NEO-Driven YWP Frenziers!

For all of our events, the Young Writers Program lends NEOs — small word-processing computers — to a few deserving classrooms around the country. We love to check in and hear about their progress. Laura Nicholson, the creative writing teacher at Huntley Project High School in Worden, MT, recently told us about what her students have been working on this April.

Who knew that writing a script could be such a hard process? My students chose to write their scripts in groups, since I have a creative writing class that consists of four sophomores, four juniors, and four seniors. Each class group has screamed, cried, laughed, forced, and written their way through a short film or stage script.[[MORE]]

The seniors have chosen to write a melodrama titled Back to Daisy. It’s a rip-roaring, Wild West adventure story where one outlaw gets out of jail only to find that the only way to the heart of our heroine, Daisy, is to get back to that jail. The juniors have written a Groundhog Day-esque story about a group of teenagers who find out their first day of school keeps repeating… And at the end of each day, the same girl is killed. The sophomores are writing a horror comedy about a very weird roommate named Mary Blood, and all the weird and horrible things that happen to them at their new house because of her.

I think they are all surprised at just how difficult it is to write as a group, which is a good taste of what it would be like to be part of the screenwriting world of sitcoms or films. They all thought they were going to write more than they actually wrote and all have been a little frustrated with the process at times. However, I know they are enjoying the process. They love creating, they love writing, and they love that they are given the chance to actually write out an entire script, however short it may be.

One of the groups is filming their screenplay; one of the groups is performing it as a play; and one of the groups is doing a mock reading of it for the class. Hopefully, we can send you the screenplay as thanks to loaning us the NEOs. They LOVE having them in class—it would have been impossible to write without them. Our school is doing evaluation testing currently, and the computer labs are completely closed for all classes. The NEOs have been a lifesaver. Thank you!

– Mrs. Nicholson and the Huntley Project Creative Writers