Young Writers – Week 7 (The Art of Writing) – Picture Prompts

Hi Writers!

This week we explored writing inspired by images in Picture Prompts!

Starting out with our weekly check-in, we described our weeks as a colour.

Poppy C: yellow – peaceful and calm
Berry: peach – she hated this week because it wasn’t going quickly enough and she was looking forward to a very special occasion.
Poppy M: white – she couldn’t remember it as nothing stood out
Sukie: pink and black – they had dressed as a goth to go to a pop music clubnight
Claire: cobalt blue – she had had a very relaxing spa treatment involving a blue bath bomb

We had a lot of variety in this week’s reading check-in.

 Poppy M: ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’

 Berry: ‘First Class Murder’

 Poppy C: ‘Sherlock Holmes’

 Claire: ‘The Witches of Vargo’

 Sukie: ‘Dorset Up Along and Down Along’

We also did a writing check-in this week to see what everyone has been up to outside of the Young Writers’ sessions:

 Berry had been working on a narrative of ‘Beowulf’, one of the oldest stories still told in the

world!

 Poppy M had been writing a story in the notes on her phone, about someone living on an

enclosed island, who finds a person washed up on the beach and has to keep them a secret.

We talked about some writers we knew of who have written entire novels in the notes apps

on their phones, whilst commuting or going about daily life

 Poppy C had been working on a historical, epistolary piece – a letter from an evacuated child

in World War II to an older brother or father in the war

 Claire had been working on new pieces to incorporate into Bourn Jammy at the

Bournemouth Writing Festival

 Sukie had been working on pieces for the upcoming Sea Side Gothic pamphlet and several

writing competitions (including the one listed at the end of this blog!)

After our check-ins, we looked through the magazines and books Claire had brought and each chose

an image of a person (or animal) as the character we’d write about during this session. We took

some time to make character profiles before Claire gave us the setting: an art gallery. Each of us

created a story about how our character got to the gallery, and back to the magazines we went to

find an image our character could be admiring there.

Once we’d had some time to write a description of the art piece, Claire gave us the final stage of this

exercise – ‘your character gets pulled into the world of the image’! Everyone wrote a sensory

description of the interior world of their image, and we spent the rest of the session sharing our

pieces:

Berry: the tale of how Weird Prince George and his only friend, Rex, defeated a cruel wizard
Poppy M: the downfall of model Amy Viola (aka Picture Perfect) as she becomes trapped in her own portrait
Poppy C: Taylor Swift attempts a cunning art heist, but is foiled by the draw of the river painting!

We’re looking forward to seeing everyone for next week’s session!

Don’t forget, the Shaftesbury Tales writing competition has opened! Open to writers living in Dorset

(so that’s at least some of you!), it has age categories of 11 & under; 12-16; 17-19; 25 & under, and

‘open to all’. It’s a community project with a procession from Corfe to Shaftesbury, performing the

tales of people living in the Dark Ages in villages along the route.

Please do spread the word and submit something –

if you are looking for some extra eyes on your work, do come along to the Junior (7-11) & Young (11-14) Writer workshops at Forest Arts, New Milton.

Just as a reminder, we run on Saturday mornings (09:30 for Junior Writers and 11:30 for Young Writers) and you can sign up by

contacting the Forest Arts Centre directly, or come along and we can add you to the list!

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