So, starting in mid-May, while waiting for my job to start, I've been volunteering at my local library in the teen center. For six hours a week (Wednesday and Thursday late morning/early afternoon), I get to run the teen center and pretend to be a real librarian. Actually, I really am the real librarian, even if it's volunteer work - I handle any and all questions directed to the teen center and most people don't notice the 'volunteer' moniker on my nametag, which looks official!
It's been great experience and practice and Frieda, the official teen librarian, has been awesome. We had a meeting (all of us pulling any sort of shift in the teen center) at the beginning of the summer and she asked us all to run a program. Then, she announced that the Teen Advisory Group wanted a writing program and she wanted me to run it! We had talked about the fact I do a lot of writing in my spare time so this didn't surprise me a lot, but I was determined to do well.
Well, it's gone beyond well! Frieda and I sat down and picked two dates - Tues., July 26 and Tues., Aug. 2 for a two part program. Then, I set out to create my program. Keep in mind, this is the first program I've gotten to create and then actually implement!
Then, I reached out to the teens, through the other librarians and the Teen Group on Facebook and asked what it was that teens wanted to talk about and see during a writing program. The responses were: dialogue, pacing and plotting. Using that, I then formulated my plan of attack, based on many of the writing classes I took in college.
I won't go into my prep but here's the schedule for each of the days and how they went!
Day One: July 26th.
I got five people - two 15-year-old girls, one 19-year-old boy, one 23-year-old guy and one 30 something woman (the older two are both connected to the Teen Center through various means).
We started out by going around and introducing ourselves and giving just a brief description of what we usually work on so I could figure out what genres/types of writing I was dealing with here. We had 3 fiction writers, one mostly poetry kid and a non-fictionery who also dabbles in fiction.
Originally, I was going to share a bunch of the library's books and a bunch more that I owned, but I scraped that since I was generally dealing with a more experienced audience than expected. I did, however, write up and categorize a list of solid writing books (on all genres) that our library has on the shelves that will be posted for further reference. Our last order also included three prompt books for writers to use.
Then we moved on to our game time/icebreaker. The first one was using the words: Bench, Magnified, Olive and Seclusion, you had ten minutes to write a story or the beginning of a story using all four words. I allowed that you could be planning on using them even if you didn't actually write them. Then we moved on. I learned for the second week and changed the endgame but will explain that later.
Our next game was a round of Exquisite Corpses. For those of you unfamiliar with this game (you obv were not in LIS2000 or did not have class at Gburg with Dusty), it goes like this: Each person starts out with a piece of paper which they write any old opening sentence or two that they want, then they fold over the paper so only the last line (of any 2 words or more) show and pass to the right. The next person then uses only what they can see and adds to the story. When we were done, we all had to read the story we ended up with outloud. It was absolutely the most perfect icebreaker because we all cracked up repeatedly throughout the readings. They got plenty ridiculous!
I found the games here and here. There are plenty more where those came from.
Next was our discussion time. We started with dialogue. At this point, people were still fairly timid so it was mostly me sharing some tips and tricks that I had found online and agreed with (Google: How to write good dialogue or something similar). We did discuss a bit about how to listen in to real conversations for practice without seeming like a creeper. Then, I had pulled out all the old sheets gathered through my writing classes on writing 'rules' and we talked about and shared those. Following that, I opened the floor for questions and got a few, such as 'how to break a bad habit' and 'what do I do about writers' block?' These worked really well to create discussion among all of us, including Frieda who was listening in.
Finally, I gave them their 'assignment' for the next week. I wanted them to write anything, or bring in an older piece (within the last year, though) of 1-5 pages for us to group critique. They all left sounding excited and ready to hit the books the following week.
Day Two: Aug. 2
This time, I lost one of my 15-y-o girls and gained a maybe 16-y-o boy.
We opened the session with a brief discussion of how things had gone over the course of the week and where we were at. One had taken my advice and gone outside his comfort zone to try a piece while another had had no progress and had nothing to report (no biggie - this is all for fun!). We had another brief round of introductions to catch up the 16-y-o and then plunged into games.
This time we only did one. I gave everyone 4 slips of paper and then gave them each 4 categories: Person's Name, Event/Place, Thing, Conflict. Each person wrote down random responses and we compiled them into themed piles and then everyone picked at random - so it was possible to get one of your own but you'd still be guaranteed to get others too. Then we had 10 minutes to write somehow combining those 4 prompts. This game was also found off the above sites.
For example, I got Ayesha (Person's Name), A Hospital (Place), Traintracks (Thing) and "I want cookies but there is no sugar" (Conflict). Once our 10 minutes was up, I improved upon the week before and had everyone read their 4 prompts and then explain how they incorporated them into one coherent story, without making them actually read their pieces (although that was a choice, no one took me up on it).
Here we were supposed to have a discussion on pacing and plotting since that was the feedback I'd gotten, but they all insisted they didn't have a problem with that so we moved on. I asked if anyone had any other issues they wanted to bring up but they didn't.
Then it was time to share. We went over the guidelines for good constructive criticism (I did up a flyer on this which everyone got a copy of so they could keep it in mind) and then started sharing. Each person read their selection out loud and then the others gave them constructive criticism on their piece - what to add, what sounded off, what we dis/liked. We had four people share and four different types/genres, which was pretty awesome.
After a brief conversation, I realized that everyone expected this to continue through next week so we've extended it at least a week! From what I've talked to people about, it sounded like it might even become a permanent fixture, which is beyond awesome!
Day Three: Aug. 9
So I'm probably going to repeat either the Exquisite Corpses or this week's 4 prompts game, depending on the turnout. If there are a lot of new people, then we'll probably go back to the ECs, otherwise we'll go for the 4 Prompts Game.
We'll open the floor for any discussion on progress, problems, etc.
Then we'll again spend most of our time critiquing, starting with the two 'regulars' who did not go this week.
I have all the prep work I did for this as Word docs, including my Constructive Criticism Guidelines and my list of books. If anybody wants them, please let me know, I'd be happy to share!
Sorry this turned out so long, but some of my librarian friends asked for it, so I have provided to the best of my ability :)
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