The Reality of Writing in the Middle Grades - Part 1 - My Philosophy on Writing

The Reality of Writing in the Middle Grades

Part 1 - My Philosophy on Writing. 

Writing is evidence of thought.

If you can't write it simply, then you don't understand the topic. This applies across all content areas and careers. Not everybody needs to write thesis papers, but this is why most certifications have a written test component. Unlike a live verbal discussion, writing takes time to plan and process. You can blank in a conversation out of nervousness. You can only blank in your writing through a lack of understanding.


Writing is your first impression.

People develop an opinion about you through your writing before they have a chance to meet you. Increasingly, as technology stunts our interpersonal growth and drives us further apart while ironically tethering each of us to one another, people will meet you first through social media. Do you not use Facebook or Twitter? The wording in your text, email, resume, or cover letter reveals more about you than you may realize. The Letter of Introduction may be lost to history, but your status update is telling and permanent.


Writing has to mean something.

Authenticity shifts the burden of accountability onto the student. It doesn't matter what the writing assignment is or from which content area it is assigned. Kids like challenges and even a short writing piece takes on more emotional investment when it is tied to the outside world. If a strong connection is made, students will take their work more seriously and own the task.

There are several practices that I use with my middle school students that are in line with the philosophy above. I developed these practices with many of my peers over the last few years and wish they were explained this simply when I started teaching.  

Further posts in this series will follow the process below.

1. Define and explain each practice. 
2. Link the technique to the Common Core. 
3. Articulate practical applications. 
4. Identify avoidable problems. 
5. Provide tools, samples, and solutions.

This process will break each practice down into its component parts and help me describe the little details that make it sing or make it sink.

Engaging Your Audience – Part Five – Keeping and Growing Your Audience

Engaging Your Audience – Part Five – Keeping and Growing Your Audience

Conflict #4: How do I keep them coming back?

The answers are brief, but the practice is essential.

1. Identify your Audience 
2. Stay Productive (Substance) 
3. Keep Relevant (Style) 

Identify your Audience.

Who are you working for? If you don't know, stop what you're doing and figure it out. There should be a clear image in your mind of the type of person you need to reach. They're out there, whoever they are, but you need to know before you waste days (years?) of energy and hundreds (thousands?) of dollars reaching them. Teachers have an easier time with this, since their audience is generated for them each year. Writers should do a quick internet search of your genre. Find threads and forums and figure out what needs are not being currently met.


Stay Productive.

Audiences are insatiable. They crave entertainment and information and if you are not continually producing, then they will move on to a new source. Don't take this personally. The audience certainly doesn't.

Imagine yourself an educator who attempts to teach the same lesson day after day or a writer who posts the same blog verbatim. Your audience would (and should) drop you in an instant.

Teachers are repeatedly tested professionals, who are forced to produce something new each day under threat of student riots and the supervision of curricular demands. By design, this focuses instructional development and improves the delivery of content.

Writers aren't so rigidly structured. As a rule, writers should blog between books. Not only does this keep you working until a new book idea develops, it helps maintain good writing habits.


Keep Relevant.

Social media is critical. Marketing yourself poorly is almost as bad as not having anything to promote.

This is the second-most important skill-set of any self-published writer. Authors need a website and a smattering of accounts on Facebook, Twitter, GoodReads, Pinterest, or Linkedin. Without these steps, your work may never get discovered.

Unfortunately, teachers are insulated in a system that doesn't require them to be relevant. That doesn't mean that many pioneers haven't taken it up on themselves to do so anyway. www.Edmodo.com is the classroom's Facebook. This username and password protected site allows for discussion and assignment posting as well as a quiz generator, gradebook, and class calendar. It is the current primary and secondary school answer to the university-level site, Blackboard.


Final Thoughts.

Audiences are the air in our lungs and the blood in our veins. Since we breathe and pump blood on reflex, we often forget how critical these systems are to our survival until they are threatened. Consider your audience carefully or risk throttling your efforts before they have a chance to thrive.

