Student Handout Ideal Reader
Who is going to read your piece? Thinking of one particular person as you write helps you decide what to write. Suppose your writing idea is "how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich." You would write one thing to a five-year-old, who has never made one, and something completely different to a cafeteria worker, who has made hundreds.
When you choose an ideal reader, you can choose a real person or make up an imaginary person. It is usually easier to choose someone who knows less about your subject than you;
for example, someone younger than you, someone who is learning about your subject for the first time, or one of your fellow students who hasn't read about it yet. Don't choose your teacher. You will keep wondering what to write that the teacher doesn't already know. When you choose your ideal reader, ask yourself, Why do I know more about this than my ideal reader? It helps.
Purpose
Why are you writing this piece? Why would your ideal reader want to read it? Do you want to entertain your reader? To show your reader how to do something? To persuade your reader to do something? To describe something your reader hasn't seen? Answer these questions, and you will know your purpose.
Think of your writing as a gift. You give your gift to your ideal reader. Your purpose is what you plan to give.
Examples
To entertain my ideal reader
To show my ideal reader how something works To show my ideal reader how to do something To persuade my ideal reader to do something
To report to my ideal reader something that happened To give my opinion about something to my ideal reader To explain to my ideal reader why I have a particular opinion To describe something to my ideal reader
To trace the history of something for my ideal reader
To show my ideal reader why (or how) two things are the same To show my ideal reader why (or how) two things are different
From Teaching Writing in Middle School © 1998 Beth Means and Lindy Lindner. Teacher Ideas Press. (800) 237-6124.
Part 1: Finding a Focus ^^^ 31 You can have two purposes; for example, "to explain how to do something in an entertaining way," "to give my opinion and explain why," or "to describe something and trace its history."
Mood
A piece of writing is like a good conversation. It shares a mood as well as ideas. You can be friendly and helpful. You can go on a crusade for your ideas. You can be detached and logical. You can be funny and informal. Think of sitting down with your ideal reader over lunch and talking with him or her about your writing idea. What kind of mood do you want your conversation to have?
EXAMPLES
angry commanding critical crusading detached
friendly helpful humorous informative ironic
leisurely quick sad serious silly Key Idea
Your key idea is your writing idea. Any article, essay, or book should be about just one key idea. Everything else in the piece is somehow related to that idea. To choose your key idea, you can use your original writing idea as is or sharpen it using the decisions you've made about the ideal reader, purpose, and mood. The sharper your idea, the easier it is to write nonfiction.
EXAMPLES
Original Writing Idea
How to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich Key Ideas
How to make forty peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in no time flat How to make your first peanut butter and jelly sandwich
How to make low-calorie peanut butter and jelly sandwiches A day in the life of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich
From Teaching Writing in Middle School. © 1998 Beth Means and Lindy Lindner. Teacher Ideas Press. (800) 237-6124.
32 <***>> 2—Planning
Original Writing Idea What freedom means to me
Key Ideas
Gives people rights and responsibilities Must be practiced everyday
The little things in life Having dreams of your own
A story of one person's escape to freedom Original Writing Idea
Getting good grades Key Ideas
Why students should try to get good grades A survey asking teachers why they give grades Ten tips for getting better grades
What to do when you get a bad grade A story of a person's first A
Sharpening your key idea takes a little practice. Sometimes it helps to pretend that you are holding a camera. Suppose your subject is trees. Are you going to write about the big, wide-angle picture and trace the history of an entire forest? Or are you going to use a narrow lens and focus on the history of just one tree in that forest? Perhaps you'll write the history of something in the middleground—one type of tree in that forest or all the trees along one stream.
Think, too, about the period of time you will write about. If you will be writing about one tree, are you going to cover its entire history, back to the Ice Age? Or are you going to show what happens to and around that tree during spring, summer, fall, and winter? What about just one day in the life of that tree?
It sometimes helps to think of several key ideas that might work, then choose the best one. Remember to choose just one key idea. You should only write about one idea at a time.
Two key ideas will make your piece confusing and hard to write.
From Teaching Writing in Middle School. © 1998 Beth Means and Lindy Lindner. Teacher Ideas Press. (800) 237-6124.
Part 1: Finding a Focus ^^^ 33 Activity 2:
Prewriting Choices for Fiction
W h y shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction?
Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
—Mark Twain
To anyone who loves writing, teaching twelve- to fifteen-year-olds to write fiction is a great joy. They never run out of ideas, their enthusiasm is infectious, and their capacity for absorbing some of the technical aspects of writing fiction is astonishing. Seventh- and eighth-graders may be a little shaky on nonfiction, but fiction is ice cream and candy to most of them.
Better yet, writing fiction pressures them to develop their vocabularies and encourages them to use more complex sentences. The logical demands of fiction stress connecting cause and effect. Students may learn more about science from writing science fiction and more about history from writing historical fiction than they will from writing reports or essays.
Fiction is an ideal vehicle for teaching middle school and early high school skills and concepts. Teachers don't use it enough, or use it creatively enough.
Students this age have no trouble creating plots. They'll stuff every story with four or five plots. "But I may never get to write another story," one student complained when we pointed out that he had enough characters and plots for ten stories. It's really impossible to plan stories too far ahead, so the principle purpose for the fiction prewriting choices is to help students sort out just one story to write.
These handouts are long. If your budget is short, you can use the prewriting worksheet with a verbal explanation of the choices. We like to send the handouts home with students along with a note to parents to save them. Few writing assignments are complete without a little help from parents and the handouts give them clues on how to help without doing the writing.
Instructions to Students
Sit with your writing group. Today we're going to learn to make the prewriting choices for fiction: characters, central conflict, setting, and narrator. On the "Fiction Prewriting Choices" handout is an explanation of each choice. As you make decisions for your piece, record them on the worksheet and discuss them with your writing group. Write in pencil, so that you can change your decisions if necessary.
(Text continues on p. 38.)
34 ^^^ 2—Planning