Write about two characters who have reunited after many years apart. How have they changed? Do they still interact with each other the same way?
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Writing Workshop #27: Revising, Rewriting, & Expanding
An update from our twenty-seventh Writing Workshop! A summary of the workshop held on Saturday November 7, plus some of the output published below This week we discussed various techniques for revising our writing, reminding ourselves that the process of writing is more often than not a process of re-writing! We looked back over some of the previous writing challenges to think about some of the techniques to use for polishing an existing piece of writing: Would some alliteration work? Could some additional depth emerge from more attention to the landscape or setting? More specific description of character? Writing form a different perspective? Adding a prequel or a sequel? We discussed all these ideas and more, plus the students had some great suggestions–such as changing the tense a piece was written in. The Writing Challenge: Use some of the techniques we discussed to rewrite, revise, expand, contract and improve one of your existing pieces of writing. The Participants: Peri, Lena, Lina, Nova, Liam, Jonathan, Elbert, Charlotte, Teagan, Lena, Maddie, Madeline, Anya, Hera, Angela, Tilly, Rithesh, Samantha, Charlotte, Georgia, Lena, Sadie, Anna, Ava, Charlotte, Emma, Enni, Helen, Janani, Juniper, Keyang, Ma’ayan, Margaret, Olivia, Ever. Peri Gordon, 11Sherman Oaks, CA Eyes (Revised) Peri Gordon, 11 I lay in my bed late one night, eyes shut tight, trying to fall asleep and failing. I heard the rain whispering outside, the cold, dark, dank rain. I was unusually tense. The brown quilt cover on my bed was a weight pressing down on me. Not a friend. And not a protector from the cold. I breathed in and out and tried to think pleasant thoughts. But every time, an image in my mind would transform into another. A lake would become a raging ocean storm, a rainbow would split into two giant…what were they? I opened my eyes, and I could still see them. They looked like two eyes themselves. Then they disappeared. I must have imagined it, I thought. But…they were so real. I got out of bed and went into the kitchen. Got a snack. Chills were zipping up and down my spine; I was convinced that they would paralyze me. I looked both ways every two seconds like I was crossing a street. I couldn’t prohibit myself from checking for danger, though I didn’t know why. I had never believed in any sort of fantastical dangers before. Dreaming? I pinched myself. My hands were cold. I flinched at their touch, as if it were someone else’s. I did not wake up. I took a deep breath, getting a mouthful and nose-full of the chilled air surrounding me, and went back into bed. Shut my eyes tighter than I normally do. Pinched myself again. No I didn’t…my hands were stiff at my sides. Think pleasant thoughts. I saw the rainbow split into the two eyes again, and I opened my eyes, and they were still there. They were beautiful in a way, shining in the dark, but they were piercing and looked at me accusingly. I wondered what the owner of those eyes was thinking about. Maybe about capturing me and taking me to some terrible, frigid place far from here. I hated the cold, and it seemed to be out to get me tonight. And then the eyes vanished again. My heart was beating rapidly. What was going on? I sat up. My lungs were breathing rapidly. What was going on? Maybe I was afraid of the dark. My eyes were blinking rapidly. What was going on? I tried to walk towards the light switch, though my legs were trembling. Rapidly. The eyes appeared and melded into the face of my least favorite movie villain from childhood. Smooth, pale, and smiling a thin-lipped, malicious smile. Long, dark hair. And the eyes made it worse. I shrieked. That alerted more eyes, more pale villains from nightmares years ago. Then I became one of them. Lina Kim, 10Weston, FL My Minecraft Journey: Autumn Lina Kim, 10 Hi! My name is Autumn, and I’m going to tell you about my journey to the village. I grabbed some food, saplings, and supplies, and set off into the forest. I walked for a couple of hours, and got hungry. It was nearing nighttime, so I built a shelter and planted saplings. I went mining, and wrote a little in my journal. I placed down my bed and went to sleep. In the morning, I picked up my house and put it in my inventory. Minecraft is overpowered that way. I traveled a little further, stopped for a snack, and continued on my way. Later, I built an iron golem to protect me from monsters. I finally arrived, and resolved to improve the village, seeing as it had tiny houses and only some jobs. There were no police, no pet stores, no hospitals, and no food shops, so I made all of those. I also built a wall to protect them from zombie sieges. Once, I was selling apples from my trees, and a villager came up to me and asked for an apple, promising me much more money than what I needed. I gave him an apple, and he fished through his pockets. His pale blue eyes widened, and he handed back the apple with trembling hands. He ran off. I shrugged. Oh, well. If he doesn’t want the apple, he doesn’t want the apple. I went to my house, and I saw someone on my glass roof trying to break it. I climbed up there with my spare grappling hook- my other one was missing- and pushed him off the edge. He died and dropped several riches. And my grappling hook. It turns out that this guy stole all of the money from the man at my apple stand. Once he respawned, I put the robber in jail and gave the money back to the victim. Eventful, huh? Well, I was writing a story when someone knocked on the door. I opened it and a
Saturday Newsletter: November 14, 2020
