March 2022 SWC Weekly #1 - Different Types Of Writing
Greetings and welcome to the very first weekly of Scratch Writing Camp March 2022! <3

This weekly encompasses four sections, each of which involve a workshop that you must read through and an activity you must do in relation to that workshop. Thank you to our wonderful workshop innovators. We have Poetry by @Polarbear_17, Scriptwriting by @The-Book-Worm, Types of Non-Fiction by @129waterfall, and Essays by @theniqhtsfall ^^
You may begin writing towards this weekly at 12:01am on March 3rd, UTC time zone!

Part One: Poetry (written by the brilliant Zura)

For this first part, we will begin with poetry! The iconic Zai has created a phenomenal workshop here on this topic!

Once you read through the workshop, write 300 words of poetry, comprising of at least 5 different types of poems.

For this example, I have picked a Haiku, Acrostic, Limmerick, Sestina, and Free Verse as my types of poems. You don’t have to do these but have at least 5 different types (Zai's workshop will give you many ideas on which types to write for this weekly and help you write better poetry).

Poem 1: mother (haiku)

swallowing my tears
your honeysuckle breath wraps
in a warm embrace.

Poem 2: fairy (acrostic)

far away, sweeps an enchanting floral aroma
away from the melancholic countryside
inside the beating blood of the rosy-cheeked stands a line of figurines
ready to be harvested for their eternal
youth.

Poem 3: swc (limerick)

once was a gathering of fifteen
with lofty hopes and dreams
to reach the crown of sole victory
so one cabin, one by one, knocked the other teams into misery
crumbling the fourteen into a depressed state no one could have foreseen

Poem 4: tales of a pebble thanks random word generator(sestina)

over the silky stream lies a pebble
a greater magnificence than a ballroom
which gave its gym
a bright glow like lights on an ambulance
over the yonder lay a mill
which stood tall on its legs like a pillar

by the river the children would shout “wow, it's a pillar!”
when a distant traveler strolled by the pebble
at night returning to their cotton mill
hoping a chance in the ballroom
but in their dreams rushed an ambulance
and they settled on a gym instead

in the rushing crowd of 6th graders running at the gym
the golden statue stood as a pillar
as they waited for the ambulance
to heal the scar from the pebble
a young girl then shouted, “suzie! let's wait in the ballroom!”
and instead got lost in the mill

the children steadily threaded string at the mill
calmly watching the gym
waver back and forth like dancers in a ballroom
“i wish we could have this much fun,” a person shouted to a stone pillar
so they threw the supervisor a pebble
and as they escaped awaits the ambulance

of course, it's unfavorable to be the ambulance
watching the workers empty its mill
wondering how a pebble
managed to harm a 6th grader in the gym
they could only turn to its pillar
and resigned their job, residing in ballroom

and yet there was eerie silence in the ballroom
with the workers of the ambulance
departed, there would be no pillar
for the workers at the mill
and the children at the gym
all caused by a cursed pebble

the ballroom, the gym
the ambulance, the mill
all watched their pillar crumbled by a small, simple, pebble.

Poem 5: childhood (free verse)

a bubble, rapidly expanding
in a world of color
drifting faster than a wheel spinning
a warm breath
its life source stopping
and finally free
flying high above the sunlit rooftops

a tightness rings in my chest
and slowly
i count down the days
i can taste summer

maybe i never realized the pain
of growing older.

Part Two: Essays (written by the magnificent Vi)

For section 2, you get to learn about essays from the wonderful Nights! Take a look at this workshop first, where you'll learn all about how to write an intriguing argument essay and then move on to our activity.

For this activity, you'll have to write a 500 word essay about an unpolitical topic. Instead of typically writing 5 paragraphs, you only have to write 3: Introduction, 1 Body Paragraph (including at least 1 piece of evidence/reasoning), and 1 Conclusion. While writing, try to create an informational (that doesn't involve too much research) and convincing/persuasive.

Here's an example of an essay (however, this is shorter, once again, you'll have to write at least 500 words):

More than 100 billion bananas are consumed every year all over the world. 2,500 types of apples are grown in the United States. Both bananas and apples are very popular fruits but when it comes down to nutrition, which one would be considered the healthier option? Both have significant nutritional benefits, apples being higher in fiber (helps rid the body of toxins) and bananas contain more protein (building blocks for bones, muscles, etc). However, I believe that the award of ‘healthiest’ would go to the banana because of the high amounts of potassium, less amounts of fruit sugar, and higher protein levels.

Comparing nutritional values, apples contain more sodium than bananas. Bananas contain 422 mg of potassium while apples contain only 195. Potassium helps rid your body of acid and also helps keep the fluids in the body at the right amount. Apples also contain 5 more grams of sugar. Although fruit sugar is significantly more healthy than man-made sugar or table sugar, fruit sugar can still cause the body to have health conditions (such as diabetes). As stated previously, bananas also have higher protein levels (bananas have 1.3 g and apples have 0.5 g). Bananas also have twice the amount of carbohydrates, which will be incredibly useful as an energy booster. Bananas also contain tryptophan, an amino acid that encourages the production of serotonin, which makes you “happier”.

