Writing about Reading (Generic Questions) - To Use in Writer's Notebooks

    • For your next entry, get a package of one of your favorite canned or boxed foods and look at the ingredients. Use every ingredient in your next piece of writing.
    • This week, I would like you to think about what you find if you looked in your main character’s garbage can. What do they have that they would throw away? Compare that to what you might find in your own garbage can.
    • In your next entry, write one question that you would like to ask the person in your literature circle book. Then, imagine (and write) some of the ways they might answer the question.
    • When you come back, please write about what you read over spring break. Did you read something for fun? For school? You can include magazines and newspapers in your next entry.
    • In your next entry, imagine your main character had a hundred dollars, but he/she couldn't keep it. That character had to give it away to a person or charity. Who would he/she give it to? What would he/she want them to do with it?
    • In your next entry, I would like you to write a summary of your novel using only one-syllable words. It might be a challenge, but I have given you a few starters or examples.
      • “The last time he saw her, he...”
      • “From the back of the truck...”
      • “On the night of the full moon...”
      • “The one thing she know for sure…”
    • In your next entry, please complete the following sentence from the perspective of the main character in the book that you’re reading: “I’d walk a mile for a _______.” After completing the sentence, explain why your character would say that.
    • Your next entry is to list 100 things that you have learned in the year 2013. It doesn’t have to be descriptive or in complete sentences. For example, here are some of things that I have learned in 2013:
      • 1. Packing and moving apartments is much easier when I have help.
      • 2. How to use googledocs for reader’s notebooks
      • 3. How to make my cursive writing look really nice
      • 4. F. Scott Fitzgerald (author of The Great Gatsby) is related to Francis Scott Key (author of “The Star Spangled Banner”). They’re distant cousins.
      • 5. Pinterest craft projects are not as easy as they look.
    • For you next entry I want you to pick one picture that would tell the story that you’re reading. For example, you may be able to look at the picture on the right and know that this is a part of Red Riding Hood. Your next entry does not need to be many sentences. A picture is worth a thousand words, right? Therefore pick (or draw) a descriptive picture and use a few sentences to describe it.
    • For your next entry, make a list of everything in one of your character’s closet. (You don’t have to pick the main character.) What should have been thrown out but wasn’t? What’s right in front? What kind of clothes do they wear? What kind of style does he/she have? Please let me know if you have any questions.
    • For your next entry, create a dialogue between you (the psychologist) and the main character of your novel. The dialogue should revolve around an inkblot test. An inkblot test is a personality test which involves the evaluation of a subject’s response to ambiguous ink blots. This test was published in 1921 by Hermann Rorschach who was a psychiatrist from Switzerland. The interpretation of people's responses to the Rorschach Inkblot Test was originally based on psychoanalytical theory, but investigators have used it in an empirical fashion. Please use the image (to the left) when creating your dialogue between you (as a psychologist) and your main character.
    • Stephen King said that “Fiction is the truth inside the lie.” In your next entry due, explain a truth your book is telling, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction. For example, in Of Mice and Men, we read about this truth: oppression does not come only from the hands of the strong or the powerful.
    • For your next entry, imagine that the book you’re reading was about to be made into a movie. Who might play the main parts? What body language, characteristics, and quirks do they have that might help round out your characters?
    • For your next writing about literature, I want you to find 2-3 grammar mistakes from your novel: run-ons, fragments, and comma errors. Write out the error, and then explain why it is an error.
    • For your next entry create a music playlist for your main character. Pick at least 3 songs that you think your main character would like to listen to. Then, write a short description for each song with why you think the character would listen to them. (If you want, you can link the songs (to youtube, pandora, googlemusic, etc.), and I will listen to them when I read your “Writing about Reading” entry.)
    • In your next entry please write about the rules of the society your main character lives in – the spoken, written-down rules and the unspoken ones, too. What are the consequences when these rules are broken?
    • In your next entry, write a poem in your main character’s voice, using a metaphor to describe a secondary character who matters to him or her.
    • In your next entry, answer the following question: “What happens when your antagonist sees a spider?” (An antagonist is a person or a group of people who oppose the main character(s). In the classic style of stories wherein the action consists of a hero fighting a villain/enemy, the two can be regarded as protagonist and antagonist, respectively.)