Mark Robson
Dragon Writer
I thought you might be amused by this. I was in Cheltenham yesterday doing creative writing workshops with several groups of children from a Junior College. The theme of the workshop was 'How to start a story effectively'. I'm not going to post the entire workshop here, but suffice it to say that one of the things that I try to nail home is that when introducing a new character, a trap that many young writers fall into is to give a whole list of physical characteristics. eg. Joe Smith was a thirteen year old boy with blue eyes and short brown hair etc etc.
For the practical part of the workshop I get different members of the class to offer up 1 - The name of the lead character for a story. 2 - The location that the story begins. 3 - The time of day that the story begins. I then get the class to all begin stories, in whatever genre or style that they feel appropriate, armed with the knowledge that their aim is to work four elements into the first few paragraphs.
1. Introduce the main character.
2. Set the tone of the story.
3. Set the scene.
4. Introduce the main problem/goal/motivation of the main character.
As the sessions are relatively short, I generally only have time to pick out one or two to be read out for analysis by the class. One of the classes came up with the following parameters: Character - Germuntrude Jones! (Where do they think of their names?) Location - In a wood. Time - Dusk.
I will try to repeat the start given by the boy that I picked at random from the class. Please bear in mind that this is from rough memory, but it really was this good, and though the humour is childish, it certainly appealed to the class and was technically very well written. Worse, I had to backpedal hugely about the use of lists of physical attributes!
Germuntrude Jones: the fattest girl in the entire school. She had thin, straggly red hair, a bulbous nose, fat lips and spots. In short, she was ugly. Really ugly. And right now, she was crying, which made her face blotchy.
Germuntrude ran from the girls' changing rooms in a waddling sort of way, panting as she struggled across the sports field and into the wood on the far side. With her chest heaving, she flopped down on a pile of leaves in the deepening shadows under the trees. It would be dark soon. No sooner had her body settled than she heard a sound behind her. A small squirrel had fallen out of the tree and broken it's neck. It was dead. Hungry after her run, Germuntrude picked up the unfortunate creature and started chewing on it absently.
'Everyone hates me,' she thought. 'I can't help being fat. It's the way I am.'
Unfortunately, it was true. The boys made fun of her because of her obesity. The girls were disgusted by her because of her tendancy to let out long wet farts in the showers...
I think you probably get the picture. The boy's surname - Fleming. And yes, you guessed it - he's related to Ian Fleming. It seems the creative flair runs in the family!
For the practical part of the workshop I get different members of the class to offer up 1 - The name of the lead character for a story. 2 - The location that the story begins. 3 - The time of day that the story begins. I then get the class to all begin stories, in whatever genre or style that they feel appropriate, armed with the knowledge that their aim is to work four elements into the first few paragraphs.
1. Introduce the main character.
2. Set the tone of the story.
3. Set the scene.
4. Introduce the main problem/goal/motivation of the main character.
As the sessions are relatively short, I generally only have time to pick out one or two to be read out for analysis by the class. One of the classes came up with the following parameters: Character - Germuntrude Jones! (Where do they think of their names?) Location - In a wood. Time - Dusk.
I will try to repeat the start given by the boy that I picked at random from the class. Please bear in mind that this is from rough memory, but it really was this good, and though the humour is childish, it certainly appealed to the class and was technically very well written. Worse, I had to backpedal hugely about the use of lists of physical attributes!
Germuntrude Jones: the fattest girl in the entire school. She had thin, straggly red hair, a bulbous nose, fat lips and spots. In short, she was ugly. Really ugly. And right now, she was crying, which made her face blotchy.
Germuntrude ran from the girls' changing rooms in a waddling sort of way, panting as she struggled across the sports field and into the wood on the far side. With her chest heaving, she flopped down on a pile of leaves in the deepening shadows under the trees. It would be dark soon. No sooner had her body settled than she heard a sound behind her. A small squirrel had fallen out of the tree and broken it's neck. It was dead. Hungry after her run, Germuntrude picked up the unfortunate creature and started chewing on it absently.
'Everyone hates me,' she thought. 'I can't help being fat. It's the way I am.'
Unfortunately, it was true. The boys made fun of her because of her obesity. The girls were disgusted by her because of her tendancy to let out long wet farts in the showers...
I think you probably get the picture. The boy's surname - Fleming. And yes, you guessed it - he's related to Ian Fleming. It seems the creative flair runs in the family!
