Author helps Alexander Dawson students try hands at storytelling

Alexander Dawson School, 10845 W. Desert Inn Road, has some budding authors in its sixth-grade class. They even got special instruction under the tutelage of visiting author Brian Falkner.

The Australian author of nine books visited the school for a week in September, and in that time, the students were asked to write a book anywhere from three to 12 pages, which was printed and bound by the school using Adobe's InDesign program.

The students learned various aspects of creating a book: outline, story structure, character profile, pacing and rewriting.

Falkner, who also visited Faith Lutheran Middle School and High School, 2015 S. Hualapai Way, said his goal was not to make every student into an author.

"I try to make them want to read," he said. "Because no matter what they end up doing in life, you need to be able to write, and those skills are (developed) now, at this time in their lives."

The day View visited, Steve Gillis' sixth-graders were ready to do final edits. Gillis said the students were "amazed to learn that authors don't consider their first draft to be the finished product but rewrite it numerous times."

The youths might have been close to finishing their stories, but the instruction wasn't quite complete.

Falkner told the students to imagine they were on a holiday in a gorgeous New York City hotel, looking out their room over Central Park. He set up a slide of a man walking through the park. Farther down the path, partially hidden behind a tree, was a masked man. The unsuspecting man was walking into the other man's trap. There was no time to call the police and no way to open the sealed window and shout out a warning.

"How does it make you feel?" he asked.

The answers were shot out at him: fear, frustration, concern, guilt.

"Now, imagine it's not that man who's about to be attacked, but your 8-year-old little sister, walking back to the hotel alone," he told them. "Now, how do you feel?"

The youths reacted this time with heightened emotions.

"All those feelings, times them by 100. That's the secret to getting your reader involved in your story," Falkner said. "You've got to make them care about your character."

He then played a video, the opening to "Shrek." It showed Shrek emerging from an outhouse, brushing his teeth with slime and bathing in mud. When Shrek jumped in a pool to wash off, he sighed in relief as bubbles appeared near his behind.

"Oh, it's a hot tub," one of the students exclaimed.

Falkner explained how audiences liked the Shrek character before the opening credits were even done, simply by showing him as lovable and funny. Then he let the students get to work on their laptops, finishing up their books. Falkner stopped at each student's table to see how things were progressing.

Ethan Cohen, 11, was nearly finished with his and said he always enjoyed reading books but had never considered writing one before. Now, he said, the class had prompted him to want to write "an adventure book, maybe a spy adventure, something with action. Like, something old and mix it with the future."

Ethan said it was fun to see how writers put book ideas into words and structure a story.

Vanessa Orton, 11, said she likes writing and may pursue it as a career. Her story was titled "It's a World Within a World" and dealt with tiny people living in the walls of her school.

"I think my story's so good, I can make it into a book," she added.

Rachel McDonald, 11, wrote a story about a girl who is lonely and misunderstood.

"Then she travels to another world because she wants to know if there's something wrong with her or if she's cursed, so she finds out how to break her curse, but it also comes with a price," she said.

Rachel said the hardest part was coming up with a problem for her character. How did Falkner's input help her?

"I really didn't know what it meant to be a good writer before," Rachel said. "But now I know what you need to do, how to (craft) your story. Like, he didn't tell us what to write, but he told us what to think about when you go to write something."

By that Friday, Falkner had read all 50-plus books, and an awards ceremony was held. Categories included Best Opening Line, won by Madison England for "Josh's Adventures." Best Editing went to Chase Thompson for "The Meteor from the Void."

Best Character was won by Stella Spiegel for "Beach Bliss." Best Description went to Ella P for "Lauren Medley." Most Imaginative was won by Kenzy Smith for "Stairs of Confusion."

Lynne Reid, librarian at Alexander Dawson, initiated the program, which sees five or six authors visit. But Falkner spends the most time with them.

"It's like the Academy Awards," Reid said. "He'll go, 'And the nominees are …' It's great because the kids who are not very athletic are getting accolades they wouldn't get otherwise."

— To reach Summerlin Area View reporter Jan Hogan, email jhogan@viewnews.com or call 702-387-2949.