Staying on the Rails: Structuring Fictional Stories
How do you broaden creativity while fostering story structure?
How do you broaden creativity while fostering story structure?
My students have been getting sparked by a character to develop believable stories in their realistic fiction unit.
Writing flash fiction can be liberating, exhilarating, and great writing process practice.
Looking for a way to end the writing year with transference, engagement, and noticeable growth? Choosing a familiar writing unit may be just the way.
Fiction is not a dream, nor is it guesswork. It is imagining based on facts, and the facts must be accurate or the work of imagining will not stand up. —Margaret Culkin Banning
Last month at MRA, I listened to Jacqueline Woodson speak about her writing process. It wasn’t the first time I heard her speak and I hope it won’t be my last. She is… Continue reading
Some of you know I’ve been dabbling with writing fiction for the past six months. I’ve also had the pleasure of leading a fiction writing unit of study in two different classrooms this… Continue reading
In narrative writing, it is difficult to shift from telling the story to showing the story. I’ve helped launch a fiction study in a couple of fifth grade classrooms this week, and we’ve… Continue reading
Giving characters free will, instead of outlining them in detail before writing begins, allows the story to flow naturally and allows the characters to become more real and more interesting than they could be if… Continue reading
The past few months I’ve been reading several authors’ blogs and I keep coming across the abbreviation W.I.P. Finally I figured out it means Work In Progress. WIP is part of the language… Continue reading
So I took some time to create a video about the system I created in order to track and reflect on my summer reading. Because I pushed myself to reflect in a new… Continue reading
Slice 1: All morning I waited for Laurie Halse Anderson’s post about the writing challenge for today. Although a little apprehensive about whether this would be worthwhile, I found myself writing interview questions… Continue reading
Did you know that the Curious George Stories, written by Margaret and H.A. Rey, were inspired by many real-life circumstances the writers went through as they escaped from France in 1940? Remember how… Continue reading
I was assessing my students in Reading in a colleague’s office today. As a student was finishing up a passage silently, I began looking at her walls. I found a great chart on… Continue reading
I received a question earlier this evening about what’s next in my Writing Workshop: What do you usually do next in writing workshop? I just finished persuasive writing, and this is the first… Continue reading