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24 May 2025

Posted by Frankie

Junior & Young Writers: Week 4 - Sci-Fi: Other World Forests

Hi Writers,

This week in Junior & Young Writers, we journeyed through alien terrain again—this time, deep into forests on other worlds.

We opened with our usual check-in: everyone described their week as a cuddly toy.

In the younger group, we had a barfing Mad Max mutant (inspired by a week of sickness) and a broken teddy bear reflecting the general meh-ness of school. In the older group, metaphors ranged from a poorly treated teddy to a long, fluffy worm that ended as a rainbow—capturing a week that finished on a high.

Claire began the session by reading the opening of Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis, setting the mood for our own explorations. We then dove into a series of prompts:
  • Describe your forest using the senses
  • Who is telling the story—the narrator or the character?
  • What happens next?

As always, both groups impressed with their wildly imaginative responses.

In the younger group:
  • Eddy wrote and performed a song about a forest that smells of eggs, tastes like wood, and grows giant mushrooms.
  • Wilf described a fearsome forest where you hear screaming, smell rotting corpses, and encounter deceptively cute creatures that murder you.
  • Evan envisioned a forest scented with vinegar, where the trees' bark is made of dragon scales and the wind carries human screams.

In the older group:
  • Berry created a forest full of howls, the scent of melting old cheese, and air like rotten socks.
  • Georgie imagined a sacred guardian tree worshipped by forest dwellers.
  • Daisy described trees that smell like freshly baked bread, with metallic deer created by ancient gods roaming nearby.
  • Sonny gave us a decaying, clammy forest with frequent murmurations of metallic birds.
  • Catherine envisioned a glowing abyss hidden beneath the forest floor, inducing visions of your fears the deeper you go.

Later, we examined a scene from Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, inspiring us to draw maps of mysterious new territories and explore key questions:
  • Why is the place called Area X?
  • What happened and when?
  • What's going on in the tower—and why is it there?
  • From your character's perspective, what happens on your first day in Area X?

The younger group:
  • Eddy, writing as the anthropologist, described a world where 'the fence keeps the people out—and the monsters in.'
  • Wilf, as the psychologist, encountered the X-Terminator, a skeletal robot.
  • Evan, as the biologist, gave a detailed account of their journey through Area X.

In the older group:
  • Catherine's psychologist character had sinister motives.
  • Sonny, writing from the surveyor's point of view, described eerie beasts and an irresistible draw to the tower.
  • Poppy and Georgie, also evil psychologists, imagined betrayals and hidden agendas.
  • Berry led their character to a future portal.
  • Daisy offered vivid visuals of silhouetted buildings, marshes, and gnarled shrubs.

Another joyful and spooky adventure with both groups—full of creativity, horror, humour, and fun. We can't wait to see where we go next!

Frankie :)

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