Kids Get In On The Action With NaNoWriMo

November is national novel writing month and some schools are participating by having students write long-form fiction.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Now to a Manhattan middle school where students are celebrating National Novel Writers Month. Beth Fertig of WNYC visited to find out what these budding eighth-grade authors are writing about.

BETH FERTIG, BYLINE: Kiana Colon says her story is about a teenage drug dealer.

KIANA COLON: She is a stuck in her dad's footsteps. Like, she has to keep on with the family traits of being a drug dealer, and she wants to get out of it.

FERTIG: Sitting across from her, Karla Tribaldos starts her novel with an intimate scene about a girl bracing for a terrible school day.

KARLA TRIBALDOS: (Reading) I laid back into my bed and stared at the white ceiling and thought to myself - I can get through this day.

It's about a girl who's getting bullied in school, and she ends up falling in love with the guy.

FERTIG: There's a lot of drama coursing through the imaginations of these eighth graders at Tomkins Square Middle School. At least three kids are writing about a familiar subject in pop culture...

WOLFGANG CARDONE: So my story is about the reaction of people in a zombie apocalypse.

FERTIG: But Wolfgang Cardone insists his story isn't so much about the zombies.

WOLFGANG: Like, there's not really any scenes where they're killing them, stuff like that. It's just about what people do to each other to survive in this situation.

FERTIG: So we've got drugs, bullying and zombies. Eighth grade teacher Amy Anderla says this is her second time participating in a National Novel Writers Month. She's noticed young teens love reading and writing about people with terrible lives.

AMY ANDERLA: I think it's a way to experience things that you can come out of, you know? Like, you read the book, but you don't have to experience it.

FERTIG: Thirteen-year-old Samantha Smolar seems to agree.

SAMANTHA SMOLAR: I love horror books. I'm obsessed with reading and writing. Like, I go home and I write, like, horror stories and I just want to creep myself out.

FERTIG: Oh, and her story? It's about a girl with two heads. For NPR News, I'm Beth Fertig in New York.

Copyright © 2014 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.