A few weeks ago, in the middle of lockdown, a friend of mine, fellow children’s author Lois Davis, mentioned her new Zoom workshops to me. Ahead of the publication of her new book, Lois has been holding workshops via the popular video conferencing app with youngsters to give them some story-writing tips, and, knowing that I had a 8-year-old son, Lois suggested that we gave them a try. So we did – and it was great fun!

In each of the three half-hour sessions, Lois encouraged the children to use their imaginations to come up with a story. This was done by looking at the structure of a typical story and breaking it down into individual building blocks. So we began by thinking about a place: where does the story occur? Then Lois asked the kids to think about the main character: what animal or person should it be? And what does it look like? Does it have any unique features? How does it interact with others? 

Within minutes, Lucas went from having no story at all to one featuring a shark called Stephen with a skateboard with an S on it. The other kids had equally imaginative tales, and each week they built upon their own individual story with guidance from Lois. It was a lot of fun and some of the stories now feature on Lois’ website. You can read Lucas’s here. 

I highly recommend these workshops to any parent who wants to get their kids to engage more with creative writing. Lois is very friendly and personable, and she knows how to put a good yarn together. For more information or to book one of the online classes, click here