01 April 2026

Marvellous March

Our Junior Writers’ Club members have explored a myriad of marvellous topics this month:

Character buffet

In this session we delved into adapting and letting go of the characters we create, something many successful writers have experience who have had films or TV programmes adapted from their books. Our writers were given three prompts to start to create their characters: name, age and three things you should know about me.

Once everyone had chosen their characters and spent time building a picture of who they were, the writers were asked to pair up with another group member and swap their characters. This initially proved challenging for some but as always our writers rose to the challenge with tales of a Big Friendly Giant (whose hands were so big he could rest a pig on his pinky finger) teaming up with a brave Harry Potter, a dynamic duo of waffle loving Skellie and wizard loving Larry and softly spoken home-schooled Jerry meeting annoying cheat Aaron.

Whimsical poems

This week we took inspiration from a Mary Oliver’s whimsical poem ‘“Just a minute” …said a voice’. In the poem the writer pauses when a voice speaks to her from somewhere in the grass and imagines what creatures, real and mythical, and what could be happening below her ‘great feet’ while walking in the grass.

Our writers were tasked with creating their own version of the poem, imagining something unusual or magical crossing their path and talking to them, and what message they might be sharing. The writers came up with some wonderful creatures in their poems including a shining white coated snow fox and magical faraway fairies.

Creating a ‘How to Poem’

This week our writers experimented with creating a ‘How to poem’. This is a poem that does what it says on the tin - it gives instructions on how to create something. We used the analogy of following a recipe for making blueberry pancakes, thinking about what ingredients we needed and what actions we would take to make the pancakes, with the writers having a first word prompt for each of their lines using words like mix, add, spread, fry and top with.

Each writer then chose their favourite and least favourite season to create their own ‘How to’ recipe poems, with some wonderfully creative results. Can you guess which season the lines from our writers below referred to?

‘Spread a sunset orange sky’

‘Top with baked sunlight’

‘Add Eggs and flowers’

‘Flip the weather and add a drop of joy’

‘Fry the frail sun’

Looping story

In this the last session before the Easter break we were excited to welcome Lotti Begg who will be leading our sessions in April.

We started with a collaborative warm up exercise creating a looping story which started with the sentence: ‘It was a bright spring morning as I walked into the kitchen. As I put my bread in the toaster I noticed it started to giggle …’. Each group member was asked to add a sentence to build the story with the last person looping the story back to the beginning again. It definitely sparked our imaginations and raised some smiles as our story took us from giggling toasters advertising two for one deals at Tesco’s to talking air fryers!

The writers were then tasked with coming up with their first sentence and creating their own looping story. The writers’ fabulous plotlines ranged from disillusioned outdated sandwiches in a Tesco store and time travel from a Sainsbury’s supermarket to battleground, to the concentration and excitement of winning a Fortnight game.

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Marvellous March