Dear Martha Jones,
We are looking for smart and proactive parents to take part in our parent survey! Each year we look to see how we can improve the school environment for your child.Please fill out the questions carefully and thoroughly as to receive amazing input from our great parents. Thank you for showing support for your child and your school.
Sincerely, Gabrielle Carter ‘
9written by Gabrielle Carter 2015)
Close your eyes for a second and imagine that you are a butterfly light and bouncing and beautiful. You have just smashed through your chrysalis and “Bam.” You are gone laying on the edge of the window and getting washed away by the harsh rolling of the windshields cold and cruel. Every year approx. 300 butterflies are killed due to windshield wiping accidents. Cars don’t see a tiny butterfly as it lands so gracefully. They don’t know the journey. Help protect butterflies buy flysavers for 16.99 online or visited #savethebutterfly411.
Writing about yourself should be easy. However it’s the subject most teens avoid. When Mr. Z asks why they avoid the topic most teens say “We have to write what the teacher wants to hear.” To this Mr. Z reveals a really good secret, the secret to writing about you, is to let you shine. = However, he also mentions that there is a difference between permission and permissive. “By “permission” I don’t mean “permissive.” I have no patience with sloppy workmanship—the let-it-all-hang-out verbiage of the ’60s. To have a decent career in this country it’s important to be able to write decent English.” In this paragraph I learned that in order to write about myself I have to not be eager to please others and give myself permission to share a piece of who I am. Lastly, I learned that memoirs are not about everything that happened in your life they are about a specific moment.
Skill paragraph (True story.)
The video ended with a huge crescendo and suddenly all eyes were on me, the only oboe player in the room who had now made a fool of myself. I coughed, and suddenly the room erupted into snickers. “She can’t play the saxophonist moaned.” “OMG she s louder than all the instruments and she messed up” The flutes tittered”OMG we should kick the hobo girl out the band.” The tuba thundered. And suddenly a boy stood up and turned to all the sections. and the one word that sentence that erupted from his mouth was “I think she knows she messed up now leave her alone.” And all was silent.
Summary
People and places are the twin pillars on which most nonfiction is built. Zinniser points out this reasoning at the beginning of the paragraph. Things happen and people want to know where. Sometimes it only takes a few sentences to tell about a place. However, sometimes the mood can be establish in a paper. This area is where most writers struggle because they want to give too much info on their trip, this gets boring quickly. To write about travel you must keep an eye on what your reader thinks. The opposite of writing nonfiction. Here is where travelese sets in. Like journalese it has to do with using boring words to explain a subject.
Skills/examples
Today we visited the rolling hills of Ireland. Everyday, we woke to the fresh smell of biscuits that coat the air like the smell in a fresh bakery. We also went and visited the Irish bantums, a small flower field nestled off the quaint cobble roads. Most of all, we sat by the Ireland river and dipped our feet into the ice cold water.
written by Gabrielle Carter on August 6th
The interview tells you tips on how to write a good interview. Interviews are there to get people talking. Learning how to ask questions that will elicit answers about what is most interesting or vivid in their lives is a skill worth learning. Remember that during an interview, their opinion Is the main part of the story and not yours. He also talks how sometimes when interviewing people in jobs it may seem as though everyone is the same but there are those who are interested in their jobs.
Example
Since there are no skills to practice I decided to write tips. For one, make sure to bring a pen and pencil. A lot of writers forget there. Number two, make sure to do some research on the person before you start. There is nothing more awkward than having an interview with someone you just met and know nothing about. Number 4 make a list of questions to ask. Finally, once you get the questions finished make sure you take notes from the interview and type them up. Then scratch out all of the words or repetitive parts and finesse it with your owns style using these tips.
This paragraph was about how nonfiction should be a literature not just journalism. In this paragraph Matthew was telling a story about how World War 2 changed writing. Hee was also talking about famous authors throughout history like : Ellen Glasgow, Sinclair Lewis, Virginia Woolf, John Galsworthy, Elinor Wylie, Ignazio Silone, Rosamond Lehmann, Edith Wharton, Somerset Maugham, Willa Cather, Booth Tarkington, Isak Dinesen, James Gould Cozzens, Thornton Wilder, Sigrid Undset, Ernest Hemingway, William Saroyan, John P. Marquand, John Steinbeck and many others.
