GTLA Weekly Newsletter
Week of April 11th - April 15th
Reader's Workshop
- We will continue reading our Fantasy Book with our partners for our Fantasy Book Commercial Project. Our project consists of a book commercial that persuades our audience to read our Fantasy Book. In addition to the book commercial, we will write a personal commentary about our Fantasy Book. Class time will be given for us to read our Fantasy Book and to film our book commercial via iMovie. Our Fantasy Commercial Project is due on Wednesday, May 18th.
- Our Idiom Of The Week is: Head In The Clouds and our IOW Activity is due on Friday, April 15th.
- We will need to have our (25) correctly answered questions via Membean practice minutes by Thursday, April 14th.
Writer's Workshop
- Last week, we examined fantasy structures to strengthen our understanding of a fantasy story and we then brainstormed ideas for our fantasy story. Just coming up with a topic is not enough. A simple story idea is not enough. In order for a story to really become a story, it must have characters that seem real to us. We must make our audience connect with and care about our characters. In order to do this, we must bring our characters “to life”. Just creating a cute or interesting name and physical description of a character is not enough. All too often we focus on what is going to happen – the plot. While this is important, it will not make a GREAT story. It is not enough to just create action and events – what is important is WHO is starring in this plot. WHO is the story about and what will they do or become by the end of the story.
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Once your seed idea is chosen, the next step is NOT to develop the plot, but instead, the characters must be developed. They will need internal and external traits.
TEACHING: Today, you will select your story idea – the one you want to develop into your fiction story. Now that the idea is chosen I DO NOT want you to start drafting. Good fiction writers have to “live with” a story idea for a while. They use “thinking on the page” strategies to live with the characters and rehearse for the first draft of the story.
We are taking a different approach than you may have done before. Instead of focusing on planning what will happen in the story, we will be working on bringing to life the people/characters in the story that will make things happen.
Don’t overthink choosing your story. It will be the one that you keep coming back to – the one that “chooses” you. Often it is the one that has a character that reminds you of yourself or a character that has traits you wish you had.