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

19 November 2022

Posted by Holly Spillar and Rohan Gotobed

THIS IS NOT A WORKSHOP THIS IS AN APOCALYPSE! / Re-writing Ghost Stories

THIS IS NOT A WORKSHOP THIS IS AN APOCALYPSE!

This week our junior writer session was interrupted by a shocking announcement. The APOCALYPSE was here!


After 5 minutes of free writing about the origin of the APOCALYPSE and what creatures were lurking, the young writers had to team up and work out their survival plan using the tried and tested method of THE RANDOM SQUARE GAME!


drawing a square the teams had to write 4 weapons, shelters, characters and amounts of time on each side of the square and then (after deciding on a random number) count round the options crossing them out until they were left with there APOCALYPTIC fate.


After their fates were decided they had to either write a letter from their shelter about their experience or draw and label a time capsule to be burried in the ground before the APOCALYPSE truly took hold.




19th November


This week we returned to Function Room 4, where there were even more spooky happenings. Our zoom screen was noticeably glitchy, with a strange mist appearing on the monitor. Is the room haunted? Do they ghosts dislike our presence? Was there a smudge on the camera? Who knows?


Anyway, we began with a simple warm-up question: where do ghosts come from? We got a variety of insightful answers – one person said they come from clouds; another said they’re funny people trying to get a last laugh – all gearing us up for today’s workshop.


We read a series of famous scary stories – ‘The Hook’, ‘The Keyhole’, and ‘The Wishing Well’ (the final one based on a story by MR James). We talked about why these stories were scary and what we could use in our own writing: Tension and suspense. Twists. Tragic characters. Jump scares and ambiguity. The Young Writers then had to create their own ghost stories out of the following options:


  1. The story of someone who encounters a ghost.

  2. The story of someone looking for a ghost (do they find it?)

  3. The story of a ghost looking for someone.

  4. A letter form the ghost to its haunting place.


The writers started forming some fantastically terrifying tales, many of which we’ll be sharing at our ghost stories event on 3rd December. They also continued in their groups on the projects they started last week. 


THIS IS NOT A WORKSHOP THIS IS AN APO
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