People write because they are in love with the idea of watching words producing magic on paper. Attempting to convey the skills behind creating this magic to young writers, Deborah Reed taught children the basics of writing compelling stories at a workshop held at the Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF 2019).

“Sentences that snake across the blank paper are echoes of our soul”, says Reed hoping her words will resonate with at least some students in her class. Engrossed students listen to the instructor as she talks about jotting thoughts down on paper and developing a habit of writing, right from a young age.

Approaching this in a structured manner, she urges her students to play with words, using strong adjectives, and for example replacing simple words, like ‘angry’ with a more effective one like ‘furious’. It’s an idea she believes will not only catch reader’s attention, but also create a picture in their mind.

“Sometimes writing can be daunting and often when people are asked to write something, they stare at a blank page for long. But children are more spontaneous, they unhesitatingly start churning out ideas. Sometimes, there is even a burst of ideas! So, one simple word can prompt different emotions and ideas in them, ranging from horror, humour, disgust to love”, Deborah continued.

While taking the first steps can be both fun and challenging, Deborah, shines light on different elements in a story like character building, scene setting, conflict, resolution and the end – all of which are important elements to develop a story and eventually engage readers.

The take away from this session was not only to construct a story successfully, but to properly examine the way different words work with each other. So, a storyline needs to be entertaining, that’ll ensure it has plenty to keep its readers interested.