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Books to inspire you. Title Page – Let's Get Writing! Quote by George R.R. Martin: “I think there are two types of writers, the arc...” Title Page – Let's Get Writing! Explicit Writing Instruction – The No-Nonsense Educator. Why Writers Should Read Nonfiction. Artificial Intelligence Identifies the Six Main Arcs in Storytelling: Welcome to the Brave New World of Literary Criticism. Is the singularity upon us?

Artificial Intelligence Identifies the Six Main Arcs in Storytelling: Welcome to the Brave New World of Literary Criticism

AI seems poised to replace everyone, even artists whose work can seem like an inviolably human industry. Or maybe not. Nick Cave’s poignant answer to a fan question might persuade you a machine will never write a great song, though it might master all the moves to write a good one. An AI-written novel did almost win a Japanese literary award. A suitably impressive feat, even if much of the authorship should be attributed to the program’s human designers.

But what about literary criticism? We can treat this as an exercise in compiling data, but it's arguable that the results are on par with work from the comparative mythology school of James Frazier and Joseph Campbell. Those numbers describe the dataset from Project Gutenberg fed into the The Hedonometer by the computer scientists at the University of Vermont and the University of Adelaide. How does this endeavor compare with Vonnegut’s project? Via The Atlantic. How To Write a Book Review. Are you an avid bookworm who loves to share what you thought of your latest read? Writing a book review is a great way to let fellow readers know about an exciting new page-turner—or give a heads up that a book might not meet expectations. Whether you’re reviewing a book on a site like Goodreads or on your personal blog, you’ll want your review to be informative and helpful for your audience.

Read on for our essential tips on how to write an engaging book review. Here’s a tip: Want to make sure your writing always looks great? Grammarly can save you from misspellings, grammatical and punctuation mistakes, and other writing issues on all your favorite websites. Write with confidence. Two Good Ways to Create Choose Your Own Adventure Stories. How to Help Students Explain Their Ideas in Writing. Create Your Own Story Cubes with Google Drawings. Story cubes have long been a popular item to give inspiration for writing.

Create Your Own Story Cubes with Google Drawings

Typically they are regular cubes with a different picture or word on each face. Students can pick a few cubes and then roll them to randomly get elements for a story. Although you can certainly buy these cubes, you can also make you own. Better yet, students can each make several story cubes and then you will have dozens and dozens to use from your class. One easy way to make your own story cubes is to use Google Drawings with pictures, emojis, or text. iReporter. Kurt Vonnegut Offers 8 Tips on How to Write Good Short Stories (and Amusingly Graphs the Shapes Those Stories Can Take) You can't talk about American literature in the second half of the 20th century without talking about Kurt Vonnegut.

Kurt Vonnegut Offers 8 Tips on How to Write Good Short Stories (and Amusingly Graphs the Shapes Those Stories Can Take)

And since so many well-known writers today imbibed his influence at one point or another, you'd have to mention him when talking about 21st-century literature as well. Despite so fully inhabiting his time, not least by wickedly lampooning it, the author of Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat's Cradle, and Breakfast of Champions also had a few tendencies that put him ahead of his time. He worked wonders with the short story, a form in whose heyday he began his writing career, but he also had a knack for what would become the most social media-friendly of all forms, the list.

In the video above, those abilities converge to produce Vonnegut's eight bullet points for good short-story writing: Guide to Digital Writing « Voiceworks. Getting Started Familiarise yourself with experimental online writing.

Guide to Digital Writing « Voiceworks

The wackier, the weirder, the more exhilarating and genre-bending… the better! You can check out some of our favourite digital writing below: If you’re daunted by the prospect of developing a digital work on your own, consider collaborating with another writer/illustrator/technologist.Digital works come in all shapes and sizes, and the internet is full of inspirational examples of what is possible in interactive forms. If you find work doing something technical you haven’t seen before, make sure you bookmark it so you can refer to its code if necessary! Experiment with different forms, styles and arrangement of work. Describing Words - Find Adjectives to Describe Things. Shape of a Story – Revolutionary Poets Society — Spring 2018. We started with…where I begin?

Shape of a Story – Revolutionary Poets Society — Spring 2018

Last week we continued with where I’m from. Now we continue this discussion about the story of you by considering the shape of a story. Connecting events in a story. Written Communication - Say It Like You Mean It - Kitty Lusby. Whether you’re blogging to express yourself, writing advertising copy, or just trying to get your point across in a business email, written communication skills are pretty much necessary in today’s world.

Written Communication - Say It Like You Mean It - Kitty Lusby

We’ve got an interesting situation in the modern marketplace, though: Much of our communication takes place online, and therefore, much of our communication today is in writing…and writing is hard. Then again, most people don’t communicate particularly effectively while talking face to face, either, but that’s not the point. If you want to improve your writing skills and get your point across more clearly, more quickly, and more powerfully, read on. Fantasy Name Generator. Behind the Name: Meaning of Names, Baby Name Meanings. Freewriting: A Way Around Writer's Block. Freewriting: A Way Around Writer's Block (printable version here) Freewriting is one of our Consultants' favorite techniques for helping writers who cannot get started.

