I love to write and I want kids to have that joy and passion. I used to go to schools and we’d talk about writing and I realized that kids did not know where to begin. I understand that. It’s a difficult process, especially when you’re learning about things like capitalization and punctuation and paragraph breaks and the conventions.
That’s something that is really emphasized in school, as it should be. What happens is that I’ve discovered that young writers get tangled up in the conventions and they forget about that pure joy of writing — that imaginative process that it doesn’t matter if you make a mistake. Let’s go back and fix it. It’s messy and it’s fun.
I have come up with a workshop that I use successfully. It’s always so great. I actually tell the kids that it’s my super-secret, splendiferous formula. You try to say that three times fast. It’s good.
Nothing like a bunch of fourth graders going “super-secret splendiferous formula.” It’s pretty funny. It’s basically the word “claps.” C-L-A-P-S. Every letter in the word claps stands for something. Every story, your story mind, the library, if it’s fiction, absolutely has to have
“C” of course is character, and that’s the main character. I always ask myself when I use “claps,” and I ask kids when they use “claps,” two questions about the main character. One, of course, you need a name, but then the first question I ask is, “What does your character look like?”
Something extraordinary. If your character is a duck, don’t tell me that it has webbed feet and a bill. We know that. Tell me something different. Is it pink? Does it wear a boa? Those sorts of things. Tell me something extraordinary, noteworthy about your character — one or two things.
The second question I ask about “claps,” about the letter “C” is, “How does your character act most of the time?” Everyone has a predominate characteristic. “How does your character act? Are they shy? Are they silly? Are they funny?” Second graders usually tell me that they’re silly, which I love. Makes for a good character.
Now you’ve got “C.” You move on to “L.” “L” stands for location. Just another word for setting. Where does our story take place? I also ask my young reader, or my young writers, to keep that place small. It just makes it easier for them.
Instead of telling me that a story takes place in New York City — make it smaller. Find me a place in New York City — the Empire State Building or Statue of Liberty. Think about what that place looks like and think about how that place sounds and what you would smell. Bring in all those senses.
The letter “A” stands for action. I think it’s the most difficult letter in that “claps” formula. “A” stands for action and what it means is, “What is your character doing at the beginning of the story?” You and I know that when you open up a book, that first page, that first paragraph, the first chapter you see the character doing something typical, ordinary — from their ordinary, everyday life. It’s not exciting yet.
I ask them, “What is our duck doing at the Statue of Liberty?” Something simple. Visiting, vacationing, taking photographs. That’s the sort of answer I’m looking for. Then you move to “P” and “P,” of course, is the problem. Now something comes along to change the character’s day or their life — something that interrupts their photo-taking at the Statue of Liberty.
I also remind kids to give me a problem that my character can solve. They always love this and, “It’s a great problem,” I will say. They go, “Well, T-Rex comes along and steps on the duck.” You go, “Well, that’s really great. It’s a problem. It’s also the end of the story. So I need something that you can solve.”
Then we move on to “S.” With the “S,” I put a one, two and three because writers actually call this “the magic of three.” What you want, your character to do is try to solve his problem at least three times.
The first time he doesn’t succeed; he has to try harder. The second time he doesn’t succeed; he has to try harder. The third time he can succeed or fail. That’s entirely up to the writer. I do that not only because the struggle is what’s important to the story, but I’ve discovered that young writers will try one time and that’s it.
I also remind them that they gave their character some characteristics at the beginning — how they looked and how they act most of the time — and those are the characteristics that they have to use to solve their problem. If they did not make their duck a magical duck with the magic wand, they cannot pull out a magic wand to solve their problem because it’s cheating.
Additionally, they have to solve the problem themselves. Young readers always want Mom to come and solve the problem or a principal. I do, too. I actually want my Mom to come and solve my problems, but I have to remind them that they can’t. Sometimes they get a little surprised by that.
“What do you mean you can’t call your Mom and have her come and save the day?” I say, “You know, if you’ve read Harry Potter, you’ve read all those books, you’ve read all those thousands of pages, you waited all those years, then it’s that big scene. It’s Harry versus Voldemort.”
“You know, as a reader you just can’t wait. It’s the epic battle. And then Harry pulls out his cell phone and he calls the British Army to save the day. It’s just wrong. It’s a cheat.” Your character has to solve their own problem. It always works. It’s amazing. They always have so much fun.
The best thing about “claps” is it shows young writers, and I think maybe they hadn’t — it’s so simple and they hadn’t quite realized it — is that all those pieces of a story fit together like a puzzle. So every piece leads naturally to the next piece.
I am amazed by the stories that it produces consistently and I’m also amazed at how fun they find just filling out that little “claps” formula is because they don’t do sentences. I mean, eventually they’re gonna have to write the story, but first they’re planning it and it saves them just so much worry and agony and fear and just opens up that imagination. So it’s great. It’s a great, great way to teach writing, I think.