Writing with Children

So last weekend I was at GnomeCon in Savannah GA. While there I got a chance to do a writing exercise with a bunch of kids. Which I think would translate well to any age group from kids to adults. Basically we Round Robin a short story. So now I know what it is like to work on Axe-Cop.

My three partners in crime were Sailor Moon, a little girl dressed up like the TARDIS, and a boy who was in love with Xenomorphs.

This is how the story went thanks to their incredible imaginations, and this was one of the best times I have had at late at conventions.

   In a galaxy far far far away on a pink battleship flying through the Beach Cosmos; Tinkerbell the Captain of the X-42 and a legion of Zenomorph soldiers land on the planet of Be-Gal. There they discover a land of ice cream inhabited by the men of Coke A Cola.

   The Xenomorphs try to make with the liquid men of Coke A Cola, but they were thirsty. The Xenomorphs’ mouths extended forth to drink the Coke. The Coke Men attacked the Xenomorph soldiers with coke rays making them all sticky.

   But then came the Ice Cream Warrior of the Alabama city of Zruccnni and freezes the army of Xenomorphs.

   Then out of the green skies in flies Captain Tinker the Bell, because she powered up, and used her unfreezing ray to save her Xenomorph soldiers.

   Captian Tinker Bell, her Xenomorphs, the Coke Men, the Warrior of Ice Cream all gathered on the field of battle.

   In the distance the Pink Battleship flies off to GnomeCon 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 54! Because the battleship, now commanded by the second in command Xenomorph, was secretly the Master’s TARDIS.

    Back on the Planet Be-Gal, on the field of battle the Xenomorphs say, “Why are we even battling? We can just eat the Ice Cream Warrior.”

   The Men of Coke cheered this idea because the Ice Cream Warrior was actually the evil Warlord of Planet Be-Gal.

At this point I had to run to do another panel, the con kept me quite busy, but Sailor Moon finished the story for us.

   A cat comes and eats cake and eats the coke men and the Xenomorphs leave.

In truth the story makes no sense, but it was a lot of fun to do. But it really got me thinking wouldn’t be fun to get a group together and just write a story in Round Robin to see what we get. I think Teens would get a blast out of doing an exercise like this. Because you never know what you are going to come up with.

The funny part to this story was that GnomeCon is filled with volunteers from SCAD. One of the SCAD volunteers was assigned to help me. She videotaped the whole insanity. It was quite insane and I was quite animated. It turns out she is going to illustrate the story. I can’t wait to see what happens with the story once it is illustrated. 

I love the cycle of creativity that occurred with in that hour; it was more like 30 minutes. But fun and magic occurred.