There are many good reasons to teach creative writing. Some of the most important, to my mind, are:

1. Children love stories and have a basic need to express themselves in words.
2. Creative writing stimulates the imagination.
3. It enables the student to better understand and appreciate good writing.
4. It helps young people in their search for their identity.
5. It clarifies thinking, i.e. it forces students to be logically consistency and factually accurate. If they want their story to be believable, they have to get the details right.

Those critics who describe creative writing as a ‘soft’ subject, as a break from the real business of teaching basic grammar, underestimate what creative writing can do to develop students’ cognitive and communicative skills.

Of course, the desire to teach creative writing is not enough. The teacher needs good, practical teaching material. My idea of writing little stories about a ‘careless’ adventurer who is continually getting himself into difficult situations proved to be a highly motivational way to get students started along the path of creative writing.

The stories may seem silly, but they do have their appeal, especially to boys, who are generally ‘undermotivated’ when it comes to reading and writing fiction.

Have a look at some of my Careless Corrigan stories on the Download page. There are several recently-written stories, including ‘Careless and the Rockslide’, ‘Careless and the Blue Bear River’, ‘Careless and the Polar Bear’, ‘Careless and the Diamondback Rattler’, ‘Careless and the Marijuana Plantation’,  ‘Careless and the Wasp’ , ‘Careless and the Pygmies’ and ‘Careless and the Illegal Campfire‘. Before you use any of them, you should have a look at download 1, which contains more information about Careless including the ‘rules’ for rescuing him.

If you try them out with your students, why not write a short comment on how your experiment worked out?

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