Starting a creative writing club for teens was something I was pretty nervous to do. Creative writing was never a strong talent of mine but there was a need for it in my community and with the encouragement of my director, I started planning Scribe Tribe. I had a vision of teens working around our community room, papers spread out on tables, teens brainstorming in the corner with friends and getting inspired at the library. That was in The Before Times. Once the world shut down and no programs could be in-person, the Scribe Tribe creative writing club became a virtual event held over Zoom as part of our SLP. Turns out, this change was for the better.
The plan was for Scribe Tribe to meet every week for an hour on Zoom from mid-June to mid-August. I was extremely dubious that a creative writing program would translate to this virtual format but I was proved wrong and Scribe Tribe became one of my most successful programs of the summer.
Each session generally included a warm-up game, a short lesson about a writing topic, discussing the writing prompt, silent writing time, and optional sharing time. Let’s break that down:
Warm-up: I found it really helpful to have a warm-up game to get the teens to turn on that creativity switch in their brain and get them comfortable in the (virtual) space. We would play MadLibs to get them thinking about word choice. I tried other word games, with only mild success (these games would be much better in person). The most successful warm-up was based on the game What Do You Meme? This game works much like Apples to Apples except with meme pictures. I do NOT recommend buying it for your library as it very much R-Rated! But I happened to own it myself so I would hold up one of the (appropriate) meme cards and the teens would have to come up with their own captions. For example, I’d hold up a picture of a sad looking cat and the teens would come up with a caption like, “that feeling when you can’t see your friends because of quarantine.” Another successful warm-up was having the teens write a story one line at a time in the chat function on Zoom. That story ended up going in about a million different directions but the teens were cracking up!
Writing Topic & Prompt: Never at any point did I want the teens to feel like I was their English teacher and they were in class. When we’d talk about aspects of creative writing like theme, plot, setting, character, etc., I always kept it broad and tried to relate it back to a story they knew. It would usually tie-in with that day's writing prompt. For example, when talking about plot, we used this Random Plot Generator (or this one) and they had to map out a story based on their results. The same applied to writing about random characters. To get them thinking about setting, teens picked a place off this list and wrote about life there. I also gave them visual prompts and question prompts.
These prompts were a great stepping-off point and gave each Scribe Tribe session structure but as the weeks went on, the teens used the prompts less and less and instead wanted to work on their own stories.
Writing and Sharing: This is what the kids really wanted, designated time to write, and I gave them almost half of our hour long program to do it. I would ask them to mute themselves on Zoom, with the option to unmute themselves if they had a question. Occasionally I would find piano music or video game music (which is designed to help you focus) on YouTube to play while the teens were writing. When that time was done, I would leave the last 5-10 minutes of the program for them to share what they wrote. Every program I would emphasize that it was completely optional and I never forced anyone to share. That being said, almost every teen wanted to read their work outloud to the group. I think this is where having Scribe Tribe on Zoom was actually an asset. It was much less intimidating for them to read in front of their peers on a video call as opposed to reading in person.
By the end of the summer, I was so impressed with my regular group of 6-7 teens! The stories they wrote were so creative and I was so proud everytime they would choose to be vulnerable and read their story out loud to the group. I wanted to reward my dedicated teens with an author visit! Many expressed interest in becoming published authors someday and had a lot of questions. After doing research and asking around, Melissa Carollo at the Sun Prairie Public Library put me in touch with YA author Geoff Herbach. He enthusiastically said yes! The teens absolutely adored him and thought he was just hilarious! He gave them great advice, answered questions, explained to them what it takes to get a book published, and told some funny stories along the way. It was a fantastic experience!
When the new school year rolled around and fall programming started, I didn’t hesitate to add Scribe Tribe to the lineup. I felt that it was so successful during the summer and guessed that the teens would want to keep the ball rolling during the school year. I was sorely mistaken. Out of everyone, only one teen returned to the weekly fall session. I kept it going for that one person, mostly because he just wanted time to write and read his story out loud to me to get feedback. I didn’t talk about any themes or give any prompts. While I was happy to help this one teen, I was disappointed the momentum of Scribe Tribe didn’t carry over (and the one teen also missed writing with his friends). As librarians, we never truly know why one program is successful while another one fails. My best guess is that, despite my best efforts, creative writing felt too much like homework which was unappealing during the school year. Scribe Tribe was fun while it lasted but this program is going on the shelf for a while and I hope it has a resurgence someday!
Abby Seymour - E.D. Locke Public Library- McFarland, WI
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