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12 November 2022

Posted by Beth McKeeman

Origin Stories

Junior -  9 Young - 10

Once upon a time there was an island called Pilutkeymon…
We’ve built the island and it’s inhabitants, but how did it come to be? We found out with a game of fortunately, unfortunately.

Once upon a time there was an island called Pilutkeymon. The people that lived there were happy.
Unfortunately a meteor crashed into the island and everything died.
Fortunately some microorganisms survived.
Unfortunately they couldn’t survive the heat from the meteor.
Fortunately a coconut drifted in from the sea.
Unfortunately there were flowers growing on the coconut which meant anything inside couldn’t escape.
Fortunately Pringles fell out of the coconut because the animals smashed it.
Unfortunately the animals ate all the pringles and there were none left.
Fortunately another coconut came from the sky.
Unfortunately that coconut rolled close to the Extremely Very Bad Mountain which the meteor had created.
Fortunately monkeys bashed the coconut out of the way. It smashed against a tree and started spreading life around the island.

Our Junior Writers enjoyed creating this origin story because it was collaborative, creative and we found out more about the Extremely Very Bad Mountain.

We then read the story How The Whale Became. Before reading it, we put down our guesses. Whales might have evolved from lizards, dolphins or microorganisms. They could have come from chemicals, a rock sprung to life, a pringle sculpture come to life, or whales could be part of the natural life cycle of the seagull.

We were surprised by how Ted Hughes’ whale origin occurred, but enjoyed it and used it as a basis to create our own animal origins, being prompted by each other with words to include.

As opposed to origins of the land, Young Writers looked at character origins, in particular villain origins.

We built these up by writing 4 sentences about your villain before they became a villain (or bad guy/antagonist depending on which suited our worlds).

Next 3 sentences about their personality and/or events that turned the character into a villain.

Then 2 sentences about the villains motivation for what they want more than anything in the world and why it matters to them.

As a challenge from the phrase ‘I don’t like poetry’ we looked at a list poem; name and author.

This was a form that struck with our writers, who used the to record their own characters descent to the bad side.

To round out we called out answers to what is in the dark? Ranging from nothing, to monsters, shadows to brothers, we had a lot of great ideas. What do you think is in the dark?

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