Working Backward: Strengthening Research Skills through Fiction

Writing fiction requires research when writing the same as writing something non-fiction does. Any story wether it’s fiction or not has to have some element of truth in it, the story also has a bit of suspense. When making a story you need to make sure its logically possible, for example you need to make sure that the book has come logical events. Some may ask how can we use this in the classroom? You can, “Flip the author’s process and conduct backward research. For instance, instead of researching a topic first and then writing about it, students could choose a favorite piece of fiction—a picture book, a novel, even a fairy tale—and trace back one or more facts of the story. ” (https://www.literacyworldwide.org/blog/literacy-daily/2011/12/15/working-backward-strengthening-research-skills-through-fiction). some stories are based on events that supposedly happened in the past and they are recreated into a book with small details changed so it is not copying the exact series of event. Students can take books and look up if they are true events of not, this is part of the backwards research. They can take a book like charlottes web and ask, do farmers rally do that? can this really happen? etc. Kids can learn new information this way and they can learn how events can be changed when in the writing process, but there is some truth to the events.