Bananas and apples both have nutritional content, both being very healthy (and popular) fruits. Though apples also have healthy contents (lots of fiber, antioxidants, lowers risk of heart disease), it seems like bananas have the upper hand for health.

Part Three: Script Writing (Written by the fabulous Sawyer!)

In this section, we'll be adapting an older piece of writing into a script after learning about script writing from the wonderful Finley! Go check out their workshop here, where you'll explore scriptwriting and how techniques in scriptwriting can differ from those used in novel writing.

Once you've done that, let's move onto the activity! Pick out an old piece of your own writing to adapt into a script. It should be about 800-1000 words long and have narration and dialogue. Then, think about how you'd adapt it into a script for a play and start writing a script based on it, at least 700 words long. As you write, keep in mind what changes would be necessary for it would be performed live on stage, as well as what you learned from Finley's workshop. Make sure to include some actions as well as dialogue - but you don't need to include everything! It's okay to leave room for the director to imagine the scene.

Note: Tabs don't show up in forum posts, but you can copy and paste this character “ ” (it shows up bigger at the beginning of a line) or use spaces.

Here's an example of what I might do (although it's not as long as yours will be):

This is the piece I'm adapting into a play. There are some parts that I don't think will transfer well to the stage medium, like the thoughts behind what she does. I'm leaving out or changing those parts in my script.

Brook pushed her blonde hair behind her ear and opened her math book. As she began working on the first homework problem, she sighed. Her dog, Nancy, was lying next to her and Brook patted her on the head. When she looked back at the page, words were appearing. She rubbed her eyes. What? she thought. She closed the book. After a few seconds, she reopened it and found that the problem had been finished for her. She stood up to get a drink of water. Maybe she just had a headache and was imagining it. As she walked down the hallway to the kitchen, she spotted herself in the mirror. Her hair was bright pink — now purple! and now orange! — and her skin appeared to be covered in rainbow glitter. She screeched in surprise.
“Brook?” her mom called from the kitchen. “Is everything okay?”
She stepped into the kitchen. “My skin is—”
“Itchy? Bumpy? Dry?” her mom interrupted, looking at her with concern.
“Uhh no,” Brook answered. “Glittery?”
Had the glitter disappeared? Brook got a glass of water and then went to look in the mirror again. Her skin was still glittery. Could her mom not see it?
She got back to her desk and found that all of her math homework had been completed.
How convenient! she decided. Glad to be done with it, she opened her computer to work on her novel. She stared at the screen. Maybe I should go look at writing memes instead, she thought. That sounds productive!
Brook leaned back in her chair and let her vision blur. In the blink of an eye, she was being sucked into a rainbow tornado that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. She took a look around her room before all she could see was rainbows.

She found herself lying on dry, hard dirt. Above her was the ceiling of a large granite cave. She sat up and examined her surroundings. A few purple and pink stones lay near the walls and water dripped from the ceiling. A drop landed next to her and she stood up.

And here's my play adaptation!

BROOK sits at her desk in her bedroom doing math homework with NANCY next to her.

BROOK
If Walker's backyard is a rectangle 20 yards long and 10 yards wide…

She sighs as she trails off and leans back in her chair. While she looks away, writing begins appearing in her math book. She looks back.

BROOK
What!?!?

She scoots her chair back and stands up.

MOM
(from off-stage)
Brook? Is everything okay?

BROOK
Yeah I think so!

MOM
Alright, let me know if you need anything!

BROOK takes her math book over to her mirror to see if the words still show up. When she looks in the mirror, she sees that her skin has turned rainbow. She screeches.

MOM
Brook??

BROOK
Uhh

MOM enters the bedroom.

MOM
Brook, what's wrong?

She can't see that BROOK's face is rainbow.

BROOK
My skin is -

MOM
Itchy? Bumpy? Dry?

BROOK
Rainbow?

MOM
What? Do you have a fever?

She leaves the room to get a thermometer.

BROOK
I'm fine!

BROOK looks in the mirror again. This time, her skin is covered in glitter. She sits back down at her desk and leans back.

The lights create a swirling effect around her and a rainbow tornado sweeps across the stage. The stage blacks out.

The lights turn back on to show that BROOK is lying in a cave. She stands up.

Part Four: Non-Fiction (Written by the lovely Kat)
We're onto the last part of the weekly - and it's a fun one! (well at least, i think so ;D)
First, have a read of this amazing workshop on Types of Non-Fiction by the amazing Waterfall! You'll learn all about different kinds of Non-Fiction and different ways to write them, which will get you ready to do your final task for the week:

Write two different non-fiction writing pieces of different types, written in different styles (e.g. if one writing piece is written persuasively, you could write the next one narratively!) Each piece should be at least 400 words.

I've written an example below, but first, some context:
This will be a memoir type piece, written persuasively (if it goes well :'D). Because my excerpt will be quite short, I'm not sure how persuasive I'll manage to get it - but that's okay, because this task is for experimenting! Don't be scared to try something that may or may not turn out how you hope it will <3

And here's my example!

