Writer's Workshop and Shorter Fiction

Some reminders:

1) Play script submissions for the GEVA contest are due on Friday 3/7. If you have a play, revise and finish it. A contest won't glaze over the little mistakes, they'll discard your draft. 

Yesterday was Fat Tuesday and National Grammar Day; I'm sad I missed celebrating them both with you. Especially National Grammar Day. So, we'll celebrate a day late. Not Fat Tuesday. 

Last time, we reviewed some of the most common and easily made grammar, punctuation, and spelling mistakes. You know these mistakes enter into your writing more often than you'd care to admit. Luckily, you're practicing the craft of writing, so things like this are easy to fix. However, they aren't easy to fix if you never make an attempt to fix them. Here's a quick refresher of what we did Monday:

1) Simple words to understand and never forget. Ever.

2) An entertaining comic on how to use apostrophes.

3) Semicolons. The scariest of them all.

4) An animation on commas. 

5) Using simple words is a good thing!

Did you think I was just going to leave these alone? Hilarious. Today you're going to really practice the craft of writing. You have your drafts with my marks on them. During 7th period you're going revise all mistakes and have your short story ready to be part of your portfolio. You'll be looking specifically to correct mistakes having to do with the problems addressed above (semicolons, commas, using correct words, apostrophes, and choosing the right words).


There are other types of fiction much shorter than the story you just finished. An important point from last time was choosing the right words for the statements you want to say. Two types of fiction you may have come across before are hint and micro fiction. 

Hint fiction is a relatively new genre comparable to tweeting. It's a short story in 25 words or less. Sounds easy, right? It's not as easy as you think. Choosing the right words to tell a story in 25 or less words is incredibly difficult. Especially if you want your story to have an impact. 

Read some examples of hint fiction. There are even contests you can check out, too. Think about how you'd write your own hint fiction. Think especially about the points we've been going over regarding the small mistakes! Practice writing hint fictions free of all the mistakes we reviewed last class. Write 10-15 hint fictions and share them in your groups. Read them carefully, choose the right words, and look especially closely at the 5 points we've been looking at together. By the end of class, have a draft of 10-15 polished hint fictions.