136 ^ ^ 5—Fiction Workshop Additional Notes to Teachers
• Have students write a scene weaving together all four techniques in the first draft.
• Have students write description and introspection first, and add the action and dialogue in the second pass.
• Have students write at least one scene in which the characters are animals. For some reason, practice with animal characters teaches young writers how to write scenes that portray vivid, interesting human characters.
• Have students study the scenes in published fiction for ideas.
• Once your students feel comfortable weaving single scenes, tackle an entire story. Get them started by writing an outline using simple narrative sentences.
EXAMPLE
The animals have a dinner party at Muskrat's:
1. Muskrat and Beaver do the dishes.
2. Muskrat decides to sponsor an etiquette class.
3. The class is a disaster.
4. Muskrat invites the animals to dinner, telling them to go ahead and behave badly. He has given up his crusade. But now, the animals prefer to follow the rules of etiquette.
Have students weave a scene for each sentence and then hook together the scenes.
PART 2:
Part 2: A Catalog of Fiction Techniques ^ ^ ^ 137
A few tips on teaching technique: Cover a range of techniques quickly, rather than covering any one in depth. Slip in a technique here and there among other practice exercises, and keep your presentations quick and light. Beginning writers usually overdo a new technique; it's a natural part of learning. Knowing a little about a range of techniques helps students more than knowing a great deal about any one. Use the "Tricks of the Trade"
as helpful points for follow-up discussions or for quick reference when students have editing questions.
Action Explanation
Action is what the characters do in a scene, as opposed to dialogue, which is what characters say. Action can include big actions (e.g., "Alex jumped from the shed roof to the garden walk and ran to the front of the house") or little actions, sometimes called "business"
(e.g., "Alex set his glass on the counter"). Too much action is hard to follow, so action is almost always woven together with dialogue, introspection, description, or narrative.
EXAMPLES
(Action is italic [our addition].)
"You will go." The milk-eyes looked through him to these, to the snow, to the line of blue that was the sky. "You will go now."
And there was such strength in his voice that Russel knew he must go. He took the handlebar in one hand and pulled the hook, and the dogs surged away and Russel let them run without looking back.
—Gary Paulsen, Dogsong
"Hullo," he said, beaming. "Where did you spring from? Come and have a warmer up at the Angel."
/ nodded and walked beside him, shuffling on the thawing remains of the previous week's snow.
—Dick Francis, Flying Finish
Tricks of the Trade
• Your reader must be able to picture who is coming into and going out of the scene,
and what the characters are doing. A little bit of business adds color and makes for an authentic scene. You don't need to write every move your characters make because readers have good imaginations.
• Beginners often try to add zip by adding adverbs. For example: "He walked quickly
and quietly from the room." Be aware, though, that adverbs slow down the action. If
you want to slow it down, fine. If you want to speed up the action, use a good, strong
verb. For example: "He tiptoed from the room." Below is a starter list of strong verbs.
138 ^=^ 5—Fiction Workshop Walked Quickly blasted
bolted bounced careened darted dashed escaped fled flitted gallivanted hastened hopped hurried jaunted
jogged jumped
loped raced ran roared rushed scampered scrambled scurried skipped skittered speeded tore
Walked ambled
crawled dawdled drifted hiked hobbled inched limped meandered minced moseyed prowled rambled roamed
Slowly roved sauntered shuffled staggered straggled strolled teetered toddled toured traversed trekked wandered wound wobbled If the strong verbs don't seem strong enough, try an unusual verb. For example: "He whispered away." "She screamed into the driveway."
• The word suddenly. What to do with all those suddenly's? Because it's an adverb, suddenly slows down the action just at the point it should speed up the action. Try deleting it. Or, try to foreshadow the sudden event.
EXAMPLE
Without Foreshadowing
Richard spread the newspaper on the dining room table. Suddenly, the tarantula pounced.
With Foreshadowing
Richard flushed away the crumbled tissue and the spider. Big spider, he chuckled. Maria wouldn't know a big spider. Some people were really funny about spiders. Now in Nam, those were big spiders.
He spread the newspaper on the dining room table and settled down to check the stock prices. Not that he owned stocks anymore. It was a habit he couldn't break, something from childhood, like making the bed or cleaning the table after dinner. The day seemed off-color without it. He glimpsed a furry leg before he saw the tarantula. Later, all he could remember were two intense spider eyes perched on top of two huge fangs.
Part 2: A Catalog of Fiction Techniques ^^^ 139
Description Explanation
You want your reader to be able to picture the story you have written. Just writing what your characters say and do isn't enough. For example: " 'Don't jump!' yelled John." Is John standing on top of a mountain or in a schoolyard? Is John young or old, skinny or fat, tall or short? Remember that reading is more like listening to the radio than watching television.
Readers can't imagine what a scene or a character looks like without help. Use description to show the reader what the setting and the characters look like.
EXAMPLE
A tall, distinguished man in a suit emerged from a battered van and walked toward Tom, smiling. The front end of the van looked like a crumpled bit of paper, painted over with white and brown paint, tinted with rust. Through twenty years of dings, dent and gouges, no effort had been made to match the bits of various colors of paint in the patches. The inside looked as bashed up as the exterior from hauling lumber, old furniture, tools, wire, cut-up tree limbs, tires, and just about anything else that needed to be hauled. Even now, the back seat had been removed to make room for a burnt-ou computer monitor, a large gray toolbox, and an ancient pair of snowshoes. Despite its coat of many colors, the engine turned over with a smooth chup, chup, chup, and the headlamps were new and clean. All the working parts worked well. No show- horse, this was the practical car of a very practical man.
Description often does double duty: It describes and tells the story at once. Though this example is mostly a description of an old van, the reader learns a lot about its owner. The example also creates a puzzle. What sort of a fellow is this man? A practical one, but why is he hauling around a burnt-out computer monitor and a pair of snowshoes?