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Regular news and insight from our many poets, writers, educators and facilitators

27 September 2025

Posted by Susan L. Edser

Storyboard

Ali Sparkes is a children’s author who leads writing sessions for Junior and Young Writers every Saturday morning at MAST Mayflower Studios. To learn more about her, visit her website: https://www.alisparkes.com and click on her profile: https://artfulscribe.co.uk/facilitators/ali-sparkes

Susan L. Edser, MA graduate in Creative Writing and Publishing and winner of Bournemouth University’s prestigious Vice Chancellor Award 2024, is Ali’s assistant and writes the weekly blog. To learn more about her, click on her profile: https://artfulscribe.co.uk/facilitators/susan-l-edser


This was the third week working on the scripts for the Play Creators, and today we focused on the main beats of the story. Ali began with an exercise to help the children and young people create the first line. Each child had to catch a shark (not literally, of course), which had a number underneath. This corresponded with hidden words in a column, such as underpants, zebra, piffle, gnu, juddering and so on. Ali asked them to write a sentence using these words that an actor could perform on stage as the opening to their play. Here’s Isla’s as an example:

The words were:
Helter-skelter, turnip, cackling, ruptured
The sentence she created was:
‘A dark and gloomy night, the lights of the helter-skelter long gone out, and a strange cackling coming from the fields of turnips nearby, loud enough to rupture the soul.’

The writers had already begun to create characters for the play, and last week, had grouped them together into potential stories. Today, Ali encouraged them to break into smaller groups to work on the different scripts. They refined the list of characters and began to think about the story itself. On storyboards, they mapped out the main beats – what happens at each major point. They had to decide what the protagonist’s goal was and what was stopping them. This simple plotting helps create drama and tension, making the story engaging.

The Junior Writers had three story ideas: a fear of flying, aliens and a fear of fur.  For the Young Writers, they had two main ideas: the ghostfather and the psychopath next door. Incredibly, the psychopath harvests organs, and the writers turned it into a musical, with a key song about tax evasion!

Writers of the Week awards went to Freya, in the Junior Writers, for her excellent sentence and her performance of it (please see the photos). Patience, in the Young Writers, won the prize for her brilliant first line about zebra-coloured boots. Congratulations, star writers!

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