Young Writers Workshops
- Advanced Poetry Workshop: For writers who have written and read a lot of poetry or who have previously taken a poetry writing course. Focus will be on raising the sophistication level of their writing and exploring more advanced writing techniques.
- College Admissions Essay Workshop: With fierce competition for seats in universities and colleges, the admissions essay is more important than ever before. In this workshop, primarily for rising seniors, participants will focus on developing engaging essays that will catch the attention of admissions officers.
- College Interview Workshop: Participants will learn how to use the interview to their advantage to help gain admission to their top choice schools by practicing answers to common interview questions and analyzing how applicants’ body language and clothing choices affect interviewers.
- Fiction in a Flash: Writing the Short Short Story : Short fiction, micro-fiction, or flash fiction is all the rage. In this workshop, students will discover flash fiction by writing it through creative exercises and timed writing sessions. We will also explore the roots of flash fiction in Aesop’s Fables. What’s more, students will write a complete short short in one thousand or fewer words.
- Interpreting Body Language: Students will gain insights and understanding that we are always communicating even when sitting in silence or when we express our feelings through facial reactions, body posture and tone of voice.
- Introduction to Poetry Workshop: Young poets will explore traditional and nontraditional poetic forms, learn about the elements of poetry and workshop their own poems with other young writers and WCSU faculty.
- Screenwriting Workshop: This workshop offers a hands-on experience in dramatic writing for stage and screen. The unique formats, plotting, character development and pacing of each medium will be explored. Students will have the opportunity to write their own Webisodes (6 to 8 minute short films for digital media) and/or a Ten Minute play culminating in Cold Readings.
- Songwriting Workshop: Learn how to write song lyrics in traditions ranging from the folkies to the rockers to the rappers. Use rhyme without cliches. Find out how to write a song that will stick in listeners' minds and maybe become a hit record!
- People in Profiles: Writing the Human Interest Feature: This workshop will stress the importance of story in nonfiction writing. Students will learn interviewing techniques and use them to pen detailed feature articles for magazines and/or newspapers. Building upon the basics of news writing and the elements of effective feature writing, students will learn how to entertain, inform, and persuade readers. By the end of the workshop, the student will write a polished story/profile of an interviewee.
- Public Speaking: By understanding the elements of word mastery and developing the ability to speak in our seats or on our feet, we can get the edge in a highly competitive academic environment and global marketplace.
- Sports Writing: Writers will take part in all aspects of what it takes to be a sports writer. They will learn to work on deadline, compose feature stories, improve interviewing skills, and write game stories. Students will be exposed to professional models as well writing original stories.
- Video Game Writing: Gamers and aspiring writers will work together to create compelling video game writing. Topics will include classic and current video game reviews, columns on how to beat the game, and original video game ideas and storylines. By the workshop's end, writers will create t heir own video game in writing.
- Writing the Fairy Tale: Pop Culture Meets Happily Ever: Fairy tales are centuries old and still popular today. We will read, discuss and study classic fairy tales (Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty) and updated variations of these stories, then write our own contemporary fairy tales. Standing on the shoulders of the great writers of the fairy tale canon, we will re-vision these old tales through a modern pop culture lens. Students will write one-to-two modern fairy tales modeled from the classics. Finally, the class will put together a collection of student fairy tales.
- Writing Family: Stories of Loved Ones: This workshop will stress the importance of story in nonfiction writing. Students will learn interviewing techniques and use them to pen feature articles. Building upon the basics of news writing and the elements of effective feature writing, students will also learn how to use the tools of fiction writing to shape their stories. Students will pick a family member or a close friend of the family to interview. By the end of the workshop, the student will write a polished story/profile of the interviewee.
