Lesson overview

Detailed practice
Story - Narrative
Middle years and up
narrative
dramatic getaway
chase sequence
word choice
environmental description
describing setting
The Map of Salt and Stars
Zeyn Joukhadar
project
imaginative detail
dialogue
action
character reactions
expansion
environmental reactions
This lesson pulls together some of the elements in the Narrative Basics course. We take a small scene from Zeyn Joukhadar's The Map of Salt and Stars, in which a couple of adventurers are chased through the streets and alleys of medieval Cairo. We break the snippet into fragments, model patterns in each fragment, and then recombine. At the end, we create a checkpoint piece. This is relatively easy lesson, with simple repeated patterns. The challenge is in word choice and imaginative detail. The lesson probably takes around 1 hour, depending on the level of student ability, engagement and teacher support.