Grades 9–10
60+ Minutes
Narrative
VideosSean Prentiss is an essayist, poet, and professor. His book of nonfiction, Finding Abbey: The Search for Edward Abbey and His Hidden Desert Grave was awarded the National Outdoor Book Award, the Utah Book Award for Nonfiction, and the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. He is also the author of Crosscut: Poems, a memoir-in-poems about his time spent building trails in the Pacific Northwest. Prentiss is an Associate Professor at Norwich University in Vermont.
You will learn new techniques for writing engaging scenes.
STEP 1 Watch the video and read the techniques summary on page 1 of the The 5 Speeds of Scene — Handout. After you’ve watched the video, find the reflection questions on page 2. Think about real scenes, from your own life, and answer the questions about the 5 narrative techniques on the worksheet. STEP 2 The word “dilation” means “to become bigger, more open.” You can apply this narrative technique to real or imaginary scenes that are either high-emotion or very boring. When writing, you will include more and more details so that the scene grows and grows. The...
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