01 October 2022
7-10 - This weeks junior’s blog was written by Alice who lead an amazing session this week while Holly was away
The young writers group continued their world-building this week, adding layers to the magical land where sea dragons have glittering blue scales, waterfalls flow with chocolate and danger awaits in certain places on the island – though even this depends on if you are the hunter or the hunted!
Our writers began the session with an improvisation practice to wake up the imagination, naming things in the room as something entirely different to what they actually were: bins became telephones, people became bananas, tissues turned to hips and hamsters!
Once we had opened up our perception a bit, we turned to the vision of the island, working in groups to write down as much as we could remember from the week before under the titles “I know…I think…I wonder”. Aliens appeared hiding close to a volcano, inside out trees had green trunks and brown leaves. The writers spoke of haunted forests and a great stone that protects the people of Enzariam Island, a wondrous realm where some monsters simply want to be friends, while others want to eat people!
With our ideas on the page we then created a group acrostic poem with the word ENZARIAM being our starting point. These poems don’t have to rhyme, though they can, and each line can be as short or as long as the writer wants. Some writers played with alliteration to create a sense of pace & dynamic rhythm to their poem, others focused on shorter lines describing a character or two who lived on Enzariam (Hello, stripey koala at the Zoo of Chaos!). We had more spooky, ominous poems describing dangers of the island and some that told of the fantastical dragons and also infestations of unusual creatures on Enzariam.
We ended by sharing our poems in a group – some had even done drawings and maps to go with their creative writing. It’s certain that the young writers are growing a vivid fictional world…we look forward to meeting the characters who live there next week!
11-15 & 15-18
1st October
Welcome to Autumn! This week we began with a ‘fill in the blanks’ warm-up, with the writers having to complete the following lines:
Yesterday I lost my --- and found my ---
With them I became –-
I’ve always wanted to be --- . I love ---
You can have lots of --- that will make you all ---
Who’s afraid of ---? I am, but --- isn’t.
Each group then explored a new play that Rohan is currently developing. Some read ‘The Death of Shakespeare’ and, similar to one of our workshops last year, discussed what was happening in each scene. The Young Writers were challenged to identify all the different forms of punctuation within the play, and choose three pieces that they could change (a ? to an ! for example). We saw how much a single piece of punctuation can change the meaning of a line.
Next up we all chose a scene from the play and drew a single image to describe that scene. What was necessary for the scene to make sense? What was and wasn’t important? We also adapted a couple of scenes into prose and created specific characters to help add detail to the first scene (where multiple characters talk like a chorus).
Working with our older group (15-18), having already read ‘The Death of Shakespeare’ we instead looked at the opening scene of ‘Getting Closer’, another short play about climate change which opens with an industrialist gifting his daughter a lump of coal. We read the scene and, like last week, used facts and questions to get a better understanding of what was happening. We summarised the plot and then considered the difference between that and the story of the scene:
Plot: The Queen died and then the King died.
Story: The Queen died and then the King died of a broken heart.
We found the idea of theatrical gestures/dramatic questions very exciting, digging into the themes of the scene and the writer’s aims with the play. What could happen in the next scene? We were very excited by the idea that the next scene didn’t have to be set in the 1800s but could happen in the modern day – the seed of an issue and the tree we see today. We all came away with a better understanding of how plays can explore form in fresh and imaginative ways.
Next week we’ll be looking at writing for TV…
Recommendations from the Room: The Fire Child by Sean Thomas (Book), Stone Cold by Robert Swindells (Book), Cloud Nine and Top Girls by Caryl Churchill (Plays)
Archive
Junior & Young Writers – Week 10 (Writers’ Inspiration) – Final Showcase
Junior & Young Writers – Week 9 (Writers’ Inspiration) – Editing & Performance Tips
Junior & Young Writers – Week 8 (Writers’ Inspiration) – Cuteness
Time goes on by Tavinder Kaur New
Junior & Young Writers – Week 7 (Writers’ Inspiration) – Natural Solutions
Junior & Young Writers – Week 6 (Writers’ Inspiration) – The Language of Fruit and Veg
Junior & Young Writers – Week 5 (Writers’ Inspiration) – Adventures In Space
Tinklebobs and Bedraggled Angles
Junior & Young Writers – Week 4 (Writers’ Inspiration) – Our Environment
Fortune Tellers & Future Letters
Junior & Young Writers – Week 3 (Writers’ Inspiration) – Home
Young Writers - Week 10 (The Art of Writing) – Final Week Showcase
Junior Writers - Week 10 (The Art of Writing) – Final Week Showcase
Young Writers – Week 9 (The Art of Writing) – Choose Your Own Adventure
Junior Writers – Week 9 (The Art of Writing) – Choose Your Own Adventure
Young Writers – Week 8 (The Art of Writing) – Sequel Stories
Junior Writers – Week 8 (The Art of Writing) – Sequel Stories
Young Writers – Week 7 (The Art of Writing) – Picture Prompts
Junior Writers – Week 7 (The Art of Writing) – Picture Prompts
Young Writers - Week 6 (The Art of Writing) - Script-writing & Dialogue
Junior Writers - Week 6 (The Art of Writing) - Script-writing & Dialogue
Junior Writers – Week 5 (The Art of Writing) – Poetry
Young Writers - Week 5 (The Art of Writing) - Poetry Potions
Edward The Martyr - A Competition!
