08 October 2022

Using props to create characters/ working as a writing room

Junior Writer's 7-10 8th October

Using Props to Create Characters

Today the young writers were presented with mystery bags full of magic items from the different regions of Enzariam Island.

The Volcano Area had a silver arrow, a bracelet of skulls, an otherworldly headband and a stone.

The Sea Area had a silver statue of a Knight on a horse, magic sparkling dust, a compose ring, a gold ring and a jade ring.

The Haunted Woodland bag was held captive by a wooden man and inside was a white crystal with a tree of gemstones growing out of it.

And Finally, The Zoo of Chaos bag contained a friendly yeti and was guarded by a spirit with button eyes.

Split into groups of 2 or 3 the junior writers had to spend 10 minutes in each area exploring the items in the bag and using them to create creatures that live on Enzariam Island and write about their role within the world.

The Sea area became home to the SealBird who could fly on a strike of thunder and a water snake with very sharp teeth. There was also a Sea Knight, captain of the hunters who had discovered precious jewels at the bottom of the ocean.

The Volcano Area was full of underground aliens in a tunnel living underneath the protector's laire beneath the Volcano. We also had a Fire Fairy who relies on magic jewelry to keep her alive.

We discovered that the Haunted Woodland's wooden man was created by the hunters to keep the creatures away from valuable stones they had plans to sell.

Here is some of the writing and drawings the writers made about their creatures.

11-15 & 15-18

8th October

This week we decided to explore writing for TV and how it’s different to writing prose or poetry. To warm-up the Young Writers were set a ‘mystery box’ activity, tasked to create something with the following ingredients:

Write from the perspective of a hungry animal.
Water must be included.
Please reference a tree at some point.
No full stops allowed!

After a few minutes we had some appetizing pieces of writing, with different stories imagining hungry dogs, lions, and even a rhinoceros. It was fun having to work within a specific formula, which is crucial when writing for TV.

As a group we discussed what we’re currently watching (Stranger Things, Heartstopper, The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power, Line of Duty, Ghosts) and why these programmes are so well written. We looked at some of the important things we have to keep in mind when writing in this way (Character/Objective/Obstacle, Inciting Incidents, Plotting). Sure enough, all of our favourite programmes played with these dramaturgical methods in exciting ways.

Moving on, we decided that we would form a writers’ room and create a new episode of the Simpsons (since everyone knew something about Springfield’s famous family). The writers chose which character we wanted our episode to focus on (Bart in one episode, Lisa in the other) and started to devise an A plot. There were some fantastic ideas and we came up with two hilarious and original episodes (which considering the Simpsons has been on for over thirty years was quite impressive) featuring mutations and body-swapping. We also played around with B and C plots and how they could interact with the A plot (or provide comic relief). At the end of the session we talked about some of the scenes we’d love to draft on the page, which is what we’ll be looking at (among other things) next week!

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Using props to create characters/ working as a writing room