We'll start the day with students choosing a slip of paper with a type of person written on it: a nun, a police officer, a best friend, a cute stranger, etc. I asked everyone to write on the back how they'd change the event their character is writing about in their first-person diary entry. The answers were either "more ____________________" or "less __________________." People then passed these slips of paper to the left. So, each person got another person's word.
Now you have to do TWO things. Re-write the journal entry in 3rd person instead of 1st person (this means creating a narrator that will describe your actions within the scene) AND write in a style that is "more_______________" or "less________________" depending on the word that you receive. The essential part of the first part of this lesson is having people recognize that they always have a narrator in the story and are always writing for "someone." Change who you're writing to and your voice and style changes.
I then explained that there are two parts to point of view in prose. The first is what "person" you are writing in. We talked briefly about first, second, third limited, third omniscient, and cinematic. The second decision is more subtle and has to do with the degree to which the narrator lets on that he or she is telling a story and telling it to a particular person. Having a narrator with an attitude is fun and can add another dimension to the story. But it's more difficult and creates a certain distance between the reader and the events in the story.
The rest of the class will be for continued work time.
Homework due Monday, October 12th
Read A Clean, Well-Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway