Katha Publications in collaboration with CBSE is conducting, on an all-India level, a story- writing competition to identify creative genius amongst school children across the country. The Katha-CBSE initiative is called I Love Reading.
On a fine summer morning, as part of the preliminary level of the competition, students of classes IV to XII of our School sat, spinning the yarns of their fertile imaginations and writing stories with zeal. The stories selected by their teachers were then uploaded on the Katha website, ilovereading.in, for reading and voting. Of the twenty one uploaded entries, four were shortlisted for the second round, that is, the regional workshop.
On 18 and 19 October, 2013, the four qualifying students-Aarushi Menon of class V, Shruti Bihani of class X and Varun Sanwlani and Kriti Dang of class XII, accompanied by Ms. Geetanjali Verma and Ms. Gandharvi Mukherjee, attended the regional writers' workshop organized at Modern School, Barakhamba Road. The workshop saw the participation of all the selected students from schools stationed in different parts of North India.
The workshop mainly revolved around three genres- fiction, translation and poetry. On the first day, students were divided into groups on the basis of their preferred genre. Each group was assigned a mentor. The fiction and translation sessions were mentored by Jayashree Acharya, a professor and Ankit Chadha, a writer and storyteller. Through various exercises we were acquainted with techniques of writing that help us excel in the craft of creating pictures with words. We learnt how the knowledge of root words enhances our understanding of a language, how each word can have several dimensions and how a story that follows the mantra of showing not telling captivates the audience. Then we sat down preparing a rough draft of our stories, figuring out our audience, idea, plot, setting and characters. In the poetry session, students were taught the art of writing Haiku and Tanka, which are three and five line poems respectively.
On the second day of the workshop, all participants discussed their manuscripts and gave suggestions to each other. The mentors also gave us tips to improve on our drafts. The stories and verses covered a wide range of themes like suspense, thrill, melodrama, horror, fantasy and humour. After reworking our manuscripts we wrote and submitted our final drafts which were accepted as our entries for the second stage of the competition.
This literary extravaganza was very interesting, innovative and high on the information- quotient. We hope that we are able to make it to the third and final round of this Katha-CBSE initiative!
Reported by Kriti Dang, XII-C.
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