Young Writers Society

Okay, so for next year I'm trying to start a writing club in my school. I already have a teacher advisor and I'm in the process of getting the Principal's permission, but I'm not sure what exactly people would want to do. I'm the person that's writing nonstop, so this is pretty much just a room for me to write in the morning before school, but what about people who can't just sit down and write? Any ideas about activities or good prompts? It's a group of 14-18 year olds and we really just wanted to get ideas before going ahead. Do any of your schools have similar programs? Thanks a lot for the tips.

Whatever kind of announcement system your school has, get on it. It's nice for recruiting.

The problem with the writing club at my school (which I and a few other people founded) is that it was no direction. Try organizing everyone for a purpose, such as your own literary newsletter. I tried to do that in my writing club, but everyone was too detached (and the 'leader' was a semi-talented hack who encouraged goofing off during meetings, very hard to work with).

My school doesn't have a writing club, so I don't have much advice to give. However, if you use YWS as a helpful source, you could probably suggest a few things to do. We have countless of activities here as well.

You could go for contests or Word Wars to help people get started and writing. You could start SBs or get people to write a story together. *two cents*

Thanks for the replies so quickly. We have an announcement system, but it isn't very efficient. And we have a literary magazine in the school which I am the editor of; it's a completely separate entity. We might suggest that people submit their writing to the magazine, but this would just be a communal writing experience.

Well, one thing you guys could do as a group would be NaNoWriMo; you know, National Novel Writing Month, when you try to write fifty thousand words in the month of November. It's a lot of fun, and having other people to agonize with, share tips with, and trash talk with makes it even better. And then in April would be Script Frenzy. In March is National Novel Editing Month. That might really get people into it and inspired. Nothing like doing something insane together, eh?

Having a writing community in the school is a good idea. Good luck!

Go to the writing activities forum here, you can get some stuff there to start you off.

I'm thinking about starting a writing club at my school, and I would say that once a week, you can all bring in short stories and critique ach other's stuff.

That's a really great idea bear. Our school does poetry month, where we all find our favorite poems and distribute them to the rest of the school. Your ideas are great. Thanks a lot.

Check out the usergroups. Namely La Plume and Character Development.

~JFW1415

Do an activity/exercise each session at the start. It's a good way to warm up those creative fires!

Also: ADVERTISING. Word-of-mouth, school newsletter, loudhailer announcement, I don't care. Just recruit as many people as you can!

Writing towards a specific goal, e.g. a presentation of work or a magazine with writers' work, as Kang suggested, is another very good idea. You can organise competitions too.

Make sure everyone gets a chance to review everyone else's work: it helps them (and you) know what works and what doesn't.

Think of a catchy name, too. We're called RAWtalent: Reading (place in Berkshire, UK) Amateur Writing Talent! Cool, huh?

Good luck!

Gahks

I would, to begin with ask every person in the group to write a short descriptive piece- on anything. Then everyone could compare and get to know each individual's writing styles. Sorry if that's not very good advice for the moment, but I can do some research and get back to you.

But well done you! I hope it goes very well.

Eimear

Speed Writing.

In the beginning of each session, with a timed writing session, have everyone write for a solid minute. They must write whatever comes to their mind and just keep going. It doesn't matter if the words come out sloppy or there is even mispelled words. The key with Speed Writing is that you're writing from the subconcious and that's where the real creativity is just waiting for you or anyone else set it loose.

Then after the buzzing going off, signaling the session is finished, take the time to look over each piece and work off from them with everyone's ideas thoughts/opinions.

Speed Writing is also one of the handiest tools to snag the writer out of a Block.

You could even add writing prompts to the speed writing. Have people speed write to the topic of something random.

Make it a fun place to be, where people can help out each other. I love writing while in a chatroom, because you get so many random and helpful ideas from the people in the chat.

And I second the tip about word wars. Word wars are the best.

http://www.nanowrimo.org, http://www.scriptfrenzy.org. Thought I would add in the addresses for Nanowrimo and Script Frenzy, although I'm sure that almost everybody knows it already.

You could even include smaller challenges, though. Something like 'write X amount of words before tomorrow,' or 'write 250 words for a week.'

Try combining the lit magazine and writing club--at least get your 'star' writers from the club deeply involved in the publication.

The best workshops, I believe, are the more liberal ones. Every one writes what they want, read it to the rest, and then the whole class actively works to make the writer feel bad about writing it. Together, they pick it apart, pointing common mistakes, etc. Most people who join writing clubs want to be read, so it's best to let them be.

Thanks for all the great ideas so far everyone. I've been bouncing them off the perspective club advisors and they really like them. In answer to a few questions: We have a literary magazine that comes out once a year. The pat two years though, the attendance is dwindling, and next year the district will be cutting the majority of our funding. We went from having 65 pages last year to having 32 pages this year. Now the writing club came out of ideas to try and increase the attendance for the Lit mag. The writing club will be in the mornings before class and the lit mag is after school. Hopefully, we'll find people that are into writing and they'll come to both meetings. Keep the great ideas coming. We're probably going to have meetings 2-3 times a week, so what I was thinking was that we could free write one day, timed write (or from a prompt) another day, and at the last meeting of the week, we could critique each others work. Thanks again for the help, and keep the great ideas coming.