Home Learning for Term 4 Week 3

As many of you are planning the printing of your writing, watch these 2 video clips to gain some ideas about presentation.

Also check out these 7 self-publishing tips and hints

Home Learning - due 19 October

Here is the link to the Home Learning doc.  You will also need this rubric.  Email me if you have any questions.

Mrs D

Vox Magazine is now called 'Toitoi'

...and they are looking for submissions now for the next issue:

http://toitoi.nz/submissions.html
Who can submit?
Young New Zealand writers or artists, 5–13 years old

What can I submit?

Submissions may be anything you like! For example:

• art
• short stories
• long narratives
• character descriptions
• poems
• legends
• myths

• lyrics
• raps
• recipes
• cartoons
• comics
• plays
• scripts

All submissions should be previously unpublished. 

Stories may be any length but may not exceed 2000 words.

Publishing schedule

Issue	Submission deadline	Publication date
Issue 2 Summer 2016	October 23, 2015 Submit now!	Term One 2016
Issue 3 Autumn 2016	February 19, 2016	Term Two 2016
Issue 4 Winter 2016	April 15, 2016	Term Three 2016
Issue 5 Spring 2016	July 8, 2016	Term Four 2016
Issue 6 Summer 2017	September 23, 2016	Term One 2017

The Key to Writing Great Scenes Is All About the Ending...

From author, K.M. Weiland

What’s the key to writing a great scene? ... correct scene structure. Good scenes are structured to keep the story rolling forward with a proper balance of cause and effect. You’ve got two parts to each scene and three parts apiece to each of those halves: scene (goal, conflict, disaster) and sequel (reaction, dilemma, decision). But that’s just the bare bones. How do you ensure that what fills up those scenes is awesome?

It’s simple: always end your scene with an outcome that’s opposite to the one people expect.

Scenes that end exactly how readers think they will are lazy scenes. Whenever you start writing a scene, ask yourself, "What will readers expect?" How can you turn those expectations on their heads while still remaining true to the characters and the needs of the plot? Find the answer to that question, and you’ll be on your way to the kind of scenes people will still be in love with even fifty years later!

Elsie Locke Prize Winning Story

Thought you might be interested in reading the winning story that is to be published in the School Journal.  Click here to read.

Home Learning before Tues Week 10

FINAL WEEK COMING UP FOR TERM 3

Time to reflect on and review your Extension Writing goals. 

 

Before next EW session please:

Open your Ext Writing Goal/Assessment doc

Your first goal:

Reflect on each strategy.  

• Was it utilised or not?  
• How effective was it as a strategy? 
• Record your reflections under 'Reviews'  (date this review)
• Then overall review of achievement of goal - not achieved, partially achieved, achieved. with links to evidence in your writing

Other goals: Repeat above if you have 2nd or 3rd goal.

Next week, I will see each of you to review your review... (hee hee)

NZ Intermediate Writing Competition

Create an original piece of writing (short story) using the following phrase as the theme or as a line anywhere in the piece of writing (but NOT as the title): ‘Beyond the Stars.’

- your piece of writing must be no more than 750 words

- your piece must be written with elements of science fiction, or fantasy

Other conditions apply so go here for more details

Home Learning Term 3 Week 9

Home Learning Term 3 Week 9

In preparation for your Author’s Circle:

EITHER:

• please choose one aspect from your latest writing that you would like feedback on from your Authors’ Circle.  It may be
• your hook
• your success at showing character in one section
• is there any unnecessary text in paragraph…..?
• success in describing setting
• Is my dialogue realistic to people and situation?
• Where to now?
• etc.

                              MAKE IT WORK FOR YOU!

OR:

• choose a paragraph that you would like to share with the group

Go to this doc to record.

Sophie and Freya to be published!

Congratulations to Sophie and Freya who have had poems selected to be published in the 2015 NZ Poetry Society anthology, 'Scattered Feathers'. 

The book will be launched during the National Poetry Conference in Wellington on the weekend of 13-15 November.

We are so proud of you and can't wait to see the book!

The Breeze 400 word Comp

The Breeze  400 Word Competition is back!

It is a competition that is open to year 7 and 8 students. You can write about anything you like as
long as it is no more than 400 words. The competition will be judged by one of New Zealand’s top
authors and the top 5 stories will then be read by famous New Zealand celebrities.

The winner of the competition will win $400 and also have their story published as an e-book.

TIMINGS: 
Monday 12th October     - Competition starts and students start writing their stories
Friday 30th October       – Entries close
Saturday 2nd November – Judging begins
Monday 9th November  – Top 5 Announced and read by celebrities on air
Monday 16th November - Announce Winner

Email from Kate De Goldi

Dear Lynne and all magnificent Raroa writers,

Thank you so much for the Scissors e-book. I'm overwhelmed and hugely impressed - by the students' astonishing imaginative interpretations and their teacher's vital encouragement in continuing and elaborating the 'Scissors' exercise. Thank you all! It's a marvellous thing for me to see such enthusiasm and boundless creativity at work - wonderful to know that the small seeds planted during my visit have such a beautiful blossoming. I love how different each of the contributions are - in rhythm, shape and tone. And each of the pieces is alive and pulsing with its own singular insights and expression - and the vocabularies at work are truly impressive. It's a great idea to have the scissors 'position' (open, inverted, etc) shown visually - and the different handholds that make for subtly different interpretations. (Freya's silhouetted pic is very evocative). But most of all, what blows me away is how infinite (seemingly) the interpretations are - and how every time new writers look at a scissors yet more fresh and surprising things are seen. Scissors really are the item that keeps on giving (more and more metaphor)!

