Time Management2 Journals
1 Short Story |
MondayThis week you will focus on storytelling techniques, you may choose to expand or revise a previous story or start from scratch. By the end of this week, your story should be done. Next week, you will review Book 3 and revise this story.
To get started you the writing artist make the following decisions!
Ready? Watch on! Will you create a story with a hero or anti-hero? Check out each below>
E.B. White on a Writer's Responsibility
In an interview for The Paris Review in 1969, White was asked to express his "views about the writer's commitment to politics, international affairs." His response:
A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter. I feel no obligation to deal with politics. I do feel a responsibility to society because of going into print: a writer has the duty to be good, not lousy; true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error. He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down. Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life. (Writers at Work, Eighth Series, Penguin, 1988) Science Fiction and Dystopia usually has an anti-hero:http://ed.ted.com/lessons/an-anti-hero-of-one-s-own-tim-adams#review
Here are more resources to explore and inspire you:“Don’t expect the puppets of your mind to become the people of your story. If they are not realities in your own mind, there is no mysterious alchemy in ink and paper that will turn wooden figures into flesh and blood.” —Leslie Gordon Barnard, WD “If you tell the reader that Bull Beezley is a brutal-faced, loose-lipped bully, with snake’s blood in his veins, the reader’s reaction may be, ‘Oh, yeah!’ But if you show the reader Bull Beezley raking the bloodied flanks of his weary, sweat-encrusted pony, and flogging the tottering, red-eyed animal with a quirt, or have him booting in the protruding ribs of a starved mongrel and, boy, the reader believes!” —Fred East, WD “Plot is people. Human emotions and desires founded on the realities of life, working at cross purposes, getting hotter and fiercer as they strike against each other until finally there’s an explosion—that’s Plot.” —Leigh Brackett, WD TuesdayThink today about writing your story and review the "W" video below as well as the 'slowing down time' video. Use the techniques as needed to go slo-mo when you need and speed up at other points.
How can solving the character's problem backwards make your story more unique?Review this previous video for how to structure your story's events.WednesdayFor writerly reminders and tips:
ThursdayToday, focus upon some of the rhetorical devices that "let your reader in on the secret." Watch the videos below and practice incorporating some of these into your story. You can take another day to write but be sure to give your draft some breathing time.
FridayOkay, admit it. Most of you waited until the last second to finish or to revise. Read the following quotes for some challenges and watch the short videos. Remember to submit by Sunday night and read the submission of the person before you. Assess with the rubric in Unit Four of Blackboard. Don't worry that's not due until Monday. But get it in, because it's easy points and will help you and the writer out!
“The first sentence can’t be written until the final sentence is written.” —Joyce Carol Oates, WD “When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.” —Stephen King, WD |