Creative Writing Workshop 2013 – Day 3

Blog post by our intern Francesca

Today’s session was conducted by Eva, Karuna and I. Sujata, sadly, was not present with us today, and we knew we had some pretty big shoes to fill! However, the three of us interns worked well together and with the children, and we had quite an interesting session.

IMG_4454

I began by introducing the kids to my friend, “The Story Worm”, who helps me plan and write stories. I explained how The Story Worm is compartmentalized into three segments, and how stories, just like the components of the worm are divided into The Beginning, The Middle and The End. Dalilah quipped that our Bookworm and my friend The Story Worm are one and the same, and I am delighted that somewhere down the line, she has realized that a voracious reader makes a better writer!

The children then made their own Story Worms, and wrote out a structured story within its body. I was glad to see Aarushi take interest and she worked hard at writing her story, which was a review of one of her favorite book series. Eric demonstrated his knack for storytelling through this activity, and it is evident that he writes in a thoughtful and articulate manner.

IMG_4480

IMG_4492

IMG_4496IMG_4507

Next we played our drawing and talking game, but decided to have the same central character for each of the drawings, so that later on, we could connect the pictures to make a rather bizarre but highly entertaining story. Before we began the activity, Eva drew a picture of a lovely old Owl on the blackboard, and with inputs from the children, she built the character further. The novelty of a new character (that too, one they wouldn’t necessarily have chosen as the main character in their stories) inspired a fresh flow of ideas.
“The fat owl is on a diet!” said Aryan, who always comes up with the most spontaneous and clever ideas.
“It’s not an owl, it’s a human dressed as an owl!” said Aarushi, and that made everyone chortle.

IMG_4502IMG_4508

When we had enough of descriptive terms for our owl, we set about creating our stories through pastels. I was amazed at the creativity of these children that was expressed through their beautiful illustrations. We interns pitched in as well. The entire process of explaining what our pictures meant, what they could also mean, and connecting the pictures to form not just one story, but multiple stories with multiple possible outcomes was an exciting experience for us all.

IMG_4513

IMG_4514

IMG_4512

Of course, we all made sure to write down our stories in our notebooks because we were eager to read them out to Sujata the next day!

IMG_4517

Leave a Reply