My daughter is getting ready for her grade six PATs in English. The cool thing is, she's in grade five. Do my teaching methods work? Oh yes. Of course this doesn't relieve any nerves she has. But the same thing I teach the kids in all my writing classes is the same thing I keep going over with my daughter. Pick your main character. Give him or her a Goal, Motive, and Conflict. Build your plot using a try/fail cycle where whatever your character does makes things worse or complicates things in some way. Make the climax so dire even the reader can't figure out a solution. Then be really clever and end with some kind of change in your character. Of course there's a lot more to it than that. But it's a great place to start for any young writer. Basically, writing 101.
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