Caveman English: Plot Map Diagrams

Monday, August 8, 2011

Plot Map Diagrams

What is it about a story that makes us want to keep reading it?

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Two other ways at looking at how most stories are now written: (from http://yomeketa.com/eng104/homework/lecture/lecture5.html

ABCD(E) Plot Analysis

Here's another fairly practical way to think about how most stories are laid out, actual paragraph by paragraph rather than the chronological plotline — ABCD:

Action = rising action / most of Aristotle's middle / in media res
Back Story = exposition, ending with inciting incident / Aristotle's beginning
Change = the climax / as seen in Aristotle
Denouement = duh / Aristotle's ending

Or, if you want to impress your friends, try ABCDE:

Action = rising action / most of Aristotle's middle / in media res
Back Story = exposition, ending with inciting incident / Aristotle's beginning
Crisis = the moment of crisis or recognition that precedes the climax, from Aristotle's middle
Decision = the climax, when a character does something that changes everything / Aristotle's climax
Ending = denouement and resolution / Aristotle's ending

Contact Ms. Dorsey at cdorsey@alpinedistrict.org
If you leave messages on Skyward, it may take days or weeks for me to get them, so please use email if you'd like a timely reply.

"May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears."

"Empathy is really important... Only when our clever brain and our human heart work together in harmony can we achieve our true potential." -- Jane Goodall

"I’d wish you luck [in your writing], but good writing depends on conscious choices, not luck. Make good choices."

-- Bret Stephens, writer for the New York Times

Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough said, “Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.”

"As human beings we each have a responsibility to care for humanity. Expressing concern for others brings inner strength and deep satisfaction. As social animals, human beings need friendship, but friendship doesn’t come from wealth and power, but from showing compassion and concern for others." -- Dalai Lama

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

-James Madison, welcoming us all back to school

"Perseverance is not a long race: it is many short races one after the other." --Walter Elliot

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.

Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.
Daniel J. Boorstin

Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow. -- Anthony J. D'Angelo

“Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times; few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.”
― Sydney Harris

Words — so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The American Notebooks, 184

--notable-quotes.com

“It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.”

― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Surround yourself with the dreamers and the doers, the believers and the thinkers, but most of all, surround yourself with those who see the greatness within you, even when you don’t see it yourself." -- Edmund Lee

What I've Been Reading -- Fall 2012

"Some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up and touch everything. If you never let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you." - From the Mixed Up Files of Ms. Basil E. Frankweiler

"When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own."
-John Berger

“Think of education
as a garden
where questions
grow.”
Anna Devere Smith

". . . success is not a function of fame or PR, but of hard work and discipline." President Barak Obama

"The future is not a gift. It is an achievement." Robert Kennedy as quoted by President Obama

A great grammar link (with some errors, but it has Yoda!)
http://www.lordalford.com/grammar/grammarevil.htm#2

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Find MyAccess for writing assignments at
http://www.myaccess.com/

Other Classes and Activities

Contact Ms. Dorsey at cdorsey@alpinedistrict.org

Find MyAccess for writing assignments at
http://www.myaccess.com/

This is the English Class Blog.
If you're looking for Ms. Dorsey's other classes and activities, here are the links:

For Reading 7 go to
http://cavereading.blogspot.com/

For Creative Writing go to
http://cavewriting.blogspot.com/

For Mock Trial go to
http://cavemocktrial.blogspot.com/

Here's a site with word games, etc.:
http://www.fun-with-words.com

Play a punctuation game at
http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/adventure/grammar2.htm

Wonder how to pronounce author names? Go to http://www.teachingbooks.net/pronounce.cgi?aid=3090
and begin with a very popular author. Use the search to find others.