Leap Write In!: Adventures in Creative Writing to Stretch and Surprise Your One-of-a-Kind Mind

by Karen Benke

Invite your jittery mind into quiet slips of timed or untimed writing experiments that are designed to encourage your timid heart to forge forgotten feelings and entice your shy-self to make friends with emerging emotions. With a bounty of prompts to select from, you’ll be inspired to explore all the wacky, confusing, brave, soul-stirring wonderings and wanderings of your emerging life’s inner treasure in a way that’s sure to unleash what you most need to say. In this book you’ll find:



   •  On-the-Spot Drops that offer quick “free-fall” prompts on different themes, such as short-winded poems and seven-line stories. 
   •  Mini Memoirs to unlock personal narrative to share, or not.
   •  Suddenly a Story suggestions to explore feelings and states of being like fear, reluctance, compassion, kindness, anxiety, anger, jealousy, happiness, and more.
   •  Surprise Yourself Surveys for those who think they know everything about themselves.
   •  Untie-Your-Mind Word Lists to jump-start stalled imaginations.
   •  Definition Decoders to introduce new ideas and styles of writing.



Created especially for tweens, teens, and other earthlings, this book provides you with a chance to create imaginative poems, stories, fragments, and real-life on-the-spot sketches. All that’s required is that you take a breath, relax, reset, and leap write in!

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Professional Development, Education

282 pages, Paperback

First published April 23, 2013

Reviews

[K.L. Bernard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author Karen Benke is not kidding when she says leap. Page four asks eager learners to leap by having them finish five starter sentences. Benke doesn’t just want you to do all of the spilling of words she offers plenty of her own, and other writers too. Many chapters have a “Your Turn” section which makes the book interactive. For example: the learner is given a task to complete. It could be finishing sentences, writing poems or working a maze. Other tasks can be found in the “Story Starters” or “Drop Deeper” sections in these chapters. Word lists, survey’s, mini memoirs and more are what learners will find to challenge themselves to open up their inner writer.

Benke doesn’t want you to waste time over thinking the writing process. The creative exercises found throughout the book are designed to make you think in short bursts so you can write down the first thoughts that come to mind. Cleverly named chapters invite readers to challenge themselves. For example: Shape-Shifter Adventure, asks readers to draw a line down the center of a piece of paper and answer a list of questions. Question one states, “Turn yourself into something that flies or slithers.” Some samples listed are a noble raven, a black mamba and others. The chapter called “Anaphora” introduces a Greek word which means to carry up or back. Readers will tackle poetry. Other chapters show readers how to tap into the five senses, to call on their muse, and to write early in the morning.

Writers of all ages can enjoy creating with these wonderful prompts. This is no ordinary or boring read. Benke’s snappy flowing text is fun and engaging. The back of the book offers resources, book suggestions and a special exit dedication just for the reader. This is a must have for any writer.

[Erica Sioda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review from my daughter:
My name is Amber and I'm in 5th grade. This book inspired me to write so many stories! The ideas just pop into my head as I read it. The book "Leap Write In" is so amazing and makes me completely go into my own writing imagination worlds. I definitely recommend it!

[Erik This Kid Reviews Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

First off, I was very excited to read this book! Ms. Benke’s other book “Rip The Page!” was great, and really helped me with my writing. I found this book was a great follow-up to “Rip The Page!” because the writing challenges were a bit more complex. The prompts were realistic and slightly challenging to do, especially if you aren’t in your creative mind frame, like the activities “Stop Making Sense” and “Your Moody Monkey Mind” – two of my favorites. Ms. Benke gave several activities for each prompt, giving the reader a choice to do. She also included some examples, from real people, so you get your creative juices flowing, and have some real inspiration. The book covers a wide range of creative writing topics, from dialogue tags to – **ugh** – the necessary step of revision. There are some really fun things to do. Ms. Benke shares some “mini memoirs” of her life, and encourages others to do the same. This is a wonderful writing resource!
*NOTE* I got a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

[Eunice]

This is a great book for teens. I went through it for creative writing ideas for my elementary kids. There are a lot of great, very creative ideas that I plan on using with my kids. Some very good short writing ideas that can be done within an hour (many less than that). I split them up into poetry, on location (some would be perfect for doing at the library, park or grocery store for example), group activities, longer writing assignment and art based.

[Susan Williams]

This book is written by a very gifted friend who is a writer and poet. I look forward to reading it and getting plenty of creative ideas for tweens and teens.

