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Teachers (and writers)! Free Class Next Monday on How to Teach Narrative for the Common Core

ByJohn Brown

If you feel a bit lost or anxious about how to teach narrative for the new core, especially stories, I think I can help.

I’m an educator in the private sector and an award-winning novelist and short story writer. I’ve been teaching authors in various venues how to write for the last five years. I’ve been on writing podcasts with thousands of listeners, taught at a number of writers conventions, and had a series of articles published by the national Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America organization, an organization for professional authors. I’ve also been helping Nellie, my wonderful wife, teach her 7th and 8th grade language arts students the unit on short stories during that same period. We’ve taught it to twenty different classes and picked up a number of important insights along the way.

This last year I couldn’t help but examine all the materials Nellie brought home during the district’s writing program adoption investigations. Some programs looked very promising; others not so much. Some got some things about writing flat out wrong. Most of the programs had gaps.

Furthermore, because I work with so many people wanting to write, I know that it’s difficult to teach if you really don’t understand what stories really are and how they work. For lots of people, the subject matter can seem impenetrable. And yet writing stories is such a wonderful way to teach writing, especially because so many kids love it. You won’t find a kid who will spend extra hours writing a business letter or poem analysis, but you will find quite a few who will go crazy writing stories. And the whole time they’re practicing their writing skills.

The question is how DO you write a story?

What is a story?

How can you tell if it’s good?

How do you come up with ideas?

Where do you start?

And what the heck is this chart? Do writers really use this? (Not many that I know.)

Story Diagram plot-mountain-pic

And does anyone think changing the diagram to look like Aspen, Colorado actually helps?

Story Diagram Aspen 

Hey, students—please make your story look like Aspen, Colorado!  (Yeah, that’s going to be effective.)

And yet it’s not as difficult as it appears. Nellie and I have seen a lot of kids really get into writing stories. We’ve seen kids WILLINGLY going way beyond the assignment to write stories that are eight, twelve, twenty-five plus pages. And as they’re writing, they’re practicing grammar, spelling, structure, vocabulary, etc. without knowing it and having a great time. I know that if you enable your students, many of them will write, write, write. Especially in grade school. But also in the higher grades.

Stories can be a blast. The assignments can connect to many students. And the results can be wonderful. I’ve laughed out loud at some of the stories coming out of Nellie’s class. Others have been enjoyable on other levels.

But for this to work in your class, you need to know some key things. You need to understand the core of story and the story development process. You need a lesson plan that details everything step-by-step so your students don’t flounder. And you need to know some fundamental tips (secrets?) about teaching this content.

So I’m going to hold this day-long class for you. A full eight hours. And share everything Nellie and I have learned. This class will be for teachers at ALL levels (I’ll show you some ways to scale the complexity of what you’re doing). There will be NO cost. The only thing you have to bring is a pencil, paper, whatever program materials you have, and a willingness to have a good time.

When we finish, you will know how to write a simple story like the ones your students will write because, ta-dum, you will write one! AND you’ll have a step-by-step lesson plan that builds on whatever materials you have—an official program or one of your own. AND you’ll understand story better than 99% of the population. AND you’ll have a bundle of techniques to help your students. AND you’ll solve both world peace and maybe the lost sock conundrum.

Truly, I think that instead of feeling stress, you’ll actually be looking forward to teaching and writing stories with your students. If not, you may bring tomatoes and huck them at me, but please be aware that I will not stand still; to find satisfaction, you will have to be able to hit a moving target.

If you’re interested, just click the Contact John link under my photo in the left sidebar and send me an email letting me know.

Hope to see you in class!

GET READY FOR A FUN DAY OF LEARNING!

