Tag: writing tips

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 7th July

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Flash fiction prompts and progress on our ‘town stories’ project!

Monday

Monday Zoom Club: We started today with a flash fiction challenge. They had three options: writing their current town story in as least words as possible, writing a future story idea in as least words as possible or rewriting a well known tale or story in as least words as possible! After we had progress on town stories!

Monday CJS Club: We had flash fiction prompts also but most made progress with their town stories. We had another story typed up and finished and another one in the process of being typed up. Brilliant!

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 plus Zoom club: We started with flash fiction prompts and these were excellent and mostly shortened versions of the bigger stories they are working on! Then we made progress on the town stories themselves.

Bransgore Primary After School Club: More progress on town stories with another one finished and typed up! These guys have shown a real enthusiasm and commitment to getting their stories done!

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom club: Flash fiction prompts and progress on town stories in this group today! These stories are shaping up to be very special and I can’t wait to share them with you when this next book project is done! Well done everyone!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom club: We started with the flash fiction challenge and then moved on to writing more of our town stories.

Wednesday CJS Club: Flash fiction options for these guys too and more town stories finished and typed up! Excellent!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 23rd June

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What have we been up to this week? Folklore prompts for Zooms, mystery envelopes for schools and more progress on town stories!

It’s been a week of excitement and accomplishments at Chasing Driftwood this week! The proof copy of our anthology, The World You Gave Us arrived and was able to show all the children on Zoom and in schools. They all enjoyed having a look through and finding their contributions! We had several more town stories finished and handed in for our next writing project. The school children are enjoying typing theirs up on my laptop which has encouraged discussions about editing.

Monday

Monday Zoom Club: We had some folklore prompts on Zoom this week. Six different prompts based around various folklore tales including The Green Man, fairies and fairy rings, selkies and The Wild Hunt! Some used the prompts to write more for their town story, while others wrote a separate piece. Great progress on town stories too and lots of excitement about the anthology!

Monday CJS Club: The kids were really excited to see the anthology, hold it in their hands and see their work and their names in print! The book is published on 30th June but they were all able to have an early look. We made more progress on our town stories and a few more have been finished and typed up! Amazing!

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom Club: More responses to the folklore prompts with this group and yet more progress on town stories. Some of them wove the prompt ideas into their stories!

Bransgore Primary School club: They were very excited to look at the anthology and find their work in it! This really spurred them on to work on their town stories and we had a few more finished and handed in. Fantastic! For anyone finished I took in mystery envelopes full of writing prompts. The idea is to write a story based on what you find in your envelope.

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Club: Fantastic prompt responses, again, some using the folklore ideas to further their town stories and others writing a separate piece. Their town stories are all way past the half way mark now which is very exciting!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Club: More folklore prompts and a mixture of separate pieces and pieces that are woven into their existing town stories. Progress on everyone’s stories! Fantastic!

Wednesday CJS Club: These guys were very excited to see their work in the anthology and also made progress on their town stories, with a few more being finished and typed up! A few who had finished their stories had a go with the mystery envelopes.

See you next week!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 16th June

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What did we get up to this week?? More work on our collaborative project and out anthology is ready to preorder!!

Exciting times at Chasing Driftwood Writing Group, as an anthology over a year in the making is finally available to preorder! The World You Gave Us is an anthology of poetry, flash fiction, short stories and creative non-fiction written entirely by young people who attend our clubs. On the 30th June it will be published in both ebook and paperback by our own imprint Chasing Driftwood Books and will be available across multiple platforms. I’ll share the relevant links next week when the Amazon paperback version has been approved.

our anthology!

A huge congratulation to all the young people who took part!

Monday

Monday Zoom Club: This week we looked at tension; what it is, why its important and how to build it into our stories, We discussed various tips on creating tension, such as using short, sharp sentences, paying attention to sensory information and using the character’s body language, and we had tension themed prompts to respond to. Great work from all and further progress on all the town stories!

