An update from our thirty-third Writing Workshop! A summary of the workshop held on Saturday February 13, plus some of the output published below This week we talked about larger than life characters, and the different tools writers use to portray them. The focus was on the first meeting with that character: how can you make it clear from the very beginning that this is a special, memorable, unusual character, and what the key elements are that make them this way? In a group discussion we shared ideas about larger-than-life characters and how we might use how they look, sound, walk, talk, laugh, dress, eat, smell–any aspect of appearance or presence or characteristic to convey a strong impression of who they are. The Writing Challenge: Write a passage in which you introduce a larger than life character, where the reader is encountering them for the very first time. You do not have to describe a bg personality in detail, but do focus on how the initial meeting with the character stakes their claim to importance. The Participants: Lina, Rachael, Sierra, Lindsay, Tegan, Samantha, Lucy K, Hera, Ava, Charlotte K, Eve, Anna, Grace, Simran, Olivia, Alice, Emma, Noa, Emi, Angela, Iago, Charlotte M, Yasmine, Olivia, Enni, Nova, Anya, Madeline N, Leo, Pranjoli, Helen, Madeline K, Margaret L, Sophie, Julia, Sage, Georgia, Ruhi, Syra, Lucy R, Peri, Kaidyn, Lindsay, Tilly, Maggie K, Lina K, Jonathan. Sierra E., 11Mountain View, CA Fox Girl Sierra E., 11 Few were (and still are) able to imagine the wild figure of Fox Girl. But if you saw her, you’d recognize her even if you’d never heard of such a thing. For Fox Girl lived in a faraway town, Ivywood, hundreds of thousands of miles from any large cities. Where she lived, the months of winter never came, and the incredible, unbelievable creatures roamed free. And here, in this world already beyond normal, lived Fox Girl, the one that many came to Ivywood to see. Fox Girl’s appearance was unreal. Stranger than the cyan wolves that managed to fly in the air with their magnificent wings, and stranger than the salmon-pink kittens that would spend their time leaping in and out of the many winding, flowing rivers. Fox Girl, for one, looked absolutely anything but human. While she had several details that resembled a person, most of Fox Girl was elsewhere. She had electrifying shamrock-green eyes that glowed especially in the darkness, while her vibrant amethyst-purple hair that stretched to her toes were unignorable. A bushy, apricot-colored tail tinged with white hung between her long legs and two ears, matching in appearance, stood always perked atop her head. Fox Girl dressed in lively hues which mirrored her animated personality. Fox Girl was one to watch. One to wait hours, days, months, years to see. Many say Ivywood is just a myth told to put young children asleep at night. But if you question me, I’ll always say the same: “No, Ivywood and Fox Girl aren’t a legend. It’s nothing but reality.” Lindsay Gao, 9Dublin, OH The Girl’s Revenge Lindsay Gao, 9 If anyone who hadn’t known better had seen the girl, they would have laughed, thinking “Ha! I could finish this girl off with a twitch of my hand.” But this, ultimately, would not be true. She was quite young, with long black hair that melted into the shadows, pale skin, and a frail, tattered white nightgown. But her eyes, white as snow, glowed with the utmost power. The only way possible to tell if she was angry or preparing to strike was to look at her right hand, where you could see her thumb, which, if provoked, would jerk back one, and then become still. After that signaling jerk, the shadows seemed to slowly crawl towards her victims. When they panicked, she would tell them it was alright, and that she wouldn’t hurt them. But she did. All their bodies were never found. When no one was watching, she might slip away, and you could see the pain, heartbreak, and longing. The feeling that people always assumed she didn’t have or feel. She would let out a sob, a mourning of losing what you loved and being turned into a monster. A monster that you weren’t. She knew people called her “the doll of death”, and she hated it. She wished that she could get away with everything, but then she would remember. The death. The blood. The screams. The tears. The pain. And it. The thing. And she knew, the beast, the one that had killed her family, and caused her sorrow would pay. It did not know that she was powerful, and now, it was too late, for she, the enchantress, the girl it had hurt so long ago, was coming. Peri Gordon, 11Sherman Oaks, CA Confusion Itself Peri Gordon, 11 It was Wednesday at 9am, I think, and I was sipping my coffee and walking to work when I