Shattered Landscape (iPhone 7) By Leah Koutal, 12 (Wayne, PA), published in Stone Soup November 2020 A note from William Congratulations to Abhi Sukhdial, winner of last year’s Stone Soup Book Contest. His book, Three Days Till EOC, has been nominated for Cybils Awards (Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards). Read his great book! Support a young author. Buy a copy at our Stone Soup Store. I would like to call your attention to the new Stone Soup design. We implemented a revised home page a few weeks ago, and now you will find a completely revised navigation system and design for the interior pages. The Refugee Project portal has been designed and will soon be implemented. Please check out the new design. Many thanks to Carlos, Carly, Daniel, Ravi, and the entire staff of c2cg for their patience and the quality of their work. Annual Drive I will try to mostly keep the Annual Drive correspondence in separate emails so that the newsletter remains appropriate for our young readers. I do want to say, however, that we absolutely need more of you to contribute to our Annual Drive than ever before or we will not be able to continue. The simplest, easiest way you can help us—and a way that costs you nothing—is to order through the AmazonSmile program. You will see where you choose your charity. Our official name with the IRS is Children’s Art Foundation-Stone Soup. Type that in and then accept that we are the charity you want to help and then 0.5% of what you spend will be given to us. It uses the same password as your regular Amazon account. Your orders, wish lists, and etc. will all be there. It takes a little getting used to to go to the smile.amazon.com site every time you buy (even for me), but Amazon will sometimes remind you to go there. In the spirit of Stone Soup, every little bit each of you contributes adds up. At half a percent, it does take a lot of you to make a difference. If Stone Soup is important to you, then please make the effort to do your holiday shopping through the AmazonSmile site. Thank you. Art project Shattered Landscape. What an interesting photograph. Cubism is the modern art movement that worked with shattered perspectives. This image is of Pablo Picasso’s 1910 Girl with a Mandolin: You can read about cubism on Wikipedia and look at cubist works or art online. For the project this weekend, I think most of you will want to work with your camera. By using mirrors, reflections in glasses, windows, and polished surfaces, create a photograph that explores illusion, broken perspectives, and dreamlike visions. As always, if you like what you create, please send it to Stone Soup so editor Emma Wood can consider it for publication. Stay safe! Until next week, Congratulations to our November Flash Contest Winners Flash Contest #25: Write a Story that begins with “Once upon a time in a land far away . . .” and ends with “. . . and they all lived happily ever after.” What a difficult task we had judging these entries! We could see that all our entrants had fun with the idea of playing with and subverting the fairytale form, and we loved reading the range of imaginative journeys everyone took. While we enjoyed many stories involving the more traditional witches, royalty, dragons and other magical creatures (not necessarily in traditional mode, though!), we also encountered aliens and were transported into outer space—and even entered the mind of a roll of toilet paper (look out for that one, plus one other, on the COVID-19 blog)! A huge thank you and a hearty well done to everyone who wrote a piece and submitted it to us. In particular, we congratulate our honorable mentions and our winners, whose work you can appreciate on the Stone Soup website. Winners The Alien by Benjamin Fraenkel, 8, Mansonville, Quebec, Canada The Queen and the Tiara by Samantha Lee, 11, Thomaston, CT The Bookcase by Iago Macknik-Conde, 13, Brooklyn, NY The State of Matter by Maya Mourshed, 8, Silver Spring, MD The Forest of Mystery by Areesha Nouman, 12, Westlake, OH Honorable Mentions Happily Ever After by Isabella Bixler, 13, Fairview Park, OH The Witch’s Journey by Lorena Manrique, 11, Fort Worth, TX Dragon Tales by Georgia Grace Hoover, 11, Forth Worth, TX The Naughty Princess by Atalie Lyda, 11, Portland, OR My True Self by Michelle Peng, 10, Scarsdale, NY Selected for the Stone Soup Blog Pecky’s Bravery Saves the Forest by Elise Cheung, 8, Danville, CA The Toilet Paper Roll’s Quest by Charlotte Zhang, 12, Portland, OR Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Salma, 11, writes a poem on the powerful feeling of loneliness and how we have to fight against it during the pandemic. Aarush reviewed Roald Dahl’s autobiography, Going Solo, on the blog. Read why Aarush thought the book was “easy to connect to” and a “page-turner.” Rex, 10, read quite a few books for the Oregon Battle of the Books, but was particularly struck by Out of Left Field by Ellen Klages. Check out Rex’s review to learn more about the book. Trevor, one of our new bloggers, wrote an exciting blog post titled “Aiming High” about a rock climber. Sydney Burr, 13Chino, CA From Stone Soup November 2020 Regrets and Broken Gas Pumps By Sydney Burr, 13 (Chino, CA) I’m pumping gas in the summer sun but the only gallons I can think about are the gallons of sweat that I’m sweating although it doesn’t make a difference anyhow and there are no good movies out and the flock in the sky has wandered to float far away above the mountains so there’s nothing to stop anyone from frying an egg or themselves on the sidewalk. The dull lifeless hot air is not stimulated until a breeze awakens but the breeze is even hotter and the skating rink is closed for refurbishment and the darned pump isn’t working so I collapse into the driver’s
