Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Creative Writing I

A new post because I forgot to mention everything in the last one and this stuff is irrelevant to the topic of the last one.

I started Creative Writing I today. I must say, I didn't have the highest expectations for it, but it's turning out to be pretty awesome so far (yeah, there's only been 1.5 hours of it, but still). We talked about common character constructs (like the Gandalf figure and the Orphan Hero Who Knows Not Of His True Background (Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, Eragon)), the problems of writing urban fantasy in today's market (Twilight, it's all your fault the agents are tired of your genre), writing in general, reading, and mostly characters.
My teacher wrote some of these things on the board. There were ten total:


  1. a lovesick dragon
  2. Space Commander Jezlak
  3. "The Creature"
  4. a repeating 8th grader
  5. a homicide detective in Baltimore
  6. a demon on holiday
  7. a time-shifting android
  8. a navy bomber in Vietnam
And I don't remember what the other ones were.
Our assignment for homework was to pick 3 of these things (the three I chose are up there, of course) and write character profiles of them. There was a lot of emphasis on the importance of characters today.
The first one I wrote (Jezlak) was just a paragraph describing him. Then I got bored with that mode of expression. This is creative writing. So the next one (the Creature) was dialog. Only dialog, no quotation marks or words in between. The third is a letter (the 8th grader).

We're supposed to bring a "popular book" (meaning something that is the sort of thing we'd like to write, meaning not Great Expectations) every day. Some days will just be Reading Days, some days we'll do exercises with the books, some days will be B.I.C. days (Butt In Chair) on which we write and only write, and some days we'll do other stuff like today.

My wrist is sore from typing. Why is this? I haven't even been doing much of it today...

In other news, I'm also taking Healthful Living I (NOOOOO), Algebra II (meh), and Band (yay).

3 comments:

  1. Are you allowed to take Creative Writing I in sophomore? I should like to....

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah, there's some of all the grades in my class.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Excellent.... *rubs hands together with a grin*

    ReplyDelete

Talk to me.