Creative Writing Ideas

Creative Writing – for teens and adults

Using famous paintings

You can find images of all famous (and not so famous) paintings online

You can choose just one painting (or a few) and display them on screen or make photocopies of a wide selection of paintings, which you can pin up on the board and invite students (in pairs or threes) to choose one that appeals to them.

Ask students to work in small groups and share a piece of paper and pencil. Ask students to choose one person in the picture they have chosen (or the one you are displaying)

Give instructions one at a time allowing students to discuss and decide

·         Give them a name

·         What did they have for breakfast

·         What do they like doing in their spare time

·         Who matters most to them

·         What matters most to them

·         Which adjective best describes them

·         What hopes / dreams do they have

·         What are they most frightened of

 

You can elicit further prompts from your students

Plus:

·         What happened before the events shown in the picture

 

·         What happened after the events shown in the picture

 

After doing this they could some of the following activities:

§  Join another group and share their information about the person they chose in their picture

§  Add 2 more pieces of information they want about this person

§  Write a diary entry for this person

§  Write a facebook post for this person

§  Working with another group tweet messages or send texts between their characters

§  Write ‘a day in the life’ for this character

§  Write the character’s obituary

§  Write a lonely heart’s posting for this character

 

Or students can choose what they want to write about the character