Description Comes Alive
This season I created a new writing workshop offered through Collier Adult and Community Education Collier Adult and Community Education in Naples, Florida. It's a writing workshop that focuses solely on critique and revision.
Since students are used to my teaching routine of covering a writing element, having them complete writing activities, and then reading for feedback, this new format was providing a shaky start. So I decided to read an excerpt from a published book or story each week.
Thursday I included description that comes alive in Mr. Monster by Dan Wells. Mr. Monster The main character, a teenage sociopath, John Wayne Cheever, is mesmerized by fire he thinks of "as a precocious dog. Fire was my pet, my companion ..." Earlier in the scene he watches as "the flames licked up the gas and then slowly started in on the wood itself."
My students were mesmerized as the scene continued: "It seemed like a living thing, probing the wood with a thin yellow finger, tasting it, then reaching out greedily and lapping it up." It had the impact I intended; they compared their own description to what they'd just heard me read to improve their manuscripts.
Description Comes Alive when you read with a writer's eye.
Since students are used to my teaching routine of covering a writing element, having them complete writing activities, and then reading for feedback, this new format was providing a shaky start. So I decided to read an excerpt from a published book or story each week.
Thursday I included description that comes alive in Mr. Monster by Dan Wells. Mr. Monster The main character, a teenage sociopath, John Wayne Cheever, is mesmerized by fire he thinks of "as a precocious dog. Fire was my pet, my companion ..." Earlier in the scene he watches as "the flames licked up the gas and then slowly started in on the wood itself."
My students were mesmerized as the scene continued: "It seemed like a living thing, probing the wood with a thin yellow finger, tasting it, then reaching out greedily and lapping it up." It had the impact I intended; they compared their own description to what they'd just heard me read to improve their manuscripts.
Description Comes Alive when you read with a writer's eye.
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With a Writer's Eye
Reviews of books I've read, comments on favorite authors, character quotes, and how I've used books in the classroom.
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