Classroom Discussions and Experiences
Video Opener: Chuck Jones - The Evolution of an Artist - Tony Zhou - July 16, 2015
All characters are in the process of learning.
Discipline: The challenges and restrictions you set for yourself.
Study real life and apply it to your art.
Assignment
Every student will write story targeted to reach five pages that will cause a reader to feel an emotion. The piece may miss the target and go way over target length, but the story must have at least one line on the fourth page to be collected. Many stories will be seven pages. Every year a few people go well over ten.
Pre-Writing Phase (Design and Brainstorming)
All students will be asked to choose a story concept from their own life. The story must be true. The story can be anywhere in the range from tragic to heartwarming, from painful to positive. The story must be something that caused change in your life, at least a little bit. This forces a dynamic character situation that can be reflected upon afterward.
Handout: Event Narrative Graphic Organizer
We will begin by discussing Freytag's Diagram and its use in describing classic tragic plays. Please never call Freytag's Diagram a triangle or a pyramid. The geometry teacher will disapprove.
Act One - Characterization
Act Two - Rising Action
Act Three - Climax
Act Four - Falling Action
Act Five - Resolution (Catastrophe)
The class will take quality notes to understand a heavily modified version of this skeleton for stories. We will especially discuss where stories begin and end (never), inciting incidents, the role of confict, tension, and emotion, the importance of crisis, and the need for catharsis. We will conclude with a discussion about the lack of straight lines in a human story, anticlimactic disappointment, and false climaxes.
There will be an in-class idea session as well as a presentation on the transformational process.
Separation - Liminality - Incorporation.
Handout: Rites of Passage in Comedy
Rough Draft Phase (Executing the Modified Freytag Design)
There will be four in-class writing workshop days. Each day will focus on one aspect of a narrative that many new writers either ignore or do poorly.
Workshop 1: Establish the Setting - Every student is expected to include a full paragraph of physical and sensory description before the action begins. Many new writers begin a story with actions taking place in an empty undescribed void. The audience responds more powerfully and emotionally if you create a "movie of the mind", and establish a vividly described environment for the action to take place in.
Workshop 2: Dialogue - Every student is expected to include spoken dialogue: what is said by them, what is said to them, what others say near them. The dialogue and the "he/she said" narration item should vary. Sometimes before the quote, sometimes after the quote, and sometimes between the quote. All three should be used to show off your knowledge of the punctuation of dialogue.
Handout: Quotations and Quotation Punctuation
Workshop 3: Internal Dialogue - Every student is expected to include a full paragraph of internal dialogue directly before the climax. Many new writers jump from verb to verb, action to action like a movie. The primary reason books will always be superior to a movie, is that in a written work, you get to know the mindset of the characters as well as the action. The student must include what the character is thinking, actions the character considers and rejects, questions the character has, as well as the complicated and confusing emotional combinations the character faces during a tension-filled crisis situation.
Workshop 4: Reflection - Every student is expected to include a full paragraph of reflection after the resolution. The student will use their current voice to comment on who he/she used to be before the change and how the events of the story have affected the course of his/her life. The "now" voice will be increasingly different than the "then" voice the character speaks from based on how far into the past the story took place. A good starter sentence for this section is "Thinking back I now realize . . ."
Final Draft Phase (Revision and Improvement)
There will be two in-class improvement workshop days.
Workshop 5: Checklist Items - Students will be asked to take their rough drafts and assess how well they have met the ultimate goals for the assignment. Students will review the assignment rubric and score themselves on each requirement on a scale of zero to four.
Handout: MLA Formatting
Handout: Common MLA Mistakes
Workshop 6: Challenge Items - Students will be asked to revisit the lessons from Piecemeal Hero and count their similes and metaphors, punctuation variety, and sentence variety.
Handout: Removing Thought Verbs
Handout: Syntax Analysis Worksheet