In this post, Richard Hardie talks about World Book Day and his experience this year running a creative writing workshop with local Scouts.
Image from Canva
I love celebrating World Book Day. I always have!
Some years ago, all the Authors Reach authors met for the evening at Rick Barter’s
wonderful The Bookshop in Lee-on-the-Solent. Sadly Rick retired and now lives in London.
We had a wonderful time. Two years a fellow Authors Reach author, Francesca Tyer, and I
spent the entire morning at a local Primary and Junior school, talking bout books and giving
a workshop on how a book is written. In the afternoon we a signing event at W H Smith in
Southampton. We loved every minute.
Then the Pandemic hit and events of any kind were off the agenda. Until last Thursday.
Just when I was beginning to think World Book Day 2022 was going to be a damp squid, I
was contacted by a Beaver Scout Leader, who wanted to know if I could come and give the
kids in his Beaver Colony a talk about being an author of Young Adult fantasy adventures.
Yes please!
Thursday evening was therefore great fun and the 19 kids, aged between 6 and 8, were fantastic,
totally entering into the spirit of the talk and making it very interactive. They all came
dressed as book characters, as did the leaders and I went dressed as an author! We talked
about the 6 rules for plotting a book … Who What Where When Why and How, or as the
kids call them “Five Bums and a Rugby Post” for fairly obvious reasons. We used one of my
books Leap of Faith and showed how I’d used the rules to create the story. The kids all
dressed up in props I’d brought and became characters from the book, acting out a couple
of scenes.
During the last 20 minutes, the kids were challenged to develop their own story using the
rules, giving me characters, plot ideas and location. I promised to come back to them in
about a month with a short story using all their ideas The story will be theirs and they can be
proud.
An excellent end to World Book Day 2022!