Realistic Fiction / Fantasy Workshop

Dura­tion: Full Day

Can be adapted to suit a range of ages and situations

Real­is­tic Fiction

Story ideas are all around us just wait­ing to be snapped up. Be a detec­tive and carry a note­book and pen­cil. Write down the things that you notice. Good writ­ers are keen observers. It is often the small details that bring a story to life.

1. Watch the peo­ple in the room, in the playground/ at the football/ in the super­mar­ket. Choose 1 per­son to describe – hair, clothes, eyes, skin.
2. What if that per­son sud­denly fainted/ pulled out a gun/ began to trans­form into an alien? Choose one of these sce­nar­ios and write a report for your school newspaper.
3. Now pre­tend that you are that per­son in the inci­dent you chose to describe and re-write your report as a story.

The idea for my novel Leav­ing no Foot­prints came while I was walk­ing along the beach with my dog. A boy and his dog walked past me and I noticed that nei­ther of them had left any foot­prints on the sand. Was this a real boy and a real dog? Had I imag­ined them? Or did they have some sort of magic pow­ers? They seemed real, but what was allow­ing them to walk on the beach with­out leav­ing any trace of their presence?

Fan­tasy

Per­haps the boy and his dog are weightless?

Try writ­ing a story about how they came to be that way.

Has some weird dis­ease or alien pres­ence removed their insides leav­ing just the outer shell?

Are they the ghosts of a boy and his dog who were washed out to sea and whose bod­ies were never recovered?

Remem­ber that for any fan­tasy to work it must have its feet firmly on the ground. It must have enough accepted logic about it for the reader to sus­pend their dis­be­lief, even temporarily.

Check out your favourite fan­tasy writer. Make a note of whether they have taken ‘real’ char­ac­ters and put them into a fan­tasy world, or invented fan­tas­ti­cally weird char­ac­ters and set them down in our famil­iar world.

Real­is­tic fiction

If the boy and his dog are real, what expla­na­tion can there be for the fact that they leave no marks on the beach? Is the sand too firm? Do they walk on the edge of the world where the water washes away their foot­prints before they are made?

Who is this boy with the dog? Where have they come from? Where have they gone?

Who is the per­son watch­ing them?

Use one of the descrip­tions from your note­book. Or invent new ones.

Give your char­ac­ters names. You will be sur­prised at how much the act of nam­ing a char­ac­ter tells you about their per­son­al­ity and circumstances.