Storycraft: How to teach narrative writing
About this ebook
This book is not a style manual. Authors Martin Griffin and Jon Mayhew think there are plenty of those about. Instead, it picks apart the craft of narrative writing and equips teachers with activities designed to help their students overcome the difficulties they experience when tasked with creating something from nothing.
Written by two fiction writers and English teachers with over forty years' combined experience in education, Storycraft packs in expert guidance relating to idea generation and the nature of story and provides off-the-peg writing prompts that teachers can immediately adopt and adapt in the classroom.
The book breaks down the simple components that must be in place for a narrative to work the crafting of character, setting, shape and structure and shares fifty-one stimulating activities that will get students writing narratives regularly, more creatively and with greater confidence .
Martin and Jon also include helpful advice in a chapter dedicated to the process of editing in which they provide activities designed to help students diagnose and improve misfiring narratives, and they close the book with invaluable tips for GCSE exam preparation written directly for students and with an impending creative writing exam in mind.
Suitable for English teachers of students aged eleven to eighteen.
About the author
Having worked as an English and SEN teacher for 25 years, Jon Mayhew is now in demand on the school event circuit - delivering writing workshops to students from Key Stage 2 to sixth form. He is also a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow, helping students to improve their academic writing at Chester University. Jon is the author of the Monster Odyssey series and the multi-award-winning Mortlock.
Martin Griffin has 20 years' experience teaching post-16 students, and has been a head of faculty, assistant head teacher and deputy head teacher. He was the director of sixth form at The Blue Coat School and now works with schools and colleges to design and implement character development and mindset programmes.
