Cartoon Pitches and Tim Crouch

28th January- Junior Writers - Cartoon Creators

This week the Young Writers met a Comic Book Creator from the USA

In teams they were tasked with working together to come up with an idea and some characters that our pink monster friend could use to make a cartoon before his scary giant boss came back.

Watching a clip from Stephen Universe for inspiration the groups got to work coming up with all sorts of amazing storylines.

-A quest to find gold and defeat a minotaur

- 3 ghosts curing loneliness by making friends and saving someone from an evil witch

- Simon Cow (Simon Cowel eats some magic grass and transforms)

- and 3 adventurers finding a gem hidden by a dragon with scales made from galaxies

Needless to say, the scary USA comic book boss was very impressed.

28th January - Young Writers

After last week opened up our eyes to stand-up and comedy writing, we decided to further imagine how we can engage with readers and audiences in exciting ways. What could we do to make things more interesting?

First up, the Young Writers had to come up with Ten Things that are like Function Room 2 which gave way to some inspired ideas… a hollow watermelon? a blank canvas? A wet and windy day in Scarborough? What were the best ways we could evoke this room if it wasn’t a room?

This led us into our first case study of the morning – If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. We read the opening page, where Calvino writes directly to the reader: “You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room.” The Young Writers enjoyed the intimacy and were intrigued by the specificity with this opening.

Split into pairs, everyone wrote down three places where they enjoy reading; three distractions that stop them from reading; what kind of books they enjoy reading; and other facts about when and what they read. They swapped their instructions and wrote their personalised opening page to their partner. The effect was brilliant. We then passed each piece to another writer, so everyone got to read something that wasn’t addressed to them. This felt transgressive and interesting and demanded more of the reader’s imagination.

For the second half of the session, we looked at Tim Crouch’s play An Oak Tree, which invites an unprepared actor onstage to perform a play they haven’t previously read or seen. We watched a clip from the show and considered what it would be like to be in a similar situation as creative people.

As we divided the group into threes, we set a surprising task. Each group had to come up with two tasks for another group to complete, without them knowing what the tasks were. For example, if the aim was to ‘antagonise the fire extinguisher’, then you could ask them to find a blue object in the room and compliment it before then asking them to find a red object to criticise (as there were very few red objects in the room, it made sense to go to a fire extinguisher). Each group had some brilliant ideas – we saw an exciting circle of Jasper, Lucas, and Jacob asking another to ‘SAY IT!’ – while Evie, on zoom, managed to get the older group to write the word BOAT without us noticing. Everyone came away with some new ideas for how they could write for specific audiences and readers.

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Cartoon Pitches and Tim Crouch