Help! Ideas for a creative writing group?

Question

Hi everyone.. I work at a hostel for the homeless, and I've just noticed I'm on rota to run the first meeting of the 'Creative Writing Group' tomorrow evening. I love writing myself, but I've never tried to run something like this before.. I've got until 5pm GMT tomorrow to find some good ideas of things I can do for an hour, that will hopefully get the residents thinking about expressing themselves creatively... any suggestions? Please!!! Thanks gang x

Answer 1

Write about life stories

Answer 2

Free writing is a great creative writing exercise. You set about ten minutes, and have the participants write without lifting their pen from the page. It doesn't have to be a story, it doesn't have to make sense, the goal is to keep writing. Sometimes some really great stuff comes up, and it's a good way to start a class as a warm up.

One of my favorite exercises is handing out some random pictures from magazines (funny or strange ones are the most fun), and writing a short story about them. You can focus on developing a character, or creating a dialog, or you can set it up as more focused form of free writing. Again ten minutes or so is a pretty good start.

To use up time, you might want to talk about creative writing a little bit (Has anyone tried creative writing before? If so, what did they write about? Maybe some of your own experiences with creative writing, etc.), and at the end of the class you can ask people if they want to read something they came up with during the class.

Answer 3

You could start the ball rolling by getting them into groups of 3. Ask them to find out each think of 2 things about themselves that is hard to believe but true and 1 that isn't true. Within their groups, they will then guess which is the line that is untrue. This is a good ice breaker, and it gets the people to think about themselves and their lives. If time permits, you can then call 3 or 4 of them to present their 3 statements to everyone and everyone can have fun guessing.

Next, you could ask them to think of something that they would like to achieve that is achieveable, e.g. sing a song during the Christmas concert. They will then write a story about themselves achieving this goal. They can be as creative as they want, but they should try to start writing in point form the main events in the story before they begin.

Answer 4

One fun thing to do if you have enough people is to create "pass around stories". The first person writes a bit. You could require two or three sentences or something, and then they pass it to the next person in the circle. The next person elaborates on what the previous person wrote. The kicker is- you fold down the paper so the next person can only read the most recent part of the story. Then when you pass it around enough you call for the next person to end the story and then read them all out loud. You can also do it with line drawings- but I suppose not for your writing class!

Another thing you could try is writing a monologue or a character analysis. You could pick a hand full of different topics, and have them pick one to write a monologue about- as themselves or make up a character. Or if you're going to have multiple meetings- they could develop a character one week and then write a monologue for the character the next week.

Answer 5

Maybe thinking of a topic would be a good place to start? And humour never fails to get people involved. Sit down tonight and write a list of all the things that made you laugh this week. Then try turning it into a short poem maybe? I imagine the situation some of your students have found themselves in, are far from funny, so this could be a good way of cheering them up. Give it a try anyway, if it doesn't work then you're no worse off are you lol

Answer 6

Something to start a creative writing group is to start a book club, and with such a short time-frame to organise your first foray, why not choose a short story; James Joyce "The Dubliners" or Ernest Hemingway - a variety are available, are amongst many. This not only gives you the opportunity to write critiques but also broaden your horizons when researching material for anything you may do in the future.

Answer 7

It is a good idea to give them an exercise in writing for about 20 minutes. Some pics cut out of papers and picked out of a hat. Then writes short story about the person or place. Two sentences not connected and to write a story with both to them in. Anything like that. Only 20 minutes because they are read out at the end and even vote for the best one if you like

Answer 8

Here's an idea that I've used with many groups -- and it Works and its fun!

1. take a basket/box/bag
2. put about five small items in it. ie: feather, coin, stamp, old envelope, old photo, etc.
3. set them on the table and suggest writing a story that includes at least half the items in an important way. ie: The old letter and coin came from the sunken Titanic, or some such major event.

Another idea....

Have everyone pretend they are a building, tree, bush, etc and then tell the story of an important event (say maybe 9-11, or Katrina) from the point of view of that object.

I could go on for hours, but my kiddies are screaming for dinner...bye

Answer 9

this activity always turns out some good ideas...
get everyone to sit in a circle and hand them all a piece of paper (you will probably need about 10 pieces per person, all different colours) on the first piece, get them to write a character, one that they've made up on the spot. put all the pieces in the middle. On the second piece of paper (a different colour to the previous), get them to write a place, fictional or not, put all the pieces in the middle. continue in this way with subjects such as, jobs, names, personalities, family, more characters etc. anything you can think of really. Shuffle the bits of paper together and hand one of each colour out to each person; they will inevitably have one of their own but this doesn't matter. using the info on their bits of paper, get the participants to write a short story, incorporating all of the various descriptions and see what they come up with. even if the participants are not really into writing, this activity usually draws people in. GREAT FUN!

Answer 10

Hey this sounds like fun. Firstly you need to set up your program by capturing people's imaginations. Everybody has the ability to write creatively. Every body has an experience or a view that can help creativity. Talk to the residents about their experiences. Some of them will have some great stories. THen get people to get into groups of three or four and talk about common themes in their experiences. The you write four sentences.

when I was young I met.....................


when I think back to ................


I know that he/she is out there somewhere..................


The person I loved the most.............................

If people want to work in pairs great. I am sure taht your residents will have fun talking about things and ad libbing. Get your residents to realise that there own experiences are there greatest source of inspiration and that all good yarns are made of. Get people to talk about movies they liked and whether they were based on fact.

also talk about how people can go from rags to riches from writing an amazing story. Also people dont need fancy educations to write, just imagination. Good luck

Answer 11

The good old standby for creative writing is the "Finish this Story" assignment. Come up with a story but give them the first half. Have each person write the second half. It is interesting to see how many different ways they can end the story.