What is The Book Project?
The book project consisted of each of us students writing personal narrative about an important event in our life. These stories would then transfer and become a class book after very long and rigorous draft editing. During this process we learned new skills that would further develop the level of our narratives. For example we learned about description, the hero journey and dialogue.
The Launch
The day we started this project was wild. Our teachers planned a grand intro to this project and here is me writing all about it .....
Also we had a field trip to a Vons nearby and wrote about strangers, here are some of my notes.
Baseline piece
Now my baseline piece. We spent an hour in silence writing these. All we saw walking into the class is "Write about an important event in your life". After a while of pondering, I knew what I was going to write about... Unfortunately it feels to personal to post here and I ended up writing about something completely different. Knowing what I know now, I would definitely add more similes and description on the five senses. Also dialogue to really elevate the piece.
Staging "How I Won the Right to the Streets of Memphis"
We were given a narrative called " How I Won the Right to the Street of Memphis." We read it in groups and separated in actual "scenes" that were ready to be preformed by us students. We were all assigned a scene to reenact and interpret, and 15 minutes to prepare it. We executed this surprisingly well and it was a fun assignment. Looking back, I'm guessing we did this to show how dialogue helps in scenes by really explain whats going on. Also describing how actions happen, instead of saying "She slapped him" , it works better saying "Her arm lifted furiously, I shut my eyes and in seconds felt a stinging sensation on the cheek. " Basically, if your writing can be preformed easily, its a good narrative.
Initial Story Ideas
Some of my initial ideas for my personal writing piece were.....
-
-
-
-
Looking back on them, im glad I went with the one I did (option 3) But wonder what others could have evolved into.
-
-
-
-
Looking back on them, im glad I went with the one I did (option 3) But wonder what others could have evolved into.
Hero's Journey
Do you ever feel like movies and books are so predictable? Well here's why, there's so many movies and books out there that follow the structure of the Hero's Journey. From old time novels the The Odyssey to recent books like The Hunger Games.... they loosely follow this format. We learned about it in class and applied it to our stories if we were able to. I personally could but chose not to. I now realize it could have gave my story a better structure but I was really happy with the way I initially wrote it.
Final Shell Description
Describing shells. At first it was fun, but after a few hours it can be a dreadful thing to do. However, I cant deny it helped me describe better in my narrative. It helped me know what places could use more description and what places were fine.
Final Draft
The writing process was rigorous. There were around 13 people who edit your piece and so many drafts. At first it was fun, but after a number of drafts it felt pointless. I could tell the quality of the editing became less and less. However, I got some really good critiques that even led me to change my entire writing piece. I was told it felt like too much was going on and I needed to focus on one event, I took this in consideration and just dropped everything entirely, writing about a new event I feel could fit the hero's journey and be more interesting.
After switching my event, I was told I needed more dialogue and added that, making my piece so much stronger, I finally understood how dialogue can make a piece so powerful. Other edits were minor things, such as grammatical errors and add description. In the end my piece really came alive and went through a lot. I still feel it could have been improved but am happy with the drastic different that I made from draft 1 to the final draft.
After switching my event, I was told I needed more dialogue and added that, making my piece so much stronger, I finally understood how dialogue can make a piece so powerful. Other edits were minor things, such as grammatical errors and add description. In the end my piece really came alive and went through a lot. I still feel it could have been improved but am happy with the drastic different that I made from draft 1 to the final draft.
Exhibition
My friend and I were managers of exhibition and planed and managed the whole thing. We came up with the idea, pitched it and made it a reality. Everything from making the job list, material list and inviting classes. It was hard work and took a lot of energy and time from us. In the end exhibition did not go as plan. Our mistake was not preforming a run through in class before the exhibition, so many people were confused about their jobs. Also, because it was such a busy week at High Tech, many classes could not attend and the first hour was basically empty. It was embarrassing and the opposite of a golden moment. All the work setting up... for nothing. However the second hours ticks by painfully slow... and to my surprise the door opens and a ton of 6th and 7th graders fun in. Hope. We pulled through and the golden moment was when my friend and classmate, Pablo preformed his narrative out loud. The crowd was listening and laughing and enjoying the exhibition, his performance was amazing and a great way to end the exhibition. For those few minutes, I was really proud of the room I helped put together.