ideas needed please.... dd wants to write a book

[sweetsouthern]

i just ordered write shop for her, but now she busts out with he ideas of creating a book. so i figured, we could play around with this for a while. shes almost 14. shes looking to write something like a warped fairy tale style story. besides "heres paper, starting writing" lol! any ideas of resources or info i can have her do or look through? thanks so much!

[Occasionally]

Nanowrimo's Young Writer program has some noveling workbooks free on their website: here. Maybe that can give your DD some direction?

[merylvdm]

I would suggest the One Year Adventure Novel curriculum (she can give it a fairy tale spin). I bought it for my son and he got quite far, but didn't actually finish his book.

[Tohru]

I would suggest the One Year Adventure Novel curriculum (she can give it a fairy tale spin). I bought it for my son and he got quite far, but didn't actually finish his book.

 

 

I agree - this is a fantastic curriculum that helps teach them how to organize all their thoughts and gives really good pointers on writing. We bought it for my son a few years ago and he goes through lessons when he's inspired to write. He's gotten quite far in his book and has many different other book ideas going. They also have a very friendly support forum for the kids.

[J-rap]

I think there are pros and cons to using a curriculum for helping inspiring young writers write a book. My older daughter was set on writing a book, so I got her the One Year Adventure Novel curriculum. It has wonderful ideas in it of course, and for the right students it's probably perfect. But for my daughter, it had too many rules and assignments along the way and it really squashed her motivation. She did end up with a short book, but it was slow and tedious and no longer enjoyable for her, and she never wanted to write another book again.

 

My youngest wanted to write a book when she was about 15, so for half a year, that was her English. But she didn't have any curriculum or guidelines. I just told her, OK - write it then. :) She would usually spend hours working on it daily, and with no deadlines or guidelines except to get it done, her motivation remained high and she carried it through to the very end.

 

My only requirement before the final step of publishing it (printing it off at Kinko's ) was that she needed to proofread the whole thing first, which she did.

 

So then we had it printed and bound. And THEN the English lesson began. :)

 

That's when we walked through the whole thing together, discussing organization, sentence structure, outlining, how to capture the reader's attention and carry it, transitions, historic accuracy, and so much more. We came up with two more editions of it over time.

 

For us anyway, that seemed a much better way of doing it, and my daughter is now working on her third book.

[FloridaLisa]

Like jjhat7, we've done it two ways in our home. One of my sons is just a writer. It's still how he expresses himself today. He just wrote and self-published; I had nothing to do with it except to ask periodically what his book was about. I didn't even enter into the editing process, though it needed it desperately. He didn't want me to, it was his work, his project, outside of our academic work and anything he was doing formally for school. So. :cool: I had to bury every single journalistic instinct when I read it, but I did enjoy it!

 

Another son used Learn to Write the Novel Way. Since this was taught through a co-op and I was really recovering that year and involved only in my kids' core classes at home, I can't really tell you about the curriculum. I can tell you he was slowly but surely walked through the entire process of pre-writing, plot development, character development, and even designing a cover for the book. He LOVED the experience and after a one-year hiatus, has started writing another book on his own. This child is a huge reader as well, but probably did need the structure to jumpstart his inner author.

 

Hope that helps ~

Lisa

[Guest Susan T. in Ohio]

My daughter participated in NaNoWriMo a couple of years ago and actually completed a novel, which was then published for free by a company working with NaNo, and we were able to get as many copies as we wanted (not all were for free). what I loved about NaNo is that there are quite a few supports along the way, and the community feeling of working alongside many others who are working to complete their words in the month of November is a lot of fun. Here is the link: http://www.nanowrimo.org/