Nurturing Creativity

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Now, write a story yourself. (oh… and make it less than 1200 words)

Creative Responses

Rethinking the Creative task

We wanted to

● improve student results on the creative task,

● shift the balance of content (knowledge) and skill development,

● Incorporate more direct teaching and application of the skills for creative writing.

ACTIONS

● explicitly teach creative writing skills

● provide with peer and teacher feedback prior to

assessment

● set the creative task to the end of semester

● task specifically aimed at students demonstrating

an ability to use and analyse the techniques

explored in the texts studied

Findings and future decisions

Mean increased on previous year by 1.31.

(A +6% B + 3% C +7%)

Non submission rates reduced.

Qualitatively, there was a noticeable improvement in the quality of the creative pieces.

As a faculty we decided to continue this focus, but expand to include a visual task in semester 2.

The Rubric

POWER and PROPAGANDA(Unit 1: Communication of Meaning)

Propaganda techniques - visuals and language

Harrison Bergeron (Kurt Vonnegut, 1961)

The Fly (Katherine Mansfield, 1922)

Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell, 1948)

V For Vendetta ( James McTeigue, 2006)

V for Vendetta, 2006Directed by James McTeigue

Based on the comic by David Lloyd and Alan Moore

Lloyd is quoted as saying:"The Guy Fawkes mask has now become a common brand and a convenient placard to use in protest against tyranny – and I'm happy with people using it, it seems quite unique, an icon of popular culture being used this way…V for Vendetta is a story about one person against the system.”

The film has been seen by many political groups as an allegory of oppression by government; libertarians and anarchists have used it to promote their beliefs.

Waites, R. (2011) ‘V for Vendetta masks: Who's behind them?’, BBC News Magazine, 20 October. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-15359735, (Accessed: 1 July 2020).

Themes

What themes are explored in V for Vendetta?

How is a theme developed? ● The events of the narrative - literal and symbolic● Stylistic elements in a film - mise en scène, cinematography,

editing, sound (setting, plot, symbolism characterisation in a written text)

● Characters and character development ● Style - mood & atmosphere ● Motifs ● References to other films or art forms

Literary Techniques

AllusionsSymbolsMotifs

WHAT THEMES ARE YOU GOING TO EXPLORE IN YOUR CREATIVE

RESPONSE? THINK ABOUT THE TOPICS AND IDEAS WE HAVE LOOKED AT IN CLASS...

Ideas from ‘V’Freedom & AnarchyBigotry The power of symbolsPower & Control PropagandaVendetta & Revenge

Pick four of these ideas and find a symbol to represent it:

● Peace● Freedom● Imprisonment● Power● propaganda● deception● betrayal● control● knowledge ● ignorance

Thinking about symbol and motif to support theme development.

Elements of a narrative

Learning Intention: identify the basic parts of a narrative

GENERATE A NARRATIVE In groups of 4, each student writes a list numbered from 1 -10

Student 1: 10 jobs (eg nurse, policeman etc)

Student 2: 10 problems, fears or anxieties that a person can have (eg fear of heights, low self esteem)

Student 3: 10 things that can go wrong (eg car crash, relationship break up)

Student 4: 10 ways to solve a problem (eg make a plan, work together, obtain large sum of money)

Randomly select 4 numbers to generate a narrative.

Ticking Mind Educational Publishing, 2013, How to Teach Creative Writing - from the how to teach series. Viewed 1 July, 2020.

GENERATE A NARRATIVE Discuss and share your narratives.

1. What happens when you combine these elements?

2. What makes them interesting, funny, thought provoking?

3. What parts must a narrative have?

ThinkWhat parts should a narrative have?

PARTS OF THE NARRATIVE

ORIENTATIONCOMPLICATION

CRISISRESOLUTION

EVALUATIONCODA

How did we get to this end?

Learning intention: understand the importance of using complications in a narrative

What was the chain of events between the beginning and the end of this story?

He sat her down and held her close before telling her the terrible news

She stared at all the money on the table, There there must be hundreds and thousands of dollars in cash. She didn’t know how it had gotten to this point.

Writing Exercises and Prompts. 2020. Writing Exercises and Prompts. [ONLINE] Available at: https://writingexercises.co.uk/index.php. [Accessed 07 July 2020].

Idea #1

Build on a narrative you know already...

What was the worst film you have ever seen?

Ticking Mind Educational Publishing, 2013, How to Teach Creative Writing - from the how to teach series. Viewed 1 July, 2020.

*Bigger, better, badder

*Add something new

*Replace, remove, reorder

*SUBSTITUTE

*COMBINE

*ADAPT

*MODIFY

*PUT to another use

*ELIMINATE

*REVERSE

What else does a narrative need?

Learning Intention: think about ways to make three dimensional characters

Kerin, R., (2018). Developing Writers ACTATE Workshop, Canberra, 1.3.2018.

