DIY Homeschooler

A story is a “moving picture of life.” We covered how to make that story move. But let’s take a step back and examine what makes a story true to life.

A great writer can place us where he wants us as readers by vividly describing things so that we can see and feel them. The best way to learn and develop this skill is to practice by imitating those great writers.

Let’s take a look:

Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.

Charles Dickens, Bleak House

Anyone reading that description can nearly feel that dampness! And it is not that the word fog is repeated. It is that Dickens is showing that wet, foggy, cold feeling in our mind by his word choices. The words he uses are vivid.

It is the choice of words that brings a story to life.

Let’s take another, different sort of example:

We had had a consuming desire, from the beginning, to see a pony-rider, but somehow or other all that passed us and all that met us managed to streak by in the night, and so we heard only a whiz and a hail, and the swift phantom of the desert was gone before we could get our heads out of the windows. But now we were expecting one along every moment, and would see him in broad daylight. Presently the driver exclaims:

“HERE HE COMES!”

Every neck is stretched further, and every eye strained wider. Away across the endless dead level of the prairie a black speck appears against the sky, and it is plain that it moves. Well, I should think so!

In a second or two it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling, rising and falling—sweeping toward us nearer and nearer—growing more and more distinct, more and more sharply defined—nearer and still nearer, and the flutter of the hoofs comes faintly to the ear—another instant a whoop and a hurrah from our upper deck, a wave of the rider’s hand, but no reply, and man and horse burst past our excited faces, and go winging away like a belated fragment of a storm!

So sudden is it all, and so like a flash of unreal fancy, that but for the flake of white foam left quivering and perishing on a mail-sack after the vision had flashed by and disappeared, we might have doubted whether we had seen any actual horse and man at all, maybe.

Roughing It by Mark Twain

More Suggestions

Have your students do one or more of the following:

• Use “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” to find words that express the terror of poor Ichabod.
• Use the other activities in that lesson to sharpen your skills.
• Find a piece of your favorite fictional writing. Find ten words that express and show the mood.
• Change those ten words to reflect a different mood.
• Read more about the Pony Express. See if you can write your own vivid description of a related scene.

Write Something Every Day: 366 Pencil Sharpeners for Students of Writing
Our book will get you started. This huge 554-pg. resource provides carefully crafted writing prompts and challenges for each day. We use nearly 20 different forms of writing to keep the student engaged. Also included are writing instruction, tips for modifying assignments for “younger writers,” and other resources. Learn more.

---

Additional Resources

At this point we have covered the following storytelling techniques:

• Activity: Storytelling
  Four ways to develop the art and skill of storytelling.
• Activity: Storytelling Prompts
  Storytelling prompts encourage a student step by step through the process of creating his own story.
• Activity: Steps for Developing Storytelling Skills
  For beginning writers, retelling the best stories is the first step in developing our writing skills. Steps for developing storytelling skills.
• Activity: Choose a Title
  The first step to writing a simple story is to choose a title. Here are ideas to help a student choose an interesting one.
• Activity: Complete the Story by Drawing
  While older students familiar with the short story form will have no problem with completing a story, younger students can focus on what happens, and simply draw their answer.
• Activity: Write an Opening Sentence
  Crafting impactful opening sentences that engage readers from the start.
• Activity: Making a Story Move
  A story is a “moving picture of life.” Capture attention and make a story move.

_____

1. Mud
   Wallowing dinosaur
   Smoke lowering
   Soft black drizzle
   Fog drooping on gunwhales
   Fog in eyes and throats
   Wheezing
   Pinching
   Shivering ↩︎