Sunday Snippets: Opening Line Prompt

This past week I gave my teen writers an opening line and then they had to write what happened next. Of course, I participated in the writing exercise as well and I didn't expect to go Jurassic Park on everybody, but here we are. The opening line is italicized to distinguish what I came up …

Sunday Snippets: Show vs Tell

We discussed show vs tell, briefly, during my last meeting with my teen writers. It's a tricky element of writing that is super important but hard to grasp. So I had them do a fun exercise where I gave them three phrases to pick from and then they had to write a scene that depicted …

Sunday Snippets: Dialogue Exercise

It's been a while since I shared a writing exercise. This one was paired with a mini-lesson on avoiding info dumps in writing for my teen writers at the library. Basically, I challenged them to write a scene that explains the culture // world // time // etc. a character is living in entirely through …

Sunday Snippets: Haikus

The Teen Writing Club I run at my library decided to continue with poetry for a little while. We'll be going over the more popular forms of poetry, exploring the specific structures as well as the poets that are known for writing those specific forms. And we'll also be experimenting by writing some of them …

Sunday Snippets: 5 Words

I lead a writing club for teens at my library. Almost every time we meet, I give them some kind of writing prompt to challenge them. This past week, they picked a random slip of paper with five words that they then needed to incorporate in their writing in some way. Since I usually participate …