Announcements and Reminders:
Please finish your child's book, if you haven't.
|
Today’s Agenda:
Pick a photo and describe that person or build a scene around him or her.     Guess Who! Characters More Great Character Descriptions We left off last time when filling out this questionnaire: Questions to Ask Your Character: (from Spilling Ink by Anne Mazer and Ellen Potter) 1. What is your happiest memory? 2. What makes you laugh so hard soda shoots out of your nose? 3. What don't you want anyone to find out about you? 4. What is the best part of your personality? 5. What shoes do you usually wear? 6. Name some things that you are not very good at. 7. How would your best friend describe how you look? 8. What irritates you? (i.e. noises, bad habits, personality traits)? 9. What are you afraid of? 10. Tell me about your family. 11. What does your bedroom look like? 12. What do you think of yourself when you look in the mirror? 13. What's the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to you? 14. Do you have a crush on anyone? 15. What do you really, REALLY want more than anything else in the world? Students were working on these when the bell rang. More questions from Gail Carson Levine's Writing Magic: Name: Nickname: Kind of being (human, animal, extraterrestrial, fantasy or fairy-tale creature): Age: Gender: Pets: Best friend: Way of speaking: Physical characteristics (gestures, posture, attitude): Items in his or her pockets, backpack, or purse: Hobbies: Favorite sports: Talents, abilities, or powers: Relationships (how he or she is with other people): Other faults or good points not mentioned above: Challenge #3 Make a list of all the things you want. It can be anything from wanting a particular bully to leave you alone, to wanting riding lessons, to wanting your best friend to move back from Japan. Now pick from the list the thing you want the most, and think of all the ways you could attain that thing, from the realistic to the ridiculous. Write a short scene in which you try out one of those ideas, and see what happens. |
If you were absent:
See above. Ask Ms. Dorsey for a chance to read the chapter we used from Spilling Ink, and the passage from Writing Magic. |
In Stephen King’s words, from ON WRITING:
“Thin description leaves the reader feeling bewildered and nearsighted. Over description buries him or her in details and images. The trick is to find a happy medium. It’s also important to know what to describe and what can be left alone while you get on with your main job, which is telling a story.
I’m not particularly keen on writing which exhaustively describes the physical characteristics of the people in the story and what they’re wearing (I find wardrobe inventory particularly irritating; if I want to read descriptions of clothes, I can always get a J. Crew catalogue). I can’t remember many cases where I felt I had to describe what the people in a story of mine looked like—I’d rather let the reader supply the faces, the builds, and the clothing as well. If I tell you that Carrie White is a high school outcast with a bad complexion and a fashion-victim wardrobe, I think you can do the rest, can’t you? I don’t need to give you a pimple-by-pimple, skirt-by-skirt rundown. We all remember one or more high school losers, after all; if I describe mine, it freezes out yours, and I lose a little of the bond of understanding I want to forge between us. Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.”
Do you recognize this description?
“Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, __________! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days and didn't thaw it one degree at . . . . "
Some Sources:
No comments:
Post a Comment