101 Activities For Teaching Creativity And Problem Solving

88 101 Activities for Teaching Creativity and Problem Solving

101 Activities for Teaching Creativity and Problem Solving.Copyright © 2005 by John Wiley &

Sons, Inc. Reproduced by permission of Pfeiffer, an Imprint of Wiley. http://www.pfeiffer.com

15. A Likely Story

Background

Have you ever wanted to write the Great American Novel (GAN), but didn’t think you

could? Well, now is your chance. Even if we don’t consider ourselves to be writers, we

can compose brief, fantasy stories. We then can use our stories as the basis for our GANs.

Writing, like painting and sculpting, is a creative activity. All artists use a variety of

stimuli to craft their creative products using free association. Some of these stimuli come

from the product itself. Thus, an artist might draw a shape that stimulates another shape,

which prompts a third and so forth. Creative writing works much the same way. A cre-

ative phrase, character description, or plot element might suggest other corresponding

thoughts that, in turn, suggest even more. In addition, creating a story about a problem

forces us to consider new information and perspectives that might have gone unnoticed.

Objectives

• To help participants generate as many creative ideas as possible


• To help participants learn how to use the activities to generate ideas

Participants

Small groups of four to seven people each

Materials, Supplies, and Equipment

• For each group: markers, two flip charts, and masking tape for posting flip-chart
  sheets


• For each participant: one sheet each of three different colors of sticking dots
  (^1 ⁄ 2 ” diameter) and one pad of 4 x 6 Post-it®Notes

Handout

• A Likely Story Handout

Time

90 minutes

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