School Writing Group

LHS Creative Writing Club

Emilie Stewart A new club is running in Lochaber High School dedicated to creative writing for junior students.

The club off ers a quiet, friendly and inviting space to share ideas, provide feedback and hone writing skills. Each session typically consists of reading new material and excerpts of writing followed by interactive writing exercises.

In recent collaborative sessions, writers have begun with short sentence prompts and taken turns at each writing their own paragraph to take the story in whichever direction and genre they’d like.

Members are encouraged to take part in writing competitions and opportunities, as well as take part in discussions about topics such as world building in long-form projects, choice of narrative and creating convincing characters through dialogue.

The creative writing club runs every Monday lunchtime at 1.30pm in Lochaber High and is open to all S1-3s.

The club began on Hallowe’en, with the fi rst session based around spooky storytelling and poetry. Since then there have been sessions exploring the possibilities of collaborative writing, colour and the winter season.

Moving through the high school I saw few opportunities for students with a genuine interest in creative writing to express it other than in compulsory folio pieces or at home. I wanted to create a club for younger students to give them a place to explore the possibilities of writing, diff erent genres, styles and share their ideas and opinions with others.

Club member Sine Grant said: “It is a good place to express yourself and gives you the opportunity to write what you want with fewer limitations.”

Each session is documented in its own short blog post on the club website, which features all of the writing produced during exercises in written and typed form.