I was having a bad morning. I'd woken up late, there was no (good) food in the house, I hadn't done all my homework from the previous night. I'd rushed around downstairs, getting distracted, before returning to my desk for another dreary day of online learning. Still smoothing my hair (there'd been no time to brush it) and pushing things off my desk as I logged into my zoom, I couldn't quite remember whether the test was this week or next. I'd studied for it, right…? I knew the vocab, I was sure I did.

The call connected as my teacher was instructing us to tilt our screens so he could see that we weren't googling things on the sly. Half the boxes on my screen were of people's hands, furiously writing at blurred tests. I had to keep it together. As I started to complete my own test, struggling to calm my mind as I stared at the page of words, it became painfully obvious in my mind that I was not going to get a good mark. I knew most of the words, kind of. But the test covered 5 chapters, and I'd only studied 4. I hadn't touched my revision word list in a week. In my head, before I submitted my test, I mentally calculated. 100 words, and I'd left 10 of them blank. An 88, I told myself. Allow space to get some wrong, and maybe I'd be pleasantly surprised.

When the mark came back, a big red 85 staring cruelly up at me as if a joke, I told myself I deserved it. “I guess that's what I get for not studying,” I told my friends. No one said anything, but I could tell what they were thinking. They had 60s, 70s in latin, and here I was complaining about an 85. But I couldn't shake the crushing shame that pushed in from all sides, that told me I had failed myself. I stashed it away with my other tests - with my collection of perfect scores, and I couldn't help think about my average. It would have been a 100, and now it wasn't. I would have topped the year level, and now what? I'd be 5th, maybe – and that was if I did perfectly for the rest of the year.

I found myself wondering, later that day, what the point of all this was. Why did it matter that I didn't know the words I was supposed to know today, when I'd know them tomorrow, and every day after that? It meant next to nothing that I submitted homework religiously, put my hand up at every question that was asked. I'd lost my place at the top, and the pride that went with it, and nothing else I could do would fix it. Why did the darned numbers matter so much, when there was one thing they represented - and a million things they didn't.

Conclusion (intro and conclusion written by the fantastic Birdi)
To finish up our weekly, here's a handy list of the minimum word counts and required proof for this weekly:

• 300 words of poetry with 5 different types of poems
  
• 500 words of an essay intro, one body paragraph, and a conclusion on a topic that is not directly political
  
• 700 words of a script
  
• 800 words of non-fiction (400 words each to two different types of non-fiction)
  
• Proof of all parts
  

(In total, at least 2300 words for 4000 points!)

And that pretty much sums up our first weekly for this session. When done, remember to post links to proof of all completed parts in the main cabin along with your total word count. You will need to submit your weekly by 11:59pm on March 9th, UTC time. If you submit a weekly late we will be unable to add your points, so please make sure to submit on time <3

Remember to add the words you write for this weekly in your cabin as well!

Finally, don't stress too much about getting this done immediately - you can try and spread your work over the week, and there are still three weeklies to go ^^' Always prioritize your health (mental, physical, and social) and real life obligations over SWC; they hold more value than any number of points that you could earn.

And with that, It's time to get writing! Good luck <3

Me first

second >

third EEEEEEEE

fourth? also awesoem weekly ashfdkhahdfsa

FOURTH?

edit: nvm fifth

sixth
awesome weekly <3

Seventh?
Edit: Yep, seventh! Cool weekly :0

ooh yayyy

Bellevue91 wrote:

(#1)
Part One: Poetry (written by the brilliant Zura)

Bellevue91 wrote:

The iconic zai has created a phenomenal workshop here on this topic!

I think there's been a mixup haha

Ooh, sounds fun!

-MyNewAccount- wrote:

Bellevue91 wrote:

(#1)
Part One: Poetry (written by the brilliant Zura)

Bellevue91 wrote:

The iconic zai has created a phenomenal workshop here on this topic!

I think there's been a mixup haha

Nope! That part of the weekly - the instructions - were written by Zura, but the workshop on that topic was written by Zai ^^

Bellevue91 wrote:

-MyNewAccount- wrote:

Bellevue91 wrote:

(#1)
Part One: Poetry (written by the brilliant Zura)

Bellevue91 wrote:

The iconic zai has created a phenomenal workshop here on this topic!

I think there's been a mixup haha

Nope! That part of the weekly - the instructions - were written by Zura, but the workshop on that topic was written by Zai ^^

whoops haha~

For the essay, does there have to be only 1 body paragraph, or can I do multiple?

8th?

I can't access the workshop for part 4

_kittykay_ wrote:

I can't access the workshop for part 4

yeah neither can I

Here we go…

wait this is such a cool weekly, i'll do it soon when I have some time

_kittykay_ wrote:

I can't access the workshop for part 4

Unfortunately it hasn't been shared yet - we'll try to fix that asap <3

Dawn_Camps wrote:

For the essay, does there have to be only 1 body paragraph, or can I do multiple?

That sounds fine to me ^^