Topic: Teaching writing (narrative & the common core)

Who: Teachers (and writers at least 18 years old), seats are limited

When: Monday, July 29th, 8:15 AM – 5:00 PM

Where: Rich Middle School, 54 E 100 S  Laketown, UT 84038

Materials you need to bring:

  • Pencil
  • Paper
  • The writing program you’ll be using this year
  • Kooky socks, for those who cannot resist the urge
  • A lunch or a way to get one

AGENDA

8:15 AM Arrive

8:30 AM – 9:20 AM

  • Can you create a redneck crapper?
  • The 1st secret to teaching writing: Attributes & techniques
  • The 5 parts of story
  • Thieves prosper – using existing patterns
  • A car, a beggar, and an idiot — basic pattern 1

9:30 AM – 10:20 AM

  • The 2nd secret to teaching writing: Do it with them
  • Technique: Sketch then draft
  • Workshop 1: Zombies and kisses
  • Technique: Zing hunting
  • Workshop 2: Hunt zing

10:30 – 11:20

  • What makes a story big or small
  • Workshop 3: Select a right-sized THOM and character
  • Workshop 4: Select a Goal
  • Workshop 5: Make character sympathetic
  • Workshop 6: 3 tries
  • Workshop 7: Resolution

LUNCH

12:00 – 12:50

  • The 3rd secret to teaching writing: Cognitive modeling and the 6-step process
  • The 4th secret to teaching writing: Our tiny brains
  • Writing is telling: Narrative & description
  • Technique: Yes, SiR
  • Technique: Broad-brush + 1
  • Technique: The Pause

1:00 – 1:50

  • The 5th secret to teaching writing: Have fun
  • Workshop 8: Write your story

2:00  – 2:50

  • How the pros revise—concept, line, & copy
  • Workshop 9: Content edit
  • The 6th secret to teaching writing: Our brains are still tiny
  • Workshop 10: Line edit

3:00 – 3:50

  • The 7th secret to teaching writing: The 3 grunts (responding to a story and grading)
  • Share stories
  • What the heck did we just do?

4:00 – 4:50

  • How to adjust for grade level
  • Common core
  • Your program and lesson plan
  • Identify black holes
  • Wrap up & next steps
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    30 books you should read before you die

    ByJohn Brown

    An avid reader friend of mine began reading through the books in a list called “100 books you must read before you die.”

    She got to Jack Kerouac’s On The Road and went to Facebook and posted the following: “I don’t get the appeal. It’s about a group of boys/men who are irresponsible, drunks, whoring around taking advantage of others and being enabled by their women. Why is this a classic and why should I have wasted my time on it? Can some of my literary friends explain? I hated a brave new world and the handmaid’s tale too.”

    Is the book a classic?

    Should she read it before she dies?

    Is it really that important?

    Let me share an edited version of my response and then provide my list of 30 books you should read before you die.

    *

    Annette, the unfortunate truth is that these lists of “classics” are a sham because there is no objective criteria for determining literary excellence.

    Or maybe I should say that measuring quality in the arts isn’t like measuring the unambiguous, objective score of a baseball game. After books exhibit a certain level of proficiency, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish the quality of one book from another, especially because much of this depends on a reader’s interests and subjective experience of the story.

    When it becomes hard to rank performances, people rely on other measures. One of the most powerful is social networks.

    So if two readers find two different books that blow them away, one of the books might get all the attention because the one book gets picked up by a news service (The New York Times) or a platform (the Oprah Book Club effect) or some other social network of influence. A lot of the so-called literary classics only appear on various lists because they tapped into the academic network, which kept them alive far longer than they would have lasted otherwise.

    On The Road is simply a book that made a stir among some circles in the 1950s. That’s it.

    Was it more important or of higher quality than Exodus? The Chronicles of Narnia? Lord of the Rings? A Town Like Alice? All published in the 1950s as well.

    It depends.

    If you’re wanting to understand the 1950s beat culture, it would be an important book.

    But if you’re wanting to understand fantasy writing of the time, it wouldn’t.

    If you’re wanting to read a book that’s had a huge impact on popular culture, well, LOTR beats On The Road like a dog.

    Some people have the feeling that the so-called classics have some inherent medicinal value because someone put them on a list and called them classics.

