Just to let you all know, the blog may take next week off. I'll be vacationing, tra la, and I don't know if I'll get to it.
On August 29th, 2011, Charlotte wrote, ....I've got the plot set down pretty well in the novel I'm working on, but what I'm having trouble with is the world itself. It's fantasy, and it's set in a world other than this one, and I don't want it to come off quite as modern as our world--e.g. skyscrapers, cars, etc. But there are some modern aspects that I do want to use--e.g. Polaroids but not digital cameras, flashlights but not streetlights, pianos and acoustic guitars but not keyboards and electrics, trains but not cars, etc. And there are also period aspects that aren't necessary to get into, such as how people wash their clothes or go to the bathroom, which are never significant to the story, but I feel I have to put in anyway because I know I'm wondering how these things work, though I don't remember ever wondering that when reading any other book.
Is it okay to have only some modern inventions, and even more in the background? Or do I need some major reason why there aren't highways and a million electric appliances--like how in Harry Potter they explain that Muggle inventions tend to "go haywire" around heavy concentrations of magic, which is why there are no computers or electric lights at Hogwarts?
If it works, it’s fine. If the reader accepts whatever you’ve laid down, you’ve done well. But not so well if your reader starts scratching her head and loses interest in your story because she doesn’t understand why your zebras are plaid not striped but they’re still called zebras.
If you’re writing about a sort of modern world, like ours in some respects, different in others, readers will assume that details not mentioned (toilets, laundry, banks) work in the regular way. You don’t have to haul them into your plot just to show them in operation. Even if they’re different, if the differences don’t influence events, you can omit them. When they’re needed, say in the eleventh volume of your series, you can bring them in. If you’ve set the stage for a world in which mattresses turn sleepers over like pancakes at two am every night, the reader will go with the flow, or, in this case, the flip.
You mention Polaroids as a kind of camera you want to keep. The trouble I have with that is simply the name. Polaroid seems to belong solidly to planet earth, because of the link to Polaroid Corporation. I’d look for a generic term, like instant-image camera. In my fantasy novels I avoid references to our reality. Of course this is impossible to do entirely. Gnomes and ogres, for example, are our invention. Still, we’re not going to meet up with them at the supermarket. In another example, when I write dark-skinned characters I don’t call them African, and I don’t call light-skinned characters European. There is no Europe, no Africa. Dark-skinned characters don’t have to come from a warm climate or fair-skinned from a cold. In my world the effects of sun on skin color are up to me.
It can be helpful, as in your Harry Potter example, if you know why some features of modern life were invented in your world and others weren’t. Knowing can guide your future choices. But it’s okay if you don’t know. In our real world modern inventions come about because people think them up. Sometimes new technology makes the thinking possible, but sometimes someone just comes up with a fresh way to use old materials. I believe post-its are an example of this. Alas, there must be myriad potential devices that could help us that no one has dreamed up so far.
If you do know the reason behind the state of technology and tell the reader, you may enhance her pleasure. Here’s a small detail from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series: The trolls in this universe are slow thinkers, actually stupid. The reason, we discover, is that room temperature isn’t their natural climate. The colder it is the smarter they get. At sub-zero they’re brilliant. I love having that explained.
The Discworld series is written in third-person. Most books begin with a short preface about the world, explaining that it rides on the back of a giant turtle. Once the reader sees that, she’s ready for anything. If this kind of approach suits what you’re doing, you can introduce your world in this sort of way even if the rest of the book is told in first person. It’s a quick way of bringing the reader in.
But you don’t have to do this. I never have.
Still, the reader will have a leg up if you introduce your world quickly. I discuss this in Writing Magic, so you may want to take a look. Your beginning sets up expectations for the whole book. Beginnings are hard because you have to do so much: start the conflict, introduce the major characters, begin to establish the world. You can bring on the fantasy after the first chapter, have your main character borrow Grandma’s pearls in the third and get transported to her sixteenth birthday party. Readers may enjoy the surprise but it’s nice if you can work in a tiny hint that such a switcheroo is possible. The reader will remember the earlier brief mention of culottes and be happy.
I often don’t know what my world is going to need until I’ve figured out my whole story, sometimes after hundreds of pages of looking for signs in a forest of plot possibilities. So soldier on!
As always, it can be helpful to show your story to someone. Based on the comments following last week’s post, some of you are nervous when fresh eyes read your writing. I am too! But it’s usually worth it. You can ask a friend or another writer to read the first couple of chapters while looking only at your world building or only at your technology. You can say you don’t want to hear a word about your plot or your characters, just this one thing, and you’re feeling a tiny bit fragile, so please be gentle.