Monday CJS Club: Mostly progress on town stories today with a few actually finished! Amazing! Well done everyone. We also had a chat about tension and discussed the techniques we can use to add tension to our stories.

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom club: This group also had the tension tips followed by the tension prompts and we also had great progress on all the town stories. Well done to all!

Bransgore Primary School: Today we discussed how to add tension to stories and made more progress with our town stories with a few finished! Great work!

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Group: The same discussion on adding tension to scenes, tension themed prompts to choose from, followed by progress on our town stories. Great work from all. Their on-going collaborative story is also nearly finished!!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Group: These guys did really well responding to the tension techniques and the prompts combined! Lots of progress!

Wednesday CJS Club: This group also discussed how to add tension to stories and continued to make progress with their town project. We also have a few finished stories in this group now!!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 2nd June

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What have we been up to this week?

Monday

Monday Zoom Club: It was a warm welcome back after the half-term break and straight back into our collaborative writing project! We started with a writing prompt that they could use to write a scene for their town story or just respond to with an unconnected piece. The prompt for this week for all the clubs was:

“I don’t know what is worse… The sound, the smell, or what I have imagined in my head.”

We had some wonderful responses, some connected to town stories and some not. Well done everyone!

(Note: There was no CJS Monday club this week due to a staff day.)

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom Club: This group also responded wonderfully to the prompt and we had a mix of pieces unrelated to their project stories and some that were connected. We also had a wonderful poem!

Tuesday Bransgore Primary School Club: These guys started with ten minutes of silent writing to respond to the prompt and then got on with their project stories. It was lovely to see lots of progress on some of these stories too!

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Club: Wonderful work as always from this group who got stuck straight into the prompt and produced some incredibly tense pieces! Some were connected to their projects stories and some not.

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Club: Despite being the youngest group, these guys also tackled the same writing prompt with amazing results and made progress on their project stories!

Wednesday CJS Club: Ten minutes of silent writing time responding to the prompt went down very well with this committed group of young writers! Major progress made on project stories!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 19th May

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Progress on our next big writing project!

Monday

Monday Zoom Club: We started with a writing prompt: “The view from here is…” They could go any way with this, responding with non-fiction, or using it to get into the POV of their character for the town project. We had a great mix of responses as well as more progress on the plots for the town stories!

Monday CJS Club: We also made progress on stories, with everyone either working on plots or actually starting their stories. We discussed different ways to plot a story too.

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 plus Zoom club: Responses to the prompt, “The view from here is…” which went very well with this group. Each member used the prompt to get under the skin of their town project character and some stories have now been started too! Excellent!

Bransgore School club: We looked at different ways to plot a story and worked on plots for most of the session, though some people have started writing their stories too!

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom club: Writing prompt responses, plus plotting for our stories and using the prompt to get into our character’s and explore their viewpoint, whether physical or otherwise! Great work!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom club: Another mix of fabulous responses to the prompt, plus plots advancing for town stories!

Wednesday CJS Club:

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 12th May

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What did we do this week? Creating characters for our next big writing project!

Monday

Monday Zoom Club: This group voted on the event they think our town should experience and worked on their character bios for the short stories we will soon be writing. They also made progress on their own individual writing projects!

Monday CJS club: The last club to vote on the event the town experiences, plus adding their character’s homes to the project book and any suggestions for town names. Some stories have even been started in this group! Here are a few examples of their characters and stories…

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom group: With voting for the town event now over and counted, I was able to reveal to this group that the ‘strange creatures spotted’ option won! This option had the most votes by far so I hope everyone is going to be excited about writing stories for it. All they have to do is ensure their story mentions the town and the event! They can have any other plot they like, or they can make their story about the town and the creatures spotted there.

