December 7, 2009 | Life in General,The 4-1-1 on Me,The Sunny House
I closed down my other blog, Non-Profitation, and just decided to blog about my mentor/volunteer/school stuff over here. So I moved over ALL the posts. It was pretty friggin’ tedious, but easier than trying to keep up with two blogs.
This week at The Sunny House: Abstract vs Concrete
PA brought two poems for the group to read. “Intensity” and “Courage” were written by two local high school students and had been published in last years’ 22 Across book. The activity for this session was to take something abstract (emotion) and associate it with something concrete (person, place or thing). This was definitely a big challenge for the girls, even with the sample poems they had as a guide.
They found it difficult, at first, to describe an emotion. There was a lot of “How would you describe (insert emotion here?” and PA would respond, “Well, what does someone do when they’re (insert emotion here)?” I thought this was a really great activity for me because, as a writer, this is what’s called “show don’t tell.” If a character is nervous, we have a habit of telling our readers that the character is, say, nervous:
“Do you think we should be in here?” she asked nervously.
Instead, we need to show the character being nervous: shifting from foot to foot, glancing over the shoulder every few seconds, jumping at every sound, etc.
I didn’t think of that until I started this post. So, of course, I didn’t mention this during the session. *sigh*
Basically, these girls had to write a poem about physically describing an emotion and they did a great job. Similes and metaphors abounded! They’re so talented. It’s great to witness their potential and the way they stretch their minds. PA is teaching them so much. I hope they’ll keep at it after we’re done.
Technorati Tags: 22 Across