Engaging your Audience – Part Four – The Closing

Engaging your Audience – Part Four – The Closing

Conflict #3: How do I close strong?

The ending is the most important part of any story. The audience will forgive a sagging middle and a less-than-amazing start as long as the end leaves them breathless.

Strong endings don’t NEED surprise plot twists.
Strong endings don’t NEED huge explosions.
Strong endings don’t NEED an amazing reveal.
Strong endings don’t NEED to claim the life of your favorite character.

In fact, if any of these things happen without good reason, then they’d be meaningless by definition and possibly confusing to your audience.

Strong endings need to be strong. Loose ends need to be tied up neatly. Characters need to reach the end of their change. Activities need to be apparently relevant to the objective. The story needs to end logically and completely. Series episodes need to be resolved.

This theory works similarly to the way human memory functions. When remembering a series of happenings, people will generally remember the last event most clearly, the first event not as clearly, and the middle event(s) least clearly. This is called Serial Position Effect.

If your audience read or sat through your entire work, it is only right that they leave with the satisfaction that it was for something meaningful. If not, you’ll find it harder to hook them the next time.

Writers and teachers should plan solely with their end objective in mind and target every ounce of effort to that end without distraction.

Continued in Engaging Your Audience – Part Five – Keeping and Growing Your Audience

For writers: Nancy Kress wrote “How to Write Successful Endings” for the Writers’ Digest website.

For teachers: Claudia Pesce wrote a post, titled “7 Best Ways to End a Lesson,” in which she reviews a few short methods. “Strategies for Effective Lesson Planning” on the University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Learning and Teaching site is another great resource. Brenda Power wrote “Make Kids' Writing Shine: Using Beginnings and Endings to Teach Craft,” a great way to help students write stronger endings.

Engaging your Audience – Part Three – The Middle

Engaging your Audience – Part Three – The Middle

Conflict #2: How do I keep this audience engaged?

The part that often drags the most is the middle of any lesson or piece of writing. It is where all the technical information has to be conveyed to the audience. This is where, even if you have a solid opening, you risk losing people.

When delivering content, it is important to: keep it short, make it clear, and get the audience involved.

Keep it short.

Students and readers lose interest quickly. The difference is when a reader loses interest, they can move on. Students aren’t afforded that freedom, so you are left with a possible disruption. Keeping instruction and exposition short is important, but not nearly as much as clarity and audience involvement.

Make it clear.

Few things disengage an audience faster than being confused. It halts the flow of the narrative and forces the teacher or writer to spend more time explaining. This doesn’t mean that a mystery writer has to give away all of the information up front. Nor does it mean that a teacher can’t place unexpected surprises in her lesson along the way. Clarity only refers to the audience’s ease of understanding the given situation at the time. Without it, even the most ingenious twists and turns won’t make any sense.


Get the audience involved.

This is your ticket to get away with not making it short. As long as the audience is physically or emotionally active, they will tolerate a much larger dose of explanation. When writing, have your characters involved in something physical while talking. When teaching, keep instruction-to-engagement ratios low. Use techniques such as call-backs and break-out sessions.


In Practice.

My favorite example of the use of all three of these techniques in film is in the original Terminator movie, in which the entire back-story is given during a car chase. The characters and audience are emotionally tense. It takes the writers about five minutes to explain nearly forty years of history before resuming the intense action. (Explicit Language/Gun Violence)  

Structure and planning are the solution to any problems a teacher or writer may have with the middle of their product. It is always best to have your objective or your ending in mind before you begin. This way, you can be sure that all of your efforts are aimed to that end.


Continued in Engaging Your Audience – Part Four – The Closing


Further Resources

For teachers: Yen Yen Woo posted “How Experienced Teachers Incorporate Kinesthetic Learning into Academic Lessons” on the NYTeachers Blog.

For writers: Glen C. Strathy wrote a great post title, "Sagging Middle Syndrome: How to Rescue Your Novel from Its Fatal Effect."  The Script Lab posted "Writing Exposition: 5 Helpful Techniques." 