A confused clown, a famished baby bird (love those adjectives; they really amp up the mental picture); a two-headed boy, heads swaying (gulp), shoelaces tied in a bow (but not flimsy, such a nice qualification); oddly-shaped motorbikes (the adjective makes you wonder and think), swords clashing again (love the end of that poem bringing us back to the beginning); a man trapped, primed, a stylized duck head (such precise words, so visual - and each just a little bit unsettling); colouring hills and mountains abroad, death's idea of relaxation (such surprising and somehow mysterious ideas which make you return to think some more); confusionclouds (great verb), the lounge chair reclines poolside (great personification - suddenly you see a sleek, bikinied chair with pencilled eyebrows and a fruity cocktail); a barber's silver weapon (suddenly there's a story glimpsed - a homicidal hairdresserI), a decision making hand game (another story suggested; what could that gamebe?); the celery and the orange in harmony (brilliant; hilarious; so unexpected), it embraces me on the beach (a loving deck chair? Love how it's not quite clear, but still alluring); a pair of lovers, sharp yet sweet (great paradox; mature insight!), the crooked cross, bent by grief (there's a world in that taut sentence - wonderful, wonderful)...

And that's just a little bit of what I love...thank you so much, Lynne, Freya, Tom L, Isabella R, Alex L, Ruby G, Rion A, Stella R, Sophie T and Rebecca E...

all power to your pens and keyboards

NO EW this week

There will be no EW class this week (Week 7) due to the School Runathon.

SO

Keep enjoying your writing, keep seeking and giving feedback 

using your learning about EFFECTIVE feedback.  

And please share anything with me that you would like feedback on.

Remember:

• the 'Ode to Librarians' competition closes on 11 September
• Submissions to the next Vox magazine (where Freya is to be published)October 23
• Submissions to the Starling Journal October 20

Fight for Glory By Holly I

Competition: Ode to Librarians

Write An Ode to Librarians

The School for Young Writers invites you to express your thoughts and feelings about the people who make reading, learning and entertainment possible: yes, LIBRARIANS! To celebrate these unsung heroes of literacy we invite you to write: An Ode to Librarians

The School for Young Writers, in conjunction with LIANZA, has launched a poetry competition. An Ode to Librarians has three age categories: Years 3-5; Years 6-8 ; and Years 9-11. The deadline is 11^th September.

What’s an ode? 
It’s a poetic form dating back to ancient Greece. Pindaric Odes (celebrating heroic individuals, nations or abstract ideas) and Homeric Odes (celebrating people, virtues, and aspects of society or nature) have all sorts of rules, so we’ll keep it simple! Nowadays odes are much less formal poems of moderate length, rhymed or unrhymed, and often humorous. A related term is the Apostrophe. This is not the pesky punctuation mark that many people don’t use properly! In a literary sense, it’s a poem of praise directly addressed to a person, a place, an idea or an object. 

Give your character a goal - not a desire!

Some thoughts from writer, K :M Weiland

Writers hear a lot of talk about how characters have to want something. If they don’t want something and want it desperately, then aren’t they just going to lie there on the page? Aren’t they going to be passive and boring?

Totally. Absolutely. Categorically.

A character who wants for nothing has either:

a) already gotten everything he wants

or

b) given up on life.

Neither makes for a very dynamic character. But here’s the thing. Desire alone does not make for either a great story or a great character. Desire is itself passive.

Think about it. We all want things. I want to be able to sing like Jackie Evancho. I want to have climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. I want a fennec fox. But do you see me signing up for singing lessons, booking a ticket to Tanzania, or figuring out where on God’s green earth you even buy a fennec? These are all passive desires. I want them. But I don’t want them badly enough to actually do something about them.

In short, they are desires. But they’re not goals. In order to drive a story, your character must move beyond desire to an active goal.

I’m in the midst of reading a fantasy about a character who really, really, really wants to kill another character. But it’s a passive desire. He never does anything about it. All he does is sit around and moon about the awful things this other character did to him. And the result? It’s doing nothing to move the plot forward. The other result? When the plot’s not moving, it doesn’t take long for a desire to grow repetitious very quickly.

Take a look at your character’s desires. Is he forming them into concrete goals? Is he moving forward in pursuit of those goals? If he is, then you know your plot is moving right along with him!

Poems Inspired by KAte De Goldi's Workshop

Homework before 19 August

Following on from Kate De Goldi's answer to May's question about planning...

