SIMON SAYS – Author Visits, Presentations and Workshops by Children’s Writers – Planning Presentations

Once you have been invited to visit a school, the organizers may only be looking for an author to read their books to the students, but mostly teachers expect something more. If you are planning to conduct school visits on a long-term basis, you should have a well thought out set of presentations, workshops and other material. You also need to not only discuss the subject matter of your own books. Teachers are always interested in their students learning about editing and revision, for example.

Where writers get their inspiration is also always a popular topic, as are character development and just how a book comes together, and whenever possible you should leave time for questions from the children. Sometimes, teachers have specific areas that they would like you to cover, often related to classroom programs, so you may need to adapt your presentations to suit their needs.

In addition to the subject matter of my own books, I cover such topics as where ideas come from, story structure, editing and revision, character development, time travel stories, the superhero genre, history and research and more. I will present to up to 100 students at a time, although the smaller the audience the more participation from children, as a rule and I also consider workshops with smaller groups or individual classes. A list of some of the presentations I offer can be found here, but I am always happy to discuss matters with teachers to design sessions to best serve the needs of their students.