"Writing is the real magic. Writing takes you to a whole different world,” he said.
Stricklen is a retired airport security chief, an ArtPrize award-winning artist, and an accomplished author with a series of middle school fantasy, adventure and mystery books called “Black Water Pond.”
“There is real magic in books when an author can create a world you’re able to walk through and become part of it while you read,” he told sixth graders when he visited TK Middle School this week.
Stricklen talked about the magic of stories and how writing those stories puts a lock on them forever. “If you tell someone about an adventure or event, it’s ok, but after you tell it, it’s gone. If you write it, writing puts a lock on it so it can be shared over and over for years.”
He told students his writing often comes from his own experiences and his own imagination - something he developed at an early age with this grandmother. “Every night she would have pictures she would cut out of magazines and I would pick one or two pictures and make up a story about them.”
He used the same kind of prompts with students, showing them pictures of simple items and encouraging students to use their imaginations to take those pictures and create a story. One-by-one students added their own pieces to a growing story, using their own experiences and imaginations. Each addition gained a little more excitement while Stricklen led students in the story-telling process. He allowed them to build on a conflict and increase complications until a climax and eventually a resolution.
With every bit of detail and addition, the story grew and grew along with the excitement from students.
Stricklen encouraged students to never be afraid to try writing their own stories and finding inspiration anywhere.
The writing process, he said, is to start by first just creating a “sloppy first draft for the story. Just write - get it down on paper.” Then, he said, the key is to go back to add details, dialogue and development of each character.
Stricklen also told students it’s important for their writing to have a hook early. “You want to keep someone reading and wondering what’s going to happen next, so you have to hook them into the story right away,” he said. He demonstrated what a hook is by sharing a few pages from his book, “Beneath and Beyond.”
“Do you want to keep reading? Do you want to know what happens? That’s the hook,” he said.
Similarly, at the end of the story Stricklen said readers should feel a “...big bang. “If the reader doesn’t care about the protagonist, they won’t care about the ending. You have to build up the characters in the book so the reader cares about them,” he said.
Stricklen has been visiting and inspiring TK Middle School students for the last several years - encouraging them to use their imaginations, find inspiration all around them, and write their own stories.