Archive for the ‘Brave Writer Philosophy’ Category

Five things to buy before summer

1. Buy new pencils and pens, markers and pastels, even paints.

2. Buy paper of various sizes, shapes, colors, and with and without lines.

3. Buy one new book of poetry.

4. Buy two clipboards.

5. Buy a crate to hold it all.

A fresh supply of writing/drawing/painting materials right before summer will help to keep writing alive for your kids.

To invite them to draw/write outside, try creating the following setting.

Take pillows from indoors and put them in the corner of your deck, under a tree, next to a planter or bench. Add a blanket for coziness. Make sure some potted flowers are nearby. Then bring the crate of supplies outdoors. Add a little CD player of music and perhaps a pitcher of ice water and voila! A writing/drawing haven! You might find yourself sneaking out for a bit.

Julie

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How to enhance the realism of a description

Flaws characters

The writing we love is writing that reveals a specific person or item or experience. We aren’t drawn to generalizations about topics or people.

One way to enhance the realism of a description is to include flaws:

  • a crooked nose
  • a sunset with a streak of grey smoke from a passing jet run right through it
  • the family sofa which is worn on both arms
  • the goal scored over the head of the goalie that hit the rim of the net… and dropped in anyway
  • the bite of homemade pie whose raspberries left a stain on my teeth
  • the chipped paint on a favorite bicycle
  • the piece of toilet paper stuck to the shoe after using a public restroom
  • the partial confession to a parent (telling the truth… mostly)
  • the broken promise of a politician you support
  • the charitable manner of the politician you oppose/despise
  • a mistake in spite of preparation

Find a way to show the cracks in perfection and your readers will love your work, and moreover, they’ll believe it.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything,
That’s how the light gets in.

~Leonard Cohen

Image by tanakawho (cc cropped, text added)

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That Absurd Little Bird: The Topic Sentence

If you want to see my dyed gray hair stand on end, talk to me about the importance of the initial topic sentence.

My left earlobe is very attractive for three reasons.

I like anchovy ice cream more than pizza.

Captain Diaperpants is an entertaining book and I highly recommend it.

Need I go on? ::yawn::

Truth is: The topic sentence is to the paragraph what support hose are to vericose veins. We don’t really want to be aware of the work they’re doing. They offer support, yes, but why announce that fact to the world? The best ones are hidden in the compelling-to-read prose.

I was trolling the Internet the other day and read a whole bunch of sample paragraphs on a writing site for homeschooled students. The curriculum writer stressed the importance of both the topic sentence and structured, orderly writing as hallmarks of correct writing. She then conceded that this kind of writing would be “stiff and stilted and even boring in most cases,” but it didn’t matter. Didn’t matter? In what universe? The point was to learn to write these orderly, cardboard, stiff, spiritless, uninspired, i-n-s-i-p-i-d paragraphs (::grinding teeth:: ::mad hair standing on end::) with duty and diligence no matter how painful to the reader.

Oh break my writerly heart!

Reverse the curse of the initial topic sentence.

Here’s how:

  • Start in the middle.
    Don’t tell me all I need to know in the first sentence. Once I find out that you are a black belt in karate, what interest do I have in reading how you earned the belt? Start with the struggle, facing the brick with your sore hand throbbing as you prepare to sever it in half as with a cleaver. Leave me hanging out there, flapping in the breeze, worried and curious.
  • Get me involved.
    Use sensory detail to suck me into the scene without revealing your point until I’m hooked:

    I sneezed when I leaned over the basket of cumin to examine it for bugs. The spicy fragrance reminded me of kasbahs and Moroccan stews. Unfortunately, I found myself in a modern Farmer’s Market in downtown Cincinnati instead. I miss North Africa, where I grew up.

  • Put the main idea at the end of the paragraph.
    Most freewriting will start with a typical topic sentence that generalizes about the subject for writing. That’s fine when getting your thoughts together. To help hide the know-it-all sentence when you revise, move it to the end and see what happens. Like in the sample above—the topic sentence is last to appear. It’s so much happier modestly revealing itself at the end.

I know, I know. I didn’t even talk about the all important topic sentence in academic writing or in subsequent paragraphs. We’ll get to that another day. For now, hook me, seduce me, scare me, move me, grab me by the collar and don’t let me go. Lure me into your writing by concealing the point. That’s the point! (And that second-to-last sentence you just read, the one with the hairy mustache pretending not to be a topic sentence, is the topic sentence for this piece, artfully concealed until the end, incidentally…)

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Narrow and Deep Writing

Writing Tip: Narrow the Scope

My professor pulled up his chair in front of the class. He waved his hand at us. “Anyone need help preparing their term papers? Now’s the time to ask.”

