Things You'll Need:
- Photocopies or books of essay examples
- Notebooks or journals for students
- Pencils or pens
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Step 1
Understand the most important part of teaching any writing form is making it enjoyable. Since probably a lot of your students will not have experimented with creative writing--but may have read many examples of poems and narratives--present them with some short writing prompts at the beginning of each class to get things flowing. The key is to write as much as possible so that it doesn’t become such a daunting task to put your ideas in words. Fun writing prompts include, “If you were a sandwich, what would you be?” or “Describe an old version of yourself looking back at where you are now. What would he or she say?”
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Step 2
Break down the mystique of the essay. Since most of the examples kids will have read are from the lenses of scientific prose or literary criticism, provide them with some essays that take on less serious or “boring” topics. For example, Nick Hornsby has a great recent collection about music. The key lesson out of these alternative examples should be that the essay can be a less rigid, creative form and can take just about anything as its subject. Emphasize that nothing is set in stone and that you can play with the essay structure as much as you want as long as it serves the purpose of some over-arching significance.
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Step 3
Since most first tries at creative essays will be written in the first person, give some examples of “creative” biographies or auto-biographies. For example, check out Zora Neal Hurston’s “How it Feels to be Colored Me” and read that alongside Alice Walker’s “Looking for Zora.” Ask the students what details or types of writing really give you a sense of character, and what images seem to be the most evocative. Begin with more intuitive responses and then move more into a detailed discussion of how this is actually achieved in formal or technical terms. Once they get comfortable with the first-person mode, have them explore second- or third-person perspectives.
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Step 4
Encourage experimentation with the way an essay looks on a page. There is no reason that every line has to be a complete sentence, that every sentence has to follow the other, or that all the text be left-justified. The results will be shaky at first, but eventually they will learn how to use this kind of freedom typically reserved for poems within the essay structure. Give them examples of narratives written in verse (such as Anne Carson’s “Autobiography of Red”) and show them how things like rhyme and strange syntax can be incorporated within more prosaic styles in order to highlight critical moments. Also, make sure they know all the different punctuation marks they have at their beckoning. Dashes and colons can be great tools to open up sentences to greater complexity and richness.
