WELCOME BACK!

Junior Writers:

This week we welcomed back our Junior Writers. Everyone had lots of adventures to tell us about from the summer holidays and were very inspired to start writing.

We kicked off our first term back with a choose your own adventure game I had created for the writers called The Secret Book, in which the writers would have to select options to influence the story and complete the writing tasks in order to escape the forbidden section of the library and find the secret book.

The first task was to work in pairs to write the first page of the secret book. We talked about magical books in films and stories we’ve seen and read and what kind of things are often at the start. Ideas included, secret codes, lift up flaps, hidden messages, an origin story, a spell.

Next the writers were tasked with creating an origin story or legend about the book and why their characters were under pressure to find it. Without knowing where the game might lead, the writers got very good at building tension in their stories to create mystery.

The last task we had time for was an illustration task. Drawing and creating imaginary book titles.

Next week we will be thinking about the BBC 500 words competition. Maybe some of the ideas from this week will inspire some spooky competition entries.

Young Writers:

Saturday 9th September – Welcome

Hello! Welcome to our blogs for Young Writers @ Poole Lighthouse. Every week we’ll keep you updated with what’s going on for all of our groups.

This week was our first session of the year. After a long and eventful summer, it was great to welcome back previous young writers, as well as getting the chance to welcome some fresh faces in each group. Everyone received their free notebook and pen, and immediately wrote down their name.

Exercise 1:

Turn to your partner. What is their full name? And do they have any stories behind their names? Share back to the group.

We discovered some great facts about the names within the room – who were named after their ancestors and fictional characters – how a name could help place someone in the world – and how we sometimes change our names as we go through life. It’s always important to trust other people’s experiences and stories. If we can be kind to them, then exciting things can happen.

Exercise 2:

In your pairs, find one thing that you have in common (you can’t say anything to do with writing) – then, join another pair and find another thing you have in common – keep going until everyone in the room have realised they share something in common.

Again, we discovered some useful facts about each other – and we will be working together a lot this year. Some groups realised they’d all been to France recently. Some groups realised they played a musical instrument. Some groups all liked the same subject at school. It was important to be honest, and to not say you liked something (even if you didn’t) to allow the game to move forward.

And so, now we were all better introduced, it was time for our first full writing game of the year.

Exercise 3:

After receiving a random word, the Young Writers would be shown five distinct images – a cartoon of a little girl on top of a house on top of a dragon – a group of boys playing baseball in India – two young girls stood mysteriously in a fantastical forest – a man with angel wings stood on the top of a building – and a group of mice trying to dress up as a human being. They had three minutes for each prompt and simply had to write as much as possible.

We had some wonderful prompts for this task – surprisingly, both groups randomly selected ‘Bad’ as their word for the final image – but we had some wonderful ones too – ‘Sister’ for the man with angel wings – ‘Blinked’ for the dragon – ‘local’ or ‘husband’ for the fantastical forest. By the end of the fifteen minutes of writing, everyone had a little bit for each prompt. We chose two of the images – the man with angel wings for the 11-14 group and the girls in the forest for the 15-18 group – and the Young Writers had to choose one line from their piece that they really liked. We then read it around the room – an intriguing poem which also gave a sense of everyone’s exuberant creativity.

The Young Writers then had an extra ten minutes to continue expanding on any of their stories or poems, with a few people reading extracts back at the end of the session.

Exercise 4:

What interests you as a writer? Write down 5 things that make you angry. 5 things that make you feel safe. 5 things that make you smile. 5 things that make you giggle. 5 things you’re afraid of. 5 things you are pretty much an expert in. And 5 things that you would like to change about the world. Don’t share these with the group. They are for you.

After completing this exercise, we gave out our schedule for the term and chatted through some of our plans for the coming weeks. It’s so great to be back in the room after two months away! Next Saturday, we’ll be touring Lighthouse itself and have the opportunity to write some new monologues.

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WELCOME BACK!