Creative writing activity for group/workshop

Facets

Objectives

• to work a theme from different angles
• to work towards a series of texts with other writers

Organisation

groups of about four

Example

Poverty sequence by Rita Ann Higgins

Materials

a small piece of paper per participant

one large piece of paper per group

Procedure

1. Each participant thinks of a a concept that s/he feels has many facets and writes it down in the centre of the small piece of paper.
2. Now they try to narrow the topic down, e.g. from Love to First Love or Lost Love, etc. still trying to keep in mind that the concept should allow be multifaceted.
3. They brainstorm as many ideas and associations with this topic and put them down on their piece of paper in the form of a mindmap.
4. The participants form groups of no less than four and present their mindmaps; the object is to select one theme per group and transfer/expand the mindmap on this theme on the big piece of paper.
5. Then they determine who is going to work with which aspects of the mindmap and mark them headwords for their text.
6. Every participant writes one or two short texts with the aspects of the topic s/he has chosen.
7. In a final stage the texts are presented to the group and/or the entire class. Feedback is given by post-it stickers attached to the texts. They could now be rewritten to bring the texts of one topic together into a coherent series.

Variation

The same procedure without the transfer to group work is also possible. In this case each participant develops texts (e.g. poems) on the basis of her/his mindmap. This may be a useful development from the pre-groupwork activities.

© 2000 - 2005 Franz Andres Morrissey, all rights reserved.