My students enjoy watching them and are excited to know they'll be creating their own. I insist my students sit down and plan their stories using paper and pencil. I provide a worksheet road-map that forces them to think about where they're going, what they're doing, how to start, and how to finish. Each entry on the worksheet is only a sentence or two, and I stress that anything can be changed once the story is under construction. The worksheet is a map that points the writer in the general direction, not a recipe that mandates a certain result.
All good fiction features characters who have problems to solve or conflicts to overcome.
This section forces the author to understand his or her own story and say what it is really about. Once the writer understands and focuses on this, he or she has made significant progress. I do allow writers to create nonfiction Electronic Books. They follow a modified worksheet. When it is time to work, the student simply goes to the assigned computer and double-clicks on his or her story icon on the desktop.