Guiding your young authors through the creative writing process – developing writers

Young authors all over the greater Paris area are writing furiously in preparation for the 2014 Young Authors’ Fiction Festival (YAFF), co-sponsored by Time Traveler Tours and the American Library in Paris. 

The deadline for YAFF submissions is April 1st (no fooling!). Which means that many young Paris-based authors are near the final stages of writing, perhaps moving into editing and fine-tuning their stories. 

Sarah Towle, co-director of the Young Authors Fiction Festival, has written a series of blog posts with some useful tips as to how parents can help their kids at the pre-reading and emerging writing stages. This third and final article is dedicated to developing writings. 

Sarah writes that it doesn’t take long for emerging readers to become developing readers. It’s more of a moment in the grand scheme of things, an Ah-Ha! Once they’ve cracked the code, they’ve emerged. They begin to function independently as readers. And they embark on a much longer journey toward developing fluent literacy.

This stage continues over a longer period, throughout the school years and into university. It is characterized by increased comprehension and analytical understanding of text, as well as the ability to make meaning with more complex and sophisticated material. As writers, developing readers will tend to make fewer spelling errors than emerging readers. But as their ideas grow in sophistication, so do their story structures as well as their need to employ more complex grammar. Thus, logical organization and clear communication become the bigger challenges.

To learn more about how to help the developing writer, read Sarah’s full post on her website at www.sarahtowle.com.