Map Writing Assignment

Creative Writing                                                                            Name

70 points

“To put a city in a book, to put the world on one sheet of paper -- maps are the most condensed humanized spaces of all...They make the landscape fit indoors, make us masters of sights we can't see and spaces we can't cover.”
― Robert Harbison, Eccentric Spaces

Directions: You will write seven exploratory pieces to determine what stories your map has to tell. Each piece should be between 500 and 1, 000 words.

1.      Write a detailed description of a place on your map.

2.      Choose a place on the map and write the story of how it received its name.

3.      Use details from a place to help create characterization for one of your characters.

4.      Choose a place on your map and create a mood for the place using details from the setting.

5.      Write the story of a journey from one place on the map to another (maybe through several places).

6.      Write a story of a characters first encounter with a place and its inhabitants.

7.      Write a piece in which the place becomes associated with a particular concept (think about Gatsby’s mansion, Eeyore’s gloomy place, Tolkien’s Golum’s lake, J.K. Rowling’s Room of Requirement or Diagon Alley, are a few that come to mind)).

8.      Create a language that is connected to a particular place. Write a piece about the place and its language.

9.      Write the story of how the map came to be, or how the map was discovered or rediscovered.

10.   Write about a place that is purposefully left off the map.

11.    Write about an important lesson that the hero learned in a particular place.

12.   Write about the destruction of a particular place.

13.   Write the story of someone using the map for wrong-doing.

14.   Write about your character leaving a place on your map and  visiting a place on a classmate’s map.

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