Skip to main content

Home/ Malaysian Teachers & Education/ Group items tagged fiction

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
izz aty

Five Habits to Avoid in Fiction Writing | Scribendi.com - 0 views

www.scribendi.com/...oid_in_fiction_writing.en.html

writing writing style english language learning education reference language esol

shared by izz aty on 05 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • By avoiding these habits, your fiction writing will be greatly improved.
  • 1. Generic verbs and nouns
  • People, places, and things (i.e., nouns) have names, and it's your job to know what they are. Precise nouns work wonders in fiction writing because nouns have connotations or meanings that go beyond their dictionary definitions.
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • This information could hint at what time of year it is (tulips are pretty scarce in September) and could also tell us something about the character who gives the flowers.
  • There are at least 12 synonyms for the verb to laugh, and each one evokes a specific image. A character could express amusement by cackling, chortling, chuckling, giggling, guffawing, snickering, sniggering, tittering, crowing, whooping, simpering, or smirking
  • Precise verbs contribute greatly to characterization.
  • 2. The exception: He said, she said
  • Reading good dialogue makes readers feel like they're actually listening in on a real conversation. Because of this, it can be very disruptive if the author keeps butting in to tell readers that the speaker intoned or declared or asserted or retorted.
  • It may  seem like using "said" repeatedly in dialogue tags is repetitive, but in fact the little word is so inconspicuous, it just fades into the background—which is exactly what we want when we're trying to listen in on a good conversation. The rare deviation is fine (asked, in particular, seems to be okay once in a while), but if you find yourself using a colorful synonym for every dialogue tag in your manuscript or screenplay, you may be doing more harm than good.
  • Third-person narration can be either limited (an objective narrator tells the story by focusing on a particular character's thoughts and interactions) or omniscient (the narrator sees and hears all)
  • many writers, in a misguided attempt to make their fiction writing descriptive, overuse these words.
  • Carrying a steaming and fragrant mug, she walked angrily and loudly into his office. Why write that, when you could have simply said: Carrying her peppermint tea, she stormed into his office. The second sentence actually gives us more information using fewer words.
  • 3. Adjective/Adverb-a-rhea
  • ...and adverbs that introduce redundancy...
  • ...or contradict the meaning of the verb or adjective they modify.
  • 4. Inconsistent point of view
  • In first-person narration, one character tells the story in his or her own voice (using "I")
  • be especially wary of adjectives that don’t actually convey much
  • No single point of view is better than another, but once you have made a choice, be consistent.
  • there are some great examples of novels that experiment with point of view by switching between narrators. But even in these stories, some kind of predictable pattern is imposed for clarity, such as a change in narrator from one chapter to the next, but not within a chapter.
  • 5. Unnaturally expositional, stilted, or irrelevant dialogue
  • Read your dialogue out loud. Does it sound like the way people actually talk
  • Are they talking about the weather? Because if they're talking about the weather, you'd better have a good reason for it.
  • the worst habit a fiction writer can develop is the habit of giving up too easily. Keep writing every day.
izz aty

Kurt Vonnegut: 8 Basics of Creative Writing - 0 views

www.writingclasses.com/...538

writing style literacy writing learning reference language learning teaching resources

shared by izz aty on 06 Aug 11 - Cached
  • izz aty on 06 Aug 11
     
    Eight rules for writing short fiction: 1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.4. Every sentence must do one of two things - reveal character or advance the action.5. Start as close to the end as possible.6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them - in order that the reader may see what they are made of.7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages. The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964). She broke practically every one of my rules but the first. Great writers tend to do that. - Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1999), 9-10.
izz aty

P: Planning Out a Pleasing Plot. Starting Your Students on Story [Teacher Tips from A t... - 0 views

busyteacher.org/a-pleasing-esl-story-plot.html

fiction writing esol teaching learning language learning education references esl english

shared by izz aty on 22 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • izz aty on 22 Jul 12
     
    For anyone who is writing, coming up with an effective and well-written piece takes time and effort and some planning at the start of the process. Nonnative speakers will be even more intimidated by jumping into the cold water of story writing without a little preparation ahead of time. Use the following steps with your students to help them establish the foundation of their plot before they set to the task of writing a fictional narrative.
izz aty

