Make Stories · Pennymores Writing Room
Four recorded workshops for creative kids, families, teachers, and anyone who wants to turn an idea into a world, a character, and a story worth following.
A writing room for everyone
The Pennymores writing workshops were built for ages 6–14, but the creative moves work for anyone: young writers, parents, teachers, librarians, and adults returning to a story they have been carrying around.
Choose a session, watch the full workshop, then pause the video and make your own version. The goal is not a perfect answer. It is a story with your fingerprints on it.
From the original educator room
Eric created these lessons after working with his daughters and seeing how powerful story principles can be for younger writers. The workshops are active, playful, and designed to help students discover that their own stories are worth making.
The four-part series
Creating Characters
Most authors will tell you they first found their hero. Build a character with a spark, a contradiction, and a reason for the reader to keep following.
Make after watching: Start your first character with the worksheet, then give them one desire, one fear, and one impossible choice.
Hero’s Journey
A hero needs more than a destination. Give the story a threshold, a quest, a struggle, and a moment when the character has to become someone new.
Make after watching: Draw the route your character believes they are taking—and the harder route the story gives them instead.
Bad Guys
Great stories need pressure. Discover the villain’s origin, secret power, henchmen, and big goal—then find the human truth beneath the threat.
Make after watching: Give your bad guy a goal they believe is right, and a consequence they refuse to see.
Creating a Bigger World
Worldbuilding is more than naming places. Give your story a special location, rules, struggles, triumphs, and open doors for the next adventure.
Make after watching: Write the “It’s like __, but…” sentence that makes your world familiar enough to enter and surprising enough to stay in.
For the grown-up in the room
The best writing help is often a question, a pause, or permission to try again. Let the young writer make meaningful choices. Praise specificity over polish. Ask what they intended before suggesting what you would do.
Make space. Bring paper, a pencil, and one question.
Pause the video. Ask open questions. Do not solve the story for them.
Celebrate what exists. Choose one next step. Keep the door open for revision.
Invite multiple answers. Let students share process, not just finished work.
Stay in the writing room
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