27 January 2024

Posted by Sukie & Claire

Junior Writers - Week 3 (The Art of Writing) - PLOT

Hi Writers!

This week we explored plot and the ‘seven plus two’ different kinds of plot that feature in most

fiction.

We started out with an exciting announcement – the Shaftesbury Tales writing competition has

opened! Open to writers living in Dorset (so that’s at least some of you!), it has age categories of 11

& under; 12-16; 17-19; 25 & under, and ‘open to all’. It’s a community project with a procession

from Corfe to Shaftesbury, performing the tales of people living in the Dark Ages in villages along the

route. Please do spread the word and submit something – if you are looking for some extra eyes on

your work, do come along to the Junior (7-11) & Young (11-14) Writer workshops at Forest Arts, New

Milton. Just as a reminder, we run on Saturday mornings (09:30 for Junior Writers and 11:30 for

Young Writers) and you can sign up by contacting the Forest Arts Centre directly, or come along and

we can add you to the list!

So, back to Saturday’s workshop:

We started out with our usual check-in, this time describing our weeks as a kind of sea creature.

 Marissa’s week was a turtle – gliding, slow and graceful.

 Hamish described his week as a seafood pancake – quite hot and tired with a few nasty bits

and stress, but some good bits like prawns

 Evan said his week was like a jellyfish – a bit weird, with some mixing up of classes at school

that led to them doing art in the middle of English!

 Indie’s week was also like a turtle, moving a lot with lots to do

 Claire described her week as an octopus because there was so much to do she could have

really made use of eight arms

 Sukie said their week was like a sea anemone, pulling in to be safe and cosy with a visiting

friend and darting out to do things together

In our reading check-in, we had a few new books and some continuing projects:

 Indie: Varjak Paw & the Christmasaurus series

 Marissa: Scarlett & Ivy

 Hamish: Amulets

 Evan: Diary of a Wimpy Kid

 Sukie: The House in the Cerulean Sea & Cabal

 Claire: Daisy Jones and the Six & The Northern Lights

Marissa shared a snippet of a new story she’d been working on, inspired by last week’s Murder

Mystery Generator game, about twins Ash and Diamond, entering a prestigious talent competition

on a space station. There were some great descriptions we all really enjoyed!

We started talking about plot and discussed its role as the structure of a story, and how it largely

functions off cause and effect – ‘x happens, which triggers y’ – in the sequence of events that

happen to a character.

We discussed the basic structure of most plots as a five-part system:

1. Set-up/challenge/conflict – the setting and characters are presented

2. Rising action/crisis

3. Climax – the important event(s) at the top of the story, where the greatest emotion & drama lie

4. Falling – the tying up of loose ends and winding down

5. Outcome – resolution and settling into the end.

We read two excerpts, one from The Brothers Grimm’s version of ‘Cinderella’ and one from ‘A Wizard of Earthsea’ by Ursula K Le Guin.

‘Cinderella’:

‘Now it came to pass that the king ordained a festival that should last for three days, and to which

all the beautiful young women of that country were bidden, so that the king's son might choose a

bride from among them. When the two stepdaughters heard that they too were bidden to appear,

they felt very pleased, and they called Cinderella, and said,

Comb our hair, brush our shoes, and make our buckles fast, we are going to the wedding feast at

the king's castle.

Cinderella, when she heard this, could not help crying, for she too would have liked to go to the

dance, and she begged her step-mother to allow her.

What, you Cinderella! said she, in all your dust and dirt, you want to go to the festival! you that

have no dress and no shoes! you want to dance!

But as she persisted in asking, at last the step-mother said, I have strewed a dish-full of lentils in

the ashes, and if you can pick them all up again in two hours you may go with us.

Then the maiden went to the backdoor that led into the garden, and called out, O gentle doves, O

turtle-doves, And all the birds that be, the lentils that in ashes lie come and pick up for me! The good

must be put in the dish, the bad you may eat if you wish.

Then there came to the kitchen-window two white doves, and after them some turtle-doves, and at

last a crowd of all the birds under heaven, chirping and fluttering, and they alighted among the

ashes; and the doves nodded with their heads, and began to pick, peck, pick, peck, and then all the

others began to pick, peck, pick, peck, and put all the good grains into the dish. Before an hour was

over all was done, and they flew away. Then the maiden brought the dish to her step-mother, feeling

joyful, and thinking that now she should go to the feast; but the step-mother said,

No, Cinderella, you have no proper clothes, and you do not know how to dance, and you would be

laughed at!’

‘A Wizard of Earthsea’:

‘As the witch kept talking of the glory and the riches and the great power over men that a sorcerer

could gain, he set himself to learn more useful lore. He was very quick at it. The witch praised him

and the children of the village began to fear him, and he himself was sure that very soon he would

become great among men. So he went on from word to word and from spell to spell with the witch

till he was twelve years old and had learned from her a great part of what she knew: not much, but

enough for the witchwife of a small village, and more than enough for a boy of twelve. She had

taught him all her lore in herbals and healing, and all she knew of the crafts of finding, binding,

mending, unsealing and revealing. What she knew of chanters’ tales and the great Deeds she had

sung him, and all the words of the True Speech that she had learned from the sorcerer that taught

her, she taught again to Duny. And from weatherworkers and wandering jugglers who went from

town to town of the Northward Vale and the East Forest he had learned various tricks and

pleasantries, spells of Illusion. It was with one of these light spells that he first proved the great

power that was in him.’

We discussed the common plot types that show up in storytelling all over the world: ‘rags to riches’;

‘tragedy’; ‘comedy’; ‘rebirth’; ‘overcoming the monster’; ‘the quest’, and ‘voyage and return’, as well

as the two ‘other plot types’: ‘mystery’ and ‘rebellion against The One’. We talked about famous

examples of each of these, and how they can interweave or be subverted, before playing this week’s

story generator game.

We each pulled a character, a setting and a plot type and spent some time writing a story outline

based on them.

 Marissa: a wise small child & a kind detective, a caravan, tragedy

 Hamish: a curious football player, a world where animals can talk, voyage & return

 Indie: an incorruptible astronaut, the rolling hills of Dorset, rags to riches

 Evan: a creative elderly person, a world of superheroes, rebirth

 Claire: a trusting teacher, a school, the quest

 Sukie: an extraordinary firefighter, Antarctica, overcoming the monster

We’re looking forward to hearing some of these stories next Saturday, and to embarking on our

Non-Fiction workshop!

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Junior Writers - Week 3 (The Art of Writing) - PLOT