Goal for the day: For students to understand their options in point of view.
We started 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 their Writing to Truth story if they had to tell it to that person. 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.
I think asked everyone to start rewriting their "Writing to Truth" assignment and change two things: write in 3rd person instead of 1st person (so create 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 each person received. An 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.
We then talked a bit about stories that switch point of view from chapter to chapter or even within chapters. This can get very confusing for a reader and requires a writer have a great deal of control. We went back to "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" and looked at how Hemingway shifted the point of view of the story by making the second waiter his viewpoint character.
The rest of the class was spent working on projects. I passed out a sheet with writing corrections to help people interpret how I marked up their paper.
Assignment for Thursday, September 25th
Keep working on projects.
We started 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 their Writing to Truth story if they had to tell it to that person. 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.
I think asked everyone to start rewriting their "Writing to Truth" assignment and change two things: write in 3rd person instead of 1st person (so create 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 each person received. An 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.
We then talked a bit about stories that switch point of view from chapter to chapter or even within chapters. This can get very confusing for a reader and requires a writer have a great deal of control. We went back to "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" and looked at how Hemingway shifted the point of view of the story by making the second waiter his viewpoint character.
The rest of the class was spent working on projects. I passed out a sheet with writing corrections to help people interpret how I marked up their paper.
Assignment for Thursday, September 25th
Keep working on projects.