Giant Peach called Bernie and the Fairly Large Kumquat. It also suggested a book of tips for raising ravenous hyenas as pets. Another idea was to write a book about a boy with terrible gas problems caused by a magical elf. It was called Harry Pooter and the Goblin of Farts.

That last idea definitely stinks.

Yes, so why don’t you try making stories using CPR?

I’ll give it a whirl.

To learn more about Scary Good Writing with Mr, Butt and Bonefish.

MAKING WRITING MORE PRODUCTIVE WITH LESS EFFORT

Writing essay after essay seems to me to be counter-productive. When I compare student’s essays number one and number five, I see differences. But when I compare student’s essay number five and number ten, there doesn’t seem to be much improvement.  In fact sometimes there is less effort in essay ten than essay five. I have found that most students who do lots of essays will not put out maximum effort on each essay so you will not get an accurate assessment of their writing skills. It creates unnecessary worry that the student is getting worse. And how much time do you spend reading these sometimes painful essays?  How much angst do you have when you feel you are not getting anywhere with them when in fact they may just be tired or bored with writing?  This is not to say that you do not write a whole lot in class, writing makes better writers, simple as that, but it does mean that the writing will be in manageable pieces and therefore much easier to assess. Writing can be peer-reviewed in class so that students get immediate feedback on good writing (and who doesn’t want kudos from their classmates?) Good writing skills lead to good essays. Writing lots of essays is not necessary to get better scores. It has been my experience that excessive essay writing makes kids dislike writing and not give their best efforts so you end up reading the essays that are not reflective of a student’s writing skills.

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