    Nope. They’re just stories. Some of which can shed light on the issues and interests of a part of the culture in a given period. But if you’re not interested in that specific sub-culture, who cares?

    And if you’re reading to be entertained, moved, uplifted, or educated—which ones do that best for Annette is for you to decide.

    So all that to say I wouldn’t devalue your reaction to the book ?

    *

    I’m now going to give you my list.

    But it’s not going to be a list of titles. Nor will it focus on a book’s impact on some sub-culture of a given period.

    It’s going to be a real list. One that focuses on what so many of us go to stories for.

    1. The one that makes you weep.
    2. The one that makes you giggle and snort.
    3. The one that reminds you of what it’s like to fall in love.
    4. The one that gives you hope.
    5. The one that you begin to read more and more slowly because you don’t want it to end.
    6. The one that scares the soup out of you.
    7. The one that you can’t put down, even though you need to wake up early in the morning.
    8. The one that makes you wish you lived there.
    9. The one that’s so good that when you close it, you immediately start to read it a second time.
    10. The one that gives you and your child hours of pleasure together.
    11. The one that gives you a sacred, spiritual experience.
    12. The one that makes you reread some of the lines because the turns of phrase are just so delicious.
    13. The one that gives you courage.
    14. The one that takes you on an awesome adventure.
    15. The one that makes you want to be a better person.
    16. The one that bores you to tears (just so know you how good the others are).
    17. The one that introduces you to a different culture that delights you.
    18. The one that makes you think.
    19. The one that lingers with you for days.
    20. The one that gives you lovely insights.
    21. The one that inspires you to love your spouse more.
    22. The one that introduces you to the sorts of people you normally don’t like and makes you actually like them.
    23. The one that delights you with its characters.
    24. The one that whisks you away to a different historical period.
    25. The one that inspires you to give your children a hug.
    26. The one that gets your adrenaline pumping.
    27. The one that sparks all sorts of ideas in your head.
    28. The one that makes you wonder and start imagining what it would be like to be there.
    29. The one that blows your freaking mind.
    30. The one that makes you stand up in your living room and cheer.

    We could do more than 30, couldn’t we?

    Like the one that makes you think people from a different time period are just like us. And the one that makes you think people from that same period are completely alien.

    But I think we’ll stop. That there above is a list.

    Those are 30 books I think everyone will want to read before they die.

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  • Awful Intent: copy edit finished

    ByJohn Brown

    I finished the updates for the copy edit today. Now it’s time to finish the cover, format the ebook and paperback, and then publish. I thought folks might be interested to see the blurbs I received for the book.

    “An engaging story about law and order in the west, complete with gun battles, aerial stunts and a hero just out for a hike.” ~ Police Sergeant Louise Speth

     

    “Grabs you by the throat until the thrilling ending. All too true of what can happen in rural law-enforcement.” ~ Deputy Sheriff Jared Johnson

     

    “WOW! Brown has outdone himself on this one. His books are always interesting and entertaining, but this one added a current twist to a captivating plot.” ~ Sheriff Gary Ogilvie, Ret.

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  • Green light for CURSE

    ByJohn Brown

    I just got word from my editor, and we’ve finally been able to agree on the outline!

    Let us rejoice.

    It took far longer than I’d planned. But I’m happy to move forward. I’ll finish up a couple of things I’m working on right now with the thriller and then begin production next week. I’m estimating I’m going to have to write about 130k worth of new material, which is basically enough to fill a normal novel. If I’m diligent, I can average about 7,500 words a week. That’s not super fast, but I do have a day job. So my initial target for delivering it is September 1st.

    It then goes into the publisher machine. I’ll know in the fall what the release date will be.

    This will also give me some extra time to develop the premise of the thriller. I hoped to have a rough outline by this point, at the very least the story problem. But it’s not quite there yet. So this will give me a little more cooking time. I’m still hoping to finish BOTH before the end of the year. At least two novels a year. That’s the goal.

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    Brain Nazis and Feeling Good by David D. Burns, M.D.

    ByJohn Brown

    Have You Got a Brain Nazi?

    If you’re conscious, you’re monitoring your environment. You have to. It’s how you survive. This is not something you can turn off. It’s just one of those systems that runs automatically, like your liver. You’re always appraising the situation.

    And as soon as you encounter something that’s likely to be of importance to you or yours, your monitor kicks off a physical response to prepare you to deal with or take advantage of it.

    The problem is that sometimes a Nazi propagandist worms his way into the monitoring station. And like any good Nazi, he distorts reality.

    Sometimes those distortions lead to burning resentment, sometimes to unwarranted shame or anxiety, sometimes to eating disorders, sometimes to grave depression. When I heard of the tragic suicide that occurred in our community a few months ago, my heart went out in sympathy to the girl, her family, and friends.  I’m not a doctor. I don’t know the situation. But I’m positive she was dealing with one of these villains.

    I wished I’d been able to share something that’s been a literal life saver to me. Now, it might not have changed anything. But hopefully it can change things in the future for you and others you know who may have to deal with a Nazi in the brain.

    And you will have to deal with a brain Nazi at some time.

    This is not something that affects a miniscule portion of the population. In any given year you can expect more than 15% of a population to experience some form of this [1]. That’s roughly 238 of the estimated 1,592 people 18 years and older in the little county where I live [2]. Rates for teens are similar [3]. Besides, you don’t have to have a full-blown case of a depression for distortions to affect you. How many of us haven’t made faulty comparisons with others? “Oh, she’s so thin and has such great hair; I’m so dumpy.” “Oh, he’s doing so well, and I’m not. I’ll never be a success.”

    The question is not whether you or someone important to you will have to deal with it. The question is how prepared you’ll be when you do. Everyone deals with distortions now and again.  Which means everyone can find a little more enjoyment in life by showing their brain Nazis the door.

    So how does it all work? How do you show the villain out?

    I’m going to summarize it below, but I’ll tell you right now that the book that saved my life was Feeling Good by David D. Burns, MD. This isn’t positive mental attitude. It’s not neuro-linguistic programming. It’s not the mumbo jumbo of Freud and Jung. This is practical and proven. It is the most prescribed intervention for dealing with these issues in the current medical community. It’s prescribed because it works.

    Your Brilliant Appraisal-Emotion System

    To understand this, you have to understand how emotions work. As I said before, you’re always monitoring your situation. You hear a buzz and see a rattlesnake on the path two feet away. Your monitor immediately responds. Alarm, adrenaline, increased blood flow–all of that to get you ready to deal with the situation. Your monitor writes “alarm” on your face to communicate it to those around you–to warn and ask for help. This happens in less than a blink of an eye.

    But this doesn’t just happen with danger. It happens when we encounter unfamiliar things. When we encounter positive things. You see a great friend who makes you laugh all the time. Boom, your monitor responds. You smile. Feel. Focus. You do so because you not only want to avoid dangers, you also want to seek out the things that make you happy.

    Our emotions prepare us to fight, flee, seek, and pitch woo. Our little monitoring and physical response system is brilliant.

    But there’s more. We don’t rely on just the automatic subconscious monitoring. We also have a cognitive (conscious thinking) part. Let’s go back to the rattlesnake. You walk out into the garden, step on a slither, and immediately go into alarm mode. Then you look, consciously see the slithery thing is not a snake, but the garden hose. You relax. Laugh.

    The quick subconscious appraisals keep us alive, because with snakes and other things, if you’re slow, you’re dead. We don’t have time for thought. If you touch a hot stove, you want an immediate reflex. You don’t want to ponder it for a second or two. On the other hand, the cognitive appraisals help us further appraise a situation. They bring more of our resources to bear on the situation.

    How Does the Nazi Get In?

