Dinosaur comics (qwantz.com). Check it out. =]
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Shopping in the Fiction Section
Another month has passed by, which mean it’s time for another comparison blog. =]
Like I mentioned in a previous post, because I am an English major, a lot of the time I find it easier to write about fiction or poetry or a novel. Since I’ve been “trained” to look for meaning in texts and how to analyze the symbolism and imagery, I am prepared to explicate a story. Although I will admit that the short stories included in the reader were challenging and quite interesting, especially because the stories were so culturally diverse. I definitely feel like the worksheet with leading questions and the information on the cultural background was useful in writing my essay.
On the other hand, sometimes I find it more difficult to write fiction, especially since I am my own harshest critic. A lot of the time I will think of a great beginning for a short story, but then I don’t know where to take it or how to end it. This is exactly what happened when I wrote my fiction piece; I plan to remedy this and successfully complete it for the final portfolio. However, it is obvious how both aspects of fiction inform the other: you have to know about the elements of fiction when you write your own story.
As for the classroom, I would certainly include a fiction exercise into a lesson plan. I always had to do some creative writing in school, but it usually took the form of writing poems. Only recently have I had an assignment to write an entire short story, and that was in an Asian American Literature class. It was a great exercise that allowed me to be creative while forcing me to finally finish a story. Writing fiction gives students an outlet and allows them to be original, instead of just writing about the same standard ideas. I would have few parameters to the assignment (maybe only a minimum page length) and see how the students express themselves.
Like I mentioned in a previous post, because I am an English major, a lot of the time I find it easier to write about fiction or poetry or a novel. Since I’ve been “trained” to look for meaning in texts and how to analyze the symbolism and imagery, I am prepared to explicate a story. Although I will admit that the short stories included in the reader were challenging and quite interesting, especially because the stories were so culturally diverse. I definitely feel like the worksheet with leading questions and the information on the cultural background was useful in writing my essay.
On the other hand, sometimes I find it more difficult to write fiction, especially since I am my own harshest critic. A lot of the time I will think of a great beginning for a short story, but then I don’t know where to take it or how to end it. This is exactly what happened when I wrote my fiction piece; I plan to remedy this and successfully complete it for the final portfolio. However, it is obvious how both aspects of fiction inform the other: you have to know about the elements of fiction when you write your own story.
As for the classroom, I would certainly include a fiction exercise into a lesson plan. I always had to do some creative writing in school, but it usually took the form of writing poems. Only recently have I had an assignment to write an entire short story, and that was in an Asian American Literature class. It was a great exercise that allowed me to be creative while forcing me to finally finish a story. Writing fiction gives students an outlet and allows them to be original, instead of just writing about the same standard ideas. I would have few parameters to the assignment (maybe only a minimum page length) and see how the students express themselves.
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