Use of present tense in reports - WordReference Forums - 0 views

forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php

language learning grammar sentence tense punctuation language report format writing writing style writing format english reference

shared by izz aty on 09 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • First I explain something about the findings they reported. After the participant had completed the task, he immediately fell asleep. That has to be in past perfect/past.
  • Then I comment on the researchers' findings in the report. The researchers are quick to conclude that it was the task that caused the participant's exhaustion. What the researchers fail to address is that the participant had run a marathon earlier that day. Here I use the present tense to talk about what is in the report and I still use past perfect/past to talk about the events in their experiment.
  • izz aty on 09 Apr 12
     
    When is the best time to use present tense in a report? I'll have to provide an example, because I can't think of an adequate way to describe what I'm trying to ask without one. "After the participant had completed the task, he immediately fell asleep. The researchers are/were quick to conclude that it was the task that caused the participants exhaustion. What the researchers fail/failed to address was that the participant had run a marathon earlier that day." This passage is very vague, and for that I'm sorry, but I hope my question is apparent. In a report such as this, is it better to use the present tense to convey the researchers' own statements, or is past tense better? Because the researchers did do the concluding in the past, but I've been told that using present tense is preferable (as it is when writing a report about characters' actions in a fiction story). I hope my question isn't too convoluted... Thank you!
izz aty

Are Memes & Internet Culture Creating a Singularity? | Idea Channel | PBS - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

meme internet culture society people world technology web2.0 reference

shared by izz aty on 22 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • izz aty on 22 Aug 12
     
    "Here on the internet, we love us some memes. But where do they come from? Yes we know, they are user generated. But to an internet layman, they seem to just appear, in HUGE quantities, ready for cultural consumption. Are they a sign of a "cultural singularity"? Memes follow rules and code, are varied, self-referential, and seem to multiply at an ever increasing rate. It may seem like science fiction, but we're close to a world where culture automatically and magically creates infinitely more culture."
izz aty

SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE - Audiobook for English Language Learners - ESL - 0 views

esl-bits.net/...index.html

kurt vonnegut literature slaughterhouse five historical fiction fiction audi audiobooks esl english language learning language esol education learning society history

shared by izz aty on 30 May 12 - No Cached
  • Part 1 Part 9 Part 17 Part 25 Part 2 Part 10 Part 18 Part 26 Part 3 Part 11 Part 19 Part 27 Part 4 Part 12 Part 20 Part 28 Part 5 Part 13 Part 21 Part 29 Part 6 Part 14 Part 22 Part 30 Part 7 Part 15 Part 23 Part 31 Part 8 Part 16 Part 24 Part 32
  • izz aty on 30 May 12
     
    SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE  or THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Audiobook read by Ethan Hawke. --- The work is also known under the lengthy title: Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death, by Kurt Vonnegut, a Fourth-Generation German-American Now Living in Easy Circumstances on Cape Cod [and Smoking Too Much], Who, as an American Infantry Scout Hors de Combat, as a Prisoner of War, Witnessed the Fire Bombing of Dresden, Germany, 'The Florence of the Elbe,' a Long Time Ago, and Survived to Tell the Tale. This Is a Novel Somewhat in the Telegraphic Schizophrenic Manner of Tales of the Planet Tralfamadore, Where the Flying Saucers Come From. Peace.
izz aty

They Already Read It, But Did They Get It? 10 Ways to Check Reading Comprehension - 0 views

busyteacher.org/eck-reading-comprehension.html

comprehension reading understanding english esol esl language learning educatio teaching learning assessment