Write

Share

Write

Share

SHOW DON’T TELL

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. -Anton Chekhov

Text Innovations

Students take sentences form a text and rewrite them, replacing particular parts of speech and

maintaining the structure of the sentence. This can be used to teach noun groups (adjective, noun,

adjectival phrases and clauses) and adverbials (verb, adverb, adverbial phrases) and simple,

compound and complex sentences, nominalisation, active and passive voice and tense as well as

many other grammatical features.

Model a text innovation in context and then students practise it.

They then apply it when creating their own texts.

New Learning Online. 2020. Learning by Design. [ONLINE] Available at: https://newlearningonline.com/learning-by-design/the-knowledge-processes/analysing. [Accessed 1 July 2020].

Describe the character’s personality using their appearance

‘I could picture the smooth oval of Laura’s face, her neatly pinned chignon, the dress she would have been wearing: a shirtwaist with a small rounded collar, in a sober colour – navy blue or steel grey or hospital-corridor green. Penitential colours – less like something she’d chosen to put on than like something she’d been locked up in.’

(The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood p. 4)

Describe the character’s personality using their appearance

‘I could picture the rough square of John’s jaw, his hair slicked down and combed over to one side, stuck down to his head. I could imagine the suit he was wearing: a grey wool double breasted suit, with an official look about it - with a red tie. The tie was a deep red colour, a powerful, rich colour much like the blood of his victims.

(Rachael Radvanyi done with the class)

Describe the character using multiple viewpoints

‘[Mrs. Ramsay] looked at him. He was such a miserable specimen, the children said, all humps and hollows. He couldn’t play cricket; he poked; he shuffled. He was a sarcastic brute, Andrew said. They knew what he liked best – to be forever walking up and down, up and down, with Mr. Ramsay, saying who had won this, who had won that …’

(To the LIghthouse, Virginia Woolf p. 11)

Describe the character using multiple viewpoints

‘Sarah looked at him. He had such an unnerving presence, her mother had said, all melancholy and brooding. He couldn’t converse with the others; he grunted; he mumbled. He was a bland entity, the others had said. They knew what he liked best – to be forever in the background, lurking behind, watching you go about your day.

(Ethan Y 11)

Describe the characters using action

‘I know that woman. She used to live with a flock of birds on Lenox Avenue. Know her husband, too. He fell for an eighteen-year-old girl with one of those deep down, spooky loves that made him so sad and happy he shot her just to keep the feeling going. When the woman, her name is Violet, went to the funeral to see the girl and to cut her dead face they threw her to the floor and out of the church. She ran, then, through all that snow, and when she got back to her apartment she took the birds from their cages and set them out the windows to freeze or fly, including the parrot that said, “I love you.”

(Jazz, Toni Morrison p. 3)

Describe the characters using action

‘I know that man. He used to work at the Woolworths in Chisholm. I know his family too. He used to pack meat in the freezer section. He was fixated on the girl who worked in the bakery, she went to Melbourne when her parents split up. The man, his name is John, followed her to declare his undying love. She laughed at him, leaving him alone on a cold St Kilda street. He came back to Canberra, abandoned his job, pinned up his photographs of her and made his plan for revenge.

(Claire Y 11 )

*Speech - what is distinctive about the character’s speech

*Thinks - what does the character think about?

*Effects on others - how do people respond to this character

*Actions - what is distinctive about this character’s actions?

*Looks - what does this character look like?

Read Write Think. 2020. Characterisation. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson800/Characterization.pdf. [Accessed 1 July 2020].

Using Sensory Language

Learning Intention: Identify ways to incorporate sensory language into your writing

Example #1: Gustatory ImageryOn rainy afternoons, embroidering with a group of friends on the begonia porch, she

would lose the thread of the conversation and a tear of nostalgia would salt her palate

when she saw the strips of damp earth and the piles of mud that the earthworms had

pushed up in the garden. Those secret tastes, defeated in the past by oranges and

rhubarb, broke out into an irrepressible urge when she began to weep. She went back to

eating earth. The first time she did it almost out of curiosity, sure that the bad taste

would be the best cure for the temptation. And, in fact, she could not bear the earth in

her mouth. But she persevered, overcome by the growing anxiety, and little by little she

was getting back her ancestral appetite, the taste of primary minerals, the unbridled

satisfaction of what was the original food.

(One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez)

Example #2: Auditory Imagery“The vast swells of the omnipotent sea; the surging, hollow roar they made, as they rolled

along the eight gunwales, like gigantic bowls in a boundless bowling-green; the brief

suspended agony of the boat, as it would tip for an instant on the knife-like edge of the

sharper waves, that almost seemed threatening to cut it in two; the sudden profound dip

into the watery glens and hollows; the keen spurrings and goadings to gain the top of the

opposite hill; the headlong, sled-like slide down its other side;—all these, with the cries of

the headsmen and harpooneers, and the shuddering gasps of the oarsmen, with the

wondrous sight of the ivory Pequod bearing down upon her boats with outstretched sails,

like a wild hen after her screaming brood;—all this was thrilling.”

