Teen Writers Circle Class Summary 11/18/13

with Michelle Cameron

Critique

Today we talked about sound in writing. But first, we reviewed their current work.

Among the topics we talked about today, based on the students’ work in progress:

• Use of 2nd person and how that differs from 1st or 3rd
  
• Adding additional layers for complexity, and how to let the reader to learn more than the main character
  
• Description and flow
  
• How to hold back and not reveal everything – the fact that the reader wants to know what you haven’t yet revealed is a wonderful thing!
  
• Earning your ending – not allowing yourself just to give up at the end 
  
• The use of repetition and the circular story

Sound

To start off, we talked about the bards of old and how they were able to memorize such long epic poems – that the use of rhyme and rhythm was instrumental for memory.

Then we listened to the Cups song and discussed why a song like this one – which has become an obsession with some people – really relies on rhythm to appeal to people.

We discussed nursery rhymes and how many of their rhythms come straight from our heartbeat. We also talked about alliteration, onomatopoeia, and repetition – and how all of these contribute to the sound of the work.

We read two poems – “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll, with its nonsense words which, because of rhyme and rhythm, somehow make sense, and “Click Beetle” by Mary Ann Hoberman, a child’s poem that contains all of the elements we talked about today.

Finally, we did a quick exercise. I gave them an example rhyme:

Yikes
My bike’s
Full of spikes

And gave them about 10 minutes to come up with as many of these as they could. Some of the kids took off with this – others struggled a bit. But I think they were finally getting it before the 10 minutes was up.

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Homework

For next week, they can either write a rhyming poem (today’s exercise inspired some of them to ask to do this), or use should in a descriptive part of whatever they’re writing – either their current piece or a new one.