shared by izz aty on 22 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • sequencing activity. Write the major points of the story on note cards, put those cards into a grab bag, and shake it up. Each member of a small group should then pull one of the cards from the bag and place in its correct place in a sequence. Once group members have put all the cards in their correct place in the timeline, ask the rest of the class to check if the sequencing is correct. If it is, the group should then retell the story using the cards.
  • give each person a blank comic page in which to retell the story. (You can find dozens of empty templates online.) Your students should then retell the major events in the story by filling in the empty blocks with pictures and dialogue (when appropriate
  • When your students find a character they love in something you have read, ask them to write about the further adventures of that character. This will not only help them understand what they read, it will give them practice using vocabulary specific to that character found in the piece your class read. You can compile all these short fan fiction pieces into a book for the rest of the class to read at their leisure during independent reading time.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • create your own big book for a story you have just read. Prepare 5-8 pieces of poster board for the book and write a description at the bottom of each page retelling each piece of the story. Working in groups, have your students illustrate what is described at the bottom of the page. Once all the pictures are complete, let your students decide what order they should appear in the book. Then secure the pages, read the book back to your class and make it available to your students during independent reading time
  • share his or her favorite moment from the reading selection, and have him write it on a notecard or write it on one yourself. Ask another student and then another to do the same. When you have about a dozen cards completed, ask your students to organize them in any way that is logical. There may be several organizations which are possible
  • create a map of the setting for the story or book. They can either draw the setting or create a three dimensional model of it using cardboard cutouts. Have your students include any characters in the map as well.
  • two notecards and have him write true on one and false on the other. Then, read aloud a statement about the selection your class read. Make sure some of your statements are true and others are false. Each person should hold up his vote and his card after you read each statement. Have students check each other to make sure all agree. For the false statements, ask your students what they would need to do to make them true.
  • act out in class with this post reading activity. Ask individuals or groups of students to pose as the characters in the story in a particular scene. Then, take a photo of your students. After printing the pictures out, bring them to class the next day and ask your students to explain what it happening in the book at the moment they are acting out!
  • ask pairs of students to write a description of each of the characters in detail. Then, have the pair decide which of their classmates is most like the characters in the story. If you like, you may want to have the students then reenact parts of the story.
  • izz aty on 22 Jul 12
     
    The process of reading, being able to connect semantic input with the letters on the page, does not mean much if language learners cannot understand what they have read. The following exercises, modified from Sherrill Flora's Everyone Reads! will give you and your students some fun ways to make sure the meaning came through the words on the page.
izz aty

How To Teach Writing: 7 Strategies for Elaboration - 0 views

busyteacher.org/trategies-for-elaboration.html

writing writing ideas fiction esol teaching language learning references esl english resources reference education learning

shared by izz aty on 22 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Describe a Place in Detail
  • Use Specific Words to Paint Pictures
  • Show How Something Feels, Smells, Tastes, Sounds or Looks
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Compare Two Different Things Through Simile or Metaphor
  • Use the Exact Thoughts or Words from a Person
  • Describe How Someone or Something Moves
  • Show Someone’s Feelings Through What He Does
  • izz aty on 22 Jul 12
     
    Do your students struggle to write with detail? Are their descriptions limited, lacking in specifics or uninformative? If so, you can help your students write more engaging and elaborate pieces by teaching the following strategies for elaboration.
izz aty

20 Terrifying Two-Sentence Horror Stories - Mandatory - 0 views

www.mandatory.com/...ng-two-sentence-horror-stories

horror story writing creative writing scary fiction reddit

shared by izz aty on 04 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Therealhatman I woke up to hear knocking on glass. At first, I thought it was the window until I heard it come from the mirror again.
  • Jmperson The last thing I saw was my alarm clock flashing 12:07 before she pushed her long rotting nails through my chest, her other hand muffling my screams. I sat bolt upright, relieved it was only a dream, but as I saw my alarm clock read 12:06, I heard my closet door creak open.
  • Miami_Metro Growing up with cats and dogs, I got used to the sounds of scratching at my door while I slept. Now that I live alone, it is much more unsettling.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Calamitosity She asked why I was breathing so heavily. I wasn't.
  • JustAnotherMuffledVo I begin tucking him into bed and he tells me, "Daddy, check for monsters under my bed." I look underneath for his amusement and see him, another him, under the bed, staring back at me quivering and whispering, "Daddy, there's somebody on my bed."
  • Doctordevice I awoke to the sound of the baby monitor crackling with a voice comforting my firstborn child. As I adjusted to a new position, my arm brushed against my wife, sleeping next to me.
  • The_D_String My wife woke me up last night to tell me there was an intruder in our house. She was murdered by an intruder 2 years ago.
  • Wartortlesthebestest There's nothing like the laughter of a baby. Unless it's 1 a.m. and you're home alone.
  • madamimadamimadam You get home, tired after a long day's work and ready for a relaxing night alone. You reach for the light switch, but another hand is already there.
  • Skuppy My daughter won't stop crying and screaming in the middle of the night. I visit her grave and ask her to stop, but it doesn't help.
  • Guztaluz There was a picture in my phone of me sleeping. I live alone.
  • If you're looking for a horrifying story that will keep you up tonight, don't waste all that time watching a horror movie. Reddit has provided us with pages of terrifying horror stories wrapped up in two sentences or less. Here are twenty of our favorite stories guaranteed to make you keep your lights on tonight.
izz aty

