What is due when you return from Thanksgiving break?

Be sure to bring your annotated works cited page and the notes that you have on your sources. We will begin planning our dramatic monologue upon our return.

For class on Friday

We are working on research for our dramatic monologue. The annotated works cited page for the project is due soon. If possible, it would be great to get it in before class ends next Tuesday. Then you'll really have no homework over the Thanksgiving break.

Dramatic Monologue Assignment

Today we researched for our dramatic monologue. The assignment follows:

`Creative Writing                                                                                Name

Dramatic Monologue

 

 

Walk a Mile (or at Least Fifty Lines) in Someone Else’s Shoes

 

            Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be someone famous, or powerful? Someone who won an important battle, wrote a book that changed the world, or someone who discovered a new world?

 

            Your assignment is to research a person of historical significance and write a dramatic monologue of at least fifty lines from this person’s point of view. I’ve listed some possible personas below, although you are not limited to these people. In order to prepare for writing the dramatic monologue you will have to do some reading and some research. You will need to find a minimum of three useful sources, including a book, (not just online sources—although print resources may be from databases which are accessed through the Internet). While you should begin your research with a reference source (Wikepedia, encyclopedia, etc…), the reference source should be a source IN ADDITION to more in-depth resources. 

           

            You will compile an annotated works cited page. The purpose of the research is not to limit you to writing about what you’ve read, nor are you required to include your research in the poem. Instead, reading about this person should help you determine an appropriate voice, a purpose, situation, setting, conflict and resolution to the poem. While dramatic monologues are not research papers, and should not read like research papers, they are rich in detail and description of the time, place and people.

           

            While we will (briefly) review the procedure for compiling an annotated bibliography, I highly recommend that you use the website Noodletools.

 

            Before you begin writing you might consider the following: Who is this person? What would be a central conflict they might have? How might this conflict be resolved? What other people might be involved in the poem? What is the time and place? Who might he or she be speaking to? For what purpose?

 

Annotated works cited page due:________________________

 

Three copies of the rough draft due: _____________________

 

Final typed copy due: ______________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some People to Consider:

 

Christopher Columbus             Queen Elizabeth                      Amelia Earhart

Joan of Arc                                          Mary Queen of Scots               Henry VIII

Louis Armstrong                                  Babe Ruth                                Jackie Robinson

Socrates                                              Benedict Arnold                      Ludwig Beethoven

Napoleon                                             Virginia Woolf                        Abigail Adams

Catherine of Aragon                            Henry Hudson                         Neil Armstrong

Marie Curie                                         Galileo                                    Michelangelo

Charlemagne                                       Elizabeth Blackwell                Florence Nightengale

Charles Lindberg                                 Lewis and/or Clark                 Charles Dickens

Machiavelli                                         Leonardo DaVinci                   Mary Cassatt

William Shakespeare                          Orville & Wilbur Wright        John Lennon

Annie Oakley                                      Clara Barton                            Harriet Tubman

Emma Willard                                     Thomas Jefferson                    Josephine Baker

Howard Hughes                                  Al Capone                               Julius Caesar

Eleanor Roosevelt                               Isaac Newton                          Louisa May Alcott

Harriet Beecher Stowe                        Edgar Allan Poe                      Genghis Khan

John F. Kennedy                                  Marilyn Monroe                      Henry Ford

Katherine Hepburn                              Albert Einstein                        Pablo Picasso

Gertrude Stein                                     Nellie Fox                               Ayn Rand

                                   

                                                                                                                                                 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Be sure your writing folder is complete

• My assessment of writing folders begins on Monday morning

What's due on Monday November 10,

• Bring your revised copy of your short story with the completed peer review sheet. Make sure your story has a title!

Due for Friday

• 3 copies of your complete rough draft of the short story
• If you want class credit for the assignment, you MUST bring in 3 copies, AND you MUST have the drafts in your hand at the start of class.

Character sketch due on Wednesday

THE CHARACTER SKETCH

 Descriptive Writing

 

 

When you write a character sketch, you are trying to introduce the reader to someone. You want the reader to have a strong mental image of the person, to know how the person talks, to know the person's characteristic ways of doing things, to know something about the person's value system. Character sketches only give snap shots of people; therefore, you should not try to write a history of the person.

A good way to write a character sketch is to tell a little story about one encounter. If you do that, you could describe a place briefly, hopefully a place that belongs to the person you are describing, focusing on things in the scene that are somehow representative of the person you are describing. Describe how the person is dressed. or facial expressions. From time to time, describe the person's gestures to put words into the person's mouth in direct quotations.

As you work on this sketch, you should decide what kind of emotional reaction you want the reader to have in relationship to this person. What kind of details can you select to create that emotional reaction? Avoid making broad characterizing statements; instead, let the details you give suggest general characteristics. Let the reader draw her own conclusions

Example Sketch

Eudora Welty’s Sketch of Miss Duling

 

Miss Duling dressed as plainly as a Pilgrim on a Thanksgiving poster we made in the schoolroom, in a longish black-and-white checked gingham dress, a bright thick wool sweater the red of a railroad lantern--she'd knitted it herself--black stockings and her narrow elegant feet in black hightop shoes with heels you could hear coming, rhythmical as a parade drum down the hall. Her silky black curly hair was drawn back out of curl, fastened by high combs, and knotted behind. She carried her spectacles on a gold chain hung around her neck. Her gaze was in general sweeping, then suddenly at the point of concentration upon you. With a swing of her bell that took her whole right arm and shoulder, she rang it, militant and impartial, from the head of the front steps of Davis School when it was time for us all to line up, girls on one side, boys on the other. We were to march past her into the school building, while the fourth-grader she nabbed played time on the piano, mostly to a tune we could have skipped to, but we didn't skip into Davis School.

 

Your Assignment

Write a character sketch. Avoid telling everything about the person, instead, select two or three outstanding traits to illustrate with incidents and examples. Use description to convey the impression. You may find it helpful to follow the pattern of the model by beginning with an incident showing the person performing a typical action. As you relate the incident, or soon afterward, give vital information about the subject - name, age, and occupation, for instance. Is it important that the reader see the person? If so, give details of physical appearance. After finishing the sketch, reread it to be sure that it creates a vivid impression, making any revisions that you feel will make it more effective

Paper Requirements:

Ø  Typed Size 12 Font, Standard Margins (1 inch all sides)

Ø  1 page

 

Pre-writing Questions

1. What purpose does this person have in your story?

 

2. What places or objects are associated with this character? How do these objects or places help us understand the character?

 

 

 

3. What do other characters think of this person? What might other people say about him/her?

 

 

4. What are your character’s motivations? How did the character develop these motivations?

 

 

5. Picture this person. Describe him/her in as much detail as you can. Include facial features, physical appearance, clothing, manner of speech.

 

6. How does his/her appearance reflect his/her personality?

 

7. When you picture this person, what do you think of him/her doing? Include descriptions of facial expressions, gestures, etc.

 

7. When you hear this person, what do you hear them saying?

 

8. What are unusual habits, traits, interests, etc. of this person?