Creative Writing Workshop: Story Soundtrack

Flyer I put together for the program.

After taking a pause with creative writing programs, I started them back up again this September due to patrons requesting to bring them back. 

In the past, I ran a monthly youth creative writing club. I really enjoy making lesson plans for these and find the idea challenging and fun. These programs also allow me to revert back to my writing background, having both a B.A. in Journalism with emphasis in creative writing and English. 

My focus is to encourage youth to improve their writing and recognize their own literary talents, enjoy the writing process, and let them know that they hold power with their written words because words can create change and make a difference. 

Instead of having a monthly writing club, it became a better fit to have a quarterly creative writing workshop for youth (ages 8-12) and it has been both a pleasure and a success.

For September's theme, "story soundtrack" we explored the different moods of a story through music. I read a few short stories and we decided as a group which music I played fit each of the stories. We also used another piece of music for inspiration to create our own short story. My goal for this workshop was to get the group more comfortable with mood, tone, and voice in a story and to know the differences between them. 

Naturally, I started by having a quick introduction and explaining to them the definitions and differences between mood, tone, and voice. I showed them a visual example by comparing the original Disney's Frozen movie trailer to a trailer for the same movie, but using a horror or ominous tone. They seemed to have found this interesting and we talked about the differences between the two and what mood each of them made them feel and which tone they each had. 

After I introduced and compared and contrast the topic of mood, tone, and voice, I explained that we were going to read a few picture book short stories to get some great examples of different tones. The shortness of picture books allowed me to read full stories instead of just passages and point out more of the different types of tones in writing and how they affect our mood.

The Cloud Spinner by Michael Catchpool allowed us to explore and discuss the folk/fairy tale tones in stories, The Dark by Lemony Snicket allowed us to explore and discuss the ominous tone or unpleasant tones in stories, Levi Strauss Gets a Bright Idea by Tony Johnston allowed us to explore and discuss the colloquial or informal tones in stories, and Aviary Wonders Inc. by Kate Samworth allowed us to explore and discuss the playful, witty tones in stories. 

It was fun to read Levi Strauss out loud to give it a country twang and I think the group found Aviary Wonders Inc. and it's playful idea of building your own real life bird in the future to be their favorite tone.

Next, I played some samples of songs and the group had to match the music to each story. They all grasped the concept of mood and tone and guessed correctly to three of the four match-ups. We discussed why we thought each music piece went with each story. I used some music samples from YouTube. 

We browsed some music snippets and decided on one to write to. At first, the group had trouble concentrating, but they slowly eased into it and everyone started writing fairy tale stories. They all came up with fun ideas and I wrote a little myself to set an example.

I would do this writing lesson again. I think it was a fun idea to teach mood and tone using writing and music. I got a ton of my ideas and lesson planning together with the help of Novelist's article, "Tone, Voice, and Mood: Connecting Reading, Writing, and Comprehension." 

My book display on recommended books on tone, voice, and mood from the above article.

I wasn't sure how the group would take learning from picture books, but it was a great way to get some stories in there and demonstrate some short examples of tone. I think they enjoyed being read to and liked the stories chosen.