Applied Practice

Master Classes Writing Lessons from Great Authors

JOURNEYMAN LEVEL

APPLIED PRACTICE Master Classes: Writing Lessons from Great Authors

Journeyman Level

Teacher Notes

A Note for Teachers .............................................................. 5

Student Practices

Lesson One: Telling and Showing ........................................ 9

Lesson Two: Voice* ........................................................... 14

Lesson Three: Modifiers ..................................................... 19

Lesson Four: Juxtaposition ................................................. 24

Lesson Five: Fluency* ........................................................ 29

Lesson Six: Precision* ........................................................ 35

Lesson Seven: Learning from Poetry*................................ 40

Lesson Eight: Dynamic Punctuation*................................. 47

Lesson Nine: Illuminating*................................................. 52

Lesson Ten: Paragraph Breaks*.......................................... 57

Lesson Eleven: Writing Critically*..................................... 64

Lesson Twelve: Designing.................................................. 70

Suggested Responses and Additional Activities

Suggested Responses .......................................................... 77

Additional Activities ........................................................... 87

Teacher Resources

Index of Authors and Titles ............................................... 103

Objectives and Correlations............................................... 104

*Suggested responses are included for the practices in these lessons.

A NOTE FOR TEACHERS

We have created the Master Classes series based on the premise that teachers and students can find no better examples of excellence in writing than those provided by the literature they are studying. The “master-examples” in each lesson are therefore drawn from the masterpieces commonly read on the relevant grade-level. As a particular text may or not be on an individual class’s reading list, we have provided a brief context for each quotation. This avoids confusion and allows students to concentrate on the quality of the writing.

To enable students to learn the most about the particular writing skill highlighted, each of the twelve lessons has the following format:

• A definition, which succinctly explains the meaning of the writing skill under discussion • At least three “master-examples” of the writing skill, with not only a context for each

example but also an explanation of how it exemplifies that skill • A short but illuminating discussion of the skill • A practice that enables the student, in a stimulating way, to begin to incorporate the skill

into his or her own prose style; where appropriate, the exercise is followed, at the back of the book, by suggested responses

• An essay, with a prompt question adaptable to an individual class’s reading assignments, which further develops the student’s use of the writing skill; where appropriate, the essay is preceded by a pre-writing exercise

At the back of the book, in addition to the “Suggested Responses,” you will find “Further Activities,” which build on the skills demonstrated in the lessons.

Each book in the Master Classes series has been written to complement the curriculum of an approximate grade-level. Likewise, the writing skills discussion becomes progressively more sophisticated as the series advances.

• The Apprentice Level focuses on titles commonly read by high school freshmen. • The Journeyman Level focuses on titles commonly read by high school sophomores. • The Craftsman Level focuses on American Literature titles commonly read by high

school juniors. • The Master Level focuses on British Literature titles commonly read by high seniors.

The names of the levels, which stress that writing is a craft, were inspired by the “guild” system of medieval times. A young person wishing to become proficient in a craft would first have to serve an apprenticeship under a master. After grasping the rudiments of the craft, the apprentice would then spend time “on the road” as a journeyman further improving his proficiency. After establishing himself as a craftsman, the practitioner still faced the challenge of producing a “masterpiece” before the guild recognized him as an official master of the craft. The new master could them take on an apprentice of his own, ensuring that excellence in the craft would live on.

The great authors featured in these books, established masters of their craft, are now ready to “take on” new apprentices.

The term “master class” itself refers to a teaching tradition in the arts, most notably in classical music. A school will bring in a “maestro” to work with up-and-coming instrumentalists, sometimes on a one-to-one basis. These master classes focus on technique, as no one has more to teach aspiring artists about proficiency than expert practitioners. In the art of writing, the expert practitioners are the very authors whose work students read. A master like Charles Dickens or Jane Austen can “visit” the classroom at any time.

Enjoy hosting your own Master Classes.

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Lesson One—Telling and Showing

