Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Epistolary novel

As your children may have informed you, our class has undertaken the group project of writing an epistolary novel (or, at least, an epistolary short story). The students have been taking turns writing letters in the novel; while the individual letters are left to the discretion of each student, the whole class is responsible for editing the novel for coherence and narrative flow. Thus far, I think the kids are doing a good job of striking a balance between enjoyably silly material and a serious concern for the progress and form of the novel; they've all participated quite passionately in our class discussions about where the story is going.

We've also been studying the difference between 'S's on the end of words that indicate plurals, and 'S's that indicate possession (basically, which words need apostrophes and which don't). To that end, yesterday I handed the kids a brief plot synopsis of our epistolary novel, with a number of errors to be corrected. I chose to use a plot synopsis for the exercise because I thought it would get them interested. They were even more interested than I anticipated, and have been talking about using this synopsis for the back cover the of the novel, should we ever bind and/or publish it! So here, for your reading pleasure, is the plot synopsis I wrote (without errors):

"If Aloha's pills aren't taken, her crazy spells may get worse. But, if the company of devils and skeletons gets its way, she'll have to take those pills! The location of her headquarters is hidden. Will all her enemies find her there? Will her schemes succeed, or will she be foiled by her enemies' plots?"

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