On Tuesday 4th May Newman Selective students from Years 8-10 went to the Sydney Writers Festival at the Riverside Theatre in Parramatta with Miss Brown and Mrs Thomson. We were all excited to see the authors and were looking forward to getting inspiration for our Write a Book in a Day competition. We met four authors who spoke to us about their life and what inspired them to write their books. The authors we met were Gary Lonesborough, Michael Pryor, Leanne Hall and Zana Fraillon.

Gary Lonesborough talked about the process he took to write his book called ‘The Boy from the Mish’, which is a story about an aboriginal character going through hardships while discovering himself and all the complications that come after. He was inspired by his own life and what he had gone through when he was a teenager. The advice that he gave to the young writers was to draw inspiration from your personal experiences to ensure your writing is authentic.

Michael Pryor presented ‘The Classical Elements of Storytelling’ explaining how using these elements will always create a great story. He showed us how he uses Characters, Location and Plot to create his stories and how having a clear plan before writing can help develop a story and keep it on track. He was very humorous and entertaining and reminded us that writing can be hard work but it is always rewarding to create.

The third author was Leanne Hall who wrote ‘The Gaps’ which is one of her best selling works. She explained how the idea of ‘writing what we know’ can be hard if we have experienced hardships or trauma and that writing can be a way to reflect on personal events and move forward after trauma. Her advice is definitely going to assist us with our future writing.

Zana Fraillon is an author who finds inspiration from weird objects and incorporates them into her books. For her workshop we completed some writing and drawing activities including ‘lightning writing’, ‘random quotes’ and ‘speedy squiggles’. Zana creates base ideas for her books by either scribbling spontaneous monsters, inanimate objects and things she comes across in public or from friends. She wanted to show us how to find inspiration from random objects as well as generating ideas from our imagination. She showcased some objects she brought from her home in Melbourne, Victoria, including a William Shakespeare rubber duck, dismembered hands and feet (bones of course) and a skeleton raven which she had managed to incorporate into her stories.

We really enjoyed the day and spending time with other Newman students to learn from these authors and improve our writing skills. We thank Miss Brown and Mrs Thomson for giving us the opportunity to attend and can’t wait to put our newly learnt skills into practice.

Bianca Coates, Emily Lu and Nardeen Rafoka