Definition: The essential habit in many types of writing, especially persuasive writing, of balancing assertions with adequate explanation and/or illustration. Example 1: In her memoir West with the Night, British writer Beryl Markham recounts her adventures as the only female pilot in Africa during the 1920s and 30s. In fact, she was probably “the first person, male or female, ever to scout elephants by plane,”. Here she describes that extraordinary sight: “A herd of elephants, as seen from a plane, has a quality of an hallucination. The proportions are wrong—they are like those of a child’s drawing of a field mouse in which the whole landscape, complete with barns and windmills, is dwarfed beneath the whiskers of the mighty rodent who looks both able and willing to devour everything, including the thumb-tack that holds the work against the schoolroom wall.” In the first sentence, Markham tells us what it is like to see elephants from a plane, and that assertion is enough to create a vague picture in our minds. In the second sentence, however, she shows us what it is like, and that is what makes the excerpt memorable. Note that her strategy is to explain something unfamiliar in terms of something familiar; few of us have seen a herd of wild elephants from the sky, but almost all of us have seen pictures on classroom walls. Using similes or analogies as a means of showing or explaining is a strategy that every writer needs to put into practice at some point. Example 2: Brave New World is Aldous Huxley’s satirical vision of a society in which everything, including humanity itself, is part of a production line. Not everyone, however, is a content member of this “utopia” of consumption and pleasure. Bernard Marx, a brooding psychologist, and two companions get special permission to leave the “civilized” world and visit a “savage” reservation in New Mexico. Here, the trio is climbing up the side of a mesa (table mountain) to see the village of Malpais: “When they were half-way up, an eagle flew past so close to them that the wind of his wings blew chill on their faces.” This example demonstrates that you can both tell and show in the course of a single sentence. A less careful writer would have been content to tell the reader that “an eagle flew past very close,” but a writer, like Huxley, who really cares about his or her prose making an impact on the reader will want to show exactly how close: “the wind of his wings blew chill on their faces”—the reader can feel that.

Example 3: George Orwell is most famous for his satirical novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell was also a writer of perceptive non-fiction; his essays are models of clarity. In “Shooting an Elephant,” he reveals that his attitude toward “despotic governments” was formed long before he wrote his famous books. As a young man, Orwell served the British Empire as a colonial policeman in Burma. He had, he tells us, “already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing,” but it took an incident involving an elephant run amok for this idea to become a conviction. “To avoid looking like a fool” in front of the local population, young Orwell feels forced to act violently: “And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East.” In other words, young Orwell realizes exactly why his “thesis” (“that imperialism was an evil thing”) was true; the incident involving the elephant illuminates this truth, allowing him to understand that imperialism steals the freedom not only of the oppressed but also of the oppressor, turning him into “an absurd puppet.” Orwell the writer puts the reader through a similar process of realization, using the elephant story as a dramatic illustration of his anti-imperialist position.

The poet Octavio Paz once remarked, “If you say something is wonderful—that is a banality; if you show something is wonderful—that is poetry.” What is true for poetry is also true for prose. If you tell your readers that a lake you visited in Mexico was wonderful, their reaction is probably not going to be much more than a mental shrug. If you show them the wonder by adding that you awoke one morning to find the lake filled with flamingoes, a living carpet of pink, then they are likely to believe your assertion, and remember it, too. Of course, the “showing” portion of your prose is not typically going to be as exotic as flamingoes, but it will have to feature specific information. This information, depending on your writing situation, might take the form of details, statistics, examples, stories, reasons, quotations, expert opinion, or other forms of evidence; it may be a combination. Whereas not every sentence, by any means, will feature “showing,” almost every writing assignment, as the paragraphs progress, does. Expository writers “show” by means of description and explanation; persuasive writers “show” by means of argument and analysis.

Students in creative writing classes are sometimes told that the first rule of writing is “Show, don’t tell.” This is, however, a simplification. No form of writing is possible without some degree of “telling”: you have to make statements, to give the reader information. What is “fatal” to a piece of writing is when there is nothing but vague statements and generalities. That kind of prose does not prove anything; it only leaves the reader cold. And what is the point of writing something that will leave the reader unmoved, either mentally or emotionally? Again, it is a question of balance: telling and showing work best together. In a way, the writing you are asked to do in both high school and college harks back to that activity beloved of elementary schoolteachers: show and tell. Most of the time with higher level writing, the process is reversed: first you “tell” (assertions of fact, opinion, belief) and then you “show” (provide various forms of evidence, justification, etc.). Frequently, however, you can reverse this process—“showing” and then “telling.” One example of this would be when you “hook” the reader at the start of an essay or paper with a specific and compelling image, example, quotation, etc.; later in the introductory paragraph you “tell” what the essay is all about; in other words, you state your thesis. Another instance of “showing and telling” is the type of paragraph in which you start with specifics and build toward a conclusion. Indeed, many paragraphs will shift back and forth between these two kinds of content. For example, you will often write a paragraph that starts with a topic sentence or generalization (telling); supports that assertion with concrete evidence and thoughtful analysis (showing); and reaches a reasonable conclusion (telling). The essential point is that good writing needs both telling and showing, and the two need each other.