    So there are three parts of the appraisal-emotion system: the subconscious appraisal of the situation, the physical response, and the cognitive appraisal. Each of the three parts affects the other two. And when things are running smoothly, we don’t have problems. But sometimes we get a distortion mucking up the works. We make a faulty appraisal of the situation. And therefore have a faulty physical response.

    For example, you’re a mother. You’ve had a hard day. The kids make a huge mess with flour in the kitchen. You yell, freak out. When they’re cowering in their rooms and you’re cleaning up the flour, you think, “There I go again. I’m a total failure. I can’t stand it! I never do anything right! I’m a terrible mother.” These thoughts make you even sadder.

    And that’s the propaganda. That’s your brain Nazi with his all-or-nothing thinking, telling you that you either perform perfectly or you’re a failure.

    But is that true? No, it’s not. You might be a B+ mother, filling the lives of your kids with all sorts of goodness. You might have just had a great time reading with the kids not thirty minutes before. But the brain Nazi tells you to forget that. “Vatch dis film,” he says, “und see de horrors of vut you are!”    

    And the all-or-nothing thinking gambit is just one of ten common weapons he uses. Furthermore, this happens so quick that we often don’t notice it. In fact, we’ve often repeated some of these distortions so often than they’ve become almost automatic.

    Mr. Nazi, Meet Mr. Bazooka

    The good news is that you can pull the lid off the lies. You can open the door, spot the brain Nazi that slipped in, and take him out. You can do this because one of the three parts of the system is our cognitive appraisal. This means you can consciously stop the movie, pin the distortion on the wall, and uncover the truth. Once you do that, it’s like the rattlesnake scenario above—oh, it’s a hose, we realize, not a snake, and the appropriate emotions immediately follow.

    But you need to know how to stop the movie. You need to know how to spot the lies. David D. Burns, MD tells you exactly how to do this in his book Feeling Good. (By the way, DON’T get this book confused with his Feeling Good Handbook–you DON’T want the handbook; you want Feeling Good, the book.)  In the book, Burns talks about the theory, the results, and then gets right down to the practical techniques used to blow the brain Nazi to kingdom come.

    A few years ago I hit a bad patch with a brain Nazi that had taken up residence. A very bad patch. He’d been there for quite some time. This book and a good counselor saved me. I thank the Lord for that. By the time I went to see a medical doctor to assess whether chemical issues might be playing a role, I was stable. I wasn’t out of the woods yet, but I had opened the lid and found the villain at the controls. I used the techniques Burns gave me, and I’m happy to say that while the brain Nazi still comes round every once in a while, I can spot him. And I can take that sucker out.

    Go to the library and check out the book and take the assessment test. If you, or someone you know, scores in the mild range, maybe you’ve just experienced a very sad event. But maybe you’ve also got a villain in residence. Get the book. Read it. Be happy. Nobody needs to live with a Nazi at the controls.

    For Authors

    By the way, fiction authors should pay special attention to this stuff. Not because we’re more susceptible to brain Nazis than others, although we do have to deal with our fair share as we develop and share our stories. No, we should because the emotion process is exactly what we’re trying to tap into. Knowing the principles can be very useful indeed. Let me recommend you read the books on emotion listed on the Learning With Pros page.

    Sources

    1. 1. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-count-mental-disorders-in-america/index.shtml
    2. 2. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/49/49033.html (find your state and county and see how many folks are likely dealing with a brain Nazi in your area)
    3. 3. http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/2k5/youthDepression/youthDepression.htm
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  • |

    “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination” by J.K. Rowling

    ByJohn Brown

    This is J. K. Rowling’s 2008 Harvard commencement speech, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination.” It’s one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard. Watch and then watch again. Read the full text here.

    Two quotes that in no way can do justice to the whole thing.

    And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

    You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

    . . . 

    Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

    One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books.

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2 Comments

  1. Thank you for doing these classes. I just wanted to know if the class will be like your previous classes and posted online. Thank you again for giving so much.

Comments are closed.