Fifteen pupils from Year 7 were chosen to take part in the Lit and Phil Writing competition. The Lit and Phil is a very old library where people study, read and work. The competition has different themes each year and this year it is ‘Journeys’.

On the 15^th of November, we all met Hannah, a creative writing student who is studying for a master’s degree at Newcastle University, and had our first workshop. We started with a game called Consequences, a game where we had to write a little tiny part of a story, hide that part and get someone else to write a part but they don’t know what the other parts say. We also played Fortunately, Unfortunately, a game where we make up a story but the sentences alternate between a fortunate sentence and an unfortunate sentence. These activities were just to get us thinking and writing. We did some writing as well, where Hannah asked us questions, we had to answer them and then turn them into a story. We also looked at some items and then wrote a story about those items.

A couple of weeks later we had a second workshop but this time at the Lit and Phil. We went to the library and we first had a tour then we had the workshop and the focus was on writing speech. We played a game to start with where we wrote down the alphabet and wrote a dialogue with each new piece of dialogue beginning with the next letter. Then we got into pairs and each of us were given a goal of what we wanted to achieve and we wrote down a dialogue of the two characters trying to get what they wanted. We then edited a dialogue between two people called Ben and Bill. The day ended with some free writing.

It is now up to all of us to write our entry for the competition, which can be fiction non-fiction or poetry. One of our students was a winner last year so we are hoping for similar success this year…fingers crossed!

By Katie, Year 7