forum How Do I Write School Scenes?
Started by Frankie
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Frankie

I really need help from the experts on this one, school scenes for me are painful to write. But I write Middle Grade novels, so usually there's school scenes. Heelp

@requiemisback language

these tips are all based on personal experience <3 if anything needs further explaining, let me know!

  • most middle schools run on a childish hierarchy, with the two sides of the twisted coin being the popular kids and the outcast, antisocial kids. there's no in-between and no i'm not joking. so yeah, try fitting that in maybe?
  • if you're writing scenes about girl's bathrooms… hoo boy. never forget to have a group of girls flocked in there. there are always a few girls in a group in the bathroom talking their mouths off about literally anything.
  • rumors spread like wildfire in MS. once someone says something, suddenly everyone else knows. make sure to include that too.
  • bullies populate in MS. they are literally born and raised there. so yeah, expect a lot of bullying scenes i guess. the tips i have for that are: make the bullying kinda spur-of-the-moment (and give it a reason too, if you so desire). i mean, in my old MS, two dudes got into a fight over a bag of chips.
  • speaking of fights… those happen a lot too. people just… fight in MS. they go ham. go big or go home.

that's all i got. hope this helps!

Frankie

these tips are all based on personal experience <3 if anything needs further explaining, let me know!

  • most middle schools run on a childish hierarchy, with the two sides of the twisted coin being the popular kids and the outcast, antisocial kids. there's no in-between and no i'm not joking. so yeah, try fitting that in maybe?
  • if you're writing scenes about girl's bathrooms… hoo boy. never forget to have a group of girls flocked in there. there are always a few girls in a group in the bathroom talking their mouths off about literally anything.
  • rumors spread like wildfire in MS. once someone says something, suddenly everyone else knows. make sure to include that too.
  • bullies populate in MS. they are literally born and raised there. so yeah, expect a lot of bullying scenes i guess. the tips i have for that are: make the bullying kinda spur-of-the-moment (and give it a reason too, if you so desire). i mean, in my old MS, two dudes got into a fight over a bag of chips.
  • speaking of fights… those happen a lot too. people just… fight in MS. they go ham. go big or go home.

that's all i got. hope this helps!

Thank you so much! That helps a lot!

Deleted user

I really need help from the experts on this one, school scenes for me are painful to write. But I write Middle Grade novels, so usually there's school scenes. Heelp

My family traveled a lot, so I transferred schools a lot…and the campus wasn't always like on television with linoleum tiles, combination lockers, and a cafeteria where you slide a tray along these bars in front of glass panels or help yourself to it buffet-style and then pay for it at the cashier at the start of the line.

Sometimes it would be a red-brick ivy-covered mansion private school where there's meal plans that your parents put in advanced orders for the week and wait staff bring it to you at the long table—and the disadvantage of this setup was not being allowed to eat anywhere you wanted, or not even allowed to leave the table to put a soiled paper napkin in the wastepaper basket.

Other times it would be a renovated office building, and the same group of students would be basically herded between classrooms on campus and it'd be the same people all day every day for every year, and they'd grow into a specific dynamic.

Other times, you could go the prepacked lunch option and eat anywhere you wanted—under a tree, on a bench outside the library, or in the actual cafeteria…and the same group of students who would see each other all day every day for every year until they transferred schools or graduated would stay in the same classroom and it would be the teachers who would move around depending on the subject they'd been scheduled to teach which class.

There's this thing about whenever a teacher went on a bathroom break then these quiet studious students would erupt in conversation and throw paper balls or whatever at each other, then somebody on lookout duty would warn the others when the teacher was coming back so that everybody could go quiet pretending that they were obedient the whole time—that's so common as to be expected, because it makes sense that people who have their everyday lives so rigidly controlled would find these moments to decompress, but not everybody did this.

Also, I have never seen or held a Hall Pass in all my life. Apparently some schools have that policy, but in all the ones I've gone to it was mostly on this word-of-honor-teacher-said-I-could-go-to-the-bathroom system.

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Basically I think it depends on the country your stories are set in, what the standards/regulations/policies are, if it's a public school subject to those standards, or a private school.

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Who decided on the architecture of the campus? Do students wait at this pick-up spot or road, or is there access to a parking lot that anybody going in must show an ID card or sticker proving that they're a parent or legal guardian of a student? Or are "latchkey kids" allowed or even expected to walk home by themselves?

What are the amenities? Is the playground a green field of real grass, or plastic grass, or an empty concrete lot, or does it have slides and jungle gyms and sandboxes? Are there sports gyms with showers? Is there a pool? Is there a library? Is there a proscenium theater? Are there restrictions for use of any of these? Is there an elevator, or are students who are wheelchair-users just out of luck?

Are there uniforms or not?

After you decide all that, and how they conduct class subjects, how many recesses and for how long, and so on…then at least you'll have something to fall back on describing whether there's a tree here, or a gazebo there, or a vending machine, or somebody stole somebody else's diary because they don't have combination lockers or even padlocked cabinets for their things but rather only cubby holes without doors because somebody in authority thinks that middle schoolers can't be mean enough to steal…or that they can get over it right away or like what happens to you in middle school doesn't matter, which I think is a very misguided way of thinking from people who are supposed to guide young people.

You could have conversations taking place while every student in the classroom is going wild during a teacher's bathroom break. Or passing short handwritten letters between each other while the teacher's back is turned. Or cafeteria conversations. Or packed lunch eaten while sitting on a bench under a tree, conversations.

I hope this helps!