School Visits

New Abbey Primary School, Dumfries and Galloway
New Abbey Primary School, Dumfries and Galloway

 

 

 

I offer creative writing workshops and present talks to community groups such as writer’s groups and the Women’s Institute groups but mainly I give writing workshops in schools both primary and secondary. If you would like me to visit your school, writing group or other community group, please do contact me on the contact form provided. I have a current Enhanced DBS Certificate and am a member of the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE) and of The Society of Authors (SoA).

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St Andrews CE Primary School
St Andrews CE Primary School

Over the years I have visited a number of schools in Nottinghamshire, Somerset, Dorset and Wales to give creative writing advice and run workshops. These are great fun and it’s wonderful to see young children become enthused and responsive. It’s also very encouraging when I see how their writing matures over time. Imagination is a marvellous gift and it’s a shame when we lose that sense of fun and wonderment as the years go by.

I offer half day workshops covering:-

  1. The use of imagination, creating characters and researching / inventing character names, writing about legendary and fantasy characters
  2. The use of adjectives, punctuation, structure and writing from prompts
  3. What will stimulate your reader’s interest in your writing?  What draws a reader to a book?  Where does inspiration come from?
  4. Being an author
  5. No Slow Writing / No DADWAVERS.  Writing from the heart, not the rulebook by using your imagination and choice of structure.
  6. Motivation, action and consequences. Just as in real life people do things for a reason. Characters in stories are the same. So, with this part of the workshop, we talk about how that can be applied to the individuals in your story.
My Winterne book characters
My Winterne book characters

Over the years I have given creative writing workshops in Radford, Worksop, Sutton in Ashfield, Arnold, Woodthorpe, Mansfield Woodhouse, Bingham, Netherfield and West Bridgford, all in Nottinghamshire, where I now live.

In addition, I have run similar workshops in Cardiff, Dumfries and Galloway, Glastonbury, Wells and Coxley in Somerset, and a number of schools in Sherborne in Dorset, when I took part in the Sherborne Literary Festival. I spent my childhood in Sherborne and, during the festival, I event gave a workshop at my old school. These visits were great fun and inspirational for me…as I hope they were for the pupils. As a little extra, I set a competition for the children for after the festival. I read a short story for the children and then asked them to send me their own imaginative versions. The results made wonderful reading.

In March 2022, I am paying my first visits to a primary school in Glastonbury and one in Basingstoke, Hampshire. I am thoroughly looking forward to meeting everyone.

But I don’t just give workshops at schools. I also give talks and workshops for adult groups that can be developed to fit interests. Workshops have also been presented at completely different types of venues as well, for instance: the World of Wizardry convention in Nottingham, and at Wookey Hole Caves in Somerset.

If you would like me to visit your school, please send me an email to jaemalone.author@gmail.com or send a personal message to my Facebook page: