It’s difficult to teach something we don’t really understand. Creative writing can be one of those things.

After years of reading books, attending lectures, working with story-telling professionals, Chris (the author) realized that writing actually isn’t any different than most things in the world. It’s a very complex thing, like a car, that is made up of many smaller parts.

A car has a frame, an engine, gas, wheels, tires, and so on. If you put them together in the right way you have a functioning car. But if you are missing one the essential parts, like the wheels, then it doesn’t go. If you have everything but the gasoline, it doesn’t go. If it doesn’t have a driver, it doesn’t go. Many times stories don’t come together because they are missing an essential part.

So Chris spent years finding the foundational elements of what stories are made of and began to organize them. This is what we call the grammar of story. The back of A Pirate’s Guide t’ th’ Grammar of Story lists more than 30 different elements of story.

Just like someone building a car needs to know what all the parts are, how they go together, what is necessary and where it goes, before they can build a meaningful car and then add fun extras like cup holders and heated seats, the creative writer needs to know what the basic parts of a story are, how they work, where they go, and how they interact before they can create a functional story.

In the grammar stage of learning, a student focuses on learning how to identify and define the parts of something. If it’s latin, they might memorize the declensions and the parts of speech. If it’s math, they might memorize the times table or simple formulas. If it’s piano, they might memorize and practice scales. For creative writing, learning the foundational parts of a story, what they are, what they represent, and how they interact, gives the writer all the tools and parts they need to make a story that can, like a car, go.

For this reason, we recommend that a parent read ahead or follow along with their students. Even though all of the teaching and exercises are contained in the workbook, and the parent doesn’t need to teach anything (at least for the independent learner), spending some time in the workbook will give you an understanding of creative writing that will give you more confidence, and help you support your student as they learn more about story.