How to write a belonging creative writing
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This document provides guidance on how to write a creative piece about belonging for an exam. It addresses common issues students have like feeling uncreative or not knowing how to structure a story. It recommends drafting the piece in advance rather than improvising. Students should choose 2-3 belonging ideas to focus on, develop a premise for their story, and flesh out their main character and how their sense of belonging will be complicated and then resolved by the end. Examples of premises include a migrant family arriving in a new country or a person struggling to fit in at school. The piece must have a complication and resolution for the character's belonging.
How to write a belonging creative writing
- 1. How to Write a Belonging Creative Piece
- 2. Issues Students have • They feel like they are totally uncreative - they don’t know how to “make up” a story. • They have an idea of what they want to write, but don’t know how to go about it (how should it start?). • They don’t know what makes a good creative writing piece.
- 3. • Drafting up a creative writing piece on Belonging that you can prepare and take into the exam is as important as the essay! • Writing a creative piece on the spot…will NOT turn out well. Unless you’re a creative writing genius. But even then, think of all the reknowned authors in the world – I’m sure they had to write several drafts!
- 4. • 1. What ideas about Belonging are you going to convey in your creative? • First of all, let’s start with thinking about Belonging ideas, rather than the creative piece itself. You should choose 2-3 ideas that you think you want to write about or that you find the most interesting. • If you’re unsure about what ideas about Belonging there are – just think about the ones in your essay! It could be things like: • Belonging and identity: belonging gives us a sense of identity. • Belonging and conformity: belonging depends on us conforming to the group/society. • Belonging to people, place and culture • Belonging and choice: we have control over whether we belong or not
- 5. You can then think about how these ideas relate to your character: • Will your character gain a sense of identity through belonging in the story? • Will your character struggle to belong because they refuse to conform? • Will your character feel a sense of belonging to a particular place? • Will they struggle to belong to a new culture? • Will your character choose not to belong? • Will your character find themselves forced to belong anyway?
- 6. 2. What is going to be the premise of your creative? • By “premise”, I mean….what is the basic background or situation that the story will occur in? • The premise is very important to your creative, because that is what will set your creative apart from others! • Think simply about WHO and WHERE. There is usually no need to discuss WHEN, as it is too difficult/confusing to write about another time (past/future) in a short creative piece.
- 7. 2 basic examples • A migrant family arriving in Australia. (You can vary this up by having refugees or illegal migrants instead. Or using another country besides Australia.) • A school student struggling to belong in school. (Make this more creative by thinking about reasons why they may be struggling. Perhaps they are deaf? • A young family moving to a new town. (Why are they moving? A new job?)
- 8. More creative examples The fact that they “don’t belong” is quite obvious: • A homeless person living on the streets. • A mentally ill patient in an asylum. • A drifter travelling from town to town. • A circus performer moving from town to town with the circus.
- 9. Examples of less obvious instances of “not belonging”: • A middle-aged business worker, who has worked at the same company for over 10 years. • An old, retired man, living in a nursing home.
- 10. 3. Fleshing out your premise and structuring it Once you have selected your premise, really flesh it out. • Who is the main character/s? • What is going to happen to them during your creative? (the Belonging “complication”) • What are they going to realise at the end? (the Belonging “resolution” or “realisation”).
- 11. Note • The prevoius points are important, because your creative MUST have a complication of some sort and there MUST be a resolution/realisation. • Without these aspects, the creative piece is pointless. There would be no point in reading something that JUST has a complication without some sort of finality, because then it would simply be the character complaining on and on and on! • The worst thing is to read a story where at the end nothing has changed.