I don’t want to bury the lead; before you go any further, open this site in a new tab. Then, please read on.
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Years ago, I was teaching in Tacoma, Washington. The local paper ran a series of mini lessons sponsored by Jeff Peha, founder of Teaching That Makes Sense. Soon after, I come across the website that I listed above. My teaching has been better because of it. Each link will download a series of lessons and handouts that you can use in your class today. One of the many excellent lessons is the idea that there is a predictable structure to all fiction. Peha calls it “The Five Facts of Fiction”:
1 Fiction is all about character.
2 Fiction is all about what your character wants.
3 Fiction is all about how your character gets or does not get what he or she wants.
4 Fiction is all about how your character changes.
5 Fiction is all about a world that you create.
Then, he goes through how you can use these facts to help the young writers in your classroom give a structure, a backbone, to their own writing. In turn, this frees them up to be creative with the content and playful with the language. I’ve used this to help students not only as a way to think about character and structure their writing, but with novel study as well. There is so much just one click away; I can’t do it all justice in one post. Do yourself a favor and check it out.
