Skillbuilding for Story Writing: A creative writing workshop for beginners (8-12 yrs)

About the workshop:

In the course of this workshop, children will learn:

• The building blocks of a story - plot, setting, tone and character (if the story requires characters).
• Structure - pacing, breaking up their plot into sub-units, choosing tense/s, crafting endings.
• How to convey the mood - of a place, ambience, and character/s.
• Different kinds of writing - descriptive, emotional/reflective and conversations.
• The importance of editing - word choices (arriving at precise verbs, adjectives and adverbs) and correct use of punctuation.

Workshop conducted by Shuktara Lal

Shuktara Lal has been working in theatre and publishing for over 15 years. She has taught theatre at The Creative Arts Academy (TCAA), Garden High International School and The Calcutta School of Music. She has also worked as a Communications Skills, Theatre and English teacher at Indus Valley World School. She has worked extensively with her family's publishing house, Writers Workshop, an independent press that has played a seminal role in the promotion and growth of Indian Writing in English, and in the translation of works from other Indian languages into English. She taught creative writing at TCAA for 7 years and her writing has been staged and published both online and in print. As a drama therapist and counsellor, she privately counsels clients and has worked with different NGOs and institutions like Kolkata Sanved, CHIP (Children in Pain), Jadavpur University School of Media, Communication and Culture and Asian University for Women (Chittagong, Bangladesh). Shuktara holds an MA in Performance Studies from New York University where her area of focus was examining the therapeutic potential of performance for survivors of abuse who identify as female, for which she received an international fellowship from the American Association of University Women (AAUW). She also holds an MA in English from Jadavpur University.