Blue Winds Dancing

1. Blue Winds Dancing Writing Workshop

2. The Personal Essay • “BWD” is a personal essay • essay: a brief work of nonfiction that expresses a person’s opinions or views about a particular subject • Possible purposes: • Analyze • Inform • Persuade • Entertain

3. Function of the Personal Essay • For the author: allows the author to re-create a personal experience • For the reader: allows the reader to “live” the author’s experience through the author’s eyes • Why might this be helpful to you as a reader? What does this allow you to do?

4. Why do we Need to Learn This? • “The reader’s interest in a personal essay often has at least as much to do with the author as it does with the subject of the essay.” • Listen to Marlin’s mollusk joke. The story isn’t that bad, but the way he tries to tell it is terrible… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRad4Y3FPdM • The way you tell the story makes it come alive and makes your reader interested!

5. In other words… • If you want people to pay attention to what you have written, you need to write in a way that appeals to others. • When would this be important in the “real world”?

6. Style, Use of Language, Comparison • We will focus on three areas of how to write a story so that your readers are interested: • Author’s Style • Sentence structure • Imagery • Use of Figurative Language • Simile • Metaphor • Personification • Use of Comparison

7. Author’s Style: Sentence Structure • Sentence Structure: the pattern the writer uses to connect words in a sentence • Good authors mix up their sentence patterns by using a variety of simple, compound, and complex sentences. • Good authors vary the length of their sentences.

8. Author’s Style: Sentence Structure and Imagery • Parallelism: (sentence structure)the use of repeated forms, phrases, or clauses that are similar (parallel) in structure to add to the “flow” of the paragraph and to make connections between ideas in a paragraph. • Alliteration: (sentence structure)repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the beginning of words • Imagery: the use of words or phrases that appeal to one or more of the senses

9. Use of Figurative Language • contributes to an author’s style • Refers to words or phrases used in unusual ways to • create strong, vivid images, • to focus attention on certain ideas, • or to compare things that a basically dissimilar • Simile, metaphor, personification

10. Simile: A direct comparison that uses like, as, or than; or a verb such as appears or seems Ex: “giant cacti that look like petrified hitchhikers along the highways” Metaphor: An implied comparison that doesn’t use words such as like or as Ex: “The giant cacti were petrified hitchhikers along the highways” Use of Figurative Language: Simile and Metaphor

11. Use of Figurative Language: Personification • when an animal, object, or idea is given human characteristics • Ex: “heavy mountains holding up the night sky”

12. Use of Comparison • Comparison AND contrast • Comparison: focus on similarities • Contrast: focus on differences • Demonstrate dramatic differences between two topics • Through comparison, the reader understands both ideas being compared even better because they are being set side-by-side

13. Use of Comparison • If you’ve only ever had one, it’s hard to notice the subtle things you like about it until you have had the other!