Let’s say your child needs to write a short story for class. They’ve brainstormed a bit, and now they have to choose ONE story from their brainstorming sessions. For some kids, this is simple - they only managed to brainstorm one or two stories, and one made sense, they pick, and voila, they are off. For others, this produces an entirely new set of anxieties!

So, how do you pick ONE story idea to write about? You (well, your student) should choose the story idea that interests them the most. There isn’t a right or wrong answer. Your student will be living with this story for however many weeks it takes to write the story, so the most valuable thing is that they care about their story.

Yup, that’s it. They pick a story idea they care about - that interests them, that they want to think more about, find out more about, play around in. It doesn’t matter if, at this stage, it doesn’t make sense, or isn’t a “complete” idea, or anything. Have them look at their story ideas, and find one that they want to spend the next ten weeks with. And go with it!

As an aside, this method of “choosing” by interest and what they care about, works for many other decisions they will have to make over the coming weeks. How do they choose which characters to put into their story? Think about who they’d want to spend time with - because they’ll be spending a lot of time with them. Focus/theme - what’s something THEY care about? Want to think more about? Location - where would they like to go? Of course, this is by no means the only way to make choices, and in lots of instances, it isn’t the best way, but for these starting points, finding what interests your students, something they care about, will help all the future moments of diving into this story again and again something they are interested in and excited about doing.

Tags: Brainstorming