Workshop Title: Wonderful ways of writing for young readers.
Facilitator: Geoff Havel
Date: Sunday October 8
Time: 1-4pm
In this workshop I will be covering a range of ideas about writing for children. I’ll look at just what a story is, what makes a story appeal to children and cover some useful approaches to actually writing a story. Hopefully, by the end of the workshop, you’ll have the beginnings of a story you might like to take away and develop.
The workshop will be a mix of practical, hands-on activities designed to clarify ideas, writing, and will include discussion on how writing might be improved. Have no fear, my own writing will be first to be analysed, and I have several early drafts of published books that will show what was done to them in the editing process.
Be prepared to:
- Make paper puppets and act out short plays with them.
- Draw pictures of random people.
- Watch as I take some characters I draw and develop them into characters to use in a story.
- Listen as I tell a story based on the characters I draw, using a graphic representation of how short stories are usually structured.
- Begin and share stories of your own using a similar process.
I hope to make the whole session as much fun as possible. Writing should be fun, if it is something you have to do then it has become work. Work is something I would prefer to avoid. That said, the session will probably focus on the 1% inspiration part of writing and leave the 99% perspiration part for you to deal with later.
Once I have shown you guidelines of how a story might be written, I hope you will go away and break every rule so that your story is new and original.
Geoff Havel has been writing stories for young readers for over twenty-five years. A primary school teacher for forty two years, he was amazed at the fantastic stories the children in his classes wrote and read to each other. Published by Fremantle Press,Walker books, and Oxford University Press, Geoff is an award winning Western Australian author winning the Western Australian Younger Reader’s Book Award and shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award.
Cost:
$50 PCWC and WUWA members
$62 non-members
Register:
Click the link below to register for this workshop – Please note registrations open on Monday 28 August.