Story planning with post-it notes in school and ‘quick everyday writes’ prompts for Zoom! Plus our first ‘Dark Club’ Zoom session!
Monday
CJS Monday Club: Today this group could either carry on any stories/poems started in the last few weeks from our ‘quick everyday writes’ prompts or they could make progress with their rescue dog stories for the Bournemouth Writing Festival competition. But we started with a quick story planning activity which really got them thinking about how to structure and plan a story. Everyone had six post-it notes but had to put three aside to start with. On three they had to write the beginning, middle and end of a story in quick note form. We talked about how helpful The Three Act Structure is in story planning. For example, Act 1 is the beginning of the story where you introduce a character and their world. Act 2 is the middle of the story where you make something happen and give the character a problem they cannot ignore. Act 3 is the end of the story where you resolve the problem. After everyone had written three notes, I then showed them how to interject three extra notes to provide more detail. We had some wonderful results from this. many of them said they now knew how to write their story better and many started stories because of the activity! Here are a few of their memo-note story plans:
Tuesday
Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom Group: These guys had the following prompts to discuss and respond to:
- Write about the happiest sound in the world
- Why do you write? How do you feel when you write?
- What does it feel like to have a head full of ideas?
- What is the one thing you always wish you were doing?
Some of them were also interested in the memo note planning technique I’m showing the school clubs this week so I talked them through that.
Bransgore C of E Primary School: These guys planned their stories today using the memo note technique, first coming up with three basic points of a story, start, middle and end, and then adding more detail. Fantastic! Here are a few of their plans:
Wednesday
Wednesday 11 Plus Group: This group had the writing prompt choices to go through and we also ran through the memo note planning technique. There was progress made on on-going projects too!
Wednesday 8-11 Group: The younger group seem to be really enjoying the quick writing prompts each week, with most of them doing more than one each time! We also had a look at the memo note planning technique and one member of the group decided to use this to plan her next story!
Wednesday CJS Group: With this group we discussed the memo note planning technique and everyone had a go at planning a story this way. Lots of them then went back to stories for the Bournemouth Writing Festival competition! Here are a few of their story plans:
Thursday
January ‘Dark’ club Session: This is a new monthly Zoom club for young writers interested in the darker genres such as horror, sci-fi, fantasy, crime, dystopia and post-apocalyptic. We will be meeting once a month at the end of the month to explore these genres and look at some famous authors who wrote in them. The aim is to learn more about the darker genres of writing and make progress with stories! Our first session went really well. We discussed various genres and what readers might expect from them, we looked at writing advice from Ray Bradbury of Fahrenheit 451 and tried his activity for writing a dark story which involves writing a list of ten things you love and ten things you hate then using some of that passion in a story. It was great fun and I am looking forward to the next one!
Burton C of E Primary School: Today at Burton I introduced the memo note story planning technique and as you can see from the photos below they enjoyed having a go at this! Some great story ideas evolved from the planning and some ongoing stories got a boost too. We also enjoyed using the feather and ink pen set, plus the fountain pen and my laptop to write with! Well done everyone, excellent work!
