November is National Novel Writing Month. This yearly event challenges students to write a book during the month of November. In the past, we’ve given the challenge of writing a chapter a day. We’ve offered tools to help facilitate this through tips to start writing and writing prompts. This year we have a new challenge that incorporates social skills.
The Challenge: Write a short story as a group.
For this year’s NaNoWriMo, we want to encourage students to utilize their social skills to successfully write a short story together as a group. Proper social skills include compromise, communication and listening to everyone’s ideas. It’s important for each group member to feel as though they have a voice and that they are being heard.
As a group, come up with a basic outline for your short story. Determine the setting, plot, and a list of the different characters that will appear in your story. To help you get started, use these graphic organizers to set up these key features of your story.
Setting Graphic Organizer
Plot Graphic Organizer
Characterization Graphic Organizer
Once you have your overall idea of the story, now’s the time for each member of the group to separate. Each member will be responsible for one character in the story. Each chapter will be told from the perspective of a character. Each chapter should give a different perspective of a singular event that encompasses the plot of the overall story. Use this graphic organizer as a tool to help with preparation.
Point of View Graphic Organizer
Finally, come back together and put all the chapters in order. Members of the group will have to agree on the order, as well as write the first and last chapters together. These chapters will be written in third person omniscient, whereas the character chapters will be written in first person. Once completed, present your short story to the class.