Final Day Onsite – Author-in-residence

Today was my final day in classrooms, working with the inspiring and creative Year 8 students at Keilor Downs College during my four week author residency.

It’s not the end of the project, though.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be reading and editing their amazing stories and poems to include in our anthology.

Thanks to all the staff and students for making my time in the classroom such an extraordinary experience.

Thanks also to the fabulous Milena and Alison in the library for their wonderful support and enthusiasm throughout this project and for all Milena’s hard work in getting it off the ground.

Working On Our Anthology

It’s so inspiring to see how the Year 8 students at Keilor Downs College have taken a simple idea and transformed it into an amazing piece of writing over the four week period I’ve been working with them.

Their stories and poetry submissions for our anthology are already coming in and they are fabulous.

So many unique ideas, characters and settings are emerging.

Students have until 20 May to submit their writing pieces, and/or illustrations.

Next step is to edit the pieces and compile them into the anthology.

Everyone whose writing or illustrating is included in the anthology will get a copy of the finished book.

Thanks again to Creative Victoria for the Creative Learning Partnership that is making this all possible and to Kathleen Hodgson who paid us a visit yesterday and experienced the enthusiasm and creativity of the Year 8 students participating in the project.

Author-in-residence Week 4

I’m entering week 4 of my author-in-residence at Keilor Downs College and seeing so many great stories and writers emerging.

We’re working on finishing the stories and getting them ready to submit.

I’ve been sharing with students, what the editing process is like for an author and encouraging them to consider using more active and specific words to make their writing stronger.

We’re also talking about techniques we use like reading our work aloud or getting someone else to read it to ensure that our ideas make sense and translate to compelling writing on the page.

Year 8 Stories Are Well Underway

I’m loving seeing the characters and stories develop from the imaginations of the Year 8 students at Keilor Downs College.

There’s an amazing array of settings, characters and themes.

Some stories are set in our current world, others in a future world we can only imagine. For their story settings, students are journeying all over the world in their imaginations to select their story settings.

Once the students have finished their writing pieces, they will be emailed to their class teachers, and I’ll get to read all of them and work with Head of Library, Milena Gates and other staff to collate their amazing stories, poems and illustrated pieces into an anthology.

Thanks to Milena and Alison at the library who are so wonderfully supportive of my residency.

And how fabulous is their library? It even has a Reading Room!

Making Our Stories More Compelling

This week our Year 8 Keilor Downs College writers are working on developing the middle and endings of their stories.

I have been sharing with them how I introduced new story events and increased what was at stake for my character Ruben in Beyond Belief to make the middle of the story more compelling.

They are now applying the ‘raising the stakes’ principle to their own stories.

The students have been sharing their story ideas and beginnings with me.

They are developing great characters and stories and I can’t wait to read them.

Thank you to Creative Victoria and The Creative Learning Partnerships programme for making this residency possible.

Creative Learning Partnerships – a State Government Initiative

Book Design and Visual Storytelling

As part of my author residency at Keilor Downs College, I had a wonderful experience working with Year 12 art students talking about book design, book illustration and how words and pictures work together to tell a story.

We spoke about the journey of a book from idea to publication, how an artist is assigned to a book and the collaborative process.

We spoke about how the way an author and illustrator develop characters are similar but different.

It was agreed that getting to the emotional heart of a character is important when developing them, whether it’s visually or through words.

We spoke about how the body language of a character, their facial expressions and even the colours used by the artist contribute to characterisation and mood.

I shared with them how my colleague, author/illustrator Serena Geddes uses a different method to me when she’s creating her stories and characters. She tends to draw them first then add the words later. There is no right way to tell stories … it’s the voice of the artist that makes each story unique.

We also talked about the cover design for my book, Beyond Belief and I shared how I created the main character of Ruben.

Creative Learning Partnerships – a State Government Initiative

Interview Techniques – Finding Out About People – Year 11

As part of my author-in-residence at Keilor Downs College, I’ve been sharing my experiences as a journalist with the Year 11 VM Literacy classes.

Their current curriculum involves interviewing someone and creating a post about them, so we chatted about interview techniques and how to find out interesting information from the person you’re interviewing.

We talked about asking open-ended and follow up questions, and asking the easy questions first to make the subject of the interview feel comfortable. Then you can ask the harder questions. The answers to these are often the most interesting … and the ones that blog posts and articles are created from.

Students have also been researching the lives of a famous person of interest to them and we discussed what questions they might ask if they met someone famous.

Creative Learning Partnerships – a State Government Initiative

Young Poets, Story Writers and Future Novellists

Being author-in-residence at Keilor Downs College continues to be an inspiring and rewarding experience.

Last week the Year 8 students developed some amazing characters inspired by a photo that they chose and we talked about why they selected that particular image as inspiration for their writing pieces.

The characters they have created are many and varied, from people their own age to men and women in their 70s and 80s.

This week we have been working on building a world for their characters to inhabit including forms of transportation, geographical features, and the rules and infrastructure of that world.

Some students are setting their stories in the past, some the present and some the future. Some stories aren’t even on our planet.

It has been great to see students reaching into their imaginations to create these worlds.

Many are keen to take advantage of the opportunity to become published authors in the Year 8 anthology we’re producing.

A number of eager writers have already started their stories. Some are poets, choosing this form to tell their character’s story. Some students are writing journal entries, some are creating short stories and some have the beginnings of a novel.

We can’t wait to read their pieces.

Thanks to Ms Gates and all the amazing library staff and the teachers who are supporting this project.

Thank you also to Creative Victoria and The Creative Learning Partnerships programme for making this residency possible.

Creative Learning Partnerships – a State Government Initiative

Building our Story Worlds

This was my real world view when I set off this morning for Week 2 of my Creative Learning Partnerships author residency with Year 8 students at Keilor Downs College.

It reminded me to immerse myself, to look around and absorb everything I could see, hear, feel and smell … the kind of details that help me build a world that readers can picture when they read my books.

Today, I’ve been working with the Year 8 students helping them create a story world for their characters to inhabit, a world that will cause things to happen in their stories, a world that will put their characters to the test.

We have been discussing the geographical features of their story world and the problems their characters might encounter because of them.

We’ve also been exploring infrastructure and travel within their worlds … whether they be past, present or future civilisations that we can only imagine.

Setting and story worlds are intertwined with plot and characters. We don’t get one without the other … and we discussed today how making a character active within the setting brings our stories to life.

Thank you to Creative Victoria and The Creative Learning Partnerships programme for making this residency possible.

Creative Learning Partnerships – a State Government Initiative

An Amazing Week With Amazing Year 8’s

This week as part of my Creative Learning Partnerships’ author residency, I’ve worked with seven classes of Year 8 students at Keilor Downs College sharing how I create characters for books like Beyond Belief.

We’ve been discussing how vulnerability, admirability and credibility combine to create characters that readers connect with.

Of course characters don’t have to be completely admirable but there has to be something that readers like about them. And vulnerability is something that helps us build compassion for characters and care what happens to them.

It has been so rewarding working with these enthusiastic students and watching them unleash their creativity and use their imaginations to make up scenarios and story problems for their characters.

Next week we’ll be putting these characters into stories and settings.

Thanks to the wonderful dedicated librarians and the supportive staff who have got behind this project.

We’re going to be creating a collection of works in digital and/or print format, and I for one can’t wait to see what the students produce.

Watch this space.

Thank you to Creative Victoria and The Creative Learning Partnerships programme for making this residency possible.

Creative Learning Partnerships – a State Government Initiative