Moby Dick, Herman Mellville (1851).

Example #3: Visual ImageryOutside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold. Down in the street

little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was

shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no colour in anything, except the

posters that were plastered everywhere. The black mustachioed face gazed down from

every commanding corner. There was one on the house-front immediately opposite. BIG

BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into

Winston’s own. Down at street level another poster, torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in

the wind, alternately covering and uncovering the single word INGSOC. In the far distance a

helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and

darted away again with a curving flight.

(1984 by George Orwell)

Example #4: Olfactory Imagery In the period of which we speak, there reigned in the cities a stench barely conceivable to

us modern men and women. The streets stank of manure, the courtyards of urine, the

stairwells stank of moldering wood and rat droppings, the kitchens of spoiled cabbage and

mutton fat; the unaired parlors stank of stale dust, the bedrooms of greasy sheets, damp

featherbeds, and the pungently sweet aroma of chamber pots. The stench of sulfur rose

from the chimneys, the stench of caustic lyes from the tanneries, and from the

slaughterhouses came the stench of congealed blood. People stank of sweat and unwashed

clothes; from their mouths came the stench of rotting teeth, from their bellies that of

onions, and from their bodies, if they were no longer very young, came the stench of rancid

cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease.

(Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind)

Example #5: Tactile Imagery “I heard the rain still beating continuously on the staircase window, and the wind howling in the grove behind the hall; I grew by degrees cold as a stone, and then my courage sank. My habitual mood of humiliation, self-doubt, forlorn depression, fell damp on the embers of my decaying ire.” Descriptions of temperature and moisture are tactile imagery. In this case, the rain and Jane’s physical discomfort mirror her dark mood.

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë (1847)

Combining the senses ‘He took down from the shelf a bottle of colourless liquid with a plain white

label marked VICTORY GIN. It gave off a sickly, oily smell, as of Chinese

rice-spirit. Winston poured out nearly a teacupful, nerved himself for a shock,

and gulped it down like a dose of medicine.

Instantly his face turned scarlet and the water ran out of his eyes. The stuff

was like nitric acid, and moreover, in swallowing it one had the sensation of

being hit on the back of the head with a rubber club. The next moment,

however, the burning in his belly died down and the world began to look

more cheerful.’

(1984 by George Orwell)

Use sensory language in your story...Write your story’s orientation or or a

paragraph describing the setting or action

in your story using sensory language.

Use sensory language in your story...I strode down the dimly lit street taking lengthy paces in sync with the constant

thrumming coming from my headphones. The cool wind slicing right through my thin

cotton shirt causing a shiver to wrack my body. I fastened my pace after taking a quick

glance at my watch, but suddenly something caught my eye. I came to a halt, turning to

face the warm light that filtered through the window of a small cosy shop. The window

mirrored my long dark hair mussed by the wind and a crumpled school shirt and skirt. I

slowly pushed the door open, the faint scent of vanilla hitting my nose. A quiet chiming

filled the store as a small fragile girl flitted out from the shadows. Taking small cautious

steps towards me, her eyes scanned my body hovering over the tattoos that littered

my skin. Her small round face was framed by waist length feathery hair and a long blue

dress which stuck to her body as the wind gushed through the door. She had a worn

out name tag pinned to her dress that read ‘Gracie’.

Alyssa, Year 11

Use sensory language in your story...Tilting the top of her frame, Ava examined the water flowing into her bottle. The bottle

wasn’t anywhere near full, yet the tap had started to lose its force. Slow flowing water

soon became droplets. There was more water flowing out of the bottle than out of the

tap. She panicked and enclosed her hands around the leak feeling and she felt the

liquid seeping through the gaps of her grubby fingers. Using some of the scarce

amounts of water for hygiene would make Ava feel selfish. She let out a deep sigh and

dragged herself to the piece of paper hanging above her bed frame. She drew an

angled line across the four other vertical lines. The days were adding up fast and she

could start to smell the rancid sharpness of her body.

Andrea, Year 11

Use sensory language in your story...They didn’t come in peace, that much was clear. The first creature who emerged was

accompanied by an eruption of lights and noise. They moved rapidly through the mass

of gathered spectators, snatching and cutting people before they could comprehend

what was taking place. The melody of their screams accompanied the rhythm of the

chaos. As bodies hit the floor we came to our senses, dashing inside the houses. To

them, there was no such thing as an obstacle. I watched them darting around at

tremendous speeds scooping up anyone they came into close contact with. It was a

scene from a war film. The seemingly normal street had turned to the scene of a

massacre in a matter of minutes.

Kaleyah, Year 11

Ways to get students to share their workThink pair share

Paired reviews

Collaborative writing tasks

Chat charts

Table group sharing

Speed dating

Did we nurture creativity?Improved student confidence in completing the task

Improved submission rates

Improved quality of writing

Built an ongoing collaborative class culture