Sometimes, a short story might be born of a “What if’ question.

Not every story starts with the same elements. One of the character development pages from My Cup Runs Overs Story Planner Templateįor those who are struggling, probing questions can be very effective in eliciting new thoughts. In this post, we’ll look at how using a story planner template can help kids write better short stories, and I’ll give you a free download you can use with your students at home or in the classroom. I have to tell you, it’s quite hilarious when your child starts pointing out the emotional wounds of fictional characters and the universal life lessons that will help them overcome those wounds. The result is amazing: they are now adept at generating ideas, developing well-rounded characters, describing the setting, and planning out a plot with lots of twists and a satisfying resolution. For every short story assignment or passion project they do, we sit down together and use a story planner template to develop a backbone for their work. That’s why, when my kids developed a passion for writing short stories, I worked on strategies to help them plan out their stories from the beginning. It got to the point where I stopped writing for several years because I was afraid to tackle endings. If they had an end, it was usually something like, “Suddenly, I woke up and realized it was all a dream.” Blech. Most of my stories just faded out somewhere in the middle. I was really good at getting my characters into bad situations, but not so good at bringing them back out again. I travelled up and down the Pacific Northwest coast with my dad and my stories made some epic journeys.īut the plots always got stuck.

The only problem was, my stories never really went anywhere.

I carried notebooks everywhere I went and wrote short stories (and long ones!) in them whenever I could.

Story planner app for free