Tuesday Bransgore Primary School: The children voted for their favourite town name and continued to work on their characters. Some created more bios for their story, some worked on homes for their character and some started planning their stories! Fantastic work! Here are a few examples:

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Group: We discussed the result of the vote on the event that happens in our town and we voted on a name for the town. They then had options which including adding to their character bios, creating a home for their characters, drawing maps of their part of town or starting to plot their story. Great work everyone!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Group: This group also voted on the name for our town, and we had a mix of some children working on character bios, some creating homes for their characters, and some starting to plot their stories… Fab!

Wednesday CJS Club: This group also voted on our town name and I can now exclusively reveal that Lakeside View won the vote! Thank you to everyone for making such great suggestions. We had more character work from some and plotting and even starting stories from others! Here are a few examples:

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 28th May

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What have we been up to this week? Launching a collaborative writing project and starting by creating characters!

Monday

Monday Zoom group: The new collaborative book idea was explained to this group today and voting commenced on four options we have in creating a short story collection together. The idea is everyone will write their own story and will come up with their own character but the stories all have to be connected some way. We did some character work today to get started! The options are:

  1. An OBJECT is passed through the stories and every story must include this object somehow
  2. A SHARED EXPERIENCE on a train – everyone creates a character who then responds to something that happens on a train
  3. A SHARED EXPERIENCE in a town – we collectively create a town and everyone creates their own character, we agree on an event and each character responds to the event
  4. A SHARED LOCATION – everyone creates a character and writes their own story but all the stories must connect with a shared location

Monday CJS club: Voting for the collaborative short story collection idea and character creation! We also had character interviews where the group get to ask the ‘character’s questions in order to get to know them better. As you can see, the bios are wonderful!

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom group: After working on character ideas last week, this group got to vote on the collaborative project idea today. They also carried on creating characters, adding back stories and motivation and more. Fantastic. I’m very excited about the characters being created in this group!

Tuesday Bransgore School: This group also voted on the collaborative idea, and started character bios. We had a few ready for interview and will do the rest next week! Here are a few examples:

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom group: Voting for the group project idea and progress on their previous group story, plus creating characters from scratch OR adding more detail via back story, motivation and more…

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom group: This group also got to to vote on the collaborative book idea and then returned to creating characters for it!

Wednesday CJS club: We voted on the collaborative idea, and finished the interviews we started last week! More work on character bios. Here are a few examples:

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 21st May

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What did we get up to this week?

There was no Monday clubs this week due to it being a bank holiday. There was also no club at Bransgore school due to an inset day there. Here is what the rest of us got up to!

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 plus Zoom group: For this session, we discussed our group story which is now finished and has has been edited a few times. We discussed changing a bit towards the end that didn’t quite work and once that is done, the story can be added to the anthology all the groups have been working on. Today we also had a writing prompt: From a window. For this, they could write a fictional or non-fiction story, or a poem, describing a view from a window. We also discussed my new idea for another collaborative writing project all the groups will get involved in and this group were really enthusiastic about it!

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 plus Zoom group: Similar to the above, we had some discussion over their group story which is drawing to an end but will need editing when finished. I set them the From a Window prompt and also explained my new idea for a short story collection.

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom group: This group had the same prompt and most of them decided to respond to that. They could also carry on with ongoing stories or poems too, and a few of them went with that option. They also seemed keen on my new idea for a big writing project!

Wednesday CJS Club: Today I told the group about my new idea and they had plenty of questions about how it will work. We set the goal for this term of each creating a character and working towards a short story for that character. We talked about simple and complex character bios and everyone started creating one. Towards the end some of them pretended to be their characters and were interviewed by the rest of us!

See you next week where we will have more news on the anthology AND the new book idea!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 24th March

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What have we been up to this week? News reports for school clubs and tackling writers block OR Minecraft stories for Zooms!

