To Note: This whole activity is available online at my new “Keep On Writing” Online Writing School. It’s set up as a tutorial to allow kids to work at their own pace with more in depth instruction. For more information, LINK HERE!

Welcome to Day 5 of writing your own Spooky Story. Well, tomorrow is the big day, Halloween. And I’m sure if you’ve been working hard all week, you’ve got your rough draft done and ready to polish today. This is when you need to find a partner to listen to your story, and give you some feedback. Feedback is comments about what the person liked, what works, and what might need to be changed. They should listen to and let you know if anything is confusing or hard to understand. I’ve always taught this aspect through the writing workshop process, and often gave my students a feedback worksheet to work with. Below are the questions I would include on the sheet for them to fill out.

Your partner can be an older sibling (brother or sister), cousin, Mom or Dad, Grandparent or even Aunt or Uncle. You can also have your friends work with you as well. Writer’s call this a critique group. We often have a network of fellow writers, or betareaders, that read through our stories and give us feedback on what to improve.

You might also notice I mentioned listened. It’s best that you read your story out loud to your partner. That way, it is easier for you to hear what works, check on how dialogue flows, and how your descriptions read. You can often catch awkward and hard to understand sentences this way.

So, here is a list of questions for your betareader(partner) to answer as they listen to your story:

1. What was your favorite part? Why?
2. What would you want to know more about in the story?
3. Is there anything, words or sentences, that were confusing in the story?
4. What details in the story stood out the most?
5. What would you want to see in the next story?

After you’ve had a chance to go over some revision, only then let your partner look over your story for corrections in punctuation or spelling. They are welcome to look through and catch any changes they may find. Then, it’s your turn to go back and rewrite the parts and make changes they suggested. When you’re done, show it to them again. See if they suggest anything else.

Most writers do this about 4-5 times. I know, you think, wow, that’s a lot. As a beginning writer try this at least once. Make changes, and show them to your partner one more time. In the last rewrite, they should probably be less often. That’s when you know you’re ready to copy from a revision draft to a final draft.

When you get to that point, you’re ready for tomorrow. Tomorrow, it’s all about copying into a nice final draft to read for friends and family on Halloween. You’re ALMOST there! Have fun today and tonight! You’re in the home stretch.

Meanwhile, looks like I got my phone working. So, I’m going to try the Periscope Broadcast at 3:30 pm PDT. Look for @Tiffmeister. That’s in about 1/2 hr from uploading this post. So, I’ll be going over the steps the last few days, answering questions you might have, and enjoying any comments you have for me. I would love the feedback. Again, Periscope is an app. that is available on Android and iPhone. I’m sure it’s also on iPads too since it’s in the iTunes store. Just head over to the apps section, type in Periscope, and you’re there. So, hope to hear from you. Until then, happy revising! -Tiffany Turner (Mrs. Turner)