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 Part 2

Last week, I shared an exercise I did with my teen writers from the library that had to do with showing vs. telling. I didn't want the post to get too long, so I didn't include a second exercise we worked on during the same writing club meeting. This exercise was put together by a …

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: 2021 Writing Goals

For the last teen writing club meeting at my library, I had my teen writers answer a series of questions to get them thinking about what they want to accomplish with their writing in 2021. I found the questions to be helpful to get myself thinking about my 2021 goals as well and I thought …

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: Light Poetry

This will probably be the last bit of poetry I share for a while since the teen writing club is moving on to other topics. I don't usually find myself writing poetry, so I don't anticipate having a lot to share in the future. But then again, who knows when inspiration will strike? This past …

Sunday Snippets: Prose Poetry

This past Wednesday, I introduced prose poetry to my teen writers during our club meeting. I love prose poetry, and it's probably my favorite type of poetry because it mashes the two types of writing into one. I love play on words and internal rhymes and alliteration and just the way the words sound together. …

Sunday Snippets: More Poetry

In the teen writing club I lead, we're still going over different forms of poetry. Some (like lyric poetry) are harder than others, but I've been enjoying the process alongside the teens. So here are some more poems I wrote for the club. "Storm"Rain from the skythunder rumbles far awaygloomy aura lingers "Roller coaster"Metal mountain …

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: Bad Poetry

August 18 is National Bad Poetry Day. I had my teen writers from the library write bad poems in honor of the day, so I thought I'd share some of the ones I wrote as well. One of the prompts to get them started was to make a random list of things (a city you'd …