Writing Tips — Acting out a Story

At my young writers’ workshop yesterday, we experimented with bringing stories to life through drama. It turned out to be a fun and zany workshop, and I recommend this for bringing action and movement into a story.

One young writer would read their story aloud, and we as a group acted it out. Sometimes characters were assigned to individuals, other times we were mostly all fish …

This exercise made us write dynamic stories with a certain amount of movement. It also brought a host of ‘chorus’ characters into a scene (for example the school of fish as ‘background’, or a jury in another story). I was interested in how the stories written in this workshop moved quickly with lots of action.

It can also be useful to read stories written ‘as usual’ and see what happens when others act them out. This can show us where we might be able to put more action in, or even where things are unclear.

And acting someone else’s story is such a fun, bonding thing to do. Definitely high on the group-bonding scale! Thanks to the young writers who were up for this.