Freewriting: A Way Around Writer's Block

What Makes a Person: The Seven Layers of Identity in Literature and Life. “A person’s identity,” Amin Maalouf wrote as he contemplated what he so poetically called the genes of the soul, “is like a pattern drawn on a tightly stretched parchment.

What Makes a Person: The Seven Layers of Identity in Literature and Life

Touch just one part of it, just one allegiance, and the whole person will react, the whole drum will sound.” And yet we are increasingly pressured to parcel ourselves out in various social contexts, lacerating the parchment of our identity in the process. As Courtney Martin observed in her insightful On Being conversation with Parker Palmer and Krista Tippett, “It’s never been more asked of us to show up as only slices of ourselves in different places.” Today, as Whitman’s multitudes no longer compose an inner wholeness but are being wrested out of us fragment by fragment, what does it really mean to be a person? George Saunders Demystifies the Art of Storytelling in a Short Animated Documentary. An interesting thing happens when you read certain of George Saunders' stories.

George Saunders Demystifies the Art of Storytelling in a Short Animated Documentary

At first, you see the satirist at work, skewering American meanness and banality with the same unsparing knife’s edge as earlier postmodernists like John Barth or Donald Barthelme. Then you begin to notice something else taking shape… something perhaps unexpected: compassion. Rather than serving as paper targets of Saunders’ dark humor, his misguided characters come to seem like real people, people he cares about; and the real target of his satire becomes a culture that alienates and devalues those people. How Orson Welles' F for Fake Teaches Us How to Make the Perfect Video Essay. If you don't understand what makes Citizen Kane so important, just watch a few movies made before it.

How Orson Welles' F for Fake Teaches Us How to Make the Perfect Video Essay

In his first outing as a filmmaker, Orson Welles, whether by ignorance or other virtues, pioneered so many aesthetic and narrative techniques that we can now hardly imagine how the medium ever did without. If you don't understand what makes Welles' last picture, the quasi-documentary on fact and falsehood F for Fake so important, just compare it to all the video essays proliferating on the internet today. If Citizen Kane was just slightly ahead of its time in 1940, F for Fake, which came out in 1973, now looks more than three decades ahead of the curve.

Nobody knows that better than Tony Zhou, creator of the popular cinema-focused video essay series Every Frame a Painting. "I've stolen more ideas from this film than from any other," he admits at the beginning of his tribute to F for Fake. Writing Resources. – Bryn Donovan. Edutopia. Writing is complicated. Depending on the study you read, strong writing requires a mastery of 28, 34, or 47 distinct skills.

The fact that researchers can’t even agree on how many traits go into writing illustrates just how complicated it is. That makes the teaching of writing really complicated—writing teachers need to understand this complex skill and find a way to pass it on to 140 or more students, each with his or her own blend of prior knowledge, writing ability, and motivation. Faced with such a Herculean task, writing teachers need to be as efficient and effective as possible. The good news is that a number of best practices have emerged in recent years that allow writing teachers to significantly improve their practice without adding more hours to already overfilled days.

How The 3 Ladies Of Destiny Can Help You Seal A Character's Fate - Writers Write. Fateful Attraction In Greek myth, three goddesses control the destiny of mortals – the sisters of life, suffering, and death. Clotho spins the thread of human fate.Lachesis measures the length of the thread.And Atropos cuts the thread – she decides when we die. In Roman myth, they appear as Nona, Decuma, and Morta. I’m sure that last one will send a shudder down your backbone.

So why are talking about these three women? Go Teen Writers: How to Write Your Character's Thoughts. By Stephanie MorrillStephanie writes young adult contemporary novels and is the creator of GoTeenWriters.com. Her novels include The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt series (Revell) and The Revised Life of Ellie Sweet (Playlist). You can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and check out samples of her work on her author website. When we do Go Teen Writers contests, one of the feedback boxes that our judges can check is that an entry had "too much internal monologue. " One of our writers asked me to explain in more detail what this means. Au.pinterest.

Writing Prompts

Be a better writer in 15 minutes: 4 TED-Ed lessons on grammar and word choice. There’s no denying it — the English language can be mighty tricky. When writing a paper, a novel or even an e-mail, you might look at a sentence you just wrote and think, “Is that comma supposed to be there?” Or “Is that really the best word to use?”

Edutopia. "The most important thing about it for me is that it's not censored, and it's not too highly structured," explains James Kobialka, a UPCS seventh-grade science teacher. Connecting and supporting writers, writing workshops, competitions and literary services. Gallery.