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't one of those books you can just sit down and read. It is, however, one of those books that you can flip around, that you can open to almost any page and find something to engage with. It's meant to be read a little and then inspire a little to write a little. It's a lovely little book, aimed mostly at teen or adult writers, I think, to offer writing models/mentor texts, writing exercises, and writing suggestions. As a hobbyist writer and a current high school English teacher, I certainly found ideas as I flipped through this book, and I used almost an entire small stack of sticky notes to tab the exercises and ideas that I most wanted to try myself or try with my students. But, of course, some ideas or examples seemed flat or boring, and a few toward the end seemed like repetitions of previous exercises, with with a different title on it. All in all, this is not a bad book to have on the shelf when you need to jump start your own or your students' creativity.

[Lucy Marcovitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did enjoy looking through this book. Karen's own writing is beautiful and creates some really good examples of personal creative writing. The prompts and exercises are mostly interesting and stimulating, and although it might take a lot of stamina to work through this book from start to finish, I can see that it would really appeal to a teenage writer dipping in and out to get inspiration and develop their ideas.

I would pick out exercises to use in a creative writing class, but there's a lot of text and information to work through if you take it as it is. It's also very definitely American - there are experiences and vocab that might need explaining to someone in the UK. But overall it's a really nice book, and good to dip in and out of.

[Trisha Parsons · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I haven't read this book from cover to cover, I have skimmed through and bookmarked the heck out of it. I like the creative approach to writing prompts. There isn't much in this book that I've ever seen before; however, sometimes the prompts are a little too abstract. I work with a tween writer, and the prompts weren't very useful for her.

[Lauri Meyers · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book of prompts- but it isn't just prompts. It's samples, examples, methods to dig into your brain and get some free writing going. Plenty of room to write in the book encourages you to do the work versus grabbing a separate journal. Lots of good tips for revision, too.

[Diane Dreher · Rating 5 out of 5]

A welcoming book filled with short, powerful writing cues--offering mindfulness, reflection, inspiration, and creative insights for young writers--of all ages. Highly recommended.

[Charmel Bowden · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is more of a practice than a read. The exercises helped me generate some really cool stuff. When I feel like being creative this is always a go to idea starter.

[Nicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

First I would like to thank the author for giving me the opportunity to read this book through the First Reads Giveaway.

I requested this book because I am a teacher and I felt that it would be helpful for ideas for classes. In some ways it is because it has lots of ideas but unfortunately it appears to be a little too in depth for the age groups I am likely to be teaching.

There are some very nice ideas in the book and some that can be adapted easily and used in different ways. I especially like that it is split into different types of tasks which focus on different ways of writing. It is also very nicely laid out and I love the whole feel that the book has.

However, it is a little too introspective and 'fruity' for my taste and I feel that some of the tasks are a bit too high brow without their being much reasoning behind it. It is likely due to my thought process behind coming to the book but I do not see much true writing being done through these stimuli. It appears to be more an exercise in creating ideas to 'find yourself'.

That being said, as a child this is likely the type of writing book that I would have enjoyed as it really pushes the mind at times. It is different and a lot of the stimuli is very different. However I was a very keen writer and even then I feel that a lot of this book would have went unused in my hands. It is certainly for older children and teenagers but I wonder how many would be truly interested in working through the stimuli and how much they would feel that it has helped them.

It is a lovely looking book although the lines provided, whilst aethetically pleasing, are completely impractical to the process of writing. I will look through it at times if I am working with an older class and I may try a few of the tasks myself to work my own brain, but I am unsure how useful this book will really be for me.

[Emily Mack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Got this book as a gift from my English department, and received Rip the Page for a writing mentorship/field learning project I'm doing. Both of them are fantastic. I'm using it with a 4th grader, and using it for myself (2nd year college English Ed and creative writing major) and we both get something out of it. Fun, creative prompts, good mix of serious and silly. Some activities are more personal/reflective, some are more creative, some are great for strengthening writing skills in general. Leap Write In and Rip the Page will both get a lot of use for my personal use and in the classroom!

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it to tweens, teens, or adults who need a best friend to guide them through create writing experiences. The prompts and inspirational stories provide motivation and a template for exploring and expressing one's creativity. Written for tweens and teens, but adults should not scoff...the writing exercises are not limited by age or experience and the snippets of the author's own story are relatable and heart-felt. highly recommended!

[Medeia Sharif · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is geared towards young people to motivate and inspire them to write. With numerous prompts and story starters, this is a solid resource book for teachers and students. It seemed to me that the reading and interest levels were more for teens than tweens. I read this on my Kindle, so I’m not sure how much of a workbook this is. I did see blank lines for writing space, but have no idea if it’s sufficient in a hard copy. I received the galley from NetGalley, courtesy of the publisher.

[Chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of great writing prompts in here!

[Cassie Bentley-Bradshaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good ideas but ultimately not what I was hoping for. :(

[Kaelyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is the same as the first: for poets rather than fiction writers.

[Whitney West]

Great for people who like to journal or just enjoy writing. Many great ideas for teachers as well! Definitely worth the purchase!