English

Story Slams Writing Workshop

On Monday the 10th of September, Years 9 & 10 of McGuire College went to Latrobe University in Shepparton and took part in a creative writing workshop.

The Year 10s went to an adventure story workshop with author Kelly Gardner, about making fast paced action sequences. The Year 9s participated in a workshop with author Kirsty Murray, talking about truth and fiction and her experience writing stories and her life before she came an author. Kirsty explained the art of turning truth into fiction, keeping the event but changing the characters or the perspective or the way the event is written. She gave us writing time to narrate our own recount of a true event that changed our lives, and manipulate the truth to seem fiction. She talked about setting the scene, and really describing what things looked like and how they appeared. We did some interactive activities to try describing our own scene, and also to describe and imagine an image of someone's pet.

Kirsty talked about the places she had travelled to write her books, how she came into the writing world, her personal and family experiences and history, and also gave us some facts on what a young adult fiction is and should be, and how we can write our own.

After the individual workshops we went into a room with the other group of students, Cobram Secondary College was also there, and had a Q & A with the two authors. People asked questions relating to how much money they got per book, how long it took to write books and find a publisher, when they started writing, how they got their ideas and a few other questions.

Kirsty and Kelly were very inspiring and encouraging, and we thank them for coming to speak to us.

Moara Smith, Year 9