If needed for Scribble:
Pick a photo and describe that person or build a scene around him or her.
Showing posts with label Character. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Character. Show all posts
Monday, November 3, 2014
Interesting Characters/Photos
If needed for Scribble:
Pick a photo and describe that person or build a scene around him or her.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Announcements and Reminders:
Please finish your child's book, if you haven't.
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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:
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Guess Who! Characters
Who is the character? What book is he or she from?
1. "If the motorcycle was huge, it was nothing to the man sitting astride it. He was twice as tall as a normal man and at least five times as wide. He looked simply too big to be allowed, and so wild — long tangles of bushy black hair and beard hid most of his face, he had hands the size of trash can lids, and his feet in their leather boots were like baby dolphins."
2. "She's the twelve-year-old, the one who reminded me so of _____in stature. Up close she looks about ten. She has bright, dark eyes and satiny brown skin and stands tilted up on her toes with arms slightly extended to her sides, as if ready to take wing at the slightest sound. It's impossible not to think of a bird."
3. "_______ did not see ________ as the beautiful ten-year-old boy that grown-ups saw, with dark, tousled hair and a face that could have belonged to Alexander the Great. ______ looked at ______ only to detect anger or boredom, the dangerous moods that almost always led to pain."
4. "_____ _____ was a tall man with powerful shoulders, a fierce dark face, and eyes that seemed to flash and glitter with savage laughter. It was a face to be dominated by, or to fight: never a face to patronize or pity. All his movements were large and perfectly balanced, like those of a wild animal, and when he appeared in a room like this, he seemed a wild animal held in a cage too small for it."
5. "The face of _________ was ageless, neither old nor young, though in it was written the memory of many things both glad and sorrowful. His hair was dark as the shadows of twilight, and upon it was set a circlet of silver; his eyes were grey as a clear evening, and in them was a light like the light of stars."
from (mixed order)
d. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (page 12)
e. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling (page 8)
Answers: 1e, 2a, 3c, 4d, 5b
and
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (page 7):
"There are four simple ways for the observant to tell Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar apart: first, Mr. Vandemar is two and a half heads taller than Mr. Croup; second, Mr. Croup has eyes of a faded china blue, while Mr. Vandemar's eyes are brown; third, while Mr. Vandemar fashioned the rings he wears on his right hand out of the skulls of four ravens, Mr. Croup has no obvious jewelry; fourth, Mr. Croup likes words, while Mr. Vandemar is always hungry. Also, they look nothing alike."
1. "If the motorcycle was huge, it was nothing to the man sitting astride it. He was twice as tall as a normal man and at least five times as wide. He looked simply too big to be allowed, and so wild — long tangles of bushy black hair and beard hid most of his face, he had hands the size of trash can lids, and his feet in their leather boots were like baby dolphins."
2. "She's the twelve-year-old, the one who reminded me so of _____in stature. Up close she looks about ten. She has bright, dark eyes and satiny brown skin and stands tilted up on her toes with arms slightly extended to her sides, as if ready to take wing at the slightest sound. It's impossible not to think of a bird."
3. "_______ did not see ________ as the beautiful ten-year-old boy that grown-ups saw, with dark, tousled hair and a face that could have belonged to Alexander the Great. ______ looked at ______ only to detect anger or boredom, the dangerous moods that almost always led to pain."
4. "_____ _____ was a tall man with powerful shoulders, a fierce dark face, and eyes that seemed to flash and glitter with savage laughter. It was a face to be dominated by, or to fight: never a face to patronize or pity. All his movements were large and perfectly balanced, like those of a wild animal, and when he appeared in a room like this, he seemed a wild animal held in a cage too small for it."
5. "The face of _________ was ageless, neither old nor young, though in it was written the memory of many things both glad and sorrowful. His hair was dark as the shadows of twilight, and upon it was set a circlet of silver; his eyes were grey as a clear evening, and in them was a light like the light of stars."
from (mixed order)
a. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (page 98)
b. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
(page 274)
c. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Cardd. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (page 12)
e. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling (page 8)
Answers: 1e, 2a, 3c, 4d, 5b
and
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (page 7):
"There are four simple ways for the observant to tell Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar apart: first, Mr. Vandemar is two and a half heads taller than Mr. Croup; second, Mr. Croup has eyes of a faded china blue, while Mr. Vandemar's eyes are brown; third, while Mr. Vandemar fashioned the rings he wears on his right hand out of the skulls of four ravens, Mr. Croup has no obvious jewelry; fourth, Mr. Croup likes words, while Mr. Vandemar is always hungry. Also, they look nothing alike."
Friday, June 7, 2013
Friday, May 9, 2008
May 9, 2008
May 9, 2008
Today we read from an example book for an Underland story: Gregor the Overlander which the first in a series of five books. Students should be working on developing their underland stories.
We also used that book to look at developing a character, and ways an author gives the reader information about the character.
Students received their class final assignment which is due by May 23rd at the latest. We will have one computer day -- May 19 to type these up in the computer lab. See the assignment in a nearby blog.
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