Monday

Monday Zoom Club: This week we tackled writers block and writers struggles by talking about specific problems such as over-writing, under-writing, not planning enough, planning too much, lack of confidence, perfectionism and more. We all shared our struggles and discussed strategies for overcoming them! We also had some writing activities to try in order to help us, such as starting an ‘everyday quick writing’ notebook, and we had some general writing prompts on the theme of ‘memory’ to choose from. Well done everyone!

Monday CJS Club: This week we were writing news reports! The children could either choose a picture and then write the news report to go with it, OR they could play around with the headline word choices in order to construct their own wacky newspaper headline. Here are a few examples from the session:

Tuesday Zoom Club: More discussion, tips and plans to tackle writers struggles! In particular we were looking at over-writing and over-editing and not finishing stories. We made great progress in this group today with some new stories pushing forward and some old stories being recharged to try again! Fab work!

Tuesday Bransgore CofE Primary: More news reports using either picture prompts OR crazy headlines! Here are a few examples!

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Wednesday

Wednesday 11 plus Zoom Group: Due to holidays/illnesses we only had one young writer in this club today! That was okay though because I got to hear the battle scene piece she wrote from last week’s prompt which was absolutely superb! Battle scenes are tricky to do! There is a lot to think about, a lot of action and danger and emotion, and this was all covered beautifully! She went on to finish the piece and I am hoping it’s one we can publish in our anthology

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Group: Today the younger group continued their Minecraft stories and made fantastic progress. One was even finished, so huge congrats to that young writer! Finishing a story is always a big achievement! Well done everyone!

Wednesday CJS Club: This group were working on news reports today and the responses were fantastic and incredibly imaginative. Here are some examples:

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 17th March

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What did we get up to this week? Battle scenes and Minecraft stories for Zoom clubs, recipes and spells for school clubs!

Here is where you will find a weekly summary of everything we have done in our creative writing clubs this week. Simply scroll down to the day your child attends a club to find out what they got up to!

Monday

Monday Zoom Club: This week we are looking at battle scenes! We have already worked on pacing, as well as how to write an action scene, so this week we are tying all our knowledge up and writing battle scenes! These can involve small, one on one battles, or epic battles! We discussed several tips for writing battle scenes, such as making it clear when, where and why it is happening, ensuring we allow the battle to have high stakes, allowing the action to rise and fall, and making sure we consider the physical and emotional impact on the characters. There were some prompt choices to get them going and we had some amazing responses, as well as progress on on-going stories that needed a battle scene!

Monday CJS Club: Today we had a go at either writing silly/crazy recipes or magic spells! The idea was to create a list of both ingredients and the method. They could use pictures to help them come up with ideas. Here are a few examples of their work!

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom Group: Some great work tackling battle scenes today, well done everyone. We also discussed the progress of the now finished group story and the editing process that’s begun. More on that soon!

Bransgore C of E Primary: recipes and spells today at Bransgore! We had a lovely mix of real recipes (I love the idea of the mug cake!) crazy/silly recipes, and spells for conjuring up all sorts of magic, such as making dogs talk, creating frogs, making dragons and more! Well done everyone! Here are a few examples.

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Club: Incredibly work from this dedicated bunch today! All tackled the battle scene prompts after listening to the tips and advice on how to write such a scene. Some of the pieces of work were also able to progress on-going stories. I was extremely impressed with this group today!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Club: The younger group asked to do Minecraft stories a few weeks ago, and what a fab idea! We kicked this off today by reminding ourselves that planning will help keep us on track. We quickly ran through what a story needs, ie. characters, setting, plot and theme/genre and I encouraged them to do a bit of a plan before starting. Everyone seemed very excited to tackle their own Minecraft story and one member of the group proudly exclaimed that she’d never written so much before! Wonderful ideas and a great work ethic today!

Wednesday CJS Club: Back to recipes and spells for the school club today. They really got stuck into this and we had real recipes for chicken chow mien, plus silly/crazy ones for flower soup, spells for making a unicorn, spells for creating an amazing book and much more. Well done everyone, we had a lot of fun! Here are just a few examples.