Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Components that don't Appear out of the Blue

In the Exploratory Writing Workshop I have a pre-exercise prior to the course starting. It is called a Favorite Author Chapter Template (FACT). What the student does is take a chapter from one of the works of a favorite author and identify the components that are used and the distribution percentages. The reasons for this are to show a deeper appreciation for their favorite author and why they liked their style... by peeling back the onion a layer deeper.

When the students start writing their vignettes I hope they will try and achieve an inclusion of these components in something comparable to the distribution they discovered. For example the components include backstory, dialog, submerged dialog, exposition that moves the story along, foreshadowing, symbolism and others they might want to include.

What I find is that its one thing to be able to diagram a chapter in this way and quite another to apply this understanding to the writing of their vignettes. One of the profound lessons I've learned in life is that just because I know something doesn’t necessarily mean I'll apply that knowledge to those particular tasks they relate to. For example a student might be able to regurgitate a litany of facts for a test and get an “A” for the effort, but when it comes to applying those to writing a vignette, that understanding will often fly right out the window. Hence, many just seem to follow their key-strokes in hopes these components will just magically materialize out of thin air.

I used to scribble and doodle in class as I took notes showing relationships between the points the professor was trying to make. Writers need to do something along these lines when they begin to write, organizing the components they'll be using to give order and discipline to the fire hose of thoughts that fill the awareness of their imaginations.