Tips for story writing & drawing plus win a trip to Dubai! Read more about it here!
Last week, we were fortunate to be invited to London by Emirates PR to have a fun-filled day of story writing and drawing with award winning children’s author and illustrator duo, Sarah McIntyre and Philip Reeve. This event was to introduce to us the new Emirates programme which encourages families to get together and create stories around their own travel adventures!
Flight Time Stories sees Emirates work with Sarah and Philip, who have previously collaborated on children’s books including Pugs of the Frozen North, Oliver and the Seawigs and Jinks & O’Hare Funfair Repair.
Now they are inviting children aged 4 to 10 year olds to enter their favourite story along with a colourful front cover design. Sarah and Philips will be taking inspiration from the stories for a new children’s book, which will be available in early 2017. The winner will win a once-in-a-lifetime holiday for four to Dubai to provide them with inspiration for future stories! To enter the Flight Time Stories competition, click here: http://www.emirates.com/flighttimestories. The competition closes on 6th November 2016.
Ms C loves to draw while Mr K loves to write stories and so they were both looking forward to the event! When we arrived, we were greeted by Sarah, Philip and the PR team members. Both children took a while to warm up but by the end of the session, they were both so excited and wanted to draw more characters!
To start the event, Sarah and Philips prompted the children with ideas to think about different adventures/locations and characters for their storyboard. Slowly, they pieced them together to create a storyboard. Then they made this storyboard into a game and got children involved to play the board game.
Then Sarah and Philips taught us how to draw different characters using Sarah’s favourite character – Sea Monkey and animals. Throughout the whole session, Mr K was so attentive and got so excited that he drew even more characters!
Later, they both got a balloon animal each and had their faces painted! Mr K got himself a doggy face while Ms C decided to have her hand painted. They both loved the event. Thanks to Emirates and of course Sarah and Philips for all the wonderful tips!
To get my readers to create their own story with writing and drawing, I would like to share Philip & Sarah’s top tips!
Top tips for story writing from Philip Reeve (Click here to visit Philip’s website)
- Write about something that really interests you – a setting or an idea that you really love (or maybe really hate!). If you’re interested in it, hopefully the readers will be, too.
- Start with your main character wanting something – they need to go somewhere, or get something, or escape from something, or meet someone. Maybe they’re just lonely and need to make a friend, or maybe they want to find some buried treasure. How they get what they want will be your story.
- But they don’t get what they want straight away! There are problems to overcome along the way. Perhaps they meet other characters who help them, or try to stop them. It’s like a board game: there’s a start point and an end point, and what makes it interesting is the obstacles along the way.
- Don’t worry too much about the words. Just tell the story. Then, when you’ve finished, go back and see if you can tell it better. Does it make sense? Could it be shorter? Can you make it funnier (if it’s a funny story) or sadder (if it’s a sad one)?
- Enjoy yourself. Have fun. Surprise yourself! Writing a story should be a bit like reading a story – you’ll want to find out what happens on the next page.
Top drawing tips form Sarah McIntyre (Click here to visit Sarah’s website)
- Focus on making your main character look awesome, but think about keeping it fairly simple because if you make a whole book, you’ll be drawing that character over and over again.
- Think about setting: are you going to draw your character in a forest? At the beach? In space?
- Add extra details: your character might have a plaster on its head, a moustache, attract a swarm of flies, or be holding a magazine. Often it’s these little details that will make a picture funny or interesting.
- The colours you choose can set a mood for your picture: a blue background can suggest night-time, sadness, or cold. A yellow or orange background might look joyful, hot or full of energy.
- Don’t worry about making things perfect: We all need to make lots of bad drawings before we learn to make better ones. Try your hardest, but then be kind to your artwork.
Disclosure: I was invited to the event and received goody bag.
