Note taking for Half A Chance

Today is the first day of Teachers Write, a free online summer writing camp for teachers (or anyone!) who wants to work on their own writing this summer with some fun prompts and activities.

I wrote a post last week on Facebook, talking about what it takes to add writing into your life. Kate Messner who is one of the organizers of Teachers Write asked to copy it to their blog. You can read it here if you'd like. Life Doesn't Permit.

And each day, you can check the blog for the lesson or Q&A or whatever the day's activity is. Today's is about setting and the activity is to go outside and isolate one sense at a time.  You come, too.

I always set my books in real places for just this reason. You will go past the common details that everyone would think of. Real places have contradictions and history and surprises. In my school visit presentation, I tell kids that when I am writing details, this is my rule for description:

The surprises that you couldn't have imagined often become the gold in the description.

Here's a photo of a setting from Rules. If I had simply imagined a parking lot for that scene where Catherine and Jason go running, I never would've imagined the hard things that Catherine would've had to deal with in relation to the wheels of Jason's wheelchair. Rocks, sticks, pinecones, the sewer grate--and because I live in the north, SAND. I would've imagined a flat parking lot, but the real parking lot was much more complicated. She would've had to look out for all those things and they would've shaped her decisions.



"Jason’s head and shoulders shake as I bump him over cracks in the tar. There’s so much to look out for: holes and rocks and sand near the side of the building. "

It's a simple mention, but it carries an unmistakable truth.