Youth Writing Festival

Yesterday, I spoke on How to Write Fight Scenes at the Youth Writing Festival at Calvin College. My presentation includes time for the students to write their own fight scenes. The group of middle school students was large, so instead of reading their scenes out loud, we discussed what they found easiest and hardest about writing fights. Most agreed it was easy to see the scene in their imaginations, and hard to put it into words. No arguments from me there.

As the high school students wrote their scenes, I was delighted to see a girl pull out a thesaurus and consult it frequently. I was less pleased when a boy started thumbing his phone. When my session was over, the young man with the phone asked me to read his scene. I squinted at his tiny, spidery writing and asked if he would read out loud. He told me he couldn’t because English was his second language. The scene was hard to follow because of problems with English usage, but some of the descriptions were unique and lovely, and I complimented him. Later, I realized he must have been using his phone to access a Chinese/English dictionary.