This casual format works well at drop-in centers and after-school programs. Each week, students explore an element of craft and/or participate in a hands-on activity or game. The focus is on making writing fun and empowering students through storytelling, as well as building reading and writing skills. Sample activities and lessons might include creating bizarre characters and using them in a story, exploring how to make villains more interesting, creating a new world for a story and drawing a map of that world, blackout poetry, cut-and-paste poetry, writing a scene for a new TV show, making up new words, and freewriting. All workshops contain a little bit of reading, writing, listening, and sharing.

Our Fiction Toolbox workshops focus on all things fiction. Participants learn about character, setting, point of view, and plot with a published fiction writer as they make up new stories and share them with new friends. A good choice for younger or reluctant writers, this workshop incorporates drawing and games to spark imaginations and make writing more fun. We can offer Fiction Toolbox as a single two-hour session or extend it into a multi-week or even year-long program. We can also offer this workshop as Poetry Toolbox, focused mainly on poetry.

Journey into science fiction paradise, where students will create their very own worlds and stories. We'll explore time travel, technological futures, the paranormal, and the deepest realms of outer space. We'll study some of our favorite sci-fi stories to learn the techniques and craft of science fiction’s best authors. Students will draft, revise, edit and share their fantastical stories. The best part? They’ll leave the workshop with four drafts of sci-fi originals!

All of our Young Writers Program faculty are working, published authors. We'll send a real, live writer to your classroom to talk to and write with your students.

This performance-style poetry workshop focuses on sharing stories aloud in a powerful and empowered way. Using a variety of prompts focused on unleashing stories that matter, students will write new stuff, then share it aloud and see how playing with rhythm, sound, and other poetic elements can make their words sound even better.

Using an object from the actual world (a playlist, a collection of shoes, rooms of the house, even clothing sizes), students will tell their own vulnerable personal stories by delivering them in the protective shells of the objects they have chosen. A tough course to describe, but one with exceptionally meaningful results!

We can customize a writing workshop for your particular school, site, students, and budget. Contact Roxanne@lighthousewriters.org to get started!

Students will learn how to write a screenplay for a movie or TV show. Depending on the length of the workshop, they’ll end up with at least a scene for a new script project; longer workshops will result in scripts for an episode of a TV show or a full-length movie.