An update from our seventieth Writing Workshop A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, October 8, plus some of the output published below During today’s workshop, we discussed one of the most fundamental aspects of creative literature: point of view! We kicked things off with a brief five-minute diary reading in which Nova, Ava, and Pearl shared their brilliant work. The students learned all about the different classifications of ‘point of view,’ from the omniscient third person to the limited first person, and we studied both classic and modern samples of this concept in action. Some examples included The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, and Olivia Lee’s story “The Note,” featured in last month’s issue. The students were first challenged to write from either the limited perspective of a single character or from the all-knowing perspective of an omniscient outside narrator. Pearl, Reethi, and Ava shared. Finally, we were challenged to the task of writing a single story from two distinctly different points of view. The participants were given 15 minutes to write from one perspective, and then 15 minutes to write from a different point of view. Pearl, Yueling, Reethi, Peri, Rachael, and Ava all read their fantastic work. Scroll down below to see what the young writers came up with! The Challenge: Write a single story with two points of view changing after 15 minutes. The Participants: Ava, Pearl, Peri, Anya, Celia, Crystal, Greta, Yueling, Nami, Nova, Rachael, Reethi Blame the Squirrels Peri Gordon, 12 Eleanor: It was a summer day, but a dreary summer day, when my older sister, sixteen-year-old Priscilla, came home with a pear and made the dreary day a thrilling one. The sun, a constant cause of misery, was worth it when the light met the fruit, allowing it to glow like the beacon of hope that it was. We had been living off of no more than bread and water for so long I had stopped keeping track, and the prospect of something smooth and sweet on my tongue wasalmost more than my mind could handle. I didn’t know where my sister got this juicy, green treasure, but I knew her intention was to keep it for herself, as that’s surely what I would have done in her situation. In fact, she was smiling to herself, just waiting to devour the treat. I knew that if I didn’t intervene, I might never get to bite into a pear; I might starve to death before I could. So that night, with only the stars awake to witness my treachery (the stars are mischievous themselves and will certainly approve, I thought), I crept into the dragon’s den: Priscilla’s room. It was too easy, the prize lying exposed on my sister’s desk. I sank my teeth in. Then I opened the window, so my sister would wake up and blame the squirrels. Nobody would have to know. Priscilla: It was a summer day, a beautiful summer day, because my English teacher rewarded me with a pear for my exceptional essay, and I could give the pear to Eleanor, my younger sister and greatest joy. The plan was to make it a birthday present, as she would turn seven in two days, but as I walked through the door, I knew from the look in my sister’s eyes that she saw the object I was holding behind my back and would not wait to bite in. I smiled to myself, knowing what Eleanor would do. She was young and impatient, and she had stolen many times before. And that was alright with me. It was our parents’ job to teach her not to steal, not mine. So that night, I stayed awake in bed, wanting to see her take that heavenly first bite. I saw her tiptoe in on her tiny feet, a little mouse with golden hair. I saw the utter bliss on her face as the taste of the pear sank into her mouth. Then she opened the window, thinking I would wake up and blame the squirrels. It was adorable, really, how she was oblivious enough to think that I was oblivious.
William Rubel
Writing Workshop #69: Fast Sketching Characters (Revisited)
An update from our sixty-ninth Writing Workshop A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, October 1 In this workshop, students created rapid character sketches: short writing pieces that give a sense of a character by focusing on the face, body, and clothing. Students gathered inspiration from pieces such as Leonardo da Vinci’s grotesques, The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter, and Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony. (Beethoven’s Sixth was used to demonstrate the difference between a fully developed character’s story and just a glimpse of a character; the participants listened to the same piece played by a full orchestra and by just a piano.) William discussed how an author uses words to create visions in the mind of the reader the same way a magician creates illusions with smoke and mirrors, and how authors use character sketches to convey the essence of new characters. He emphasized that a character’s appearance can match or contrast with their personality. As mini-challenges, students wrote character sketches to describe images William provided (a sketch of a young girl, and later a photograph of a homeless man and a self-portrait by Rembrandt), and they later described original characters. The students were asked not to tell a whole story but to give quick yet meaningful snapshots of characters, leaving the reader to imagine the rest. The Challenge: In ten minutes, write three or more quick sketches of humans or animals. You can think about different ages, professions, types of people, and emotional states. The Participants: Anya, Ava, Celia, Crystal, Greta, Liam, Nami, Pearl, Rachael, Reethi, Yueling
