How to Teach Writing Short Stories

Teaching how to write short stories can be difficult. Students will have to learn about basic structure and character traits before they can begin to write their short stories. The best way to teach short story writing is through practical writing activities and encouraging students to read fiction. By using the idea of a writer's notebook, students will be able to record their ideas and write their short stories somewhere that feels safe.

• 1

  Give the students a notebook or small writing pad. This will be their writer's notebook. Ask them to note down any feelings, memories, facts, fictions, questions, poems, expressions, colors, stories and any ideas for short stories that come to mind. This notebook will be a safe place for them to write their ideas and feelings and to form their short stories.

• 2

  Introduce students to children's literature. By having the students read a variety of children's literature they can begin to gain an understanding of character traits, important literary elements and story structure. These lessons can then be applied to their own short stories.

• 3

  Instruct the students to draw on real life experiences for their short stories. Character development can be hard to grasp for some students. For a starting point, have the students think about the most interesting person they know, or have read about and base their character on that person.

• 4

  Conduct regular spelling and grammar booster lessons. Ensuring that high levels of spelling and grammar are maintained in the short stories is an important step to improving the students' writing skills. As they become more competent, provide them with dictionaries and thesauruses to apply new and more advanced vocabulary.

• 5

  Encourage the students to write in their writer's notebooks regularly. The best way to develop short story writing is to practice. Try setting the students the task of producing a short story every week. As they develop their writing, increase the length of the short story and the time in which they have to complete it.

• 6

  Apply all of the points simultaneously to develop the students' understanding of fiction writing and their application of this understanding.