Training students to show where they are in their stories.

Where am I?

If students develop the skills necessary to write a focused story, there will be adequate space to include settings that involve the reader's imagination. In other words, instead of just telling the settings, they can show them, painting vivid pictures in the minds of their readers by using the senses, shape, size, color, etc. While a beginning writer will tell the setting at the beginning, your intermediate and more advanced writers have the maturity to allow their setting to evolve, if you will, throughout the entire event. Here are a few examples that show the setting of the story instead of just telling it. Read these to your students to see if they can draw conclusions from the details to figure out what might be the location of each from the clues given.

1. I raced across the burning hot sand to the waiting cold water ahead. My feet were singed and I was completely out of breath as I set my towel, umbrella, and lunch basket down. A seagull was diving at my head, apparently hoping for some scraps of food, but I had none to offer. I glanced to my right and noticed a lone fisherman casting his rod and reel in the distance. He must have been doing well because his ice chest was overflowing with fish! To my left I heard the soft laughter of a little girl and her mom as they playfully built a sand castle together. I couldn't wait much longer to splash into the water! Where am I?

2. As I stepped into the room, a mountain of books appeared around me on all sides. About thirty or forty children were milling around the room, but not one of them uttered a word. A soft spoken woman sat behind a desk near the door with the sound of a computer beeping as she scanned books under them one after another. Several teachers came in with their arms full of books, binders, and other materials. I walked to a corner of the room and pulled a book off the shelf. Where am I?

3. The room was cold, dark, and quiet. A single beam of light shone from the back of the room all the way to the front, where a humongous white screen came alive with people and places. The aroma of popcorn filled the air and the sweet, icy Dr. Pepper felt great as it slid down my parched, scratchy throat. The place was almost packed with other occupants of the soft, comfortable, cushioned seats. I took my wife’s hand and settled in for a nice relaxing time with her. She just looked at me and smiled. Where am I?

Development of Story Ideas: Less is More!

Road signs and billboards are blunt and to the point, mainly because the people reading them do not have time to read anything that takes more than a few seconds when they are driving. If students could grasp this concept when they are writing a paper, it would do wonders for the development. Some students spend as much time brushing their teeth in a story as they do on the main event, and really can’t understand why that's a problem! Knowing when it is appropriate to develop an idea, or when to say it in a word and move on is sometimes difficult. This activity uses normal street signs to model where many kids go wrong in their writing. Take a sign like the first one above, for example. It basically stands for: Watch Out! Train! The picture should be enough without having to go into great detail. Here’s what an untrained student might write on his train sign: That light coming toward you......that’s not God! But if you don’t stop pretty quickly, you’ll see Him soon enough! I’m bigger than you and stronger too. Even if you get to the intersection before me, you better not take a chance, because I’m not going to stop! I don’t care what you saw actors do in those movies! Try going through before me and there will be a sad ending!
The other sign simply means Don’t Park Here, but an untrained writer might say it something like this (remember, our goal here is the development of the right ideas). Don’t even think about parking here. We'll tow you, your car, and your gramma who’s still in there to the impound. Then we’ll charge you $200 per day and that’s just the fee for putting up with your gramma! We suggest you park at the parking lot next door. We don’t like the owner of that place anyway. So you’ll do us a favor by filling his parking lot. Just don’t do any business with him and that will make us very happy! Bye!
There are hundreds of clip art programs full of road signs like these where the students can practice this activity. I know what you’re thinking! Why would I want my students to practice doing things that would be considered wrong? Well, if the student does this activity and begins to be able to distinguish between ideas that can be explained in a word or sentence, and the ones that need to be fully developed, then he has learned something from the experience. I once
heard someone say, “Everyone has a purpose in life, even if it’s to be a bad example for others.” I think that quote applies here, and this activity does a good job of showing the students that less is more when they are writing about minor details!