Writing Workshop #68: Sense of Place
An update from our sixty-eighth Writing Workshop A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, September 17, plus some of the output published below In this workshop, we covered the idea of ‘sense of place.’ The students learned that sense of place is a literary device that not only evokes physical, objective descriptions, but also uses vivid imagery to capture the thoughts and feelings of a character about a certain place. We studied numerous example of sense of place within literature and music, including Jack London’s Call of the Wild and an excerpt from Claire Rinterknecht’s story featured in the March 2020 issue of Stone Soup. Students participated in a brief 5 minute write in which half of the class described a place as a neutral narrator and the other half described a place through the lens of a character. Pearl, Greta, Nami, and Peri all shared their incredible work before we moved into our half-hour writing period, during which Peri, Yueling, Pearl, and Ava read. Overall, we had a blast kicking off this fall semester and look forward to more great work yet to come! The Challenge: Describe a place or a setting in which a story will take place. 1) Describe as the omniscient narrator, like the art director for a movie set description including lighting and mood. OR 2) Write from the point-of-view of a character. This is the skeleton vision of the place (lighting, sound, feeling, etc.) as appropriate to your vision. The Participants: Anya, Ava, Celia, Cora, Greta, Nami, Pearl, Peri, Reethi, Sofia, Yueling Arctic Winter Pearl Coogan, 10 Cold howling wind whipped through my fur, blowing endlessly. The deep snow crunched under my paws, stretching as far as my keen blue eyes could see. Snow-covered mounds that were once grey cliffs rose out of the white sea, not a hint of rock visible on them. Farther beyond the once-cliffs were the towering mountains, also covered in snow that was continuously piling higher and higher. The streams that ran and pulled in spring were now completely frozen over with ice. Everything was beautiful. But like many things, the looks of the tundra didn’t say much about the tundra. I couldn’t see or smell any other animals except the six other wolves in my pack, all of them my relatives. The prey, even the caribou, had disappeared like all the other animals, having hidden in their snow-covered burrows or migrated south. To make it even worse, the falling snow prevented me from seeing far. I was an Arctic wolf living in my Arctic habitat with a thick winter coat, but I was still shivering. The snow, though beautiful, covered up all of the hare’s burrows and even rocks that I could fall and hurt myself on. Hunger, as ruthless as ever, gnawed at my stomach. But I had survived one cruel Arctic winter before and could live through another, even if I wasn’t thriving. “Taiga!” My cousin Icicle called, standing on top of one of the snow-mounds, clearly trying to find prey like me and the rest of my pack. But, unlike me and the pack, she wasn’t a good hunter. At all. “Leave her alone, Icicle! She’s a much better hunter than you,” Icicle’s mother and my father’s younger sister Snowclaw growled. Icicle bowed his small head and padded down from the mound he was standing on. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. He was still young with plenty of room to improve his hunting skills and Snowclaw didn’t seem to like him at all. Smelling a wisp of deeply burried hare, I started digging into the endless sea of snow. The smell grew stronger, more vivid, as I dug. Crackly brown grass started to appear, a hole in the middle of it. Lighting up, I started digging in the hole. Surprised yellow eyes glared at me. The snowshoe hare leaped up and started sprinting away from me, but he was tired from his hibernation and wasn’t use to running in such deep snow. My paws pattered on the ground, barely touching the snow before they lifted up. The howling wind was even louder and stronger as I ran, flurries snaking down faster. Suddenly I wasn’t cold anymore. Suddenly the Arctic winter wasn’t as menacing anymore. My sharp fangs sank into the hare’s neck, sinking deeper and deeper. I knew my teeth, once gleaming white, would be stained with blood for days. But I didn’t care. Once I had thought that in the winter, the tundra was a cruel place. A menacing place. An evil place. But now I knew that it wasn’t so terrible. There was still prey but you had to work to find it. There was still warmth but you had to rely on other wolves for it. There was still water but you had to break through the ice to drink it. After all, why would nature make the tundra so cruel that the only good things about were the looks. Holding my head high, I trotted back to my den with my pack following me. My aunt and uncle had brought down a caribou and my brother had caught a bird, so combined with my hare, there would be plenty of food to go around. Maybe not as much as the bounty of prey in spring, but enough to thrive through the not-so-cruel arctic winter. To Let Go Aditi Nair, 14 And I let go. It happened to be a fall much similar to the ones I’ve seen on T.V, and I was ready–well, sort of ready. The adrenaline came to me like a lightning bolt, but I know that this was the best scenario, if any at all. It felt like the world was racing to greet me on all sides, and everything
