Prewriting: At the first teacher-student conference we brainstorm ideas for the story, the genre and the main characters. All ideas are jotted down in a diagram which I call “sun associations”. Some of the ideas manifest in the story while others are dropped and forgotten.
At this stage the students may already refer to a list of WH questions which may help them form the skeleton of the story, including characters, setting, time and more. The WH questions sheet may be used for other tasks such as writing short stories.