Students, faculty turn ideas into collaborative short stories during Writing Day event

Pens and pencils went to lined paper April 19 as Northwest Missouri State University’s Department of Language Literature and Writing hosted a “Northwest Day of Writing,” centering on a collaborative writing activity during which participants crafted pieces of a story from a shared context determined by the group.

“A lot of times as students, we get stuck in this rut of eat, do schoolwork and sleep with nothing much to get us going in-between,” said Amanda Johanson, sophomore English major from Kansas City who helped lead the collaborative writing exercise. “Through participating in an event like this, we get to bring together like-minded individuals in a fun, creative setting and get to let off steam while connecting with one another.”

Johanson and some of her classmates in Luke Rolfes’ Introduction to Creative Writing course introduced the activity by prompting participants to verbalize sights and sounds conjured by two pre-selected places – a laser tag park and a movie theater. While the Writing Day event drew students and faculty working in a variety of writing styles, the activity was born out of a popular class activity in Rolfes’ courses.

“We took elements from some workshops we’ve done in our past classes and pieced them together to make a fun activity that created a sense of shared context for people to write from,” said Corrina Dittmer, a junior creative writing major from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who also helped lead the activity.

Dittmer, who aspires to work in the publishing industry, added, “In my writing classes I learn that everyone has a different perspective when it comes to interpreting a writing prompt and writing in general. So we wanted the attendees to use their different perspectives and collaborate to create different places where their stories have to take place. By showing people the different ways others write, it pushes them to expand their own writing and ideas.”

Northwest students and faculty participated April 19 in a "Day of Writing" and collaborated on short stories based on a series of prompts they established during a brainstorming session. (Photos by Chandu Ravi Krishna/Northwest Missouri State University)

Corrina Dittmer and students in Luke Rolfes’ Introduction to Creative Writing course led the collaborative writing activity.

Participants in the Day of Writing activity created stories that were silly and serious.

After their stories were complete, participants were invited to read them aloud for the audience.

Based on the long list of smells, scenes and rapid descriptions on the meeting room whiteboard, participants began writing their stories. Each time a timer sounded, participants passed the story they had been writing to a person sitting next to them. The multiple writing rounds were as long as two minutes and as short as one minute.

When the final round of writing concluded, participants received the short story they began crafting several minutes earlier – with a few more layers of scene and character development written by the collaborators sitting around them.

Participants created stories of a historic movie theater undergoing never-ending renovations, where tickets were overpriced, the move posters didn’t match current showings and the air-conditioning didn’t work. They described a movie critic for the local newspaper, a girl on a first date who slipped on a banana peel, and a 100-year-old woman who was often seen eating chicken in the back of a theater.

Participants who chose the laser tag park as their backdrop ended with stories that included an experienced player losing a showdown with a ruthless kid when he stepped on a Red Bull can and an individual who got stuck in an air duct behind the control booth.

Johanson said she enjoyed overhearing the giggles of participants as they wrote. She says participating in similar writing activities has pushed her to explore genres and plotlines she wouldn’t otherwise.

“The activity definitely offered a glimpse of what taking a creative writing course looks like at Northwest,” Johanson, who hopes to teach English in a secondary school setting, said. “In our coursework, we often operate by writing based off of prompts and other activities to generate work. It’s a really helpful tool to have as it helps push you forward in your writing and get more daring.”

While the objective was perhaps daunting for some of the participants, Stancy Bond, a senior instructor of English, said she enjoyed that the stories they created were both silly and serious.

“My hope for the non-creative writers was to show how writing can be fun in a collaborative group,” Bond said. “Creative writing, by and large, is a collaborative process – students write and then critique other students’ work. My hope for the creative writers was they begin to understand how emotionally powerful their words are.”