On Friday, author Brian Falkner visited Sancta Maria College to give an insight into his writing skills through an informative and interactive presentation. Brian Falkner is an author who writes books for kids and young adults. He has written many books such as The Super Freak, The Tomorrow Code, Brainjack and Shooting Stars.
Brian first published ‘The Flea Thing’ in 2003 when he was 40 years old. He got most of his ideas from his past experiences and research. He gave us some tips on how to improve our creative writing by asking the question: ‘What if…’.
Brian Falkner engaged us with some fun activities. He challenged the students to name a language and if he couldn’t say ‘hello’ in that language, they would win one of his books. Also, he either put up a photo shopped book cover without its title or the first line in a book and we had to guess the title of the book to score our class a point.
In the meantime, each class had a representative team who had to write short stories or opening lines which could score up to 10 points. The team from the class which had the most points at the end won one of his signed books.
Brain Falkner’s presentation was entertaining and educational and will help enhance the writing skills in many of us.
Mr Falkner was later able to talk to Year 11 students on how to write essays by creating stories of their own. He gave us very important tips and theories about writing and how it would get us into depth with our creativeness. We learnt how writing a story needs turning points, solutions, climax, and resolution to make it a good one. We were very thankful that he taught us very important skills, and at the same time making us laugh with his quick-witted humour.
Sydney Causer and Lorenzo Cruz
