Junior Writers – Week 8 (The Art of Writing) – Sequel Stories

Hi Writers!

In this week’s workshop we wrote some sequel stories!

In our check-in, we described our week as a film.

 Hamish said his week was like Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – it had been action-

packed and there had been many tasks to complete

 Marissa described her week as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – lots had happened,

and she couldn’t remember all of it, but there had been a lot of running around

 Indie’s week had been like Home Alone – she likened Kevin’s creativity to her art-filled week

 Evan said his week was like Cars – like Lightning McQueen, he had been trying to get to the

end of the race/week as quickly as possible

 Claire said her week had been like The Wizard of Oz as she’d woken up in a new situation

and was trying to find new qualities and a way home, and she advised that we pay no

attention to the man behind the curtain

 Sukie’s week had been like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert – they’d helped with their friend’s

solo drag theatre show the night before.

We played some improv games to warm up for the session, including taking it in turns to say our

names and where we come from, imbuing it with all the emotion we feel about the place! We had a

very exciting London, a dancey and delightful New Milton and a frightfully boring Poole.

We also made up non-human languages and passed them around, practising our body language and

nonverbal communication, and played around with acting out different emotions using vowel

sounds.

We read some example summaries of famous books, including ‘The Lion, the Witch and the

Wardrobe’, ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ and ‘Murder Most Unladylike’, and then started on our main

writing exercise.

We all chose a story to write a sequel for:

 Marissa: ‘Murder Most Unladylike’

 Evan: ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’

 Indie: a first-person sequel to a fairytale

 Hamish: ‘Sarcophagus Adventure’

Then we each listed the main characters, settings and genres from the first book that we’d like to

include in the sequel, and we thought about some prompts for sequel writing:

 The main character has been shrunk to miniature size

 The main characters have gone back in time

 Someone has been kidnapped! They are blindfolded – what can they hear/smell/feel?

Where are they and who has taken them?

 The characters have crossed over into another story world

We also looked at the Writer’s Digest 7 Rules for Writing Sequels:

https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-fiction/7-rules-writing-sequels

Everyone shared a bit of their sequel idea:

Then, as it was the day before Mother’s Day, we took the time to engage with a second writing

exercise: writing a poem for our mums!

We focused on gratitude, good memories, similes, hope for

the future and an apology, as well as an ‘If I could, I would give you…’

Everyone did very well getting their poems finished and hidden away before they were picked up,

and we’re sure all the recipients enjoyed them very much!

We’re looking forward to seeing everyone next week for our session on Choose Your Own

Adventure stories!

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Junior Writers – Week 8 (The Art of Writing) – Sequel Stories