Here are three prompts:
∙ I sometimes wonder how progress happened, especially early human progress. For instance, how did somebody realize that metal could be extracted from ore? How did farming start? Who invented shoelaces? I once read that in the Middle Ages buttons were purely decorative, sewn on clothing just to look pretty; they didn’t fasten anything. How did buttons migrate from decorative to useful? Imagine how something was invented without looking it up. Who was there? What was the dialogue? Was there an argument? Write the scene.
∙ Invent a new imaginary creature, not a fairy or an elf or an ogre. Describe it. Put it in a story.
∙ Consider Rumplestiltskin, who is described by Wikipedia as an “impish creature.” Where does he live? What’s the technology in his culture? How is it that he can spin straw into gold? Write a scene from his backstory.
Have fun and save what you write!
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Quirks
On April 28th, 2011, Squid, writer, wrote:
1- Where do you write? Virginia Woolf famously said it's important to have a room of one's own... How do you arrange your supplies, do you write indoors or outdoors? I'd like to know.
2- What supplies do you use? Do you write first drafts longhand, or do you type them? What journals and pens do you use?
And on January 7, 2012, April wrote, I'm curious for more peeks into your life. Perhaps you could divulge a little more in another post? For example, I read the linked post today about writers' various quirks. What are some of yours? How do your husband, family, and friends react to your quirks, or to your writerly profession in general (both in the past and presently)?
http://www.rachellegardner.com/2012/01/writers-quirks/
I write anywhere. Well, not in the shower, but in airports, on planes, in doctors' waiting rooms (routine exams - I’m not sick). Wherever I shlep my computer I write if I have at least fifteen minutes. At home, I write in my office or on my laptop, which lives in the kitchen when it isn’t traveling with me. In the kitchen, it’s on a counter. I could put it on the table, but I once read that it’s not healthy for people to sit for long periods, so when I’m downstairs, I write standing up. The laptop is called Reggie, named after the dog character in The Wish, years before we got our puppy Reggie.
In my office I sit, except when I get up to pace or to stare out the window. The view is lovely no matter the season: stone walls, ancient tall hemlock, antique outhouse (we do have indoor plumbing).
Right now I’m at a poetry retreat waiting for the day’s session to start. I’m in an austere place, a former orphanage on the grounds of a current convent. My room was once an orphan’s bedroom, and it’s small! There’s no desk, only a bed, wooden chair (no cushion), metal gym locker, narrow bed, high dresser, no private bathroom, alas. I’m standing on tiptoes to type on my laptop atop the dresser.
I wonder what my father, who was an orphan and grew up in an orphanage, would think of me being here. Laugh? Roll over in his grave?
The reason I work anywhere is because I trained myself to be able to many years ago after reading Becoming A Writer (middle school and up, I'd guess; the language is old-fashioned but the ideas are modern) by Dorothea Brande. I travel a fair amount, and I don’t want my work to grind to a halt whenever I leave home. People who can write only when the moon is full and the stars are in a certain alignment don’t finish many books. In an airport, under a giant TV blasting endless headlines, weather, and commercials, I can work. I’m irritated. I wish the thing would shut up, but I work.
I don’t write outdoors much. In winter it’s too cold, obviously. In warm weather there are bugs and beauty. Beauty distracts me!
My desk in my office is a disaster area. I swear when I finish the first draft of used-to-be-called Beloved Elodie, I’m going to clean it up. If I need a pen, I have to feel through the layers to find it. On the desk is a memento of my father, a gift from one of his friends. It looks like a hinged wooden box. On top there’s writing that says, “For the man who has nothing, something to put it in.” The joke is that when you open the box, it turns out to be just a block of wood. There’s no cavity. My father loved the joke.
This is a poem I wrote about my office, imagining it as part of a museum show of offices of kids’ book writers:
My office
stands in for me, part of an exhibition
children wander through. Jason heads
for the wooden skull from Mexico.
Brianna goes, Ew! and Yuck, don’t touch that.
Ella likes the hand-made Christmas-tree ornaments
around my windows: the quilted heart in muted pinks,
edged by brass beads; the striped parrot;
the black paisley angel. Sara picks up the small,
lead Tinker Bell on my desk. Everyone marvels
at my origami swan made from a Tokyo candy wrapper.