Engaging your Audience – Part Two – The Opening

Engaging your Audience – Part Two – The Opening

Conflict #1: How do I attract an audience?

Teachers and writers face the same problem when they have something to say: they need to attract and interest their audience.

When they fail, the consequences are obvious. Writers lose sales and teachers are faced with a disengaged mob of adolescents who are unable to leave. It’s not pretty.

In order to resolve this problem, we’ll look at some common wisdom and review some field tests from the front lines.

Remember: We’re examining these methods in the context of a writer’s drafting of a single piece and a teacher’s delivery of a single lesson or unit.

The irrefutable truth is that the opening statement or action must attract and hold the audience’s attention.

There are several methods and they all hinge on the immediacy of the first few moments.

1. Surprise/Shock – Teachers are limited in the amount of shock they can use in the classroom. They can’t have explosions or gunshots at the start of a lesson. Writers aren’t so tightly bound. Try to give your audience something that they wouldn’t expect. 
2. Quotations – Using a quote that is relevant to your lesson is a great way to introduce the content without being obvious or boring. This term takes on a different meaning for writers, since the quote can come from one of the characters you are introducing. Quotes bring life, voice, and perspective. 
3. Poetic – These lines take time to create. Think of them as less of a poetic structure and more of the intent of poetry, which is to evoke strong feelings. The powerful images set tone quickly and save you precious time when introducing ideas. 
4. Humor – The best advice I ever got was: “If you are not funny, don’t try to be.” Writing humor, just like comedic acting, is far more difficult than drama. Humor is topical, personal, and requires timing that not everyone has. If you feel comfortable starting with a joke or a witty observation, keep it short and relevant. 
5. Question – Rhetorical questions are common literary techniques because they lead the audience into a sense of urgency. This is different than the standard “Do Now” that teachers often write on the board and have students answer quietly at their seats while attendance is taken. These questions can’t be answered quickly and should challenge the audience’s natural state of apathy. 

There are other methods in the resources I have linked below, but these are the five that I use in my teaching and writing.

Using one of these approaches will help you attract your audience and hold their attention… for at least the first five minutes. Keeping their focus is a completely different story.

Continued in Engaging your Audience – Part Three – The Middle

Resources:

For Writers: Christopher Jackson wrote a great post, titled "The Most Important Sentence: How to Write a Killer Opening," in which he bullets four musts in opening lines.

For Teachers: Education Week Teacher posted “The ‘Do Now’ or ‘Do Never’?” as a commentary on standard approach. Iowa State University posted a “101 Ideas for a Great Start.” (Basics)

Engaging your Audience – Part One – The Conflict

Engaging your Audience – Part One – The Conflict

Audiences are fickle. Students and readers have infinite opportunities for entertaining and meaningless distraction. The question for a teacher or a writer becomes: How do I get them to pay attention to my material?

Teachers have a slight advantage. Even though the audience is divided into smaller chunks, students are placed in your care and told to listen to you. That doesn’t mean they have to like it, but the audience is there nonetheless. Teachers have an authority and an opportunity that writers don’t have when they are starting out.

When it comes to finding and engaging an audience, writers have a challenge similar to street performers in New York City. Thousands of people could stop and watch you at any given moment, but they are all busily hurrying along with their own plans. Writers need to make themselves an authority or at least someone worth watching for a few minutes.

Although there are differences, the problems are the same.

1. How do I attract an audience? 
2. How do I keep this audience engaged? 
3. How do I close strong? 
4. How do I keep them coming back? 

We’ll approach problems 1-3 as a direct correlation between the writer’s actions of writing a piece and the teacher’s actions of teaching a lesson. Question four has more to do with your approach outside of the classroom and beyond the keyboard.

Over the next few posts, I’ll go over each of these ideas in more detail.

Part Two - The Opening
Part Three - The Middle
Part Four - The Closing
Part Five - Growing your audience.