Stone Soup

Where young artists paint the world with words

The international magazine of stories, poems, and art by young writers and artists. Published continuously since 1973.

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Writing Workshop #55: Texting and Virtual Conversations

An update from our fifty-fifth Writing Workshop

A summary of the workshop held on Saturday November 27th

Inspired by Liam’s workshop on Informal Writing, William chose a new topic for the writing workshop: texting. William led the workshop participants in some brainstorming exercises to think about what texting means and how it differs from letters, speaking, or other forms of communication. William played a scene from an opera by Mozart with quick lines of dialogue and asked the group to discuss whether the lines could be translated into a texting situation. We also saw an example of texting in a literary setting from the book Hello Universe, which workshop participant Ethan had recently read.

The challenge: Write a scene in which characters are texting each other. This can be a dialogue between two people or a group chat.

The participants: Ethan, Madeline, Peri, Liam, Sierra, Tilly, Aditi, Jonathan, Rachael, Elbert, Marissa, Kina, Grace, Kate, Nami, Iago, Samantha