Traci Sorell: Writing workshops with kids

In terms of visiting with young people in school visits and doing library visits, that is definitely one of my favorite parts of this work because I absolutely love meeting with young people, and just getting to hear their stories. Again, we’re all made up of stories, that’s part of our lives. 

One of the first exercises I do with them is to say, ‘Highlight all the passive verbs. Am, are, is, was, were, would, could, should, have, has, had, to be, will be, be.’ And this light goes off in their head.

Because I said, ‘When you are reading a book you will find some of those words in the dialogue. But if you look at books for young people, if you want to read them and they’re interesting to you, you’ll find they don’t have many of these words in them.” Because that’s one of the things that we look at is, how do you keep the story moving? Well, you keep the story moving by using active verbs and rich nouns and adjectives. So we talk about that. That it’s very intentional.