Short Story Writing Week - Day 4

Today you will have your final day of class time to work on your short story. The final version of it is due to turnitin.com by the start of class on Monday.

You may want to use class time today to write your responses to the reflection questions. Remember, these are a component of the grade for this project, as named on the assignment sheet.

• Short Story Reflection Questions
• Short Story Assignment

Short Story Writing Week - Day 3 - Peer Feedback

Here is a compilation of your excerpts

Today you will write feedback for one of them - both the author and reviewer will be anonymous to each other.

We will use the rest of the period to continue your work on your story. Remember the final version of it is due Monday by the start of class.

Short Story Writing Week - Day 2

Happy Tuesday!

In preparation for our anonymous feedback session on Thursday, please follow these steps:

1. Select a passage you'd like to get feedback on - roughly a full paragraph or half a page of dialogue. Just a few sentences will not be enough.
2. Copy and paste it into a new google doc - do not put your name anywhere in the document.
3. Upload it to turnitin.com - "Short Story - excerpt for feedback" by the end of the period today.
4. We will use these anonymously on Thursday - you will both give and receive feedback on your work. That will take about half the period, and the other half will be yours to continue writing.

Short Story Writing Week - Day 1

Happy Monday!

For a little inspiration today, we'll start off by listening to this passage from Anne Lamott's book Bird by Bird - it's one of my favorite books about writing.

Writing a Short Story - Assignment

It's finally time for the short story assignment!  Here it is:

• Short Story Assignment

Sharing Characters

Thursday - we will use class time today to share basic details about our characters out loud. Then the rest of the class will be able to ask you questions for you to consider about your character. You do not need to answer them at the moment, but consider and use them as you continue to explore your characters.

Writing Fiction - Day 6 - More Characters

Today we will continue our character work and continue building toward a short story. We'll use this handout to guide our work:

• Character Study #2

Writing Fiction - Day 5 - Characters

Happy Monday!

Today we will focus on creating a fictional character. As the week goes on we will build a story about that character, but for today we want to get a full sense of who that person is.

Random character generators:

• Character Name Generator
• Set of character generators
• Character trait generator
• Character job / occupation generator

After you explored these and made some basic choices about your character, I had you write about the series of prompts listed on this handout:

• Character study #1

Writing Fiction - Day 4

Welcome back! I hope you had a wonderful long weekend!

Today we will look at a collection of found objects - items people literally found during the course of their regular daily activities. These came from places like the floor of a laundry room, in a used book, on a table in a restaurant, in a shopping cart, on a person's lawn, or even in a book pocket of a church pew. They were collected in the wonderful Found Magazine and posted on their website. I selected twenty notes and lists for our work today and tomorrow:


Browse through the collection and choose one you'd like to work with today. The goal is to write the story of the object you selected. Things to think about:

• Who wrote the note?
• What was the purpose of the note?
• When / where did they write it?
• What does the note tell us about the person who wrote the note, or the situation in which the note would exist?

Fill in the missing pieces around the note with your story. You could write a narrative or a dialogue. You could specifically refer to parts of the note or even use its language. 

We will present these tomorrow by reading them aloud while we project the object on the screen.

Writing Dialogue - Day 3

Last time we met, you generated a line of dialogue then gave it away. You received another line of dialogue, added a response, then gave that away. Ultimately you received two lines of dialogue, and today you will put them to use.

You must incorporate them into a new dialogue - they do not have to be the first two lines - they can be, if you'd like - but you must use them both.

Also, we'll think about the different ways to introduce lines said by a character. You can simply use "she said - he said" but you do have other options! Here is a link to a list of potential choices, along with a warning about them:

• Words to use instead of said

So, your task for today includes multiple components:

• Establish the setting, characters, and purpose of the dialogue (scene)
• Use the two random lines you received
• Don't just write the dialogue - start building it into a scene
• Introduce lines using "dialogue tags"
• Add in a few actions / movements (see examples)

How to make this happen? Here are a few words of advice:

1. Start writing and just let the words flow - Don't edit - Trust your ear and initial thoughts to just get the scene out there.
2. Act it out - no, really. Think about how helpful this was the other day when we read some of the dialogues out loud - you start to notice things that you might not initially see on the page. Find someone to read your dialogue with you - I'm happy to do that!
3. You don't need to say everything, especially things that might be obvious. This is often a first place to start to cut lines - get to the stuff that matters - your reader shouldn't be able to feel like they can predict the next line!
4. Think of the flow - incorporate pauses, or even silence.  In conversations people sigh, look out a window, take a drink, puff on a cigarette, stand up, whatever. Using moments like this will help your dialogue to feel natural.
5. Don't be afraid of confrontations or challenges. Use surprises. Your characters don't always know what's coming next. You might not either! Allow yourself to be surprised!

Writing Dialogue - Day 2

Today we'll read the dialogues we created in class yesterday. I combined the submitted ones into one document. I'll assign several different pairs of people to read each dialogue aloud. We'll hear and comment on them before returning to our own work to revise and extend it.

• Student dialogues - round 1

Writing Dialogue - Day 1

On Friday we watched several examples of great dialogue scenes from films. We created this list of qualities of a dialogue:

• Moves scene / story forward
• Sets / resolves problems or conflicts
• Predictable / not 
• Language - profanity, word choice
• Emotions
• Tempo / pace
• Power - who has it / wants it / how does it shift?
• Actions / Reactions
• Intensity
• Creates / relieves tension
• Humor - variety of types

Today we'll start writing dialogues of our own. We'll all start out with the same starting line:

"You only heard one person's side. You don't know the truth."

Then, before you start writing your dialogue, name these things:

• Setting - where does your scene take place?
• Characters - choose two people for your scene. Who are they? What is the relationship between them? What is their role in the dialogue - are they trying to find out / hide something? Do they have power? Why do they care?
• What will your dialogue do?
• Create suspense? Resolve it?
• Move the story forward? Summarize what happened up to this point?
• Reveal a character's thoughts?
• Create a sense of time and place - context?

You will use this handout to create your dialogue. Please follow the directions and upload it to turnitin.com by the end of the period. Tomorrow we will read each other's dialogues and continue to work on them.

• Dialogue Activity #1