There was no skill to practice here.
This one was about little punctuation rules. For example how to use a period. This is good for beginning writers. Examples are below.
Verbs- verbs are very important to your writing. Whenever possible you should use active verbs instead of passive verbs. Verbs are the most important piece in toolbox and they give your writing sizzle. Examples are below
active verb: I saw Joe today
Passive verb: I see Joe.
Adverbs describe how the verb is doing something like eating nosily or painting lazily. Most adverbs are unnecessary and can overload a sentence there’s a strong verb in front of it.
He was chewing noisily. Noisily is adverb
Adjectives are also considered to be unnecessary but without them your writing loses specific details like how red the dirt was. Use adjectives to do the work they are meant to do describe.
The cat was so fluffy. Fluffy is an adjective.
Qualifiers are those verbs that are “Uncertain” like I feel a little tired or a little thirsty you want to avoid these.
I am kind of tired.
The most important sentence in any article is the first one. This is so true. I have this many times but I now know the truth. Sometimes if I pick up a book in the library and if the first two pages are too long to the point I put the book down. This paragraph is important for people who want to write because it talks about how to make a good lead. A lead has no certain length and its point is to capture the reader’s attention immediately. Almost as if you were trying to catch a fish. After you have successfully hooked the reader add more background information. Also, always find information in the least obvious places.
I love writing leads. So here are some I made up. “The light on the cracked doorstep swung backwards as I stepped unto one of the dewy steps.” This lead uses mystery to attract the reader. You would want to see what happens next. Another example is a humorous hook “I never knew balloons and space aliens would shake hands.” This is a slightly weird and funny sentence that may attract a sci-fi reader. The last hook is one from the paragraph I’ve often wondered what goes into a hot dog. Now I know and I wish I didn’t. It communicates a point and is interesting.
Unity was about how you learn to write by learning how to write. Z mentions that if you were a newspaper writer that had to write 3 articles a day you would be better at writing in six months. All writing is about problem solving and by unifying different paragraphs it satisfies the reader. Think about how, if things make sense to you want to keep going to see if it will keep making sense. Unity can be categorized in 3 ways. Number one is by choosing the right person. Are you going to right in first person ( I me I am) or third person (She is he is.) The second way is by unity of tenses. Are you going to be talking about the past (dinosaurs), the present (now), or the future. Once you choose one you have to stick with it. The last one is mood. Mood is the overall feeling of a piece. You may want to establish a certain mood while writing.
Unity gone wrong can cause a reader who is frustrated and confused. Matthew used this example.. The writer begins like this.”My wife, Ann, and I had always wanted to visit Hong Kong,” the writer begins, his blood astir with reminiscence, “and one day last spring we found ourselves looking at an airline poster and I said, ‘Let’s go!’ The kids were grown up,” Then he switches things up and turns into telling us about Hong Kong Hong Kong affords many fascinating experiences to the curious sightseer,” he writes. “One can ride the picturesque ferry from Kowloon and gawk..” The he goes back to talking about his adventure. In one story, this can leave the reader scratching their head. My own example “The blue moon shone from my windows and the sheets rustled in the wind. Wind is a =scyiocintric circle that travels around the world. I jump out of bed.” As you can see, the writer changes mood from spooky to informative.
Usage was about how words (from the last chapter) can be used. In this chapter Z and his crew get together to look at the usage of words and what words were OK (a debatable word in this paragraph) and was not. “The panel consisted of 104 men and women—mostly writers, poets, editors and teachers—who were known for caring about the language”The results were as followed. 97 percent of us voted to admit “dropout,” which is clean and vivid, but that only 47 percent would accept “senior citizen. Still, 22 percent were unwilling to let “trek” slip into gene language. Finally, 95 percent vote against “myself,” as in “He invited Mary and myself to dinner,” a word condemned as “prissy,” “horrible” and “a genteelism. This paragraph told how to use words.
Examples: Sometimes when words are used incorrectly it can cause weird sentences. For example, if you misplace an adjective for nouns you get a sentence that my make sense but that sounds weird. The fell down house was red is an example of this. By replacing the word red with fell it causes a lot of confusion. Another example is if someone sad the girl she ran home. In this place redundancy is the blemish. Since they said the girl there is no need for them to add she in front of it.
Gabrielle Carter's blog 