Fifteen adults sat silently.

He urged us again.

Silence.

Finally, one student raised his hand. “I’m struggling with my topic. I want to cover the impact of Cone’s theology on the Catholic church, sexuality and justice in America.”

I immediately thought to myself, “That’s not a paper, that’s a book!”

My professor agreed. “Whoa! Slow down. The best term papers are narrow and deep. You want to pick one tiny aspect of the whole and zero in on that. Then you will go as deeply as you can within that narrowly defined topic.”

I loved how he put this. The Topic Funnel (Chapter 6 of The Writer’s Jungle) is all about narrowing the scope of the writing topic so that you can investigate it deeply.

Narrow

A narrow topic comes from a larger subject that the writer knows lots about. Many kids are expected to write generally about the Civil War or the solar system. They only have superficial knowledge of these huge topics and then can only repeat those cliched bits of information in dry paragraph form. Their writing neither reveals insight nor expertise. And your kids know it. So generally, they don’t enjoy this kind of writing.

However, when a fan is asked to write about the Redwall book series, the opposite problem can occur. The child is overwhelmed by the volume of information she knows about the topic and can’t write due to the paralysis of not knowing where to start.

To avoid these twin pitfalls, go narrow and deep.

Narrow a topic by identifying the most interesting aspect of the topic to the writer.

  • Don’t write about gardening. Write about composting.
  • Don’t write about soccer. Write about playing goalie during a losing season.
  • Don’t write about the solar system. Write about the rover excursion on Mars.
  • Don’t write about Redwall generally. Write about Martin the Warrior’s sword.

Deep

Deep writing means that you probe a question related to the narrow topic of writing. Younger kids may simply report or describe the process of composting, playing goalie, the rover’s trip to Mars or how Martin got his sword. For older kids, get in the habit of asking a provocative question about the narrow topic in order to go deep.

  • Ask what method works best for composting when living in the suburbs with limited land.
  • Ask about whether or not the goalie was responsible for the losing season.
  • Ask about the cost effectiveness of the Mars Rover based on what NASA is learning there.
  • Ask how Martin the Warrior’s sword plays an important role in the book, Loamhedge.

Next time your kids get ready to write, think narrow and deep.

Help for high school writers

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Struturing Chaos

So your kids have been freewriting for months now, you are taking the risk to let your kids express all those random thoughts while you find words and ideas to praise… so now what?

I like to recommend eight weeks of freewriting before you revise any of the pieces of writing. Keep the eight freewrites in a manila folder and don’t even bother to read them unless your child wants to read them to you (let her decide).

Then when the eight weeks are over, take the folder from the shelf (on the ninth week) and lay the freewrites out on the table. Suggest your child pick one that she likes and that you will revise together.

The word “revision” often strikes fear into the heart of the child/student (particularly if writing practice has mostly consisted of correcting errors in the past). To avoid the clash of egos (Writer versus Editor), talk about expanding the piece of writing (not revising it). Let your child know that the goal is to take the raw writing, find the gems in it and then shine them up by adding detail and bringing the original to life.

Here’s how:

  • Read the piece aloud.
  • Give a colored pen to your child so that she makes the editorial changes and notes.
  • Together, identify the main idea. (Ask, What’s this piece about? Pick one main idea. If the piece meanders between cooking and soccer, choose one.) Cross out sentences that don’t support that idea.
  • Circle vague terms. Vague terms include “amazing, great, awesome, lousy, totally rad, cool, the bomb, nice, special, red, boring, long, short, hard, complicated, dangerous” and so on. These are hiding experiences so dig a bit deeper.
  • On a new sheet of paper, expand the content of the vague sentences. Pick two to start. Then ask, “How was scoring that goal amazing? Show me. Tell me about the experience of scoring the goal.” Then write a few more sentences about that experience. These will replace or expand the weak content. You can do this over a period of several days, doing only one or two at a time. Don’t do all of them. Pick ones that hold more detail in your child’s imagination. Don’t work on those that create anxiety or frustration.
  • Type up the piece (with new expanded sections) triple spaced, one sentence at a time. Print. Cut the sentences up and lay them out on the table. Now move them around until there is a pleasing order. Staple in the new order onto a piece of paper.
  • Look for lapses in sequence or missing details. Add those now on another sheet of paper.
  • Add a new opening. Almost everyone starts with a boring sentence. Write a new opening that draws on personal experience, an anecdote, a question or an interesting, little known fact.
  • Put it all together on the computer, print it up and read it to someone you love!

For more detail about all of these steps, see your copy of The Writer’s Jungle.

Remember, you don’t have to fix everything. Fix a few things and then be done.

–julie

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