On Thursday the 17th of November, an author called Alexander Gordon Smith who wrote such books as ‘Escape From Furnace’ visited the school. During first period, he did a large assembly telling us hilarious stories, such as when his brother who is eleven locked him in a dungeon cell. My personal favourite is the story about when he used a shotgun to do some research for his book. He didn’t want to shoot anything living, so he shot a cowpat. Now if you don’t know what happens when you shoot a cowpat… well… the cowpat erupts. Now I’m not going to delve into too much detail, but let’s just say that after a while, someone in the story got covered in cowpat! He also told us about the fact that you don’t have to worry about being a terrible writer, everyone can write – just have a go.
During second and third period he did a workshop with a selected few (me being one of them) and got us to invent a character for a book. He asked us questions such as ‘what’s your characters favourite possession?’ and ‘how old are they?’ Afterwards he asked us to make the first paragraph (or first chapter in my case) of a book, but it had to have our character in it. Some people (if not all) were deadly serious and made crazy story plots such as ‘on a roller coaster two peoples heads collide and they turn into zombies’ and ‘china dolls take over the world’. Did I mention Alexander Gordon Smith was a horror writer?
We had a great time and were given a lot ideas on how to go about creating a great horror plot. Jordan, Year 8
Author Alexander Gordon Smith visited our school last Thursday and he told us about his job of writing books. He told us that he likes to get inside his character’s head and see what they see, to help him write. Some of his examples were crazier than others. For example, in one of his experiments, Gordon (as he liked to be called) and his little brother decided to make some rocket shoes. They had a friend who liked to shoot and they borrowed some of his gun powder for the shoes and they tested it on an action man. They were so glad that they didn’t experiment on each other, because when they got it back, they found it had lost his feet!
Later on in the day he carried out a workshop. It was about creative writing and we had to create a character. We had to think of their age, their favourite food and drink, where they lived, where they would want to die, what their parents are like, what they do secretly (like picking their nose!), the best and worst thing in their life, what their dream job would be, their most prized possessions and more.
We then had to write the first paragraph of the story we were thinking ideas up for and then we read them out. Most of our ideas were really good. Gordon then told us to ask the question ‘What if…?’, meaning that we had to think of something really crazy that could happen under different circumstances, or think, if I had carried on, what would have happened? Damien, Year 8
Alexander Gordon Smith was really funny and I really enjoyed creating a character using his helpful tips. If I was to be an author, I would write horror stories following in the footsteps of Gordon. He was very down to earth. Ben, Year 8
The author visit was really good because I got to see a writer of really good spooky stories. Also just to add to the excitement, I got to take part in his workshop and learned how to write a proper story. We asked him questions about his job and how good it is to be an author. The rest of my group wrote stories as well and we all really enjoyed it. Max, Year 8
On the 1st December, Helen Moss will be visiting the secondary phase to carry out some workshops for students in Year 7, 8 & 9. When Helen visited the Primary phase back in October we interviewed her about her work and this is what we found out:
