Happy Lammas!
Aug. 1st, 2018 07:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouseI'm at the coffee shop early trying to prep for class, but I keep getting distracted by my review blog. (A couple of comments came in while I was sitting here).
I decided to go to a movie last night with friends (Ant-Man and the Wasp) and that was fun, but now I'm feeling a little crispy around the edges because I stayed up later than I normally would. I also feel wildly unprepared for class.
I probably haven't managed to mention this earlier (see above blog about how insanely busy July has been), but I've been teaching a week-long science fiction/fantasy class at the Loft called "Not Just the Zombie Apocalypse." It's part of their teen summer program. My attendance is once-again extremely healthy. I have 16 teenagers, all of whom are willing to show up for an 9 am class, and, on top of that, all of whom have been (crossing fingers that this trend continues) enthusiastic participants.
BUT, because of said enthusiasm, I've been tearing through material in class.
I'm ahead of my synopsis by about a day--so I'm thinking today is going to have to cover stuff I hadn't planned on doing, so that we can match back up/get back on track. I think to that end, I'm going to loop back to character design/development. We touched on it only briefly earlier, so it's time to go back to that.
This means, of course, that I don't have writing prompts ready to roll and I'm doing that last-minute scramble to find fun ideas.
Sometimes I wonder how i survive.
In this case, I survive because it really takes almost nothing to get my class talking. In fact, I intend to start to day getting them to list some favorite/memorable characters. Then, we're going to do some deep thinking about why these characters stood out: was it just their story? Was it some unusual personality trait? Was it they way they "talked" (aka the narrative voice)? Was it a special ability we all wish we had (world's greatest detective/wizard/etc.)?
I think we'll do some thinking about how do you make characters distinct from one another. We'll talk about how important (or not) physical description is, naming, dialogue quirks, etc. I think maybe I'll ask them to do an exercise where they write dialogue between two characters without ANY dialogue tags or "blocking" with the express purpose of focusing on making voices distinct enough to be recognizable without the 'he said/she said tags." (And then we'll have to discuss why huge blocks of dialogue like that are actually a TERRIBLE idea in actual fiction. :-)
Okay, I'm feeling better. I'm going to head out so I can get there early and settle in.
Maybe I'll also grab a second cup of coffee for the road.
I decided to go to a movie last night with friends (Ant-Man and the Wasp) and that was fun, but now I'm feeling a little crispy around the edges because I stayed up later than I normally would. I also feel wildly unprepared for class.
I probably haven't managed to mention this earlier (see above blog about how insanely busy July has been), but I've been teaching a week-long science fiction/fantasy class at the Loft called "Not Just the Zombie Apocalypse." It's part of their teen summer program. My attendance is once-again extremely healthy. I have 16 teenagers, all of whom are willing to show up for an 9 am class, and, on top of that, all of whom have been (crossing fingers that this trend continues) enthusiastic participants.
BUT, because of said enthusiasm, I've been tearing through material in class.
I'm ahead of my synopsis by about a day--so I'm thinking today is going to have to cover stuff I hadn't planned on doing, so that we can match back up/get back on track. I think to that end, I'm going to loop back to character design/development. We touched on it only briefly earlier, so it's time to go back to that.
This means, of course, that I don't have writing prompts ready to roll and I'm doing that last-minute scramble to find fun ideas.
Sometimes I wonder how i survive.
In this case, I survive because it really takes almost nothing to get my class talking. In fact, I intend to start to day getting them to list some favorite/memorable characters. Then, we're going to do some deep thinking about why these characters stood out: was it just their story? Was it some unusual personality trait? Was it they way they "talked" (aka the narrative voice)? Was it a special ability we all wish we had (world's greatest detective/wizard/etc.)?
I think we'll do some thinking about how do you make characters distinct from one another. We'll talk about how important (or not) physical description is, naming, dialogue quirks, etc. I think maybe I'll ask them to do an exercise where they write dialogue between two characters without ANY dialogue tags or "blocking" with the express purpose of focusing on making voices distinct enough to be recognizable without the 'he said/she said tags." (And then we'll have to discuss why huge blocks of dialogue like that are actually a TERRIBLE idea in actual fiction. :-)
Okay, I'm feeling better. I'm going to head out so I can get there early and settle in.
Maybe I'll also grab a second cup of coffee for the road.