Generating Plot. After sharing your mini-plots generated by the "first line" choices, listen to some advice from a master plotter: Stephen King.

Then consider King's advice and use a piece of it to generate further work on a plot.

Plot in Poetry

Consider the poem "The Migration of the Grey Squirrels." In a few stanzas, William Howitt told an entire saga about squirrels in a kingdom threatened by the encroachment of pigs, then has them travel in search of a new home, pursued by predators, until they heroically crossed a stream and found their promised land.

Choose your own animal and write a "plot poem" which tells a story. Consider our eight point story arc as a way to guide you.

https://www.dltk-kids.com/crafts/miscellaneous/mhowitt-squirrels.htm

What Makes a Scene Exciting?

What makes a scene exciting? What makes a plot move forward so that it does not become boring to the reader or viewer?

We will discuss these questions today in PLOT AND PACING.

Today, along with our DIALOGUE POEM, we will try this activity to help with rhyme and meter.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold,

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day

Nothing gold can stay.

Please read the short Robert Frost poem with the title "Nothing Gold Can Stay." Then read it again. Consider its thematic possibilities, and different ways that we interpret the word "gold."  What is Frost ultimately saying?

THEN, in an appreciation of Frost's style, try your own version of the poem.  Each line, aside from the title and the final line (which is the title again) should be six syllable rhyming couplets.

EXAMPLE:

NOTHING SWEET IS BAD

My chocolate cake is good

It’s happy-making food.

My frosted cupcake’s fun

When the long day is done.

So sweets go to the sweet

Deserving of a treat

So sugar makes us glad:

Nothing sweet is bad.

NOW you try!  Count your lines and choose only true rhymes.

OUR FAVORITE SETTINGS

SMALL TOWNS
    --everyone knows everyone
    --if an event happens, everyone knows it
    --town gossip
    --town drunk

HOGWARTS CASTLE
    --Diagon Alley with shops and wizard clothing, products
    --Familiar--school-like setting, returning after summer, stern teachers
    --Different--witches, wizards, odd clothing, strange courses, monsters, moving staircases
    --NEW WORLD--we investigate the castle WITH the characters, every year we learn
       new things about it
    --Common rooms--students gathering in houses (mysterious paintings/passwords)
    --Quidditch

THE GIVER
     --Everything is the same
     --Scary,  Dystopian, but compelling
     --Big Brother--type setting
     --Future

THE SECRET HISTORY--college campus
     --Intense snowstorms
     --Isolaton
     --Ivy-covered stone walls--academic setting
     --Aura of mystery, suspense

DIVERGENT
--Factions in various  parts of CHICAGO
--Characters must belong to one or another
--Factions reveal description, allow reader to know characters
--We are drawn in by finding our PLACE in the setting
--in FUTURE

THE LION, THE WITCH, and THE WARDROBE

--Fantasy
--Escape
--Child goes through wardrobe into another world
--Time stops in real world so no one realizes someone was gone.

Description and Setting: An Introduction

This week we'll read and write descriptions and look at successful fictional settings.  As an introduction to setting and word choice, look at these two introductory passages.  The first one was written by Edgar Allan Poe in his famous short story "The Fall of the House of Usher."  The second is a re-phrasing of Poe's words. Why is Poe's description more memorable?

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.

Throughout a quiet, overcast autumn day, when gray clouds lay soft and low in the sky, I had been enjoying a solitary ride through an unremarkable expanse of countryside, and after a time found myself, as twilight faded to velvet dusk, within view of the unhappy House of Usher. 

(borrowed from http://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/by-writing-goal/improve-my-writing/enrich-your-descriptions).