Page 46 - SpringBoard_Writing_Workshop_Grade6_Flipbook

Check Your Understanding
After you have drafted your short story, use the following checklist and the Scoring Guide to evaluate your story and consider revisions.
• Does the story include well-structured event sequences?
• Is there a well-defined narrator and/or characters?
• Have you chosen and kept one point of view throughout your story?
• Have you included descriptive, sensory details to make the setting and characters
clear?
• How is dialogue used to show character and move the plot?
Revising
Revising for Sensory Details
8. Review the first draft of your class-constructed short story. Where might you add sensory details to make the setting more believable? Make any necessary revisions.
Revising for Dialogue
Look over your draft again. Where might you use dialogue to reveal information about the characters and to move the plot along? Revise and add dialogue or substitute text with dialogue. Aim for a minimum of five sentences of dialogue.
Revising for Language and Writer’s Craft
Now that the short story is fully drafted, consider more carefully the language used to convey your ideas. A writer makes deliberate stylistic choices in language for effect.
A parenthetical is a phrase that is inserted into a sentence to add a little extra information or description. They are called parentheticals because we often use parentheses to show where they begin and end.
Example: Dad picked up the jar of sauce (his secret recipe) and carried it out to the barbecue.
Writers can use other punctuation besides parentheses to add a parenthetical. Dashes and commas also work. Isaac Asimov uses commas to insert parentheticals in his story, “The Fun We Had.”
They turned the pages, which were yellow and crinkly, and it was awfully funny to read words that stood still...
Margie had hoped he wouldn’t know how to put it together again, but he knew how all right, and, after an hour or so, there it was again, large and black and ugly, with a screen on which all the lessons were shown and the questions were asked.
Asimov also uses parentheticals with his dialogue to indicate who is speaking:
“Gee,” said Tommy, “what a waste.”
It’s important to insert the parenthetical smoothly, at a good moment in the sentence. Look for a pause or sentence shift, which is usually indicated with a comma.
Correct: “Maria took the keys,” warned Jose, “there’s no way to get in.” Incorrect: “Maria took the keys, there’s no” warned Jose, “way to get in.”
Writing Workshop 4 • Narrative Writing: Short Story 9
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