Your Sizzling Start

Homeschooling.

There’s nothing like spending five days a week trying to teach your own kid, to remind you how bloody amazing teachers are.

Seriously. I have one child of school age, and teaching is a struggle. Maths. French. Science! Who knew I actually knew nothing about all these things?! The perfectionist in me finds it seriously confronting that I do not know the answers to a lot of things.

But there is one subject that I do take a lot of pleasure in. Yep, you guessed it. Literacy.

My favourite kindergarten task is called ‘Sizzling Start’. It’s where the kids watch a short video, or see a picture, or read just the beginning to a story, and have to finish the story.

I used to do the same activity when I was a kid at school. And I use the same exercise now in some of my copywriting training sessions, with different content. It’s an awesome warm-up activity, and it’s a fun creative exercise when you’re feeling drained of creativity.

Here’s how you do it.

1. Open a blank document in Word or Google Docs

2. Watch this video

3. Write what happens next.

If you’ve seen this movie, don’t write what actually happens. Write what could happen, from the point of view of one of the characters in the story. Does Keira go back into the house and tell her husband what happened, and he reveals that he has had his own affair? Does Andrew go to the pub to drown his sorrows, only to meet the next love of his life? Or does he take himself to the top of Tower Bridge, and question his very existence? Or do aliens suddenly appear and transport him to another world, where he begins a new life as the love interest of a three-headed, nine-eyed extra terrestrial being?

The story could go anywhere. It’s totally up to you.

When you write, take the time to write in first person narrative ‘I’. Note how you’re feeling, what you’re seeing, what you’re doing, what the people around you are doing.

Why do I love this activity so much? Not only does it push you creatively by getting you to imagine something you wouldn’t normally, it also builds your empathy. By stepping into the shoes of these characters, you feel something different to what you’d normally feel. You’d see a different life to what you have.

There’s a reason why they give creative writing activities to schoolkids. Imagination and empathy are powerful skills. And they are skills that, too often, we lose as we get older.

Try it and let me know what you think.

Brooke

Director, The Contented Copywriter

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