Imagine a moment in history and put it in a story. Here are four possibilities, but you can picture a different moment that interests you:

• George Washington did not chop down a cherry tree or confess to his father that he did, but it is certain that someone said he did and wrote it down. Here’s a link to how the story was invented. https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/cherry-tree-myth. Make your own story out of the truth.

• This is a link to a website, where you can slide (using your mouse) along the whole Bayeux Tapestry, which, in the Middle Ages, illustrated the invasion of England from France by William the Conqueror. Choose a bit of the tapestry and turn it into a story, including narration and dialogue: https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/the-bayeux-tapestry/discover-the-bayeux-tapestry/explore-online/.

• After England was conquered, King William declared that all the kingdom’s forests were his to hunt in (with his friends and relatives). People couldn’t even chop firewood without his permission and getting a permit. (They were allowed to travel on roads that went through the forests.) The conquered English hated this. Use it in a story.

• Google the history of something that interests you, for example the history of doughnuts or of forks (but it can be anything), and write a story about it.

• Turn a bit of your own family history into a story. This can even be an event in your own life, as long as it’s more than five years ago.

These are not true, or probably not true:

• The ancient Greeks probably did conquer Troy but not with a wooden horse packed with warriors. Make up your own story of what may have happened.

• The explorer Ponce de León didn’t really search for a fountain of youth in Florida in the sixteenth century. Make up your own story about what he was actually looking for.

• Napoleon Bonaparte wasn’t really extremely short; he was of average height for his time. The confusion arose from differences in measurement systems. Write a story about how history has gotten his height so wrong. Who was responsible?

An insult poem is just what you’d think, a poem that insults someone. We don’t want to hurt anyone, though, so if you are insulting someone you know, either change the person’s name and disguise the person or don’t show the poem to your victim. And an insult poem doesn’t have to be directed at a person; its target can be an object, say spinach, or an activity, like cleaning your room. It can be serious or funny.

Try for fourteen lines or more in your insult poem, but please write at least ten. If you like, your poems can rhyme, but they don’t have to.

Examples:

This short one from ancient Greece:

            Lift sunward your considerable nose, 
                                    fling wide the abyss of your mouth,
            And you’ll make a presentable sun-dial for all who pass by.

This one, found online (and improved by me):

If I wanted to kill myself

I’d climb your belief in your brilliance

and plummet to your IQ

Walter Raleigh’s epitaph on the Earl of Leicester:

Here lies the noble Warrior that never blunted sword;
Here lies the noble Courtier that never kept his word;
Here lies his Excellency that governed all the state;
Here lies the Lord of Leicester that all the world did hate.

“Five-Finger Exercise,”

by T.S. Eliot

How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!
With his features of clerical cut,
And his brow so grim
And his mouth so prim
And his conversation, so nicely
Restricted to What Precisely
And If and Perhaps and But.
How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!
With a bobtail cur
In a coat of fur
And a porpentine cat
And a wopsical hat:
How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!

• Porpentine is an archaic word meaning porcupine.
• Wopsical is a nonsense word

Give your characters a flaw or two that will make success in whatever they do more difficult. (They will also have good qualities that may help or hinder them.) Pick one of the options below for your story with these flawed people.

• Two siblings run away from home together. You decide why. A day or a week later, they learn that some disaster has struck their home town. You decide what. Now, they’re desperate to get back but the disaster has created obstacles. Write what happens.

• One character takes from the other something that’s precious to them both. You decide what and describe it. Write what happens when one goes after the other to get it back.

• Three schoolmates and the dog of one of them enter an abandoned shoe warehouse believed to be haunted. They’re on a mission to rescue their favorite teacher who went in there the week before and hasn’t been seen since. Write what happens.

Choose one of these prompts that involve villains:

• The tooth fairy has gone over to the dark side. In the middle of the night, instead of taking the tooth from under the pillow and leaving money, the fairy is taking the child and leaving a note that says, “IOU your precious little one.” You decide what she’s doing with them. The police have had no luck finding and rescuing the kidnapped kids. Two friends who have lost their younger siblings join forces to save their siblings. Meanwhile, the captured children are trying to escape. And, more meanwhile, the fairy is very clever. Write the adventure.

• Write a new version of “Cinderella” in which Cinderella is the villain. She may be the villain from the beginning or later.

• Little Miss Muffet
  Sat on a tuffet,
  Eating her curds and whey;
  There came a big spider,
  And sat down beside her,
  And frightened Miss Muffet away.

The spider is eating more than Miss Muffet’s curds and whey, it’s preventing her from eating anything. She’s starving. Write the story of her quest to stop the food-bullying arachnid.

• A dragon lands in the tournament field outside the king’s walled castle. It trumpets to the royal family and to their subjects in the town around the castle that they must give it one child every week or it will burn everyone to a crisp. It says it will imprison the children until they answer this question: What does it want more than anything else? Write what happens.

Please remember to send me up to four pages, double-spaced in 12-point type, as a Word or Google document. Please email it to me by Sunday at noon. Please put your name and the prompt you’re using at the top of your pages.

