Teaching Writing

An update from our tenth Weekly Writing Workshop! A summary of the workshop, plus some of the output published below The Stone Soup Weekly Writing Workshop is open to all Stone Soup contributors and subscribers during the COVID-19-related school closures and shelter-in-place arrangements. Every Friday, we meet for an hour and a half via Zoom to respond to a new writing challenge, write together in our virtual room, and then share what we have written with one another. Lena Aloise, 11Harvard, MA Our session on Friday June 5 was the first at our new time (09:00 PST), the first that we had a participant in Europe joining us, and–most exciting of all–the first run by one of its participants, Lena Aloise! Lena gave a wonderful, detailed presentation on the history and standard tropes of fairytales, and proposed ways of using those typical characteristics of traditional fairytales to subvert the form–and write a fairytale with a twist! After a lively Q&A discussion, the group got down to some serious writing, and came up with some marvellous variations on a lot of popular fairytales. Participants turned villains into heroes (and vice versa), played with setting and time period, recast the tale as a news story to look at things from a whole new perspective, and even combined multiple fairytales to make something new. What a great session. Thank you, Lena! The Writing Challenge: Write a fairytale–with a twist. The Participants: Lena, Ever, Peri, Katie, Tilly, Lucy, Georgia, Analise, Djin, Lalia, Emily, Anya, Gracie, Aditi, Ethan, Vishnu, and more! Anya Geist, 13Worcester, MA The Stowaway Anya Geist, 13 In the middle of the night, when the sky was clouded and dark, when fog cocooned all land, a plane took flight. But it was no ordinary plane, no. It was special, in a way. For this plane intended to travel to space. The planet Earth was growing crowded, stuffed with people like water in a glass, only this glass was spilling over, was dripping onto the ground, little droplets running away, falling off the edge of the world. And so evacuations had begun, begun with the magical citizens of Earth. And the two magical people in the world, whose powers could erupt like lava from a volcano or could be still, like a forest at night, were twins. Moon and Sun they were called, though no one knew their actual names. At any rate, they were the ones on the plane that night, being sent far into space, to some unknown planet, where their magic could help life begin anew. However, unbeknownst to them, there was a stowaway on board. You see, Sun and Moon lived in a grand palace, not in the north, south, east, or west, but in all places at once. And the children of Earth’s royalty, the ones who wouldn’t grow up to inherit polluted cities and razed farmlands, were often sent to the Palace of the Sun and Moon as pages, as servants. The stowaway in question was one of these servants, a messenger whose job was to bring notes from the people of Earth to the Sun and Moon. There was something about this stowaway, however, that was different than all of the other servants in the Palace. First, the stowaway–whose name was Mason–had chocolate-colored hair and caramel-colored eyes, and the sweetest temperament of any eleven-year-old to date. The other servants whispered about him, though, for his parents, the Lord and Lady Alberts of the North were dead. Their entire land, all of their cities and fields, their palace and their forests, had burnt. And Mason, their only son was left without an inheritance. There was another thing about Mason, though. Both of his parents had golden-blond hair, the color of honey, and their eyes were as green as the grass on the prettiest field. Rumors spread around the world that Mason was not actually the son of the Lord and Lady Alberts, that his parentage lay elsewhere. At any rate, Mason had stowed away on the plane because he had learned something very valuable in his job as a messenger. A secret about the world that could save it, and that could destroy Sun and Moon. One day, Mason had a job to deliver a message to a man underground, a man who lived deep inside the Earth. So Mason traveled to the location on the letter, somewhere in Antarctica, and while he crossed the beautiful snowy plains of the continent, something strange happened. The sun shone down on him, and for a moment, he was ablaze with light, as if wreathed in flames. He dropped the letter, and its seal broke upon the ground. It fell open, and Mason saw no option but to read it. This letter, as it happens, was intended to be of the utmost confidentiality, and had been sealed with an unbreakable seal. When Mason saw its contents, he was aghast. But he came to a resolution. The Sun and Moon were evil. Mason recounted these events as he hid in the back of the plane with the Sun and Moon. They were breaking through the cloud cover, and soon, Mason knew, they would emerge into space. It was then that he would have to confront them. The time came and Mason stood up. He coughed, and the Sun and Moon turned to look at him, with anger in their metallic, gleaming eyes. Mason winced as they began to advance. “What are you doing here?” they asked in perfect unison, their voices tempting and soft. “I know what you did,” Mason replied shakily, forcing himself to stand tall. “I know everything. And–and I’m here to stop you.” “Well, well,” they said, each seeming incapable of speaking on their own. “He knows.” They smiled and their teeth were horribly pointed, like jagged mountains erupting from the Earth. “Welcome, brother.” Mason paused, frozen. “You knew?” Then he shook his head. “Of course you knew. And you hid it from me. You let me be