BTW I have worked with my son on these issues. We have had multiple conversations about how when you are asked to choose a "favorite" to just pick something you can talk about. Turn this into Write about a "x" that you know something about. And I remind him it's not like the teacher is really going to "know" that blue isn't really his favorite color. This is why even wrote 3 sentences rather than zero for his test, he ended up picking soccer to write about.
And how for certain essays, it's more that the teacher wants to see your writing skills. And that sometimes the prompt is just that, somewhere to start and as long as you can write something coherent you don't have to answer the prompt precisely. The trick is to know when this is true and when it isn't.
She also has struggled when she has to write about a book where she did not find any redeeming qualities in the characters. For example, she hated Tom Sawyer. Her teacher asked them to describe Tom's character. She had a terrible time writing about him because she couldn't stand the thought of thinking about him. I think that she is so empathetic that she felt violated letting this annoying character back in her head. I finally got her over her initial block by scribing her rant about what an annoying, self-absorbed, drama queen he was (her words, not mine). I gave her the written rant and told her to find evidence for it. She gets so emotional that I also wish she would "not take it so dang personally!"
Back when my son was in 4-6th grade he has this school oral book "discussion" that was graded by other parents. I noticed that many many kids struggled because they thought they always had to "say something nice". I've always told my son that is and OK, valid option to say that you don't like a character or the book as long as you can find supporting reason. And I had that conversation with a number of the students. Or if they really hated the book. I had to prompt quite a few that it was OK to say you didn't like the book and why as long as you could justify your reasons.
But just because we have talked about this for years, it doesn't always sink in at the beginning of the assignment. My son got this way about two of the poems he had to analyze last spring. What helped was to let him rant, mention that there wasn't anything wrong with his opinions if he could find evidence for it. It helped a lot. He ended up writing a silly poem to criticize the poem, he didn't turn that into the teacher but we had a good laugh about it.
