I Need A Bit Of Help

Hello,

Once a week I teach a 45 minute writing workshop class to a small group of students at my old middle school. We have all been working on novels, and hope to finish them by the end of the school year. However, lately I've been having trouble figuring out how to word the lessons I want to teach.

If anyone has any suggestions for Writing Workshop Lessons that you think are important to learn, I'd love to hear them. Thanks a bunch!

Oh, and I'm not sure if I posted this thread in the right place. If it's wrong, just let me know and i'll delete/move it. ^_^

Allo Cat!

First off, there's the Knowledge Base up there ^^ right under Resources. It has just about any topic you could want to include in a class and still have summer break afterward.

As for what to include in the class, how many do you have? For example, last year I took Creative Writing I, and the following term, took Creative Writing II. There were three in total, but I transferred schools. The first one was an overview, the second was more detailed, meant for those who knew what they were doing, and the third one was supposed to be very in depth and detailed and by the end of it you should have something publishable.

If it's just basic stuff, and overview of dialogue, plot, and characterization would be good to have. What's good dialogue, what's bad, how can you use it to develop your character, what is a Mary Sue, what makes up a plot, etc.

I know you can find more than enough articles in the knowledge base on dialogue and characterization, and OverEasy wrote an article for squills on making villains people want to read about. Plot... there are some articles. Not nearly as many as there are of the other two, but they are there.

If it's more than just an over view, then dive deeper into those three.

Good characterization
--Realistic villains (not evil for the sake of evil, but an actual character one with flaws and virtues)
--The Mary Sue Quiz and depending on their scores, a makeover
--Let the characters have their own voice -- People don't want to hear what you have to say unless you're in the book.
--If, after ten pages, you wrote an interaction between a few of your characters without once writing 'Joe said' or equivalent, not writing a single name save for dialogue purposes, would your readers be able to tell who's who?

Plot
-- 2 plot types: stranger came to town or someone went on a journey
--Plot arc: beginning, the building tension, the climax, the conclusion.
--Plot holes: what are they and how to avoid
--Common plot themes (Cinderella Story can be a story about a guy wanting to work for this company, but his old work place has some people looking for the same spot and work together to hold him down and sabotage his chances. See the step-sisters, the prince, and Cinderella? All there! Doesn't need to be romance simply because the original was.)

Dialogue
--This more or less matches the criteria of 'characterization', but there are some differences.
-- Realistic (Do people really say it? Does the character's dialogue match how he was raised to speak? Right annoying when you're reading a story supposed to be set in America and suddenly the characters start popping Aussie slang like they're in Australia. )
--Get a notebook and go somewhere public. There, write down snippets of conversations you catch, and write them like you here them. If someone has poor grammar, don't translate, transcribe. Later, study what you've written and see the responses people gave. Don't record who said what, just do dialogue. Later, you'll find a wealth of characterization there, and will be able to tell the voices apart on your own. The goal is to make your characters' dialogue like that as well.

Before I break the thread, I'll end the post with yet another plug for the KB.

Hope that helps a bit.

In addition to the topics already posted, I would include like a writing technique lesson--as in, going over "show, don't tell", what makes a good description, etc. Also, when starting a new story, I always have problems deciding whether to write in 1st or 3rd person, and in past or present tense. This may seem like a trivial thing, but one of your lessons could go over the basics of each of those and the positives and negatives of each.

Hope I was of some help!

-Cassie