Ms. Kramer points out my English usage books.
Outside, somebody calls, Wow!
J.K. Rowling’s office!
They’re gone. No one paid attention
to my quiescent computer, with a hundred e-mails
locked inside. The children didn’t notice
the hand-hewn, 1790 oak beam or the 1920s
pewter lamp. They glanced past the photograph
of the rosebud with its red petals folding
in on themselves, its shadowy hole, the two
droplets of dew.
When I’m home I don’t listen to music while I work; I prefer silence.
If the writing isn’t going well, I get sleepy, and I have to take frequent breaks, to stretch, answer an email, anything that will wake me up. I like to write while I eat breakfast and lunch and my nightly snack because I can’t sleep and chew at the same time.
I almost always write directly on the computer, but when I use a pen, it’s a cheap gel pen on a steno pad. I don’t like ballpoints because you have to press too hard, and I don’t like Sharpies because the ink bleeds through to the other side of the paper.
I don’t have a big family, but my husband is delightfully proud of my books. When I’m stuck and suffering, David, who is supremely sympathetic, suffers too.
My sister and his sisters and my brothers-in-law like my work. His sister Amy directs a public library, and I went there to speak. Libraries run in David’s blood; Amy and four cousins are or were librarians (one is retired).
I’m trying to think of a quirky quirk for you. You all know from the blog that I don’t plan my books out ahead of time, that sometimes I wander around in a fog for a ridiculously long time. If I thought it would do any good, I would tie a shoe around my neck, touch Reggie’s nose, stand on my head (if I could) for an hour to make the writing flow. How about this? When I’m describing a facial expression, I’ll do an Google images search for the emotion I want to show, but I’ll also make faces at myself in the mirror.
When I wrote the Disney fairy books I had to keep scale in mind because the fairies are only five inches tall. I had to ask myself, What’s a five-inch creature in relation to a quart of milk, to a caterpillar, a potato, a cherry? To remind myself I kept a five-inch bottle of hair goop on my desk the whole time.
Here are a few prompts:
∙ One of the exercises we did at the poetry retreat was to write a list poem, which is basically a list. So write a list poem about your writing place. To make it work as a poem, the items should be detailed, can be fantastical. Surprises are nice, and it’s good to end with an item that goes against expectation or packs an emotional wallop.
∙ Sometime before next week’s post, write outside your comfort zone. Write in the living room while the family is watching television. Bring your pad to breakfast and write while you chomp down on your pancakes or your high-fiber cereal. See if you can zone out of the distractions, see if the distractions themselves take you somewhere unexpected.
∙ Again, before next week’s post, write in an unaccustomed mode. If you usually write longhand first, go directly to a computer, or vice versa. See if there’s a change in your writing. Does the new method open you up? (You can then return to your usual way, but sometimes it’s good to shake things up.)
∙ Write a chapter in your future memoir about yourself as a writer, whether or not writing will be your career. What got you started? Write about your real past, but also imagine the future. What has been a turning point or what will be? Describe your greatest past triumph and your greatest upcoming one.
∙ If you like, post your own writing quirks here.
Have fun, and save what you write!
1- Where do you write? Virginia Woolf famously said it's important to have a room of one's own... How do you arrange your supplies, do you write indoors or outdoors? I'd like to know.
2- What supplies do you use? Do you write first drafts longhand, or do you type them? What journals and pens do you use?
And on January 7, 2012, April wrote, I'm curious for more peeks into your life. Perhaps you could divulge a little more in another post? For example, I read the linked post today about writers' various quirks. What are some of yours? How do your husband, family, and friends react to your quirks, or to your writerly profession in general (both in the past and presently)?
http://www.rachellegardner.com/2012/01/writers-quirks/
I write anywhere. Well, not in the shower, but in airports, on planes, in doctors' waiting rooms (routine exams - I’m not sick). Wherever I shlep my computer I write if I have at least fifteen minutes. At home, I write in my office or on my laptop, which lives in the kitchen when it isn’t traveling with me. In the kitchen, it’s on a counter. I could put it on the table, but I once read that it’s not healthy for people to sit for long periods, so when I’m downstairs, I write standing up. The laptop is called Reggie, named after the dog character in The Wish, years before we got our puppy Reggie.
In my office I sit, except when I get up to pace or to stare out the window. The view is lovely no matter the season: stone walls, ancient tall hemlock, antique outhouse (we do have indoor plumbing).
