Post date: Jan 18, 2013 10:23:10 PM
We're working on our unit of study in Short Realistic Fiction. I know some people will have questions about what we're trying to accomplish so I'll try to answer some of the questions in advance. The students all have some experience with narrative writing and we're building on that experience. This week we're working at taking their outlines and starting to write scenes. The transition between outline and "scenes" means that students should be adding dialogue or more description but primarily writing more like a story - we've been looking at published stories for examples of how to do this. Here's an example the outline might look like this: A girl is moving to a new town and she's nervous. Written as a scene it might look like this. Jenna paced around her empty room. Outside she heard the last of their things being loaded into the moving van. Her mother was busy rushing around the house and her brother was yelling at her to hurry up. She looked out the window one last time at the treehouse she loved. "I'm sure I'm not going to meet anybody I like in school next year" she thought to herself. We're writing short realistic fiction because in reality students won't have time to write a novel, and realistic fiction because we're asking them to write about what they know rather than making up stories about zombies and space ships. Good fantasy and science fiction is mostly based on characters and conflicts like good realistic fiction as well.