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Creating opportunities for your daughter to run wild with her imagination and to create stories in her head are two powerful tools in helping her develop skills for writing.

One of my favorite things to do - as a kid and to this day - is look at strangers in the mall, the park, walking past our house, in the airport and make up a story about them. I've done this wih my kids since they were little, starting with a dog we see wandering past our house or an empty swing gliding back and forth in the breeze. The reason this will help your daughter is because it sparks her imagination and helps her learn to formulate stories in her head (where most writers "write" before the words show up in printed form). The more fanciful and ridiculous the story, the more kids will chime in and help tell it.

If creativity doesn't come naturally to you, start by asking questions. "I wonder where that dog's owner is. Maybe he was too tired to get up and asked the dog to go to Starbucks and bring him back some coffee. Wouldn't that be fun if dogs could do our errands like that?"

Read out loud to her - even if she is quite capable of reading on her own. Hearing a story without working to read it allows us to expend more of our energy on creating the images in our mind. The Harry Potter series came out when my older kids were in midschool. They could've read to themselves quite easily, but I read the first in the series to them out loud. They're in college now and still say it was a wonderful experience. By me reading the story aloud, the kids could focus on creating the story in their own imagination, a launching step to creating their own story and world in their head,

And i second everything master of none said.

Writing requires three things - the correct tools (grammar), a nurtured imagination, and practice.

After working for 12 years as a freelance writer and teaching others how to write articles, i'd have to say that the difference between good writers and excellent writers lies in their ability to create a world for the reader - even if it is only a sentence or two at the beginning of an article. That requires a nurtured imagination. Your daughter sounds like she's on her way to being a writer, so just creating opportunities to nurture that imagination will give her confidence and experience.