Right now I’m at a poetry retreat waiting for the day’s session to start. I’m in an austere place, a former orphanage on the grounds of a current convent. My room was once an orphan’s bedroom, and it’s small! There’s no desk, only a bed, wooden chair (no cushion), metal gym locker, narrow bed, high dresser, no private bathroom, alas. I’m standing on tiptoes to type on my laptop atop the dresser.
I wonder what my father, who was an orphan and grew up in an orphanage, would think of me being here. Laugh? Roll over in his grave?
The reason I work anywhere is because I trained myself to be able to many years ago after reading Becoming A Writer (middle school and up, I'd guess; the language is old-fashioned but the ideas are modern) by Dorothea Brande. I travel a fair amount, and I don’t want my work to grind to a halt whenever I leave home. People who can write only when the moon is full and the stars are in a certain alignment don’t finish many books. In an airport, under a giant TV blasting endless headlines, weather, and commercials, I can work. I’m irritated. I wish the thing would shut up, but I work.
I don’t write outdoors much. In winter it’s too cold, obviously. In warm weather there are bugs and beauty. Beauty distracts me!
My desk in my office is a disaster area. I swear when I finish the first draft of used-to-be-called Beloved Elodie, I’m going to clean it up. If I need a pen, I have to feel through the layers to find it. On the desk is a memento of my father, a gift from one of his friends. It looks like a hinged wooden box. On top there’s writing that says, “For the man who has nothing, something to put it in.” The joke is that when you open the box, it turns out to be just a block of wood. There’s no cavity. My father loved the joke.
This is a poem I wrote about my office, imagining it as part of a museum show of offices of kids’ book writers:
My office
stands in for me, part of an exhibition
children wander through. Jason heads
for the wooden skull from Mexico.
Brianna goes, Ew! and Yuck, don’t touch that.
Ella likes the hand-made Christmas-tree ornaments
around my windows: the quilted heart in muted pinks,
edged by brass beads; the striped parrot;
the black paisley angel. Sara picks up the small,
lead Tinker Bell on my desk. Everyone marvels
at my origami swan made from a Tokyo candy wrapper.
Ms. Kramer points out my English usage books.
Outside, somebody calls, Wow!
J.K. Rowling’s office!
They’re gone. No one paid attention
to my quiescent computer, with a hundred e-mails
locked inside. The children didn’t notice
the hand-hewn, 1790 oak beam or the 1920s
pewter lamp. They glanced past the photograph
of the rosebud with its red petals folding
in on themselves, its shadowy hole, the two
droplets of dew.
When I’m home I don’t listen to music while I work; I prefer silence.
If the writing isn’t going well, I get sleepy, and I have to take frequent breaks, to stretch, answer an email, anything that will wake me up. I like to write while I eat breakfast and lunch and my nightly snack because I can’t sleep and chew at the same time.
I almost always write directly on the computer, but when I use a pen, it’s a cheap gel pen on a steno pad. I don’t like ballpoints because you have to press too hard, and I don’t like Sharpies because the ink bleeds through to the other side of the paper.
I don’t have a big family, but my husband is delightfully proud of my books. When I’m stuck and suffering, David, who is supremely sympathetic, suffers too.
My sister and his sisters and my brothers-in-law like my work. His sister Amy directs a public library, and I went there to speak. Libraries run in David’s blood; Amy and four cousins are or were librarians (one is retired).
I’m trying to think of a quirky quirk for you. You all know from the blog that I don’t plan my books out ahead of time, that sometimes I wander around in a fog for a ridiculously long time. If I thought it would do any good, I would tie a shoe around my neck, touch Reggie’s nose, stand on my head (if I could) for an hour to make the writing flow. How about this? When I’m describing a facial expression, I’ll do an Google images search for the emotion I want to show, but I’ll also make faces at myself in the mirror.
When I wrote the Disney fairy books I had to keep scale in mind because the fairies are only five inches tall. I had to ask myself, What’s a five-inch creature in relation to a quart of milk, to a caterpillar, a potato, a cherry? To remind myself I kept a five-inch bottle of hair goop on my desk the whole time.
Here are a few prompts:
∙ One of the exercises we did at the poetry retreat was to write a list poem, which is basically a list. So write a list poem about your writing place. To make it work as a poem, the items should be detailed, can be fantastical. Surprises are nice, and it’s good to end with an item that goes against expectation or packs an emotional wallop.
