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

23 September 2023

Posted by Holly Spillar and Rohan Gotobed

Prompts and Pitches


Saturday 23rd September 


Junior Writers:


This week we focused on coming up with more ideas for the 500 word competition. 


Each writer was given a blank envelope with a card inside and a prompt inside the card. Before they were allowed to open the envelope they had to address it to a made up character. The character they addressed it to would then be used as a main character in the story they wrote inside. 


This task was supposed to only take half the session but the writers really enjoyed it and kept writing for the full hour. 


Young Writers:


This week was all about teamwork, collaboration, and murder. Somewhat. 

Exercise 1: 

Werewolf. 

One of our favourite games is ‘Werewolf’, the social deduction game with a YW twist. Amongst the group were two werewolves, a seer, a doctor, and lots of villagers with unique jobs. As the game goes on, the werewolves secretly decide to kill other players, the seer gets to accuse other players of being a werewolf, while the doctor can save anyone from harm. The evil team win if they can kill enough villagers. The good team win if they can discover the werewolves!

As we started each new round in Werewolf, we learnt a little more about our villagers. What are their names and ages? What do they do beyond their job? What is the worst thing they have ever done? This meant we had some more detail as some of the Young Writers then creatively wrote about how their character was savagely murdered or executed. 

It was a mixed result between the two groups today, with the 11-14 year-olds managing to locate both werewolves (through a skilled seer) while the 15-18s were defeated by two surprising creatures of the night.

Exercise 2:

Write down three potential characters for a story. Two possible settings. And a genre.

As we moved onto our second exercise, we sorted everyone into different groups –

Exercise 3:

Spin the wheel of fortune. Receive two characters, a setting, and a genre. You have ten minutes to come up with a pitch for the movie of this idea.

Working together in their groups, everyone has time to come up with an idea for their film. What’s it called? How do these characters meet? And what happens? We discovered some amazing ideas and we can’t wait to see them realised onscreen soon. We hope!

Exercise 4:

Receive some notes from Holly and Rohan. Act on them.

After presenting their ideas to the whole group, the YWs received some notes or ideas from Rohan and Holly to help define their stories and characters. For the final ten minutes of the session, they could write collectively or alone to get their ideas on the page.

Next week… we’ll be creating entries for an upcoming competition!


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