Junior & Young Writers: Week 1 [Wild Words] – introductions & creating characters

Hi Writers,

Welcome back, we have many returning folks, and lots of new faces joining the groups for this Autumn term. This 14 week course is going to delve into the wilderness of creativity. There will be plenty of examples and exercises to try, games and challenges, tips and techniques to test out.

Junior Writers:

We began our session with a welcome, and a brief intro from each of us about what our writing experience is, who our favourite writers are, and our writing aims or goals for this season.

Then we had our weekly check in. If the week we had just had was a flavour of crisps - what would it be and why?

Juno went for a brand, Pringles, because it’s been up and down
Henry - ready salted ‘not great’
Noah - Roast chicken, because he doesn't like them and it's been a bad week
Evan - Ready salted ‘normal’
Elsie - Ready salted ‘boring’
Indy - a wotsit, because it’s been a puffy big week

Favourite books/what we are reading:

Juno: The Demon DinnerLadies
Henry: a story about a boy and an evil granny
Indy: dork diaries
Noah: escape Hitler’s base-camp
Evan: diary of a wimpy kid ‘cabin fever’
Elsie: the snow bear, and, the life of Henry Slug

Time for some warm up games. A quick round of buzzy bees, followed by saying vowels out loud with a given emotion, then building a machine as a group by acting the parts and making sounds, the team came up with some fascinating contraptions.

We had a discussion about our favourite stories, and great characters - reflecting on what makes a great story character.

We read some examples from Harry Potter, Matilda, and Artemis Fowl.

Writing exercise:

create a character profile by thinking of a fictional character and answering questions about them, such as where they live, their appearance, their hopes and fears. Not forgetting to give them a name!
Next, we bring them to life a little more by drawing our characters.
Then… we pair up with another student, and decide who will be the scribe. Then we work in pairs, describing how, when and where our characters met! The story picture cards helped with sparking ideas.
After working out our storylines, and title - it was time to share with the group.

Elsie & Evan: ‘The Enemies’

Noah & Indy: ‘The Vampire & Cyborg’

Henry & Juno: ‘Samuki & The Ninjas’

These stories were all so different, and really great starting points for storytelling. It was a lot of fun imagining very different characters forced together, and thinking about how they would interact, what they would talk about, if they get on, or not…

Excellent work all round.

Young Writers:

We began our session with a welcome, and a brief intro from each of us about what our writing experience is, who our favourite writers are, and our writing aims or goals for this season.

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Junior & Young Writers: Week 1 [Wild Words] – introductions & creating characters