∙ Sometime before next week’s post, write outside your comfort zone. Write in the living room while the family is watching television. Bring your pad to breakfast and write while you chomp down on your pancakes or your high-fiber cereal. See if you can zone out of the distractions, see if the distractions themselves take you somewhere unexpected.
∙ Again, before next week’s post, write in an unaccustomed mode. If you usually write longhand first, go directly to a computer, or vice versa. See if there’s a change in your writing. Does the new method open you up? (You can then return to your usual way, but sometimes it’s good to shake things up.)
∙ Write a chapter in your future memoir about yourself as a writer, whether or not writing will be your career. What got you started? Write about your real past, but also imagine the future. What has been a turning point or what will be? Describe your greatest past triumph and your greatest upcoming one.
∙ If you like, post your own writing quirks here.
Have fun, and save what you write!
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
The Writing Days of Summer
On August 22, 2011, Melissa wrote, ....I still want to know what you're doing at your summer workshop. Or if you could tell me some of the homework you gave the kids. Hopefully I can find your answer this time.
Thirty to thirty-five children sign up and usually about twenty or so are there each week. The age range is ten years to eighteen. Debby, a fifth grade teacher volunteer helps me. (I’m also a volunteer. The local library hosts us.) I hold six sessions, each an hour-and-a-half long. We always start with a vocabulary word, often a word that’s new to me that I got online from Wordsmith at http://wordsmith.org/words/today.html. I’m looking for interesting words, interesting meaning. My favorite word last summer was poetaster.
The kids know what to do as soon as I write the word on the eraser board. They make up a definition and guess what part of speech the word is and write both on a scrap of paper, which I collect. I pick four or five to read aloud and slip in the real definition, written in a kid vernacular. Then they vote for the one they think is the true meaning. My hope is that they won’t pick mine so there’s a surprise. When the real definition is revealed we applaud the person who came up with the most persuasive wrong definition. Kids return to the workshop year after year and get better and better at inventing the fakes. They also start thinking about roots of words and etymology. My goal is to help them fall in love with English. Most are at least halfway there already.
Next, I read a poem I like and suspect will appeal to them. I’m not always right.
During the first class I ask the kids what they hope to get out of the summer. Last year several wanted to work on conflict. Great choice!
So I looked online for help and found an article that listed four kinds of conflict (interpersonal, internal, situational, societal). For the second class of the season I introduced the four and we started on one, interpersonal conflict. I’ve discovered over the years that some prep helps before the writing commences. Here are my notes to myself for leading the introductory discussion on conflict:
Why does a story need suffering, humorous suffering or serious suffering?
Why do readers seek out entertainment in which terrible things happen, villains behave monstrously, people die? I’m not sure, but maybe because we’re preparing for the worst that life can throw at us. When we make Sammy suffer we’re helping our readers, which should stiffen us to do it. We may hurt him, but we’re helping them.
Conflict doesn’t have to be huge, though. Worry about a report card and a parent’s reaction, worry about something foolish a character said.
How do you convey that a character feels bad?
Thoughts.
Perception, like stomach clench.
Dialogue.
Action (like leaving, or being wounded literally).
Possibly even setting.
After the discussion, when I think everyone is ready, I give out the writing exercise. You’ll see that I offer two choices. The age range in the class is huge - we’re like a one-room writing schoolhouse - and I want to appeal to them all. Here’s the in-class choice of exercises. You can use either or both as a blog-post prompt:
Carl or Carlie, who doesn’t like to share, has something that’s very precious to him or her, may have magical properties. His or her best friend Tom or Tomasina wants it. Write what happens. Make each one do or say something he or she doesn’t mean. Make them both feel bad. (I emphasized that we weren’t going for a happy ending here; we were working on conflict, which means distress.)
A new bicycle
Book by author they both love
Ten dollars
Or Carl or Carlie says to Tom or Tomasina, “I hate when you do that.” Write their argument. Make each one do or say something he or she doesn’t mean. Make them both feel bad.
I can’t find the handout I gave the kids or I would have shown it to you here, but I usually give them something to look at while they work.
Then they write. I ask them to let me or Debby know if they need help. We also watch for kids who’ve stopped working and seem stuck.
After about twenty to twenty-five minutes I stop them and break them into groups for sharing and critique. Often I arrange the groups by age, and Debby and I join groups of the younger kids, because the older ones generally need no assistance. Part of the first class is devoted to a discussion of critiquing protocol.
Then I give out the homework. Below is what I handed out for the internal conflict class. It’s one of my favorites ever, and it can be another prompt for you. I don’t think I used it on the blog, but often my blog prompts are the source of class exercises and vice versa. Here is is:
A car is a great place for conflict. Who picks the radio station? Or CD player or iPod. Who prefers news or a recorded book? Open window? Closed window? How high to crank the heat or the air-conditioner? Who sits in front? Anybody gets carsick? Are the grownups arguing about driving style? Are the kids pushing, pinching, teasing? In doing this exercise you can draw on your own miserable car experiences.
Perry is invited to vacation with his best friend Letty Pewer and her parents. They are traveling from Brewster to Florida for a winter week in the sun. Write a scene or a story about their trip. Below are some possibilities to fool around with. Pick as many as you like or make up your own or do a combo of mine and yours.
• Letty’s father is peculiar. You decide how.
• Letty’s mom is a dangerous driver. You decide how.
• Letty’s younger brother and older sister are coming along. They don’t get along with Letty and dislike Perry.
• The car is older than Perry. The radio doesn’t work. There is no iPod, no CD player.
• The Pewers are economizing and haven’t bought a GPS. Good old maps are good enough for them. They plan to camp out and save on motel costs as soon as they reach warm enough weather.
• The car is bewitched - not in a good way.
• This is the snowiest winter in the history of New York and surrounding states.
• The scenic route will take the family and Perry through an old mining town in Pennsylvania. Unbeknownst to the authorities, one of the abandoned mines is now occupied by squatters who may be dangerous.
The children aren’t required to do the homework; this is summer and the workshop isn’t a school, but usually they do. I don’t grade their work but I do comment and return it. The emphasis in my comments is on story not on spelling and grammar.
For those of you who are teachers, I think you’ll understand this: I always show up with a longer lesson plan than I think I’ll need. Sometimes what I think is going to take half an hour gets done in five minutes. There is nothing (well, hardly anything) worse than running out of material.
Then we go home.
Two sessions are devoted to writing poetry. Since I’m still a newbie poet I just do my best and hope I don’t make too many mistakes. (I still shudder at the crazy advice I gave the kids about how to write a sestina.) I’ve found that structured poetry works best. Last summer we did poems that use anaphora and we did rhymed poetry. For the poetry sessions we follow the same structure as for fiction writing: discussion, in-class exercise, homework.
For the session on rhyme, the vocabulary word was apocope, a word I hadn’t known before, which I found in my preparation and which connected to the class topic. These are my notes for what I wanted to say about rhyme before giving out the exercise:
Rhyme:
the good - satisfying, pleasing, when clever surprising
the bad - too often not surprising, forced with word inversion, using not the best word
we’re waiting for the rhyme, may miss the meaning, like limericks
read from Poet’s Companion, define kinds of rhyme, make sure they know what accented vs. unaccented syllables are.
internal rhyme
rhyme scheme, aa bb, abab,
hand out Molly’s poems, go over rhymes
bouts-rimes - give example of rhymes in Handbook of Poetic Forms, put examples of these in your words, but not my examples
The exercise was a bouts-rimes, which is a kind of poem challenge. I think I had them do it in pairs. Each pair wrote a list of rhyming words then passed them off to the pair to their left. The next step was to write a poem using the rhymes. Fun. So another prompt would be to try this with a friend or a few friends.
Near the end of class I handed out Edward Lear’s poem, “Alphabet” and gave this homework assignment:
Write your own alphabet poem. In the example I gave you, some of the rhymes are forced. Avoid forced rhymes in your own poem. You can start with these first two lines or make up your own, but make the subject something lost:
A lost her Amulet, though she ransacked the Attic for it.
B said: Might it have been taken by a Bandit?
You can use any kind of rhyme:
∙ Masculine perfect rhyme, as in book with look
∙ Feminine perfect rhyme, as in riding with gliding
∙ Slant rhyme, as in blade with head
∙ Apocopated rhyme, as in beak with speaker
∙ Assonance or vowel rhyme, as in why with pride
∙ Identical rhyme, as in book with book (you can’t do this constantly)
∙ Eye rhyme, as in though with cough
For extra credit, after Z, end the poem with two or three lines (serious or not) about lost things.
Some of the poems I got back were amazing. You can look up the Lear poem and try it yourself.
The other thing I do each summer, although with decreasing enthusiasm, is a group novel. I keep offering it as a possibility because the kids like the idea, but then I think it disappoints them. I suggest a theme, and the first child writes a first chapter during the week and brings two copies of it in the next week. Debby keeps a master copy and passes the other on to someone to write the next chapter. By the end there’s a story in five chapters and everyone in the workshop gets a copy. Since there are more than five participants, there are several novels in the works, the number depending on the level of interest. Those who don't participate in the novel can submit a piece they worked on during the summer for distribution.
And that’s the summer workshop in a very long post. For prompts, try the exercise I gave the kids. Have fun, and save what you write!
Thirty to thirty-five children sign up and usually about twenty or so are there each week. The age range is ten years to eighteen. Debby, a fifth grade teacher volunteer helps me. (I’m also a volunteer. The local library hosts us.) I hold six sessions, each an hour-and-a-half long. We always start with a vocabulary word, often a word that’s new to me that I got online from Wordsmith at http://wordsmith.org/words/today.html. I’m looking for interesting words, interesting meaning. My favorite word last summer was poetaster.
The kids know what to do as soon as I write the word on the eraser board. They make up a definition and guess what part of speech the word is and write both on a scrap of paper, which I collect. I pick four or five to read aloud and slip in the real definition, written in a kid vernacular. Then they vote for the one they think is the true meaning. My hope is that they won’t pick mine so there’s a surprise. When the real definition is revealed we applaud the person who came up with the most persuasive wrong definition. Kids return to the workshop year after year and get better and better at inventing the fakes. They also start thinking about roots of words and etymology. My goal is to help them fall in love with English. Most are at least halfway there already.
Next, I read a poem I like and suspect will appeal to them. I’m not always right.
During the first class I ask the kids what they hope to get out of the summer. Last year several wanted to work on conflict. Great choice!
So I looked online for help and found an article that listed four kinds of conflict (interpersonal, internal, situational, societal). For the second class of the season I introduced the four and we started on one, interpersonal conflict. I’ve discovered over the years that some prep helps before the writing commences. Here are my notes to myself for leading the introductory discussion on conflict:
Why does a story need suffering, humorous suffering or serious suffering?
Why do readers seek out entertainment in which terrible things happen, villains behave monstrously, people die? I’m not sure, but maybe because we’re preparing for the worst that life can throw at us. When we make Sammy suffer we’re helping our readers, which should stiffen us to do it. We may hurt him, but we’re helping them.
Conflict doesn’t have to be huge, though. Worry about a report card and a parent’s reaction, worry about something foolish a character said.
How do you convey that a character feels bad?
Thoughts.
Perception, like stomach clench.
Dialogue.
Action (like leaving, or being wounded literally).
Possibly even setting.
After the discussion, when I think everyone is ready, I give out the writing exercise. You’ll see that I offer two choices. The age range in the class is huge - we’re like a one-room writing schoolhouse - and I want to appeal to them all. Here’s the in-class choice of exercises. You can use either or both as a blog-post prompt:
Carl or Carlie, who doesn’t like to share, has something that’s very precious to him or her, may have magical properties. His or her best friend Tom or Tomasina wants it. Write what happens. Make each one do or say something he or she doesn’t mean. Make them both feel bad. (I emphasized that we weren’t going for a happy ending here; we were working on conflict, which means distress.)
A new bicycle
Book by author they both love
Ten dollars
Or Carl or Carlie says to Tom or Tomasina, “I hate when you do that.” Write their argument. Make each one do or say something he or she doesn’t mean. Make them both feel bad.
I can’t find the handout I gave the kids or I would have shown it to you here, but I usually give them something to look at while they work.
Then they write. I ask them to let me or Debby know if they need help. We also watch for kids who’ve stopped working and seem stuck.
After about twenty to twenty-five minutes I stop them and break them into groups for sharing and critique. Often I arrange the groups by age, and Debby and I join groups of the younger kids, because the older ones generally need no assistance. Part of the first class is devoted to a discussion of critiquing protocol.
Then I give out the homework. Below is what I handed out for the internal conflict class. It’s one of my favorites ever, and it can be another prompt for you. I don’t think I used it on the blog, but often my blog prompts are the source of class exercises and vice versa. Here is is:
A car is a great place for conflict. Who picks the radio station? Or CD player or iPod. Who prefers news or a recorded book? Open window? Closed window? How high to crank the heat or the air-conditioner? Who sits in front? Anybody gets carsick? Are the grownups arguing about driving style? Are the kids pushing, pinching, teasing? In doing this exercise you can draw on your own miserable car experiences.
Perry is invited to vacation with his best friend Letty Pewer and her parents. They are traveling from Brewster to Florida for a winter week in the sun. Write a scene or a story about their trip. Below are some possibilities to fool around with. Pick as many as you like or make up your own or do a combo of mine and yours.
• Letty’s father is peculiar. You decide how.
• Letty’s mom is a dangerous driver. You decide how.
• Letty’s younger brother and older sister are coming along. They don’t get along with Letty and dislike Perry.
• The car is older than Perry. The radio doesn’t work. There is no iPod, no CD player.
• The Pewers are economizing and haven’t bought a GPS. Good old maps are good enough for them. They plan to camp out and save on motel costs as soon as they reach warm enough weather.
• The car is bewitched - not in a good way.
• This is the snowiest winter in the history of New York and surrounding states.
• The scenic route will take the family and Perry through an old mining town in Pennsylvania. Unbeknownst to the authorities, one of the abandoned mines is now occupied by squatters who may be dangerous.
The children aren’t required to do the homework; this is summer and the workshop isn’t a school, but usually they do. I don’t grade their work but I do comment and return it. The emphasis in my comments is on story not on spelling and grammar.
For those of you who are teachers, I think you’ll understand this: I always show up with a longer lesson plan than I think I’ll need. Sometimes what I think is going to take half an hour gets done in five minutes. There is nothing (well, hardly anything) worse than running out of material.
Then we go home.
Two sessions are devoted to writing poetry. Since I’m still a newbie poet I just do my best and hope I don’t make too many mistakes. (I still shudder at the crazy advice I gave the kids about how to write a sestina.) I’ve found that structured poetry works best. Last summer we did poems that use anaphora and we did rhymed poetry. For the poetry sessions we follow the same structure as for fiction writing: discussion, in-class exercise, homework.
For the session on rhyme, the vocabulary word was apocope, a word I hadn’t known before, which I found in my preparation and which connected to the class topic. These are my notes for what I wanted to say about rhyme before giving out the exercise:
Rhyme:
the good - satisfying, pleasing, when clever surprising
the bad - too often not surprising, forced with word inversion, using not the best word
we’re waiting for the rhyme, may miss the meaning, like limericks
read from Poet’s Companion, define kinds of rhyme, make sure they know what accented vs. unaccented syllables are.
internal rhyme
rhyme scheme, aa bb, abab,
hand out Molly’s poems, go over rhymes
bouts-rimes - give example of rhymes in Handbook of Poetic Forms, put examples of these in your words, but not my examples
The exercise was a bouts-rimes, which is a kind of poem challenge. I think I had them do it in pairs. Each pair wrote a list of rhyming words then passed them off to the pair to their left. The next step was to write a poem using the rhymes. Fun. So another prompt would be to try this with a friend or a few friends.
Near the end of class I handed out Edward Lear’s poem, “Alphabet” and gave this homework assignment:
Write your own alphabet poem. In the example I gave you, some of the rhymes are forced. Avoid forced rhymes in your own poem. You can start with these first two lines or make up your own, but make the subject something lost:
A lost her Amulet, though she ransacked the Attic for it.
B said: Might it have been taken by a Bandit?
You can use any kind of rhyme:
∙ Masculine perfect rhyme, as in book with look
∙ Feminine perfect rhyme, as in riding with gliding
∙ Slant rhyme, as in blade with head
∙ Apocopated rhyme, as in beak with speaker
∙ Assonance or vowel rhyme, as in why with pride
∙ Identical rhyme, as in book with book (you can’t do this constantly)
∙ Eye rhyme, as in though with cough
For extra credit, after Z, end the poem with two or three lines (serious or not) about lost things.
Some of the poems I got back were amazing. You can look up the Lear poem and try it yourself.
The other thing I do each summer, although with decreasing enthusiasm, is a group novel. I keep offering it as a possibility because the kids like the idea, but then I think it disappoints them. I suggest a theme, and the first child writes a first chapter during the week and brings two copies of it in the next week. Debby keeps a master copy and passes the other on to someone to write the next chapter. By the end there’s a story in five chapters and everyone in the workshop gets a copy. Since there are more than five participants, there are several novels in the works, the number depending on the level of interest. Those who don't participate in the novel can submit a piece they worked on during the summer for distribution.
And that’s the summer workshop in a very long post. For prompts, try the exercise I gave the kids. Have fun, and save what you write!
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