Thursday, April 23, 2015

Hemingway Project Due!

Your Hemingway Project (drafts 1-4) are due today at the end of class!

If you haven't completed Draft Four (or three or two or one...) please do so now.

Draft Four: Sentence length

1. Keep your sentences short and declarative in your non-flashback section of the story. Remember dialogue sounds more realistic when you speak in short sentences or fragments.

2. In your flashback scenes, find moments where you digress and create long, complex sentences. Use em dashes to indicate digressions. Use semi colons ; to connect related clauses (but don't over use these). Use commas to make a simple sentence into a complex one. Use an ellipsis … to indicate trailing off. Use repetition of phrase to expand a comment (chiasmus, anaphora, and anadiplosis).

Ex: “They knew who had shot their fathers, their relatives, their brothers, their friends…”;

Use conjunctions to add phrases to your independent clauses (and, or, but, etc.)

3. Try to find a rhythm in your writing. Most paragraphs start out with short sentences. This allows for a certain length of speed. Then as your sentences get longer and more complex, you can slow or speed the eye of the reader. Usually, you want important information to be delivered slowly. The use of repetition helps create a meter and rhythm for your sentence structure.

IMPORTANT: 
Before you turn in your draft:

  • Proofread your writing!
  • Correct grammar/punctuation, etc.
  • Punctuating Sentences
  • Punctuating Dialogue
  • Paragraphing
  • Give your story a TITLE
  • Collect all drafts and put them in order: 4th on top, 3rd under that, 2nd after that, 1st after that! Your drafts should have proper MLA headings and indicate what draft # they are.
Note: Grades will be reduced if you make mistakes with your punctuation, dialogue, or paragraphing! Be warned--and learn to format your work correctly and professionally!

If you finish before the bell (it rings at 2:09, by the way), please entertain yourself by reading and writing some poetry--as our next unit will go back to poetry.

Here's a sample poem & writing prompt, if you need one:

Ode to Love by Jennifer Militello
Place its toothpicked pit in water, watch the grist
of its insides grow. Witness its populous bloom,
honeycombed with rough. Its cobblestones grip
the heart in its mitt, a closed fist thickened
and gritty as silt. The swamp of the plumb beat
adamant as weeds. The dish of which is salted
by complexities or cries. It is a house in which
we cannot live, the quiver on the arrow
we cannot launch. It grows late over Nevada
as we watch. Strikes its gullies: we grow burnt
as a moth. Mimics a sleep of archives and
the small lies all forget. Mimics all laughter
broken by the time it leaves the mouth.
With its moving parts, its chimes, its gleam,
it muddies our archways, lying low, gives off
noise and steam; its mechanics clear the fence.
It must be wooed. Must be quieted. Hush. It must
be soothed. Has a snag. Has a bleed. A drape.
Flaps awkwardly, at its edges, a heron. At
its center, a wide bottom perfect with fish.
Copyright © 2015 by Jennifer Militello.
PROMPT: Pick an emotion (in Militello's example she has picked "Love") and write an ODE to it--a poem of praise. You can see that she seems to be inspired by recipes or instructions. You can incorporate this kind of idea in your poem as well, if you'd like.

Remember that poetry heavily relies on IMAGERY: so use metaphors, similes, symbols, allusion, and personification somewhere in your poem to create visual imagery. Use alliteration, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia, and rhyme for SOUND imagery. Count your syllables and create metrical patterns, etc.

Be creative and risky. If you finish one draft, pick another emotion and write about that one! Keep writing!

HOMEWORK: Complete your Hemingway extra credit novel, if you are reading one. 

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About this course!

This course stresses understanding the characteristics & techniques in the literary genres of fiction, poetry, and dramatic writing. This course will continue to build on students’ reading and writing skills begun in previous creative writing classes. Readings and discussions of works by major writers in the field will be examined as inspiration and models of fine writing. This educational blog is designed for the use of the students at the School of the Arts in Rochester, NY.