Practice: Let us deepen this habit of both “telling and showing” in paragraphs by considering this poem by Emily Dickinson: A narrow fellow in the grass Occasionally rides; You may have met him,--did you not, His notice sudden is. The grass divides as with a comb, A spotted shaft is seen; And then it closes at your feet And opens further on. He likes a boggy acre, A floor too cool for corn. Yet when a child, and barefoot, I more than once, at morn, Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash Unbraiding in the sun,-- When, stooping to secure it, It wrinkled, and was gone. Several of nature’s people I know, and they know me; I feel for them a transport Of cordiality; But never met this fellow, Attended or alone, Without a tighter breathing, And zero at the bone. The aim here is to create a carefully considered paragraph that both tells and shows something meaningful about this poem. A prompt question will get you thinking—and writing—in the right direction. Say, for example, you were asked, “What, according to the poem, is the snake’s most striking quality?” The first part of your reply (telling) could be that the snake’s capacity to surprise is its most striking quality. You could then support this (showing) by pointing out how from the first stanza Dickinson highlights the creature’s capacity for “sudden” and surprising manifestations. The stanzas that follow, you could continue, offer vivid instances of the snake’s deceptive appearance: what seems to be a “spotted shaft” or a “whip-lash” turns out to be—in the blink of an eye—something more lively, and perhaps more lethal.

You could end by observing that this chilling surprise has the ability to take the poet’s breath away. In other words, through a combination of detail, quotation, analysis, and conclusion you show, as clearly as you can, that your initial statement is both sound and insightful. Your paragraph might look something like this: The most striking quality of Dickinson’s snake is its capacity to surprise. He appears without warning: “His notice sudden is” (line 4). When he does appear, his presence is slippery; the divided grass, the best indicator of his position, “closes at your feet/And opens further on” (lines 7-8). Also shocking is the deceptiveness of the snake’s appearance; what seems to be a mere instrument of pain—a “spotted shaft” (line 6), a “whip-lash”—turns out to be a creature who can administer that pain. No wonder that the poet, who has an affinity with many animals, cannot encounter the snake without dread, that “zero at the bone” (line 24). Its most striking quality could be swiftly followed by a lethal strike. Now, with the aid of a fresh prompt question, it is your turn to write a “tell and show” paragraph: What is the poet’s underlying attitude toward the snake? Essay:

• Pick a lyric (short) poem that you have read for this class. • Locate at least two and no more than four other lyric poems by the same poet; you

could find these poems in your textbook, school library, or other source. • After a close and considered reading, state what you think the poems have most in

common; this could be connected with theme, style, tone, subject matter, use of language, etc. This statement is the basis of your thesis, the most significant moment of “telling” in the essay.

• Use your body paragraphs to show that your thesis is sound—be sure to re-read the poems and quote from them extensively in support of your thesis.

• Understand that even in your body paragraphs and conclusion some sentences will “tell” more than “show”—and some will be a blend of both.

• Before submitting the essay to your teacher, use different colored highlighters/markers/pencils to indicate the portions of your essay that are primarily “telling” or “showing”—again, if some sentences or passages are both, this is just another indication of the importance of both these writing functions.

Suggested Responses

Lesson Eight—Suggested Responses

1. Revision: The Blazers’ powerful center forward shot the ball from the edge of the penalty box—goal! Improvement: The dash captures the speed, power, and excitement of the goal. 2. Revision: Billy forgot his goalie gloves (not a big problem), and threw the ball into his own net twice. Improvement: The dashes gave too much emphasis to a comment that is really an aside; the parentheses handle this much better. The comma adds a dramatic pause and, therefore, emphasis to the more important information in the sentence. 3. Revision: Their big center forward got injured; we scored two goals in quick succession. Improvement: There is clearly a causal link between a significant player from one team going off and the other team doing immediately and dramatically better. The period did not indicate this. A colon would indicate that it was somehow inevitable that the other team would rapidly score two goals, which it was not. 4. Revision: The Scottish offside maneuver—our coach’s pride and joy—failed spectacularly. Improvement: The dashes highlight the parenthetical element and thereby create a vivid contrast between the coach’s high hopes for the maneuver and its spectacular failure. 5. Revision: Coach Magennis, that winning machine, has led the Hummingbirds into yet another playoff spot. Improvement: “That winning machine” is an appositive, a renaming of a noun (in this case a proper noun, Coach Magennis); the commas bring that alternative name “out of the shadows” created by the parentheses.

