To celebrate her
third novel, In Darkling Wood, being
published, The lovely Emma Carroll paid a visit to our school to talk to Year 7
about her journey to becoming a professional writer, her writing process and of
course to read some tempting extracts from the book itself.
As a child, every summer
holiday Emma would buy a notebook and fill it with stories (usually about
ponies or Duran Duran fan fic!). This ritual has continued into her
professional writing career: each new novel begins in a newly purchased
notebook and is usually written straight through from start to finish. Having
completed an MA in Writing for Young People, Emma clearly knows her stuff about
the different ways that authors work; for example she told us how Hilary Mantel
prefers to write the key scenes from her stories and then goes through the
process of ‘sewing’ them together to create her narratives.
Emma then shared with the
students, three top tips for generating ideas for stories:
