Bringing Forth the Story ArcSession 8

Our motto in this bend of our unit has been ‘When You’re done, you’ve just begun.’ Once you’ve written a couple of drafts of a piece, you’re in a very special place. Now you can make your best work even better. I know you are thinking that the last draft is already pretty good-and you are right. But today, I’m going to teach you a secret that can make this ‘already good draft’ better. The word revision means literally, ‘re-vision’ It means to look again.

When you are writing personal narratives, you are writing… stories. And you already know that stories have a ‘way they usually go’ One of the most powerful ways to improve your personal narrative, then, is to look at it as a story, and to think about whether you have brought everything you know about how stories usually go to your draft.

**By now you have come to realize that our writing workshops begin with a mini lesson, then there is work time, then we may meet and share. Stories like writing workshops, have a pattern, a way that they usually go.

So I’m going to remind you of how stories go, and as I do this, will you think about how you could write a whole new version of your piece, this time writing it more as a story? Doing that will mean changing some things around a bit.

Most stories begin by introducing the main character, who has hopes, wants or motivation. There is a problem. Maybe those hopes or motivations lead the main character to get into some sort of trouble or face some sort of tension.

How Stories Tend to Go

•Main Character•---Motivation, hopes, wants

•Problem•---Trouble or tension, often with some sort of emotional response from the charcter

• Things happen related to the problem•---The problem gets bigger or another problem emerges•---The tension increases for the character•---Sometimes the character tries to solve the problem

•Resolution

Can you listen and find the character’s motivations, the trouble, and so forth?

Now lets’ try it again. Here’s a story you’ve seen before. “Goosebumps” So in Goosebumps, you recall the girl goes to bed, not wanting the wool blanket her mom recommends. They are in Montana, and her mom cautions that is will be cold at night, but the girl resists. Then she wakes up with goosebumps! She reaches for the wool cover, thinks about all the times her mother has been right, wonder why she’s questioned her and drifts off to sleep.

Can you write a story arc for the story “Goosebumps”? Find the next clean page in your writer’s notebook and write a story arc for “Goosebumps”.

**LINK

We are going to be thinking about the story arc over the next few days, and later on in the unit. But for now, will you return to your own writing, re-seeing it ? As you think about the draft you wrote yesterday and about all the narratives you will ever write, remember that stories, like writing workshop itself, have a way they usually go. Your personal narrative will be stronger if you bring out the elements of the story that are buried in it.

•Ask yourself•Do I have a character with a want or a hope?•Have I given my character a clear problem and then written some things that happen that are related to the problem?•Does my problem have a clear resolution?

•I’m expecting that many of you will write a whole new draft to bring out the story structure in your writing-but at the very least make sure you write a whole new beginning or a whole new middle. REVISING IN BIG WAYS