415: Struggling to Teach Narrative? 6 Craft Strategies for Students
About this episode
This episode discusses six strategies to help students improve their narrative writing by incorporating vivid details.
When you boil down the essentials of so much writing, what you get is the need for vivid, original detail. In a college essay, the story comes alive when a student goes way past the generalities and gives specific examples. In an argument essay, the intricate examples and counterargument that is explained with depth makes the most impact. In any kind of research, carefully exploring the core of the ideas with the most interesting possible language will hook and hold the reader's attention. And in narrative - as we've seen, eminently transferable to other areas of writing - it's the details. I took a copywriting class once where they boiled this concept down to a sandwich. Never say someone ate a sandwich. Say it was a pastrami on rye with extra mustard and a sheaf of pickles. Say it was a PB & J positively oozing J. Say it was a double-decker smash burger with Jimmy's special sauce and extra crispy sweet potato fries. See the difference? But here's the thing. When you tell a kid they need more details, that doesn't exactly come alive for THEM. You need more details in your request for details. They need to SEE and FEEL what you mean, just like you need to see and feel the world…
People in this episode
Host: Betsy Potash
Topics covered
- narrative writing
- writing strategies
- student engagement
- creative writing
- detail in writing
Keywords
- narrative
- writing details
- student strategies
- creative writing
- engagement
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