Yr 9/10 Author Workshops

Meeting a Real Author

In this once in a lifetime opportunity, all students taking Creative Writing this year attended two sessions wit, Author, Amie Kaufman. 

The first was a tour through how a writer's brain works. Participants found out how Kaufman got into writing and gained insight into a writer through little details and the importance of experimenting in writing. Many students asked thought provoking questions such as "What is your desert island book?" and "What was the first story you completed and were proud of?" 

In the second workshop students started with a blank sheet of paper and left the session with the beginning of the next big novel! With just a paper and a pen, Kaufman guided students through her tried and true brainstorming process where they generated ideas, protagonists and interesting incidents to explore.

Students' Experience:

Hi, I am Courtney, and I would like to tell you about my experience with the Author visit. The Author visit occurred on Wednesday the 17th of May, and we had one of the authors that wrote the book that is being read in the Year 9 and 10 Creative Writing classes. 

We started off with a session in the Theatre and then we had a session in the Senior Centre. The session in the Theatre occurred during Period 2 and the session in the Senior Centre occurred during Period 3. 

Session One was about getting to know her and getting to know everything a writer does to help them with writing stories and at the end we got to ask her questions. One of the thigs that she told us was that writers research and so what that means is that when writers are coming up with stories, they watch movies, documentaries and visit places and many other things like that to get ideas and information for their stories. 

Session Two was about us learning the way she plans and writes her stories by having a workshop where she not only showed us what she does but we also tried it out as she went over each step. 

Step One was where you needed to brainstorm some ideas on movie genres and things you like. Step Two was where you circle three of your ideas that you think would work well in a story together. Step Three was to try to come up with a protagonist by putting this question into thought: “Who can suffer the most pain? Who can make the most change?”. Step Four was where you needed to ask yourself ‘Why this person, and why today?’ What this means is that you needed to come up with the inciting incident.   

Step Five was where you needed to come up with a love interest for the person which could also be the antagonist, then Step Six was where you needed to come up with the personalities of the characters and things that the characters like as well as adding a few more characters, but you also needed to make sure that the love interest and the protagonist had qualities that the other doesn’t so that they would be stuck together and have to keep going back to one another and the last step was to start writing. 

Those were the two sessions, but I have one last thing to say, after each of the sessions the author had stayed behind so that if people wanted, they could get their books signed or just a signature.

Courtney Malloy, Year 9

My experience was really fun today. It was such a cool experience to get to meet one of my favourite authors and get a book signed by her! The workshop was extremely helpful for me and I will use that writing method in the future.

Mila Nacevska, Year 9

The workshop today was amazing, I really enjoyed the visit and it's helped a lot with my ideas, thinking of ways to write a story, how to start and the motivation. In our workshop she started with telling us about her life and her writing experience from there, we also got to ask any questions we had and then we went on to try and plan our own story with her help which included making the characters and the story idea, overall it was an amazing experience that we were lucky to have.

Charlie O'Neill, Year 9

We can't wait to have Amie back next year!

Michaela Piritidis, Juanita Blair, 

Kevin Hawkins and Joanne Montgomery

English & Library