1. Planning your story.
2. Purpose Audience Mode.
3. VCOP.
2. Purpose Audience Mode.
3. VCOP.
4. HIS CAT ROARS.
5. Researching your article.
6. Show, don't tell.
7. Purpose (in more detail)
8. Genre
9. Audience (in more detail)
10. Voice
1. Planning your story5. Researching your article.
6. Show, don't tell.
7. Purpose (in more detail)
8. Genre
9. Audience (in more detail)
10. Voice
2. Purpose, Audience, Mode
When writing either fiction or non-fiction, you should start by deciding on three things: Purpose, Audience, Mode. You must then learn about the conventions of what you have chosen. Additionally, if you have chosen a purpose of imagine, explore, entertain, you will need to decide on genre. There will be guidance to each of the categories within this page soon. The present image needs to be changed to say MODE instead of GENRE.
__________________________________________________________________________________
3. VCOP
Use this image to give you an idea of what level your vocabulary, connectives, openers and punctuation is at. The highest levels are at the bottom of the pyramids.
__________________________________________________________________________________4. HIS CAT ROARS
This is an acronym that covers most of the points needed to make a good, interesting story. In English, you are marked across three criteria; Reading, Writing and speaking & Listening. When writing (mostly fiction), you should use the following. When Reading, you should be able to comment how the author has used these features and to what effect.
H - Hooks: Get your reader interested! Cliff hangers, change of scene, unasnwered questions etc
I - Imagery: Similes, Metaphors, Personification
S - Sentence length: Varieties of sentences are the mark of a good writer. The controlled use of long and short sentences for an effect on the reader is the mark of an excellent writer.
C - Connectives: And, because, so are very simple and over used. Try; therefore, despite this, however. Even better, use Adverbial starters; interestingly, displeasingly, amazingly etc
A - Alliteration: Repeating sounds to create a mood
T - Triplets: Three modifiers such as adjectives / Triadic structures (three similar sentences, might shar the same number of syllables) / Anaphora (repeating words for repetition - guess how many times is the most effective?)
R - Range of vocab.
O - Onomatopoeia: words that are formed to copy the sound of something.
A - Adjectives & Adverbs: you should always attempt to modify nouns and verbs with these.
R - Range of punctuation.
S - Show, don't tell: A hard one this, you should be descriptive so the reader has to imagine what is happening, don't just say what happened.
__________________________________________________________________________________
5. Researching your article
If you are writing a period article (a period piece is set in a historical context), you will want to do at least a little research into your article. Think about the amount of research that went into Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. You might want to look up illnesses, the food they ate, wars that were going on, big news for the time, who was ruling, what were the cities and countryside like to live in? These will all give your creative writing an extra layer of value to the reader who will be drawn more and more into the story by your attention to detail.
__________________________________________________________________________________
6. Show, don't tell
Show, don't tell means to go into detail describing the action, event or emotion instead of just naming it. Have a look at the following - the best one is much longer, but it is much more interesting.
He ran across the field.
vs
He turned and lifted his knock-knees and thrust each forward, over the tips of the grass, faster and faster his feet beat upon the dirt like a drum roll until the whipping blades stung his thighs.
...
He closed his eyes trying not to cry.
vs
His eyelids shut like great dams holding back a torrent of water. He took a deep breath to calm his churning stomach and the fluttering. He clenched his fists to resist the shakes that were begining to take control of his body, eminating from his pounding, racing heart.
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
8. Genre
Genre is something that needs to be considered when writing to imagine, entertain, explore. If you are writing non-fiction, you will need to decide what genre your writing falls into. This is a category of text. Each category has a specific set of rules that you should attempt to follow. You might think - hell, if everyone else follows the rules, then mine will be even more original! No it wont. Unfortunately, if you don't stick to the rules it stops being within the genre which confuses the reader and leaves them unsatisfied that it wasn't done very well.
__________________________________________________________________________________
9. Audience
__________________________________________________________________________________
10. Voice
