L5's Collaborative Short Story Writing

Often in class students work in groups, collaborating on analysis of texts, exploring characters in novels and plays. However, Lockdown has prevented students from engaging in what is usually an enjoyable activity.

To make up for this, L5 have been writing collaborative short stories in pairs; as a result they have been able to keep in touch and to challenge the creativity of their peers!

Here are comments from a number of the students:

It’s interesting doing the collaborative writing as your partner might interpret your paragraph in a completely different way from how you imagine it, so the story completely changes and you have to keep using your imagination to come up with a new idea.

Emma B

I enjoy doing the collaborative story, it is more interesting than writing my own story. It is also more difficult as you wouldn’t have thought of that idea yourself, meaning you have to use your imagination more.  It is also very interesting to see how my partner will continue my story.

Annabelle F

I like the collaborative story concept and I think it is working well. An advantage of doing this as a collaboration is the new ideas that the other person brings to the story which makes it more interesting than doing an individual story. It can be challenging to think of how you can continue the story, but as my partner said it makes you use your imagination more. I also find it interesting to wonder how she will continue with the story.

Emma S

I found it quite interesting doing a collaborative story as you had to change whatever plan you originally had to fit with what your partner had said before. I think there is an advantage writing it like this because you don’t have to think about a whole story line, only one paragraph, so it was better as it made the story more interesting having two people’s ideas combined into one story. It was quite exciting as well to see what your partner had also written.

Charlotte Y