Editorial Ass: some very quick thoughts on the present tense - 0 views

editorialass.blogspot.com/...quick-thoughts-on-present.html

story prose fiction literature writing inspiration resources reference grammar tense education language learning english language esol

shared by izz aty on 27 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • izz aty on 27 Jul 13
     
     successful present tense novel writing is much, much more difficult to execute than past tense novel writing. Most writers, no matter how good they are, are not quite up to the task.  I'm not just being conservative here. It's true that historically, most novels have been written in the past tense. This is not purely convention--there are practical reasons for narrating in the past tense
izz aty

What is the best horror story you can come up with in two sentences. : AskReddit - 0 views

www.reddit.com/...t_horror_story_you_can_come_up

horror story prose fiction literature writing inspirtation resources ideas writing ideas writing prompts language learning english reference language esol

shared by izz aty on 27 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • ADGE_S 1253 points1254 points1255 points 7 months agosorry, this has been archived and can no longer be voted onWhen I finally grabbed her in the darkness, I swam back to the surface. It never occurred to me how fast the ice could freeze over.
  • I mean, I know that hypothermia drastically reduces the blood flow to the skin and limbs, and then if you pour hot water, the heat won't dissipate as fast as usual and it can actually burn the skin. But apart from that I don't know of anything that would qualify as the famous thermal shock.
  • [–]nkeithb 32 points33 points34 points 7 months agosorry, this has been archived and can no longer be voted onEMT here. The danger with active warming (hot water bath) over passive warming (blankets), is the blood left in your limbs is very cold. Your body uses all the warm blood for the trunk of the body. If you put someone into hot water you run this risk of opening up the circulation in the extremities, sending cold blood into the heart. This will result in cardiac arrest and then death.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Nezzatic 2111 points2112 points2113 points 7 months agosorry, this has been archived and can no longer be voted onI wish I could remember whose these people are. They tell me I have Alzheimers.
izz aty

How to Write a Preface and a Foreword | Scribendi.com - 0 views

www.scribendi.com/...preface_and_a_foreword.en.html

preface foreword writing writing style education language learning

shared by izz aty on 05 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Foreword
  • because you've accomplished something, you are already published, and your name is well known.
  • Your purpose is to introduce an author/work to the world, which can be accomplished in a variety of ways. You could, for example, write about a chapter in the book, the book as a whole (assuming you've read it!), or the author's work in general
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • If you know the author personally, talk about this relationship
  • you could discuss how the author's work has affected your life or the importance of the work you're introducing
  • talk about what's different in the current edition.
  • discuss the historical impact of the book.
  • Describe the journey of writing the book
  • Consider including a few or all of the following ideas:
  • Discuss how the book came about. Why did you write it? Why did you choose the particular subject? What was your motivation?
  • Give a brief description of the book, the main characters, or themes.
  • State the purpose of the book, especially if the work is non-fiction
  • describe what the reader can hope to learn by reading the book.
  • A preface, which is included in the front matter of a book, is your chance to speak directly to your readers about why you wrote the book, what it's about, and why it's important
  • Talk about any problems that came up during the writing and how you dealt with these trials and tribulations.
  • discuss your research process. Talk about your sources. Why are they unique?
  • Include acknowledgements. Thank the people who were instrumental in the writing of your book. Depending on the level of formality of the writing, these could range from colleagues to editors to family members.
  • Talk about how long it took you to write the book, if it's relevant.
  • You don't want the preface to drag on and on. A good rule is to try to keep it to one page, two at maximum, and be sure it is free of spelling and grammatical errors
  • izz aty on 05 Jun 15
     
    Are you thinking about writing a preface for your book or have you been asked to write a foreword? A preface is a brief introduction written by the author, as opposed to a foreword, which is an introduction written by another person that usually comes before the preface.
1 - 12 of 12
Showing 20▼ items per page