Tonight's mission: To write scary stories. Not the old scary stories, mind you, with their vampires and werewolves and dark stormy nights, but new ones. Ones with... oh, knitting needles. Or maybe some chocolate chip cookies.
Every drop-in writing night has a theme, some sort of format that gives the kids a place to start. We may decide to work on starting sentences, finding ways to catch the reader and draw him in to the writing. Or we may brainstorm conflicts -- funny ones, silly ones, ones that have cake in them -- and set the kids to ending the stories. Tonight, we wrote scary stories.
To begin, the group leader asked the kids for all the things that went into a scary tale. Ghosts, witches, full moons, and devils all had a line up on the whiteboard, and many more. Nighttime was mentioned, as was murder and violence. Every kid knew the basic formula, and the things on the board could have spawned dozens of best-selling books and films. Most of them already had.
Next came the challenge: Each of us had to write a scary short story of our own, without using a single idea listed on the board. Cue gasps of shock around the table. This would be impossible!
No, says the leader, not impossible. How about... a cucumber? Cucumbers could be scary, couldn't they? What if they started doing things they shouldn't?
It'd be scary to be eaten, says a ten-year-old. She's a precocious writer, and she catches on fast. Like if you were writing as the cucumber, and somebody tried to eat you, and...
...and away they go. The ten-year-old chooses a chocolate chip cookie as her protagonist, and ends with a rather morbid tale about his last thoughts and his wish for a quick death. Another writes about a piece of yarn, trying to hold its breath as it gets knit into a scarf. As the sweet little girl in pink proudly reads her piece, describing the way that the yarn's tail turns black and face turns white as he suffocates, the volunteers exchange a look. We're a bit worried about the trend, here. The leader hints again that violence has been banished to the board. Thankfully, nothing dies in the next, as an invisible man leaves "gross things" on the protagonist's bed. Hmm. Three children protest that their stories aren't finished yet, and that they need to keep working on them. So far, so good.
The boy beside me has trouble concentrating, and he doesn't like to talk in front of the others. He picks up a pen and promptly disassembles it, shooting a thin spring across the room and sending a flight of giggles around the table. I let him fiddle for a little, then take the pieces and direct him back to the story. A few lines, and then nothing. Would he like to try drawing it? I ask. He flips the paper over and begins illustrating. After another five minutes, some coaxing, and a little extra time to think, the light blinks on. He stops fidgeting, clicks open his second pen, and starts to write. He doesn't stop until the workshop ends.
Good workshop, good fun, good times. Several kids hand over their papers to be photocopied, which will go into a pile of candidates for the end-of-year omnibus. By the end of the year, at least a few of these kids will have their stories published. And how many third graders can say that?
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