Write your own super script

Before you begin

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples can be found here. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
• Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers.

Create prompts

1. Give everyone two pieces of scrap paper and a pen or pencil.
   
2. Everyone should write a sentence that someone could to say to someone else on each piece of paper. It could be completely random from their imagination or something they’ve said or heard recently. The sentences don’t need to link to each other (and they don’t need to be perfect works of art).
   
3. Everyone should pop their sentences into the middle of the meeting place. Someone should mix them up.
   
4. Everyone should take it in turns to choose two random sentences from the pile. These are their prompts.
   

Craft a script

1. Everyone should split into groups of three or four. The person leading the game should give each group a pencil, an eraser, and some paper.
   
2. Each group should find a space and lay out their prompts so everyone can see them.
   
3. Together, each group should piece the sentences into an order that makes sense a conversation. It doesn’t have to be exact – they can change the odd word if they need to.
   
4. Everyone should decide who’ll be the actors and who’ll be the scribes. If anyone doesn’t want to do either role, that’s OK. They can still offer plenty of helpful ideas and feedback by talking.
   
5. The actors should imagine a scenario for the conversation the group created from the prompts. They should begin improvising to act out the scenario – it may feel a little odd at first; improvising’s meant to be a little messy and disjointed.
   
6. While the actors improvise, the scribes should jot down what they see – it doesn’t have to be perfect, rough notes or bullet points are fine.
   
7. When the actors slow down or start to run out of ideas, the group should come back together and look at what’s been written down.
   
8. From these notes, they should start writing the first draft of a script on a new piece of paper. Who are the characters? What about the setting? What did the actors do or say that was great and needs to be included?
   
9. Everyone should review their roles – perhaps the actors would like to scribe, the scribes would like to act, or anyone who was a little too nervous feels ready to give it a go.
   
10. Each group should act through their drama again, developing the story. The scribes should keep making notes – some things may be an improvement, and others may not work so well.
    
11. Once the actors are slowing down, everyone should come back together to review where they’re at.
    
12. Everyone should keep improvising and acting and writing until the script is about 10 minutes long.