Rough Drafts Are Due Friday 9/4. Final Piece Is Due on Thursday 9/10

Word Photos

From your prewriting, pick any three times from your life that you want to work with and create a word photo from each. The idea of a word photo is to describe carefully a small moment or scene from that time in your life (describe a brick in the wall in the building in the house on the corner instead of the house). Work on showing rather than telling – but by the way that you show and by the words you use, try to capture what is going on beneath the surface. Do this in third-person (for example: do not say “I” instead say “he” or “she” or call yourself by your name); this increases the sense of “watching yourself.” These word pictures you create do not need to be 100% true, but try to get them to touch the emotional truth behind one of your own memories. Try to get the photo/moment to capture something of what was going on for you at the time in your life.

Make these word photos short. No more than 75- 100 words but make them powerful. That is the challenge of this exercise. Working to get a few words to paint a picture helps us see more and to write better. Try to be in the memory again, try to see the detail. Bring it to life for your readers.

Take time to play around with different memories and different ways of showing the memory. You need three different pieces at 100 words or less. Give each one a title. Turn in only one page on Thursday 9/10.

Rough drafts are due Friday 9/4. Final piece is due on Thursday 9/10.

(Prewriting ideas: Journal without stopping for 20 minutes about any memories at all even if you don’t pick them; make a list of 25 memories that are vivid for you; pick five memories and make a bubble map – put the memory in the center and add bubbles for details you could describe like: rocking chair, bug noises, itchy skin, etc.)

Here is an example of a word photo:

School

First-grade class picture. Motley farm-town kids in sepia tones. Innocent. Happy. But look closely at their eyes: a hint of confusion – as if this does not fit with some vague memory rapidly melting away inside them. He is the tall one in the middle in the back row, slumping, trying to fit in. Twenty years of this. And then a lifetime of un-learning, trying to find his way back home, following a distant, sweet memory. . . (by Lynn Nelson)