Walter Dean Myers passed away this week, and I heard this past interview with him on Here and Now. He generated tons of writing that connected to his own urban upbringing and was influential as an author and speaker. What stood out to me was the following writing process he goes through constantly to generate stories (you can listen to it at the 2:58 mark):
6-Box Model for Fiction:
- Establish an interesting character + Establish an interesting problem.
- Try the obvious things for the character to solve his or her problem.
- He or she must rethink the problem "because now the character is getting deeper into the problem and as the character rethinks, then the reader rethinks."
- Growth: You want to see growth within the character. You want to see the character grow in such a way that you could also grow.
- Have a final attempt in which the character is either successful or not successful, but this final attempt, nevertheless should reflect the growth.
- Wrapping up loose ends.
He explains that when he takes the time to do all of these things, he is much more likely to finish the book. This model is important for educators to be able to show how writing is a process. It is rare for authors to just sit back and write out an entire novel without thinking about it beforehand. On napkins, on scrap paper, on notebooks with scriibbled ideas that come to us at 3 a.m., these are the ways in which many writers develop their ideas that become the books and literature that we read.
