Monday 4/1

Freewrite:  Respond to the quote below:

When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself. -Ernest Hemingway

1.  Discuss Freewrite

2.  Review/Collect Settings:  

*Invite students to read.

3.  Short Story Drafts:  

Activity:  Meet with a partner.  Discuss overall plot line and the "profile" of  the protagonist.  Identify a key passage in which the character's qualities are revealed.

15 mins:  Share

4.  Activity:  Give Sensuality to an Abstract.  Work w/ partner.  Share drafts tomorrow.  Due:  Friday  April 5th.  (1 page)    *See previous post.  

Wednesday 3/20

Do NOW:

Respond to the quote below: 

"A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is."   Flannery O'Connor

1.  Discuss Freewrite

2.  Handout :  Eudora Welty on the Short Story.

Activity:  Read w/ partner.  Identify important points.  Offer personal insights. 

10 mins:  Share. 

3.  Fiction Powerpoints

4.  Activity:  Giving Sensuality to an Abstract. 

Death, Confusion, Envy, Chaos, Joy, Truth...  Choose and abstract and by creatively employing sensory details, provide "sensuality"......  1 pg w/ illustration.  Due April 1st. 

Setting:  Rough Draft due:  Friday  3/22   Final Copy:  April 1st. 

Tuesday 3/19

Do NOW:  Respond to the following quote:

"I think a little menace is fine to have in a story.  For one thing, it's good for the circulation.  There has to be tension, a sense that something is imminent, that certain things are in relentless motion, or else, most often, there simply won't be a story."  *Raymond Carver

1.  Discuss quote.

2.  Read:  "Eudora Welty on the Short Story"  (Handout)  Read

5 minute written response:  Share.

3.  Fiction Powerpoints

4.  Activity:  Choose an "urban setting";  "paint" a portrait with creative language.  Pay attention to detail!

Monday. 3/18

Free write:  Respond to the quote below:

Eudora Welty said, "Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else... Fiction depends for its life on place. Place is the crossroads of circumstance, the proving ground of, What happened? Who's here? Who's coming?..."

1.  Discuss Freewrite

2.  "To Build A Fire"   Analysis and discussion of sensory details, setting, and conflict

3.  Fiction Power points.    

4.  Work on Setting piece.  Rough draft due Friday.   

Wednesday 3/13

Do NOW:  Describe the street on which you live.  Consider:  sounds, smells, sights, feelings, etc ***Be Descriptive and Creative.

10 mins:  Share

1.  Discussion:  How important is setting in a story?  Why?

2.  Read "To Build A Fire"

Activity:  As you read, compile a list of sensory details. 


Jack London's "To Build A Fire"

http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Jack_London/To_Build_a_Fire/To_Build_a_Fire_p1.html

Tuesday 3/12

Do NOW:  Write one sentence that succinctly describes the plot of your story.


*Begin class with one Fiction Powerpoint.


1.  Plot Activity:   Collect Writers' plot lines...

Record class' plot descriptions on board.  **Whole Class Discussion:  Collective Evaluation

2.  Analysis:  Why are we writing what we are writing?  What can we learn about ourselves through our art?

**Look for similarities/contrast in plots/patterns of imagery/Narrators/Character Commonalities...


3.  Setting:  Various in importance --  Consider a story in which the setting was of vital importance.  Explain.  10 mins:  Share.  

Activity:  Describe the street on which you live?  What do you see?  Hear?  Smell?  Feel?  

10 mins:  Share.  

Monday 3/11

Freewrite:  Respond to the quote below:

There's more to the truth than just the facts.  ~Author Unknown

1.  Discuss Freewrite

2.  Ficition Powerpoints

3.  Plot Activity:  Write one sentence that succinctly describes the plot of your short story.

Record class' plot descriptions on board.

4.  Analysis:  Why are we writing what we are writing?  What can we learn about ourselves through our art?

**Look for similarities/contrast in plots...

5.  Setting:  Various in importance

Activity:  Describe the street on which you live?  What do you see?  Hear?  Smell?  Feel?  

10 mins:  Share.  

Wednesday 3/6

10 min write:  Respond to the quote below:

“Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.”
—Virginia Woolf

1.  Discuss quote

2.  Powerpoint Presentation

3.  Writing Workshop.  

Tuesday. 3/5

Activity:  10 min write-- Write page 132 of your future autobiography.    Share


PowerPoint presentations:   Fiction in Modern Society.    Critique/Discuss


Short Story Workshop.    Due:  March 8th

Monday 3/4

Freewrite:  Respond to the quote below:

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is 

obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

Mark Twain

1.  Discuss Write.

2.  Review Narration Development:

**Pause Action

***1st or 3rd Person narrator offers:

--insight  --reveals aspects of character  --reflects view of the world --observes setting  --flashback

3.  Activity:  Students present Powerpoint Presentations:

"Fiction and its relation to American Society"

**Whole Class discussion evaluating each presentation

4.  Workshop:  Rough Drafts    ***Final Copy due March 8th