The beginning and the ending are two halves of the same whole. Once you’ve set up a powerful question in your story’s opening, you have to follow through by deliberately answering it in the finale.

The moment you answer this question, your story is going to be effectively over. Answer it too soon, and what’s left of your plot and your characters will die a slow and lingering (and boring) death.

Knowing your ending will strengthen your plot, your theme, and your character development.

http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com

Go to your Ext Writing Folder for the activity. You will need to do some thinking and some note-making.

Kate De Goldi's Workshop!

And here are some notes from the Workshop, including recommended 'reads', quotes and the writing exercises we did.

Please add your notes or comments to the doc.

After today, Mrs Dunn's aim is to read at least 3 of the books Kate recommended that writers should read.  

What did the Workshop inspire you to do?

Make a comment below.

Woop Woop!!!!

This Wednesday, Block 1 for those 20 people who put their name down.  

You have been sent an email!

CAN'T WAIT!

Kate will also be talking to the school in Block 2.

Homework before11 August

Your homework is 

to give feedback, watch, look and think ... 

details below

• To give effective feedback to your 2 writing buddies for their warm up from last week where they were showing a character's true emotions to the reader and false emotions to another character.

• To watch this 5 min video about the different narrative points of view: 

•  In prep for your warm- up, look at these 2 photos, and think about the different narrators that could tell about these situations.

Homework before 4 August

To give effective feedback on 2 other students 'False vs True' emotion writing.  The feedback should be related to the goal:

• to show the reader the true emotional state of a character through dialogue, actions, reactions, thoughts,etc 

          AS WELL AS showing the false emotion that is portrayed to another character

Ella's New Words

Confliterature(Con-flit-er-aht-yor)-Any sort of conflict between two or more characters in a fictional story/book.

I read a book, I loved the confliterature in it.

Flipwrit(Flip-rit)-To kill off a main character in a fictional story/book

To give my story an unexpected twist, I flipwrit it.

Homework before 28 July

Go to this pdf and familiarise yourself with Pages 11- 40.  

In readiness for Tuesdsay's warm-up:

• choose one of the emotions outlined in the pdf
• think of a character who would be exhibiting that characteristic in a setting of your choice

On Tuesday, you will be writing a short paragraph where your reader will be shown that character's true emotion, BUT the character will be showing a false emotion to another character.

This warm up links to the new learning you did last week on True/False Emotion.  Here is the link to the document we discussed last Tuesday if you would like a reminder.

                       Bodies are Emotional Mirrors

  

Aliya's invented words from the warm up yesterday

Posnegitive - Positive and negative

Upsetoyed - Annoyed and upset

Fantity - Believing fantasy is real and reality is fake

Dooscribe - Doodling and writing

Alphanumeral - Replacing letters of the alphabet with numbers

Clockle - When time starts to trickle

Shongest - Simultaneously long and short

Clichiterature - A story, poem or novel written in a similar style or resembling an almost exact plot.

Worditer - Somebody who creates new weird and wonderful words
Digiscribe - Describing someone based on information from the Internet
Unhealthsessed - Having an unhealthy obsession
Humonster - A monster that seems human or a human who is a monster
Ovblindious - Seeing without really seeing
Humanimal - An animal with human like traits or a human with animal characteristics
Depersonify - Describing a person as an object or possesion
Drowsper - Drowning in despair
Brounbly - Bright, bouncy and bubbly
Crammerful - Something that cannot contain anymore because it is too crammed and full
Numervu - Experiencing deja vu numerously
Killcure - Something that heals and hurts you simultaneously

Genenetration - The Internet generation

Mind-travel - Time travelling with your mind

Lollilate - Lollies shaped as chocolate bars

Combanimal - Combining or breeding two or more species of animal

Homework: to be complete before Tues 21

Watch Go Ahead and Make Up New Words (6 mins) for homework.   

You will need to watch this before the warm up activity on Tuesday.

New Competition

STARLING: A new online literary journal for New Zealand writers under 25 years old. 

        

The deadline for the first issue is October 20. 

Go to   http://www.starlingmag.com/   for details

Our E-Books

Cambridge University study on the way we perceive words- SO COOL!

A study done by Cambridge University looks at the way we perceive words and it came up with some very interesting things. They found that as we read words as a whole instead from of individual letters, which means that you should be able to read this!

Could you read it?

Holiday Workshop - highly recommended!

It's Proofing and Editing TIme - YAH!!!!

Click here for some tips and hints

K M Weiland's Writing Mantra

What would you include in your mantra?

Neil Gaiman's 8 Rules of Writing

  We enjoyed the honesty of Neil Gaiman's Rules!

Effective Dialogue

Today, we discussed how to make our dialogue effective.  Here are some ideas:

Dialogue Presentation

Goal Reviews

Time for the Ext(reme) Writers to review their writing goal(s)...

Students will be assessing their progress towards their goals, 

analysing the success of their strategies 

and showing evidence in their current writing.

We LOVE celebrating success!