The second day of the Young Writers’ Workshop began with the question: Who would Spiderman be in your universe? With answers ranging from spider-rat to Rapunzel spiderman (no webs, just hair), the young writers got their creative juices flowing and got ready to write!
First, Riley led the young writers in a game of telephone charades. The young writers were grouped into two teams that then lined up right next to each other. All of them faced the opposite direction of Riley, except for the two line leaders closest to her. Riley would perform an action, and then one by one, the young writers would have the perform the action down the line until the last person tried to guess the action. The team that guessed right won a point! Some fun actions included hula-hooping, flipping a pancake, and shooting webs.
Next, Riley led the young writers in a character building activity with postcards. Each writer was given a postcard, and the location depicted in the picture of the postcard was where their character was from. By working through an example as a group, Riley taught the young writers to analyze how a character’s location influences them and shapes who they are. In thinking about the senses – what the character might smell, taste, and hear in their locations – the character becomes more three-dimensional. After the example, the writers began to create their own characters based on senses and the location of the postcard, such as Rome or an ice cave. Finally, the young writers got to build their characters out of Lego pieces before pairing up to come up with a “meeting story” for their two characters.
Then, our visiting writer for the day, playwright Catherine Trieschmann, led the young writers through a body movement activity to engage our bodies through language. Catherine then had the young writers pair up and gave them four scenarios to choose from to simulate jumping into conflict: the young writers had to create more detail for the scenario and then perform to each other. Some of the scenarios included a student asking their teacher for a higher grade and a couple breaking up. The young writers excelled at this activity and had everyone in the room cracking up!
Next, writers were encouraged to think about the scenarios they just performed but to shift their mindset from jumping to the conflict to setting the scene for the conflict. Perhaps you need to suggest someone else was interested in your partner if breaking up. Or perhaps you need to butter up your teacher before asking for a higher grade! The young writers were also encouraged to think about the end of their scenes. After discussing how the scene would work as a whole, writers set to work creating a full scene with beginning, middle, and end that included one prop and one sound cue!
To close her session with the young writers, Catherine encouraged the young writers to enter a place where anything is possible – similar to the space of the stage in the theatre. After laying down and finding this space through breathing and music, the young writers were asked to describe the room their imaginary selves had found themselves in, as well as a person who knocked on the door of that room. Students then used their responses to write a monologue they then performed for the rest of the young writers. When performing these monologues, the writers had the challenge of assuming three different positions during their reading.
After lunch, the writers headed over to Weigel Library located in Seaton Hall, home of the College of Architecture, Planning, and Design. Ian instructed the young writers to remember the characters they made in the morning. Working with their partner from the “meeting story” earlier in the day, the young writers now got to create the world in which their characters live. The Weigel Library has lots of Legos, particularly to aid students in architecture, and graciously let our young writers use them in order to construct the setting of their “meeting story.” The writers once again wowed us with their creativity and ideas to make their story come to life.
You can see our young writers’ extremely talented designs below, including a farm scene with a car with a popped tire in front, a beach scene in Rome, a forest, and an ice cave!
Then the young writers took a break to play their rendition of Mafia: High School Mafia! Playing as the 1992 Palm Springs Platypuses’ swim team, the young writers each attempted to find who the rival infiltrators were! Each writer drew alibis they had previously written from the alibi bag to determine their character, and once a swim team member was “injured,” they got a chance to write in the Palm Springs High yearbook!
Finally, Totty prompted the young writers to think about scenes that stood out to them. Some included the ending of Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe and the door scene in Titanic. The young writers learned how these memorable scenes stand out because of dialogue, characters, and emotions. After discussing the elements of a memorable scene, the writers paired up based on their Lego “meeting story” groups to create a scene. Because the young writers have spent all day building their characters, stories, and world, they had plenty of ideas to inspire this scene. Some pairs even chose to share with the group!
As the day ended, the young writers turned their attention to our parting question: Who would play you in the movie of your life? Some answers included Chris Pratt and Zendaya!
The young writers knocked today out of the park with their creativity, funny ideas, and courage to share their work. We can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings as we turn our focus to poetry!
— Jordan Dombrowski, Program Assistant
K-State Young Writers' Workshop 