The Craft Challenge last weekend produced some brilliant and evocative settings. Anyone fancy another go? How about an opening that follows a particular structure? Okay, bear with me a moment..
This week, some of my students (an adorable pair of twins and a girl who creates her own worlds) started on Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Kids love the domesticity and discipline of Almanzo Wilder's life, but it can be a bit tricky for seven-year-old Koreans in terms of vocabulary. Take a look at the opening. The bolded words were meaningless to them:
It was January in northern New York State, sixty-seven years ago. Snow lay deep everywhere. It loaded the bare limbs of oak and maples and beeches, it bent the green boughs of cedars and spruces down into the drifts. Billows of snow covered the fields and the stone fences.
The kids grasped “vaguely winter, long ago”, but that’s it. Not a promising start. This is followed by the second paragraph, which is almost pure exposition:
Down a long road through the woods a little boy trudged to school, with his big brother Royal and his two sisters, Eliza Jane and Alice. Royal was thirteen years old, Eliza Jane was twelve, and Alice was ten. Almanzo was the youngest of all, and this was his first going-to-school, because he was not quite nine years old.
Not exactly gripping. But the magic happens in the third paragraph:
He had to walk fast to keep up with the others, and he had to carry the dinner-pail.
Aha! My students instantly understood the dynamic of "One Who Must Walk Fast And Carry The Thing Due To Being The Youngest", connecting them to this 19th century American boy. Now they were interested!
Okay, does anyone else want to try this three-paragraph opening structure? Here's the assignment: Write an opening, around 150-300 words. The first paragraph should be thick with unfamiliar terms* and the second paragraph should be pure telling, but the third paragraph should connect with the reader through a shared human experience.
Let’s see if we can reel each other in
*archaic, invented, technical, local, foreign, fantasy, etc.. Go wild!
This week, some of my students (an adorable pair of twins and a girl who creates her own worlds) started on Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Kids love the domesticity and discipline of Almanzo Wilder's life, but it can be a bit tricky for seven-year-old Koreans in terms of vocabulary. Take a look at the opening. The bolded words were meaningless to them:
It was January in northern New York State, sixty-seven years ago. Snow lay deep everywhere. It loaded the bare limbs of oak and maples and beeches, it bent the green boughs of cedars and spruces down into the drifts. Billows of snow covered the fields and the stone fences.
The kids grasped “vaguely winter, long ago”, but that’s it. Not a promising start. This is followed by the second paragraph, which is almost pure exposition:
Down a long road through the woods a little boy trudged to school, with his big brother Royal and his two sisters, Eliza Jane and Alice. Royal was thirteen years old, Eliza Jane was twelve, and Alice was ten. Almanzo was the youngest of all, and this was his first going-to-school, because he was not quite nine years old.
Not exactly gripping. But the magic happens in the third paragraph:
He had to walk fast to keep up with the others, and he had to carry the dinner-pail.
Aha! My students instantly understood the dynamic of "One Who Must Walk Fast And Carry The Thing Due To Being The Youngest", connecting them to this 19th century American boy. Now they were interested!
Okay, does anyone else want to try this three-paragraph opening structure? Here's the assignment: Write an opening, around 150-300 words. The first paragraph should be thick with unfamiliar terms* and the second paragraph should be pure telling, but the third paragraph should connect with the reader through a shared human experience.
Let’s see if we can reel each other in
*archaic, invented, technical, local, foreign, fantasy, etc.. Go wild!
