Attendance and Journal
Questions for Stephen Project Work Time: Revising, Rewriting, Building Better Stories BIG, REALLY IMPORTANT QUESTION: WHAT IS THE DESIRE OF YOUR PROTAGONIST (YOU)?? 1. Food for Thought! Read the excerpt below from "On Desire" from a Colorado State University Creative Writing Professor. If you want challenge, click on the link and read the original blog post. How can you apply this piece about fiction writing to your own story? Excerpts from "On Desire" Characters must want something in order to be interesting. And the stronger the character’s desire becomes, the more intriguing the character often becomes. When creating characters, start with desire. List what they want (their conscious desires, which might change over the course of the story). Then try to figure out what lies beneath these conscious desires. What’s their deeper, driving unconscious desire that they’re not aware of? The stronger a character’s desire (or obsession), the more they’ll drive the action of the story (and often the more interesting they’ll be). Once you know your character’s conscious and unconscious desires, think about how these desires might conflict. Try to plot your story in response to your character’s desires. So ask yourself, how might the character make things worse for his/her self by pursuing the wrong desire? What events might put pressure on your character and force his/her deeper, unconscious desire to the surface? Basically, complex characters need to have different levels of desires, and those desires not only drive them, they drive the actions of the story because the best plots are often external manifestations of a character’s internal conflicts. Don’t believe me? Go over your mental list of great characters. For each one, I bet you can think of a clear surface desire, and a deeper unconscious desire (and often these two things will conflict in some way). For instance, Scout: she wants to be seen as a grownup. But really, she wants to have her mom back, and be protected as a child. It’s this push and pull between two extremes that makes her so fascinating, and so representative of childhood. Or Holden: He doesn’t want to be part of the phony adult world he sees all around him. But unconsciously, he realizes he is part of it, and so his true, unconscious desire is to be an adult, and protect other kids from falling off the cliff. His deeper desire is so important to his character and to the story that it’s the title of the book, although we don’t realize this until nearly the end of the book. Or Citizen Kane. He thinks he wants wealth, power, and fame, but none of these things satisfy him. In fact, they only serve to isolate him and take him further from his unconscious desire (thus, the story is a tragedy). In the end, we learn that Kane’s deep, unrequited, unconscious desire was to regain the sort of simple freedom and sense of play and familial connection that he had as a child (as represented by his sled, “Rosebud”). Or Gatsby, who initially thinks he wants to win back Daisy, but when he does, he isn’t satisfied, and instead his conscious desire switches to wanting to erase and recreate the past (to get Daisy to admit that she never loved Tom). Yet as Gatsby’s conscious desires are stripped away, we see that Gatsby’s driving unconscious desire all along was to reinvent himself, and become someone else. It’s an emblematic American desire, but it’s also a self-destructive desire, and so Gatsby must die to achieve it. Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there’s some other secret heart to character that helps us relate to these made-up strangers so different from ourselves. But for me, for now, it’s desire. Revising Checklists Galore IRON OUT THE BIG ISSUES FIRST! What's the point in spending hours refining things at the sentence level if you still have some major story level (plot, character) issues! You'll end up deleting things that you've spent a lot of time on, and while that's not inherently bad, it does get a little frustrating... "Need to know how well your writing, editing and revisions are going? Here’s a variety of checklists to help you evaluate where you are in the writing process." I've selected a couple of the ones below that I think are most helpful for our purposes. But, if you'd like to look around yourself, I highly encourage you to do that by clicking the link above. Mild: Revision Checklist for Novelist - Wow. This is a great checklist. Even though it's geared towards a novel, it still hits a lot of the major elements that we've been talking about the last 2 weeks. Medium: 10 Checkpoints for a Scene - The scene is the basic unit in writing. Your stories are most likely built around a few key scenes. Use this checklist and its big, open-ended questions to think about how well you are constructing your scene(s). Spicy: Style: Checklist for Fiction Writers - Crawford Killian is a Canadian novelist and professor. Use this checklist for improving your writing style once you've already hammered out the basics of your story (basics = character's desire, results, responses; specific details used consistently throughout the story)
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Attendance and Journaling Questions for Stephen Project Work Time
This Week's Questions: 1) Am I showing or telling in my writing? 2) Are my images specific/detailed enough? 3) Am I foreshadowing and developing suspense? Image Writing Workshop. If you were absent, get a copy of the handout for this workshop here. Would you please complete it and show it to me? Dialogue Journal. Will you please check to make sure that you have 2 dialogue journal entries completed? These simply become busy work if you don't take your time and be thoughtful with them, and we don't want that, now do we? :) I use these to frame the feedback I for your writing, so they are very important to me. Snapshot of Draft 2 Would you also please double-check to make sure that you have a snapshot of Draft 2 in your Google Drive "Snapshot" folder? This will be important for your final grade. Colorful Revisions 1)Print out a copy of your current working draft. 2) Select three colors that you will use to underline or highlight your printed copy. I have colored pencils available. 3.) At the top of your paper write "Goal:" and write in what the goal of your protagonist (you!) is in your story. Why are we as an audience rooting for your character? 4) Next, create a color key like the one I have below: Green = emotional language/ inner thought language/ strong feelings Yellow = text that specifically details the setting Red= text that "tells" and doesn't "show" 5) Go through your paper and carefully color code. Go slow. Take your time. 6) Complete the Google Classroom assignment after you have correctly color-coded your paper. Homework Complete the Google Classroom assignment for homework if you did not finish it in class. Come ready to write and revise extensively tomorrow! Attendance and Journaling Project Work Time Mini Lesson: Show, Don't Tell By the end of class today...
