Introduction

  The Task

  Writing Styles

  Writing Tips

  Assessment

  The Stories:

  Good Advice...

  The Free Radio

  The Prophet's Hair

  Yorick

  Ruby Slippers

  Columbus...

  Harmony of Spheres

  Chekov and Zulu

  The Courter

  

Writing Tips

checklist | polishing your wriitng

“Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before,
but in saying exactly what you think yourself”
(James Fitz James Stephen)

  • Vary the length of sentences.

  • Draw on the senses— taste , touch, sight, hearing and smell.

  • Try inverting some sentences.

  • Focus on verbs and adverbs rather than nouns and adjectives.

  • Draw on known / real people and dramatise, manipulate, modify for the purposes of your story.

  • Write about what you feel strongly about and what you are familiar with at first and then modify to suit a particular audience or purpose.

  • Try to visualise and experience the story, situation, action as you write.

  • Experiment with different styles - be courageous in order to develop new skills.

  • Draw on literary narrative techniques and figurative language, such as: imagery, hyperbole, comparisons (allegories, analogies, metaphors, conceits, similes), contrasts, juxtapositions, paradox, oxymorons, symbolism, repetition (alliteration, assonance, repetition of words and phrases for dramatic effect or emphasis), onomatopoeia, personification, rhyme, rhythm.

  • Use dialogue.

  • Try different points of view — first, second, and / or third person.

  • Show, don't tell.

  • Try to evoke emotions and thoughts in your reader.

  • Look below the surface of each incident and assess the motivation, feelings and thought processes of each character and try to reveal these in your writing.

  • Be vulnerable — everyone is weird, not just you.

  • Beginnings need to have tension and conflict built in very early. You must capture interest in the first line, if possible; by the end of the first paragraph is mandatory.

  • Use active, not passive, voice. “A dog chased the boy” is active. “The boy was chased by the dog” is passive. “We built a house” is active. “A house was built” is passive.

Remember:

A story [or any text of writing] can have only one merit:
that of making the audience want to know what happens next.
And conversely it can have only one fault:
that of making the audience not want to know what happens next.
(E. M. Forster)

A. Checklist

1. Content:

  • Relevance to your plot, theme, characterisation, setting
  • Depth and complexity of ideas

2.  Focus:

  • Focus gives your writing its coherence and unity. Unfocused writing meanders and lacks impact or punch. The fundamental question to ask yourself is: What is my central theme or focus ?

3.  Originality:

  • It is difficult to be original about ideas that have been written about before. What is original is your unique way of relating the experience or idea. A very ordinary idea can be invested with interest by the way in which it is conveyed.
  • Avoid a totally predictable response and be wary of attempting the bizarre or off-beat which often do not fulfil the requirements of the topic. Morbid stories of mass murders and rapes, smutty or crude stories, drug fiends, lurid descriptions of hangovers, do not form the basis of appropriate content nor gain reader appreciation and acceptance.
  • Give some thought to your readers and the purpose behind your writing which is to stimulate your imagination and creativity.
  • Your writing should reflect your maturity and intelligence.

4.  Structure:

  • Structure is the order and shape of the writing. It should be organised and developed with clear linking of ideas.

5.  Style and Tone:

  • Style indicates such things as the structure of the writing (e.g. stream-of-consciousness, plot/theme/characterisation unfolding through dialogue, descriptive, narrative); the way your ideas are developed and expressed; and the way you use language (e.g. figurative, metaphor, imagery, etc.)
  • Deciding on voice and tone is important. Is your writing, for example, chatty, humourous, emotional, sarcastic, colloquial, serious, formal?

6.  Language:

  • Language is how your ideas are communicated. It includes such conventions as vocabulary, variation of sentences, punctuation, tenses, imagery, metaphor, symbols, dialogue.

B. Polishing Your Writing

Use this information to both revise and improve your own work and when conferencing your class mate's work.

Information:

  • Have you said all you wanted to say?
  • Is the information interesting to the reader?
  • Is all the information important to your reader? What parts don't you need?
  • What else might the reader want to know about?
  • What else do you know about your topic?
  • Is it really you who is speaking in this text? Is your voice coming through?
  • Does the title catch the attention of the reader?

Organisation

  • Does the title tie in with the content of the writing? Does it focus on the significance of the topic?
  • Does the opening sentence catch the reader's interest? Does the rest of the writing maintain the reader's interest?
  • What do you want to focus on? What's the most important thing you want to say?
  • What's your favourite part? How can you build on it?
  • Does everything follow in logical order?
  • How effective is the overall structure of the piece — would a different sequence be more effective?
  • Do you think you have too many ideas here?
  • Are there parts that you need to delete?
  • Are there sentences you could leave out or combine with other sentences to make your writing more compact?
  • Are there words, phrases, sentences that could be changed with other sentences to make the meaning clearer?
  • Have you paragraphed correctly?
  • Have you indented and used appropriate punctuation for dialogue?
  • How does the piece of writing sound when you read it aloud? What changes can you make so that it will read smoothly? This is a valuable strategy, as it enables you to hear things you might miss when you read silently.
  • Have you proof-read carefully and thoroughly for errors in your writing and typographical errors? Bear in mind that you will be penalised for any proof-reading slips.
  • Have you considered the overall presentation for each piece?

Use of Language Conventions

  • Have you checked for apropriate use of metalanguage?
  • Have you checked your spelling?
  • Have you checked your punctuation and paragraphs?
  • Have you checked for tense, subject and verb consistency?
  • Have you checked for legibility of handwriting?

 




East West: a reading and creative writing unit developed by Ross Barham, Amanda Carroll, Blair Mahoney, and G. Marotous.
Web site designed, constructed and maintained by G. Marotous, 2010. Contact.
Web site designed, constructed and maintained by G. Marotous, 2010. Contact.
© 2010. Melbourne High School English Faculty.