Author: Tim Saunders

New Spring 2023 Workshops and Summer Camps!

/ Tim Saunders / Leave a comment

This spring the Grand Rapids Writing Camps are back with new spring and summer offerings, along with a new location.

Mayflower Congregational Church will be the new home for our spring and summer offerings.

On Saturday, May 13, we’ll be offering a morning workshop from 9 AM to 12 PM on FAN FICTION! This three hour workshop will give your student support in planning, drafting, and revising stories inspired by the stories that move them. We’ll take a deep dive into what makes source material like Harry Potter and Star Wars so compelling, develop meaningful characters based on their favorite world, plan and outline character driven stories, and write, write, write! Our day will culminate with a share of our progress and goals. You can sign up here. $75

The following Saturday, May 20, we’ll offer another morning workshop from 9 AM to 12 PM on LEARNING FROM MENTORS! This workshop is for ALL GENRES and ALL STYLES of writing. Writers can bring a favorite book or text of any genre, and we’ll spend the morning learning craft moves from our favorite authors and writers. You can sign up here. $75

Finally, we’re very excited to offer our very first SUMMER CAMPS! The week of June 5-9, we’ll offer a morning camp from 9 AM to 12 PM on SHORT STORIES! During the week we’ll be writing a number of short stories in a variety of genres, learning from short stories we love, and unlocking the power of revising to make our writing as strong as possible. You can sign up here. $250

We’ll also offer an afternoon camp from 1 PM to 4 PM on GRAPHIC NOVELS! We’ll take a deep dive into creating characters, learning some basics on illustration, creating thumbnails, and lettering. All along the way we’ll focus on developing stories with strong structures. You can sign up here. $250

All camps are intended for students in 3rd through 6th grade.

New May Saturday Writing Workshops: Creating Comics!

/ Tim Saunders / Leave a comment

Does your child love to draw AND write?

Comic book movies dominate the box office, but did you know that comics and graphic novels also dominate the New York Times Best Seller lists as well? Smile, Dog Man, Amulet, and Bone are just some of the massively popular graphic novels taking root in children’s literature.

Comics, graphic novels, and sequential art are all ways to describe how we tell stories with both pictures and text. This three hour writing workshop course will give children some basic skills for writing and drawing their own comics, regardless of their drawing ability. Above all, we’ll focus deeply on how to tell a strong story using both pictures and words.

On May 14 join us for Creating Comics I. This program will demonstrate how even simple line drawings like Raina Telgemeier’s Smile, Sister, and Guts can lead to powerful and funny stories.

Creating Comics I & II on May 21 will introduce new students to the techniques and strategies from the first session, while giving returning students more sophisticated methods to develop stronger stories.

Each workshop takes place at the East Grand Rapids Community Center.

Sign up here!

Tim and Raina Telgemeier in 2015

Meaningful Fan Fiction Writing Workshop March 26!

/ Tim Saunders / Leave a comment

Does your student love to write? Do they spend hours dreaming up adventures for their own Jedi? Or maybe they’ve created their own wizard for Hogwarts? A Minecraft survival story? An alternate ending to their favorite dystopian novel?

This three hour workshop, Meaningful Fan Fiction, will give your student support in planning, drafting, and revising stories inspired by the stories that move them.

We’ll take a deep dive into what makes source material like Harry Potter and Star Wars so compelling, develop meaningful characters based on their favorite world, plan and outline character driven stories, and write, write, write! Our day will culminate with a share of our progress and goals.

Our workshop is meant to be a supportive, inclusive, and nurturing environment for young writers!

Each workshop takes place at the East Grand Rapids Community Center.

A morning session for students in grades 3-5 will run from 9:00 AM until 12:00 PM, and our afternoon session for students in middle and high school will take place 1:00 PM until 4:00 PM. The cost of each workshop is $75.

Click here to sign up!