Additional Activities

Activity 2

First, let us recall the definition of voice offered in Lesson Two: “The quality of prose—created through a combination of diction, tone, and other resources of language—that allows the writer to communicate successfully in a particular writing situation.” Successful communication is not just a question of how you communicate but also of an awareness of whom you are communicating to: in other words, an awareness of audience. One of the modern master examples of audience awareness is civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s celebrated essay “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” The letter was drafted in the Birmingham, Alabama, city jail after King’s arrest for the kind of “non-violent direct action” he defends in the essay. It was written in rapid response to a statement—issued by eight high-ranking white Christian and Jewish clergymen—which had called for those involved in the civil rights movement to abandon their demonstrations and seek redress for their grievances through the courts. Pre-Reading: Your teacher will direct you to read all or a specific portion of King’s “Letter.” Besides absorbing the powerful content of the essay, be prepared to learn two important lessons about successful writing, especially persuasive writing: (a) how an awareness of audience makes writing more effective; and (b) how an awareness of audience influences the writer’s voice. The definition above states that voice is created out of “diction, tone, and other resources of language”; the worksheet directs you to look for examples of how King uses the resources of language to forge this writing voice. The worksheet also invites you to make the connection between voice and audience by asking you to speculate on what impact these words would have made on King’s audience, thereby gauging their effectiveness. Preview the worksheet before reading. As an example, one part of the worksheet has been completed for you. If you are reading just a portion of the letter and are genuinely stuck for an example of a particular resource, give another example of diction.

STUDENT NAME: _________________________

Worksheet: Voice & Audience: King Letter

Language Resource Quotation (in part if too long)

Potential Impact on Audience

Direct Address (to Reader/s)

Analogy

Allusion (Historical, Cultural, or Literary Reference)

Figure of Speech

Repetition or Parallel Structure

Diction “our constitutional and God-given rights”

Argues for civil rights using both political and theological terms: bound to appeal to clergymen

Imagery

Teacher Resources

Master Classes

INDEX OF AUTHORS AND TITLES (Lesson numbers are in parentheses)

Anaya, Rudolfo Bless Me, Ultima (8) Bradbury, Ray Fahrenheit 451 (6) Brontë, Charlotte Jane Eyre (10) Cisneros, Sandra The House on Mango Street (9) Clark, Walter Van Tilburg The Ox-Bow Incident (3) Conan Doyle, Arthur The Hound of the Baskervilles (10) Conroy, Pat My Losing Season (9) Dickens, Charles Great Expectations (12) A Tale of Two Cities (5) Didion, Joan “On the Mall” (4) Dillard, Annie “Contemporary Prose Styles” (11) “In the Jungle” (3) Gaines, Ernest J. “Miss Jane and I” (11) Greene, Graham “Across the Bridge” (5) Hemingway, Ernest “In Another Country” (6) Hopkins, Gerard Manley “Spring and Fall: to a young child” (7) Huxley, Aldous Brave New World (1, 6) Kingsolver, Barbara “The Spaces Between” (11) Markham, Beryl West with the Night (1) McPhee, John “The Search for Marvin Gardens” (8) Orwell, George 1984 (12) “Shooting an Elephant” (1) Paton, Alan Cry, the Beloved Country (5) Poe, Edgar Allan “The Tell-Tale Heart” (2) “The Cask of Amontillado” (10) Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye (2)

Shakespeare, William Julius Caesar (3, 9) Much Ado About Nothing (12) “Sonnet 18” (7) Shelley, Percy Bysshe “Ozymandias” (7) Steinbeck, John Of Mice and Men (8) Stevenson, Robert Louis

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (4)

White, E. B. “Once More to the Lake” (2)

STUDENT OBJECTIVES

The following objectives are addressed throughout this book, and many of them are touched on in every lesson. The list of objectives in the lesson-by-lesson correlations, therefore, is not exhaustive; rather, the objectives that are a particular focus of each individual lesson are noted. The student will be able to: A Use imagery and figurative language to enhance meaning B Use a variety of sentence structures C Organize ideas to enhance coherence and logical progression D Provide specific support for ideas E Apply prewriting strategies to generate ideas F Use effective sequence and transitions G Revise drafts to improve organization and style H Analyze published pieces as writing models I Write in a voice appropriate to audience and purpose J Use diction effectively to enhance meaning K Apply specific criteria to evaluate writing

LESSON-BY-LESSON CORRELATIONS

Lesson One—Telling and Showing Skill Analysis H Practice C, J, D Essay C, G, D Lesson Two—Voice Skill Analysis H Practice K, I, J Essay C, D, G, I Lesson Three—Modifiers Skill Analysis H Practice A, J Essay A, G, I, J Lesson Four—Juxtaposition Skill Analysis H Practice B, C, F Essay B, C, D, G