During our events,\u00a0the writers read one of the pieces they wrote to a provided prompt. There’s a new prompt each month. One member who is an avid photographer gave us a prompt that was a picture of a Christmas tree farm with a\u00a0sign at the entrance that\u00a0said “closed forever.” That prompt elicited many stories as different as night and day.<\/p>\n

I usually take the group’s stories each month and make them into a booklet. It’s a way to keep their work and we can re-read each other’s and see our progress. Then we always have a store of writings to choose from when a group asks us to do a read-cital. In addition, we give these booklets to audience members. Who knows — these might be early stories by writers who could one day be famous authors!<\/p>\n

Depending on the time and the organization we are reading for, group members try to make the event suit that particular venue. For instance, when we did a read-cital for one of the Red Hat Society groups for Halloween, we dressed in costumes to reflect the stories we read. I was a pirate who took nuances of conversations and overheard snippets to use in stories.<\/p>\n

Incorporate give-aways<\/h3>\n

Give-aways are part of the fare when we do read-citals. For this particular group, we gave Halloween treat bags filled with candy, and a slip of numbered paper in that bag so that each story reader could give a gift to the person with the number assigned to their story.<\/p>\n

At a library read-cital, we distributed cupcake liners filled with things that represented each story —\u00a0 bubble gum,\u00a0 red\/white\/blue wrapped candy, and dog bone candy.\u00a0 As the moderator, I usually give one of my books as a door prize.<\/p>\n