Mood Boards and Postcards from Space
Young Writers - Week 3 (The Art of Writing) - PLOT
Junior Writers - Week 3 (The Art of Writing) - PLOT
Moomin Stories and Hollywood Pitches
Young Writers - Week 2 (The Art of Writing) - Genre & Setting
Junior Writers - Week 2 (The Art of Writing) - Genre & Setting
Prompts, Dialogues, and Cliché
Story Structure Part One: Exposition and Beyond...
Young Writers - Week 1 (The Art of Writing) - Character
Junior Writers - Week 1 (The Art of Writing) - Character
Young Writers - week 4 - Nature Writing [animals & wildlife]
Junior Writers - week 4 - Nature Writing [animals & wildlife]
Young Writers - week 3 - Nature Writing [trees/plants/flowers]
Junior Writers - week 3 - Nature Writing [trees/plants/flowers]
Young Writers - week 2 - 'fractured fairy tales'
Junior Writers - week 2 - 'fractured fairy tales'
Young Writers - week 1 - 'from deep inside a forest'
Creating Communities through Writing
WORDCUP - Hounsdown Session #6
Making pillows in a house full of feathers
WORDCUP - Hounsdown Session #5
Exploring home – a place, person, house
WORDCUP - Hounsdown Session #4
Stories From Our Streets at the Abbeyfield Wessex Society Reminiscence Session at Poole Library
What Do You Really Mean? Writing Dialogue for Scripts
WORDCUP - Hounsdown Session #3
Character Building & Murder Mysteries
Going inside – from a spark to a story
WORDCUP - Hounsdown Session #2
Maybe I Can Be Invisible After All... Monologues
Creative Writing: Fun Facts, Diverse Voices and Different Perspectives
Writing Competition - Stories From Our Streets
Stories From Our Streets Community Activity Pack
Thinking in-quiet, after the fire
Found Cities, Lost Objects: Women in the City Curated by Lubaina Himid CBE
Ekphrastic Jukebox - Writing to Music
ArtfulScribe LitFest Community Showcase 2023
Young writers exercise their creative power
Writing to The Sorcerer's Apprentice
The Mousetrap - Mayflower Young and Junior Writers Investigate Mystery!
Stories From Our Streets Launch!
Interview: In Conversation with Dr Victoria Leslie
The Missing Farmer/ Blackout Poetry & DADA
Exploring this wonderful World
Using props to create characters/ working as a writing room
Stories of the Dust and Character Questions
Storytelling and Escalation or Rising Action
Junior Writers Club Acrostic Poem
Notes on Intention for MAST Collective - Year 3 - Facilitation Focus
Earthquakes & Dominoes - MAST Collective Blog #4
SUPER MARIO AND POP CULTURE POEMS
Receptionists & Inky Voids - MAST Collective Blog #3
Saying No and saying YES on National Poetry Day!
There's a Dragon in the Wardrobe...
House Warming Party (The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known) - MAST Collective Blog #2
Intern Blog 5 - The Publishing Process
POEMS TO SOLVE THE CLIMATE CRISIS
On The Streets With Theresa Lola
Intern Blog 4 - The Internship Journey
NEW DIRECTIONS, STARTING SMALL - THE ORWELL YOUTH PRIZE
LIGHTHOUSES, HOPE AND METAPHORS
on workshop and transformations: frogs, lions, and the duck that becomes a larder...
Poetry Ambassadors - Interview with April Egan
Intern Blog 1 - Finding a Voice
World Poetry Day: Fluffypunk and the Invisible Women
On Being a Writer: A Conversation by Beth Phillips & Sam Morton
Poetry Ambassadors - Interview with Kaycee Hill
UNHEARD VOICES: INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY, AND STORIES OF CONFLICT
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