The festive season of November-2012 produced lot of learning and exposure for students of Dikshant International Scholl VI to IX. A Creative writing workshop was held in school campus on 9-Nov-12, Friday in which 25 students from Grade VI-IX participated. The workshop was lead by a very renowned editor in the literature world-Ms Anita Roy. She is a commissioning editor for the Young Zubaan, a freelance writer and critic for newspapers and magazines including Outlook, The Hindu, Biblio, The Indian Express and others.
The first interface of hers made students realize that it’s going to be a magnificent experience for them. They got captivated by her charismatic way of dealing with them.
The workshop started with an introduction session where students were asked about the book they liked or disliked the most, supported with a reason. Students were made to understand that if they want to take up writing as a career they have to practice lot of reading and writing. The power of observation and expression was well elucidated to them with the help of examples from surroundings.
They were then introduced to the factual and creative forms of writing, to further explicate the concept they were made to pen down their experience on the way to school in a factual manner.
Next for them was to learn about the difference between show and tell. This concept was well explained with the help of anger activity done by the lead with one of the participants. Students were then asked to write on the same topic in the form of show rather than tell.
In a Book Reading session they were explained how different writers use show and tell technique to make their book interesting. Importance of enough and right description, more showing than telling, different set up of books, significance of narration, tenses, senses was emphasized.
Final and the most interesting session was about the most powerful word “What if”. Student were given different imaginary topics like “I was half an inch” or “I had extendable arms” etc to write their “What if” fiction stories. They came out with some remarkable piece of work and narrated them with full expressions and enthusiasm. This workshop motivated students to pursue writing with more passion and enhance their skills in it.