Teen Writers Circle Class Summary 10/28/13

with Michelle Cameron

Writing Critiques

We had a great class on this last October meeting of the year…

Among the comments on today’s sampling of writing were: 

• Dialogue punctuation and paragraphing – this is still an area that needs work. That’s not a surprise – a lot of the adult writers I work with don’t get it either. We’ll keep focusing on this. 
  
• Among the important aspects of dialogue is to make sure each character sounds true to him or herself. 
  
• We talked a little about “suspending disbelief” – making the unreal in a story seem real to the reader by being true to the internal rules of the story. 

• A beautiful autumn poem elicited the following comments: 
  

              - Poetry is condensed meaning and feeling.
              - Poems don’t need to rhyme! But they do need to adhere to an internal rhythm.
              - Poems don’t need to follow the same rules of punctuation or capitalization as prose.
              - This particular poem used the senses beautifully (previewing our topic for next week!) 

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Spooky Words

We did another “pick three” exercise today, picking three “spooky” words out of my magician’s hat – just in time for Halloween!

The stories that came out of this exercise ranged from spooky to violent, foreboding to unexpected.

As we had a few minutes to spare when the kids were done, we took what they considered their favorite line out of each story and put them together into one fairly nonsensical story. I’ve rearranged the sentences to make the most sense out of what they gave me:

“Why hello, child, do you need a ride home?” The Wizard’s name was Drake the Doofus. His whole figure appeared as if it would melt into the night.

The ominous crooked mansion stands proudly at the top of the mountain. I saw a rainbow in the distance.

I howled as they hacked off my finger with a kitchen knife. 

Uncle Vicky, married to Aunt Icky, got me a spelling book of how to spell spells.  I just tried to turn them out.

Well, I did say it was fairly nonsensical!

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Homework

As usual, one of three choices:

• Complete what they started in class.
  
• Work on something they started previously.
  
• Write something completely new!
  

Happy Halloween, everyone!

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