1. Create a snapshot of "Rough Draft 2" and save it in your Snapshot folder. 2. Complete your second dialogue document entry, answering all 3 questions: 1. How is your writing going? 2. What is your next step and 3. What questions do you have for me? Attendance and Comp Book
Questions for Stephen Now that we are in project work time, it's critical that we communicate clearly with each other. This is time set aside for you to ask me questions about anything related to our project--timelines, deadlines, some content that you're not quite clear about, etc. Project Work Time We are officially in project work time! Woo hoo! Write, share, revise, take risks, conference, re-write,--be writers! Project Work Time Today's Question (again): What sentences or phrases or words indicate your internal feelings and thoughts in your draft? Review Tuesday's mini lesson. Homework There is no homework assigned. Please remember that students who earn As in my class make a habit of working on their projects outside of class time. Attendance and Comp Book Questions for Stephen Now that we are in project work time, it's critical that we communicate clearly with each other. This is time set aside for you to ask me questions about anything related to our project--timelines, deadlines, some content that you're not quite clear about, etc. Project Work Time
Today's Question: What sentences or phrases or words indicate your internal feelings and thoughts in your draft? We are officially in project work time! Woo hoo! Write, share, revise, take risks, conference, re-write,--be writers! Mini-lesson: Writing About Inner Thoughts and Feelings 1. Read and closely lines examine Richard Wright's, "The Rights to the Streets of Memphis." 2. Underline the main character's explicit thoughts ("I had the choice of being beaten....etc.) 3. Double underline statements that imply strong feelings ("I shook with fright.") (I've put these in bold text) 4. Read t She slammed the door and I heard the key turn in the lock. I shook with fright. I was alone upon the dark, hostile streets and gangs were after me. I had the choice of being beaten at home or away from home. I clutched the stick, crying, trying to reason. If I were beaten at home, there was absolutely nothing that I could do about it; but if I were beaten in the streets I had a chance to fight and defend myself. I walked slowly down the sidewalk, coming closer to the gang of boys, holding the stick tightly. I was so full of fear that I could scarcely breathe. I was almost upon them now. If you remove the passages that are explicit thoughts and imply the strong feelings of the hero, then we are left with: She slammed the door and I heard the key turn in the lock. I was alone upon the dark, hostile streets and gangs were after me. I was trying to reason, coming closer to the gang of boys. I was almost upon them now. These statements tell more about the character, his motivation, and his feelings. Such information makes the reading more appealing and more understandable. More understanding= more brain chemicals flowing (oxytocin and cortisol), and that's what you want to do in your stories! So, the question remains--what sentences or phrases or words indicate YOUR internal feelings and thoughts in your story right now? Chances are, you need to overhaul your stories in this way. Homework Think deeply about your story; work on your story. Attendance and Comp Book Questions for Stephen Now that we are in project work time, it's critical that we communicate clearly with each other. This is time set aside for you to ask me questions about anything related to our project--timelines, deadlines, some content that you're not quite clear about, etc. Project Work Time
We are officially in project work time! Woo hoo! Write, share, revise, take risks, conference, re-write,--be writers! Homework There is no homework assigned. Please remember that students who earn As in my class make a habit of working on their projects outside of class time. Attendance/Journal Show and Tell Starter Time: Silent Reading Project Work Time: "A Moment In Time" Housekeeping 1) Checklist: Are your files in order? Have you shared your Project Folder with me? Do you have a printed out copy of your story you're bringing to class everyday? See your neighbor or see me if you've been absent and aren't sure how to organize your files. 2) Create a Dialogue Folder in your Google Drive. Create a Dialogue Document with the following 3 questions: 1) How is your writing going? 2) What is the next step in your writing? 3)What questions do you have for me that will help me give you feedback about your writing? Mini-Lesson on Setting via Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" 1) Read this story through one at least once. Enjoy it! 2) Re-read the story and underline/highlight all instances where Hemingway establishes setting in his short story.
Apply Your Knowledge 1) Mark all instances of setting in your story. Don't worry if you don't have that much, yet. You will by your final draft! 2) Create your first dialogue entry in your Dialogue document. Please frame this entry in terms of "setting." Starter 11
1) Pick one of your five senses: Taste, Touch, Smell, Sight, or Sound. Now focus on one thing around you that stimulates that sense. Now for your 5 minutes, write about your item using simile. Use the words like and as to create metaphors and descriptive writing that really shows your reader a whole other perspective on this sensory object. 2) Repeat the process with another sense. 3) Did you have what psychologists call a “transitional object” as a child? That is, a special stuffed animal, blanket or toy that you took everywhere? If so, what was it, and what do you remember about its role in your life? If you didn’t, what other important or beloved object do you remember from your childhood? Attendance and Journal Starter 10 1. From what Lamott has to say, is writing a first draft more about the product or the process? Do you agree in regard to your own first drafts? Explain. 2. Do you believe that including humor in one’s attitude toward writing is important? Yes, no, maybe? Why? Quiz " A Moment In Time" Dialogue Document
Create a Document in your Humanities folder called, "Dialogue Document." Adjust share settings 1. How is my writing going? 2. What is the next step in my writing? 3. What specific questions do I have that will me get the feedback I need? My writing is going good. My next step is to write some more. Can you read the draft I put in my folder and tell me if I need to fix anything? |
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