During period 7, we will be discussing and reading Cat's Cradle. Please read silently for the next 10-15 minutes. As you read, please take notes on the handout. After our activities, we will return to the lab.
Please take a moment today to review the tips Vonnegut gives us about writing.
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
Use at least one of these tips to revise a previous draft for your portfolio. This advice can also apply to poetry.
If you didn't finish your Houston draft, please use the time in the lab to complete this assignment. Otherwise, you are free to continue reading Cat's Cradle.
HOMEWORK: Read Cat's Cradle. Complete any missing or late work. Begin preparing your portfolio.
Please take a moment today to review the tips Vonnegut gives us about writing.
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
Use at least one of these tips to revise a previous draft for your portfolio. This advice can also apply to poetry.
If you didn't finish your Houston draft, please use the time in the lab to complete this assignment. Otherwise, you are free to continue reading Cat's Cradle.
HOMEWORK: Read Cat's Cradle. Complete any missing or late work. Begin preparing your portfolio.
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