Narrative Basics Lesson 2: Action

Purpose

Teach students how to blend different types of action to create richer and more emotionally varied scenes.

Description

Narratives are characters in action. In this lesson, we explore types of action, including physical, social, internal and environmental. We also touch on how writers make action meaningful and the challenges of sequencing action. At the end we bring everything together in a checkpoint piece that features a blend of action types. We use a lot of snippets from Miles Morales by Jason Reynolds, as well as extracts from Jean McKissack's Sanctuary and Celia M. Perez's First Rule of Punk. This lesson covers a lot, so it will take most students 3-4 hours to complete, however it is made up of bite-sized chunks, so can be completed over an extended period.

Lesson type

Introduction

Genre / Topic

Universal