You can add characters and change anything about the prompts below.

• Two characters who don’t trust each other are trapped together—you decide how and where. Also, the characters don’t have to be human. For example, one could be a dragon and the other an ogre. They have to work together to escape. Write what happens.

• If you don’t know the fable, “The Tortoise and the Hare,” look it up (it’s very short). Rewrite the fable your way and feel free to change the ending if you want to. If you like, the animals can be people, one slow and steady, the other quick but easily bored. The ending can change too.

• Your main characters are a brother and a sister (and, if you like, a talking sheep as well). One of them is suddenly and mysteriously unable to move all but one body part. You decide which. Together, they have to figure out what’s going on and find the remedy. Write what happens.

• This is a variation of the beginning of the fairytale, “Rumpelstiltskin.” One of your two main characters goes to the greedy king of the kingdom and tells him that the other one can spin straw into gold, which that character has no idea how to do. The king takes that character to a barn full of straw and says that he, she, or they has to make gold by the next morning or be executed. The character in the barn wants to escape and get revenge (and make gold if possible). The character outside the barn feels sorry for what he, she, or they has done and wants to fix the problem. Write what happens.

• A magician is performing for the king, his family, and the entire court. The king’s only daughter volunteers to be the magician’s subject for the disappearing and reappearing trick. She disappears perfectly and then fails to reappear no matter what he does. The king gives him one day to get her back. When he’s alone, he finds a note tucked under his cap that says, “My return depends on the crocodile.” Write what happens.

Five friends go together to the State Fair and visit the fortune teller’s tent. Each receives a different fortune:

• Beware of a girl with a pony tail.
• You will be given a thousand dollars. Don’t keep any of it.
• Don’t get on a boat this year.
• Stay at home on August 12^th and close the windows and curtains. Lock the door.
• Accept an impossible challenge.

Pick one friend or two friends and write what happens as a result of the fortune teller’s advice, which may be followed—or not.

Use one or more of these in a story. They can be dialogue, as I have it, or woven into the narration. They can be a beginning or an end or show up in the middle. You may not finish your story in the time you have. Just write as much as you can.

Keep in mind as you write that everything in fiction is connected. Dialogue reveals character; character produces dialogue (or even silence).  

“Do you think these fangs are just for show?”

“You’re staring at me.”

“You’re not me. I’m me!”

“Please help me climb down.”

“I always wanted to kick someone through a portal.”

“Hmm. Um. Er.”

You can continue what you started during the workshop or do one of the options below. Email me no more than four double-spaced pages in 12-point type as a Word or Google document. If it’s a Google document, please remember to give me permission to edit it. Get your homework to me no later than Wednesday at noon.

Make one of these adages the title of your story and write how the precept works out for your characters—which can be disastrously or perfectly. (You can change the title later if you come up with something you like better.)

• Better safe than sorry

• What you don’t know can’t hurt you

• Two wrongs don’t make a right

• Look before you leap

• Two heads are better than one

• If at first you fail, try, try, try again

There are my notes to myself for the first writing workshop of the summer last year. The workshop this year will run from 7/14 to 7/31, Mondays and Thursdays from 1:30 pm to 3:00 pm:

Things (for me) to bring:

1. Writing Magic and Writer to Writer

1. this page!

1. Pad

1. WELCOME!

• My phone #, email address. Don’t share. Website, can share. Take a screen shot.

• My name & pronouns. Intro Jen and Debbie

Go around & say pronoun, what grades they’re going into. What do they hope to get out of summer? Say if it’s more than writing better, if there’s something partic you want. Poetry possible. Tell everyone: If you could time travel to the past or future, when in the past or how far in the future would you visit? Why?

• How c we make it better? You can say it out loud or email me.
• Ask if any will miss ½ summer.  If they don’t like it, not forced to stay. How much will they miss?

1. How many like to write poems?  Read poems? How many prefer story-writing to poetry?  How many vice-versa?  How many equal?

• Keep what you’ve written, and keep in mind that we want a collection by the end of the summer. I’ll expect you to email in something after the fifth week for copying for the sixth week.

• about homework. Don’t have to do it, but if they do, will get benefit of my editing. They can do the week’s assignment or keep going with something they started in the workshop. Don’t submit something you wrote for school, and no AI. I’ll get it back to you but maybe not instantly. Email to me as Word or Google doc. If it’s a google doc, give me permission to edit. Due by Wednesday at noon.
• email me if you want to set up a time for an individual meeting.

• can drink something, but no food. No lying in bed, unless you’re sick.

• How vocab works. Do not look up! Type in chat meaning and part of speech. What does part of speech mean? lycanthropy

PRONUNCIATION:

(ly-KAN-thruh-pee)

MEANING:

noun:
1. A delusion that one has transformed into a wolf.
2. The process of or ability to transform into a wolf.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek lykos (wolf) + -anthropy (human). Earliest documented use: 1584.

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Prompts. Discuss

Homework. Discuss. Remind them when it’s due.