What book or program would you recommend to inspire a young Writer?

Hey that's great!

It's always a very good thing to have a writer at a young age develop skills she can use when she's forty. :]

I recommend some books, here, not so much as programs and websites.

The Weekend Novelist by Robert J. Ray really helped me when I was that age, but it's kind of old now...I'd say at least look into that one.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Creative Writing by Laurie E. Rozakis Ph.D. It's great for the novice.

And, lastly, let her have some fun with characters in 45 Master Characters by Victoria Lynn Shmidt Ph.D.

Good luck and I hoped this helped.

Ryan

A good idea is to buy a beginning writer a book on writing, possibly with quotes by famous authors. A few books that you can find on amazon.com are: "The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Beginning Writers" by John Gardner, "On Becoming a Novelist" by John Gardner, "The Paris Review Interviews 1, 2, and 3" by The Paris Review. These last books contains interviews from almost all the most famous names in literature from the last 70-80 years and has them talking about writing and being a writer; including Faulkner, Hemingway, Baldwin, Gardner, Bloom, Bellow, Marquez, Morrison, Vonnegut, Capote, Eliot, Greene, King, Ellison, and more. It's a really useful book for keeping young writers' spirits up.

There's also a great series called Write Great Fiction where they give writers tips on developing all the different areas of the craft of writing; for example, character, plot, setting, descriptive language, dialogue, and more. This can also be found on amazon.

The best things she can do are 1) Read a lot, anything she can get her hands on; and 2) Write and keep writing.

Learning to write and improving your writing doesn't come from reading a book about writing or following a program, but by absorbing as much other writing as she can and by practicing herself. It's a lot like learning a musical instrument, but much more solitary.

The best thing you can do for your granddaughter is keep her provided with great books and be an appreciative audience for her writing.

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See if there are any creative writing classes or seminars in your area for children her age. This will do a great deal in helping her understand the fundamentals of writing a great novel and get her creative juices flowing. Make sure she pays attention in English class because grammar, spelling, sentence structure, and vocabulary are important in writing. Buy her a thesaurus, dictionary, and grammar book that she can study from during the summer. When I was in high school and college I had this itty bitty pocket dictionary that I carried around and read through regularly and that's how I expanded my vocabulary. She should also pay attention in literature class because she'll study some of the classic books and learn from them about what makes a good novel.

Stephen King has a book called On Writing where he gives advice about writing. I don't know if it's appropriate for age, but maybe you can find some books that are specifically for children that will give them advice on how to write well. You can check Amazon.com, your local library, and bookstores. I don't have any recommendations because I've never had to search for any.

Also, have her read. Have her read for pleasure and to study. Reading improves grammar, spelling, vocab, and sentence structure, so she can learn those things just from reading her favorite books. Also, have her read and study how the author develops the characters and plots, and how the author deals with pacing. Pacing is how fast or slow the plots are. She should study how the author writes the novel. One way for her to learn is to copy a couple chapters of her favorite books. This will help her learn to write better at the end of the day and then she start writing in her own style and her own way.

Have her start writing, be it short stories or novel-length stories. Novels are considered to be 40,000 words or more. Novellas are about 20,000-39,999. Short stories are less than 20,000. THe more she writes then the better she'll become. Challenge her to write a full-length novel for her summer break. It doesn't matter how good or bad it is, she just needs to complete it before school starts. She also needs to edit it, which means after it's complete she needs to go back over it and correct spelling and grammar mistakes and make sure there are no plot holes. It doesn't matter if the idea is unoriginal, she just needs to begin writing. Have her do it for fun and write about things that she would want to read, and it doesn't matter where she got the idea. Actually, since you're helping her, when she finishes her novel then help her edit it. Editing entails more than just grammar. She might end up rewriting whole sections to make it better, so give her suggestions on how to improve it. She might delete or add characters. She might change subplots. It won't be good enough to be published, but that doesn't matter, because very few people will get their very first novel published. She should just write for fun. The better she gets means the better chances she'll have of writing publishable material.

To help you help her, you can buy some writing books and teach her what you've learned. There are also writer's forums that you can learn a lot of information from and get advice about writing.

http://www.writersdigest.com/ - has a lot of good short articles that give tips to writers and aspiring authors. I've used their tips to improve my own novel. You can read them and then use that information to help her improve her work.

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forum - a community of published and aspiring authors. This is a good place to get writing advice and tips. There are a few teens, a bit older than your granddaughter, but younger than 18 who are writing novels, too, and a couple of them are published author. Maybe you can establish an online relationship with them and get them to mentor your daughter. Or, get your daughter to sign up with the forum and learn from them herself, if its alright with you and her parents.

If your granddaughter is serious about writing and learning the craft then she'll be open to your ideas of how she can improve.

Good luck, and I think this is a great thing you're doing for your granddaughter.