10/7- Improv Games/Writing Inspiration

Today, we'll be headed to the Ensemble Theatre to play some improv games. After each game, you'll have time to write and reflect. Use these games as inspiration for a new writing piece. This one is open ended: you can write a poem, a short story, a non-fiction essay, or a scene.

We'll play the following games:

• Scene Painting
• This game will be used to think about setting. You'll be establishing imagined settings and then interacting with them (just like we do when we write =O )
• Sassy Librarian
• This game will help you think about characterization. We'll be creating and acting out characters and imbuing them with assigned traits. It's a great way to think about physicality and voice of your characters. 
• Story, Story, Die
• This is a storytelling game. Not only can we use this game to think about the structure and flow of the story, we can use it to feel more comfortable speaking in front of a group.
• Inner Monologue
• Because the ideas of communication (and miscommunication) is so important in our course, we'll be playing Inner Monologue to compare and contrast outward dialogue with internal monologues. 

After we play each of these games, we will have 5 minutes to silently reflect and think about how we'll use this in our writing. You can either use this time to write down inspiration and ideas for a piece, or you can use it to reflect on what this game teaches you about the writing process. 

HOMEWORK: 

For next class, please complete a short creative writing piece. This can be any genre you like. This is not meant to be a long piece (think 1-3 pages or a poem) but it does need to have a beginning, middle, and end. You have 6 days until next we meet, so there's plenty of time to complete a draft. Use inspiration from the games we played in class.

10/5- Writing, Writing, Writing! (And Revising)

Happy Monday, and welcome to my blog for Performance, Word and Text!

Today, you'll have a lot of time for revision. Period 3, you will be able to work on independent revision. This means you might work on:

• your short story
• your scene
• your poems

This does not mean you can surf the web or chat with your friends! Use this time wisely, and be respectful of the working environment. Mr. Craddock and I will be available during this time if any of you would like to conference with us on your writing. Please bring any questions you have on the work you've gotten back from us, and let us know if you get stuck! 

Please note: if you are behind and have not finished at least one poem from the observation activity, please do so. It is important that you have at least one poem for a revision activity that will take place second period. 

This brings us to: 

The 10 Minute Poem Makeover!

I will take the beginning of class to demonstrate this activity with one of my poems. 

BEFORE:

AFTER:

BEFORE YOU BEGIN YOUR 10 MINUTE POEM MAKEOVER, print out a copy of your first draft. Mr. Craddock and I will be looking over the revisions you've made, so we'll need to see where you began.

The Makeover:

1. Kill your extra words! You probably don't need adverbs (which, as you know, are words that modify verbs or adjectives, and usually end in -ly, or are words like "really", "very", or "so".) If you want to emphasize a point, use a stronger verb or adjective! Instead of saying "really sad", say "devastated". Instead of saying "cried hard", say "sobbed".
   
   Also, you can use punctuation to say the same thing with fewer words. A colon, for example, can mean the same thing as "is" or "is like". Instead of saying "my heart is like a pencil sharpener", consider, "my heart: a pencil sharpener".
   
   If you want to get really fancy, think about making a noun or an adjective into a verb. Instead of saying "she climbed up the tree like a squirrel", I might say "she squirrelled up the tree". There's no rule in poetry that says all your words have to be "real". Have fun with language here!
   
2. Show, don't tell! This is kind of a cliche in the writing world, but for good reason. In poetry, it's especially important to use the five senses to illustrate what's going on. Instead of "my dad got angry" you might consider saying "I could hear my dad's jaw clench" or "my dad's veins popped out of his forehead" or even "I could smell the smoke when my dad's head exploded".
   
3. Get creative with line breaks! No need to end a line when there's a comma or a period! Line breaks are an awesome way to build suspense, surprise the reader, or pair two unexpected things together. I might have a poem with these two lines:
   
   The room smelled like vanilla.
   Dead flies lingered on the windowsill.
   
   But it would be a much more interesting stanza if I wrote:
   
   The room smelled like vanilla. Dead flies
   lingered on the windowsill.
   
   Now, the reader imagines that the room smells like vanilla AND dead flies! Gross!

Now that you have the tools to begin your poem makeover, you can get working! Work on your poem alone or with a partner, and follow the makeover guidelines to revise one of your poems. Feel free to bounce ideas off me or Mr. Craddock. We'll be collecting the first draft and the revised draft at the end of the day.