Michael Jackson Hardy Leung, July 31, 2010 Paul the Octopus Hardy Leung, July 11, 2010 Frida Kahlo Hardy Leung, July 7, 2010 Dalmatian Hardy Leung, June 8, 2010 Ada Lovelace (Computer Pioneer) Hardy Leung, May 26, 2010 Rosa Parks Hardy Leung, May 26, 2010 Eleanor Roosevelt Hardy Leung, May 26, 2010 Martin Luther King Jr. Country Populations Hardy Leung, April 1, 2010. Writing Lessons for High School English Teachers. Creative Writing Prompts For High School Students. 8 Fun Creative Writing Lesson Plans for High School Students. 29 Plot Templates: Know the Readers Expectations Before you Bust Them.

Picture Prompts - The New York Times. Improve Your Writing Instantly. The art of modern writing. Learning to write is one of the fundamental skills we gain from our time at school. WRITING ADVICE: The Narrative Arc. I've been travelling around Australia this past month, talking about my new book THE WILD GIRL. Inevitably, I've been asked many questions about my creative process. In my usual fashion, I talk about my narrative arc and how I cannot begin writing a novel until I 'see' the clear shape of my dramatic arc, or, to put it in more simple terms, my story thread with its bright beads of scenes, leading strongly and powerfully to my endpoint, my crisis and resolution.

After a session earlier this week, I was asked to explain more about the narrative arc but a woman who was wanting desperately tow rite but had never heard the term before. The Universal Shapes of Stories, According to Kurt Vonnegut. The 5 Elements Of A Story – Writers Write. How to Self-Edit Infographic. The Unconscious and Archetypes by Carl Jung. There are many archetypes that exist and though they blend and mold into each other in very different cultures, each individual contains the model of each archetype.

They can be thought of as inherited emotional and/or behavioral patterns. The Limits of the Human Body — Soda Pop Avenue. My parents love the outdoors, which I actually found out AFTER I moved out of the house. They started doing all these really fun outdoors activities that I love after I moved out! They started hiking, camping, going to all the National Parks; I was so jealous! I asked them why we never did any of that when my brother and I were at home and the answer was simple (but overlooked by me at the time): We didn't have time. The Writer's Handbook. 6 Types of Narration - Infographic.

The Psychology of What Makes a Great Story. “Stories,” Neil Gaiman asserted in his wonderful lecture on what makes stories last, “are genuinely symbiotic organisms that we live with, that allow human beings to advance.” But what is the natural selection of these organisms — what makes the ones that endure fit for survival? What, in other words, makes a great story? Kurt Vonnegut’s Lost NYU Lecture on What It Takes to Be a Writer, Animated. How to Tell a True Tale: Neil Gaiman on What Makes a Great Personal Story. A Good Infographic on How to Organize Your Writing Office. Point of View. SMART teaching strategies. 43.activevspassivevoice. Ms R's English and Literacy Blog : Photo.

WriteToLearn. Writer Igniter - DIY MFA. Change Passive Voice to Active Voice. 21 Clever Writing Prompts That Will Unleash Your Students' Creativity. Writing prompts: Caroline's favorite fifteen... A Great Tool for Creating Stories Using Maps. Writing prompts. Most Common Surnames [Last Names] in the United States (top 1000) Edutopia. 3 Tips for Weaving Together Your Story's Pieces (How to Outline for NaNoWriMo, Pt. 6) - Helping Writers Become Authors.

How to Self-Edit Infographic. 7 “Tricks” to Improve Your Writing Overnight. 5 Tips for Writing a Strong Short Story. Finish this Book, back cover. In the world I live in inside my head...: May 2011. Author, Jody Hedlund: Describing Characters: Moving Beyond Hair & Eye Color. How to Improve Your Handwriting Style: 4 Steps. Revising Your Writing (& Awesome Editing Symbols You Should Know) Bridgid Gallagher - Struggling to reach "The End"? How to Finish Your Novel. How to Grow as a Writer: 5 Ways. How to Write a Horror Story - 6 Terrific Tips. You Need To Try This Guaranteed Method of Creating Depth In Your Writing – Sacha Black. Writing Dialogue - 7 Tips. Natalie Goldberg - How to start writing. The Four Rules of Using Fake Words – Mythcreants. Guide To Using Pinterest for Writers (Infographic) - mandy wallace. 15 Great Plots from European Mythology and Ancient Literature – Bryn Donovan. Must-visit sci-fi websites for writers.

13 Inspirational Lessons From Stephen King’s On Writing. A Guide to Fantasy and Fairy Tale Fiction for Self-Published Authors - danieladorno.com. Formatting your Novel Manuscript – Lara Willard. Quill - Packs of Interactive Writing Lessons. Hemingway Editor. Create a Book - It's Simple, Free and Fun. Something Sketchy: A Beginner’s Guide to Storyboarding.

Interactive Fiction

Imagination Prompt Generator: Random Writing Blog Prompts, Writer's Prompt Tool / Creativity-Portal.com. Writing prompts. Creative Writing Activities. PDF to Flash page flip - flipping book software. Myths and Legends from E2BN.