saw her. Well, first I heard her shouting, and then I looked over, and then I saw the top of her purple stack of hair. I took the time to follow the fluffy pile down to the bottom, and I found a face died green with violet eyes and lips made to be the color of the ocean. Her eyes were wild and gleaming with both happy and sad tears, and her mouth was constantly moving as she ceaselessly talked about some problem that had befallen her. She was so out of place in the quiet atmosphere of this quiet little town that no one could ignore her. It was hard to look away from her face, but I had to see what this woman was wearing. My eyes are still angry at me for exposing them to such a bright, chaotic assortment of skirts and pants and shirts and dresses layered on top of one another, orange and green and blue and pink, spotted and striped and beaded and bejeweled. She wasn’t wearing
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Stone Soup Author Interview: Georgia Marshall
Stone Soup contributor and 2020-21 intern Anya Geist, 14, talks with contributor and winner of the Weekly Flash Contest Georgia Marshall, 11, about what it’s like to be a published author, the Writing Workshop, and expressing the imagination through writing. 0:18 – How were you introduced to Stone Soup? 1:23 – What was it like to become a published author? 2:10 – What is your favorite part about the Writing Workshop? 3:01 – What is your favorite part about Book Club? 3:44 – What is your favorite thing about writing? 4:40 – What was your published poem about? 5:58 – Is the writing you do for fun different from the writing you do for school? 7:18 – Do you have any writing advice for your peers? 8:15 – If you could tell somebody about Stone Soup, what would you say?
Betsy-Tacy, Reviewed by Nora, 12
“It was difficult, later, to think of a time when Betsy and Tacy had not been friends,” begins the first section in Maud Hart Lovelace’s book, Betsy-Tacy. Elizabeth Ray (Betsy) and Anastasia Kelly, (Tacy) had been friends ever since Betsy’s fifth birthday party. Since that day, they were inseparable. They had picnics on top of the hill at the end of their street, they made a clubhouse in an old piano box behind Betsy’s house, they made a sand store, selling bottles filled with different colored sands. They did everything together. Then, the Mullers move into the neighborhood. Thelma (Tib) Muller is just the same age as Betsy and Tacy, and the three become fast friends. Betsy and Tacy are fascinated by Tib. She is little, and dainty, she lives in a chocolate-colored house with a pane of colored glass over the window. And she is from a far-away place called Milwaukee. Although some think that the three will not get along as well as just Betsy and Tacy had, they do. They never quarrel with each other, although they do often quarrel with Julia and Katie, Betsy’s and Tacy’s elder sisters. While the three girls are as close as could be, they do not exclude the other girls in their little town of Deep Valley. Other characters flit in and out of the series, such as Winona Root, Caroline Sibley, as well as Betsy’s two sisters, Julia and Margaret. As the series progresses, following the girls through grade school, high school, and beyond, they focus more on Betsy. But it would be impossible to have a book about Betsy that did not include Tacy and Tib, although as the three get older, Betsy is put more in the spotlight than the other two. As Meg Cabot, author of The Princess Diaries writes, “Slipping into a Betsy book is like slipping into a well-worn pair of slippers.” Although the plots are smaller, and less exciting than some popular adventure books, the Betsy books hold a charm within their pages that speak of real life, and real joys and sorrows in a girl’s life at the turn of the century. Although at the beginning, the girls are only five years old, it is worth reading the series from the beginning, even if you think that books about five-year-old girls are too young for you. At thirteen, I enjoy them just as much as I did at seven. And as the girls grow older, the books become better and better, although they are more mature than the first few. The books speak even more strongly of the truth because a lot of the events in the books are autobiographical. Betsy is based very closely on Maud Hart Lovelace herself, while Tacy and Tib are based off of Maud’s real best friends, Bick (Tacy) and Midge (Tib). And these truthful elements make this coming-of-age series set at the turn of the century is one to be re-read and treasured for years to come. Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace. HarperCollins, 1940. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process!
