From Making to Writing

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Making, Thinking and Writing

Making

Did you ever receive a jewelry box before having any jewelry to put inside? Or maybe you were gifted with a beautiful set of mugs, and you thought up what you would prefer first, coffee or tea?

 I knew that if I asked this group of boys to write a story about their imaginary character, most of them would wither away in silence and lose interest. So, I tried something else. I gave each of them paper to fold into a booklet, graphics to decorate their cover page and playing cards. Not the kind you play Rummy or Speed, but Story Lynx’s Tell a Tale Cards. Nine hand-drawn image cards with either: Hero, Place, Ally, Enemy and Conflict that can be placed in any way, changed and turned upside down to ignite imagination. The boys got excited and exclaimed, “are we making our own books?’’

Yes, we are MAKING books.

 I stayed away from the word writing. Why? Because making is more inclusive to the whole process of crafting a story. It involves creating a story, illustrating, layout design, and of course stringing words together to tell a story. This got the kids excited as they each designed their books, chose their cards, drew pictures and began discussing story ideas. Writing their stories inevitably happened as they now had somewhere to put it.  They made the container before the content, the mug before the coffee.

Thinking

But why write a story? Why do we even write for that matter? With the rise of AI, it is a relevant question to ask. Do we really need to hone writing skills? Can we just outsource to ChatGPT and be done with it? Well, no we can’t. And I urge you to understand what is at stake here. Yes, ChatGPT can efficiently produce essays, delicious descriptive and vivid texts and even build stories.  But machines cannot make our minds grow and teach us how to think. The art of writing is how our minds develop thinking, reasoning, decision making and hopefully gain insight and wisdom. Let me walk you through it.

First, Concentration

Sophie has a story to write, she takes a deep breath as she ponders and attempts her first words on the page. Her mind, which is usually full of fragmented thoughts all day long, starts to calm down and delves into a deeper thought on one specific topic: her story. As she slows down, she unavoidably makes space in her mind to concentrate longer on one given topic. By doing so she is developing her concentration and capacity to think deeper on one given topic. She is learning to leave her fragmented thoughts for a moment and think deeply about one thing.

Then, Curiosity

As she writes her story, it comes to her attention that she does not know how to describe a certain character or how to open a dialogue.  Writing serves as a test for her. She can only write what her mind is capable of, and its limitations are clearly set in front of her. But this limitation is not seen as defeat because she is in a creative bubble, and she strives to deepen her skills to make her story appear on the page.  She pushes through her limitations by using the desire to create her story. Sophie, like most children when writing stories, begins to ask herself questions, “what if a whale can fly? What if lava spreads over the houses?” Her mind is racing with ‘what if’s’ as well sentence structure, spelling, dialogue and adjectives and adverbs without even knowing it. As she builds her plot, she develops her curious and inquisitive mind.

Then again, Decisions

 Sophie gets to a crucial point of her story where she needs to make decisions, what will happen to her character? Will someone die? Will help come to the rescue? Will another catastrophe happen? These are all decisions to be made, as Sophie is the master of these choices. Wisdom stems from making choices and owning up to them. She realizes a part of the story doesn’t work, crosses it out and changes some details, deletes a few words, changes them to better ones. She is making decisions. Learning to make decisions is essential in growing into a confident adult.  

Finally, Insight

 Sophie realizes something, her character strangely resembles herself, she didn’t start with that in mind, it just happened. She is surprised and smiles a bit. As she re-reads her story, she also realized that her story expressed something else, something only she can see, it was like a mirror into herself. She holds this knowledge and thanks her story for teaching her these lessons. She has just experienced guidance from her story, as writing is a window into our souls, and what came out of her was not only a story but a little part of her uniqueness that unfolded itself onto the page. Her writing taught her about herself, insight into her deeper self.

‘’Writing is POWER. It is the single best thing you can do for thinking. It formulates your ideas and helps you better yourself’

Writing

Back to our story. After being busy with the making of the book, they asked me if they could write a story, I smiled and said, ‘of course’. By now they all had chosen different cards, had an idea, and had somewhere their story could live. It was simply a matter of extracting those words down onto the page. In the end, they all proudly had a story in their book. They were all happy, because they owned their project, they crafted their own world, built their characters, made up a world, invented problems and found strategic ways to solve their problems. Along the way they used language to express their ideas, making the whole process complete. As they worked forwards towards a final project, I worked backwards in presenting the process. I gave them a book to make, some Tell a Tale and they did magic or writing and I sat back and enjoyed a cup of tea.

How about having a go at it yourself? I’m offering here a free template of Tell a Tale cards. After downloading, print cut out and give them to your child with a small booklet. Invite your child make the booklet before they write. Then spread out the cards and let them play around them until an idea unfolds and unleashes a story.