This post was written by interns Emily Imbarrato and Rosie Shewnarain.

M.D Payne was our first author of the fourth and final week of Imagination Academy. He has assisted with many works such as Goosebumps, and has written stories of his own. He started off the session by asking the kids what brought them here today. Many said that they wish to become writers; others said that they were here last year and loved it, and most said that they wanted to improve their writing skills. He spoke about his current four book series, Monster Juice, which is about a boy and his friends who team up with retired monsters to defeat new ones who are trying to take over the world. His inspiration for these books came from his love of monsters and Halloween. He advised the aspiring writers to write what they know and love. One of the exercises had the kids generate three ideas for potential stories.  While sporting a soccer jersey, Oliver used Payne’s advice to write a story in which aliens played humans in a soccer tournament. Some other ideas included: a best friend who turned into a dragon, a magical donut genie, and a daycare for monsters. At break time, several of the kids demonstrated that they are not only amazing writers but also talented pianists. After the break, we began a different exercise that taught us how to collaborate with other writers. Using the same ideas from the previous exercise the kids were asked to write an outline for someone else’s story.

Patricia Lakin, author of biographies, picture books, and graphic novels, joined us on Wednesday. She told us about her childhood and her teachers shaped her into becoming a writer. She explained that when she was a child her mean old teacher taught her that she had to have perfect spelling order to be a good writer. Sadly for her, she was a terrible speller which discouraged her from following her dreams. She became an elementary school teacher but soon after decided to give book writing a shot. Though she was a bad speller, she had lots of help from editors, publishers, and a writing group that she attends. After sharing her writing experience, the group broke off into an activity based on perspective. She showed a series pf pictures and asked the kids to write about what they saw. In the first picture, she asked everyone to write three words describing what they saw. Though many saw a picture of a dog and a woman, one kid saw mountains. For the second picture they had to name the person and explain what he had overcome and what he was going to do next. The last picture was of a woman sitting in room and the young writers had to make up the reason why she looked so sad. Intern Emily explained that the women was sad because she did not know what she would do after her last performance starring as Cinderella. For the last exercise, the kids had to pick three things in the room to write about.

Our last author for this year’s Imagination Academy was Matt London, author of The 8^th Continent. He showed the group a list of what it takes to write a good action story:

• An ordinary world
• The call to adventure
• Crossing the first threshold
• Seeking the adventure

He then had the children write their own adventure stories, one of which was about a girl who tries to escape one dangerous adventure only to be led into another one. Then they talked about creativity and how sometimes when working with someone you have to be able to work with their ideas. With that, Matt introduced an improv exercise called “yes, and?” which is when a pair acts out a scene but you have to start with the line “yes, and...” This taught the kids that when working with a partner, instead of disagreeing with them, you go along with their idea. After this we did the same but with writing stories. Working in teams of three, each kid would write a sentence in their notebooks and they would pass it to their left. They would then add another sentence to the story they received and it would continue on like that.

That’s a wrap for Imagination Academy 2015!