Schoolwide Blog

Recently, I had the privilege of hearing the esteemed author Jane Yolen give the concluding remarks at a conference for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. To an audience of over one thousand children’s book people, Ms. Yolen eloquently provided an amusing and inspiring set of guidelines. She began with “Eschew the exclamation point” and “Go easy on adverbs,” along with a number of other warnings about mistakes even experienced authors make in first drafts. As I listened, I thought about my students. What mistakes do I see over and over again?  If I made a list of five rules for student writers, what would they be?

• Rule Number One: Use Your Inside Voice. Limit your use of exclamation points and capitals. Ten exclamation points in a row and capital letters are like shouting at your reader.
• Rule Number Two: Stop To Cross The Street. Watch out for the conjunction “and.” More than two “ands” in the same sentence are often a signal to stop and use a period.
• Rule Number Three: Dare to be Different. Beginning every sentence with “then” or “the” can be dull for the reader. Rearrange your words to vary the sentence structure.    
• Rule Number Four: Play With Words, Not Fonts. Spend your writing time choosing the perfect descriptive word, not the prettiest font type or size.
• Rule Number Five: Be Active. “Was” weakens the action. If Rapunzel needs to cross the street, say “she walked” instead of “she was walking” or “she started to walk.” 

These guidelines address some of the problems I’ve seen repeatedly in student stories.

Teaching students to watch for these pitfalls will help them be more effective editors of their own and their peers’ writing.   

Jacqueline Jules

http://www.jacquelinejules.com/

Since I first started writing professionally, the word count feature on my word processing system has been my favorite tool. It can be almost a game to search through a manuscript looking for ways to say the same thing with fewer words. And after each edit, I triumphantly check the word count to see a lower number. Recently, I took two thousand words out of a chapter book for a requested revision. Over the years, trimming words to make my stories publishable has become second nature. I can’t re-read any draft without seeing numerous sentences in need of tightening. How does this help me as a writer? It forces me to examine every word in my stories. The often quoted line attributed to a variety of authors, including Mark Twain: “I’m sorry to write such a long letter. I didn’t have time to write a shorter one,” reflects the effort needed to comb a story for repetitive or confusing phrases. Professional writers make every effort to put their ideas down as succinctly as possible.

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On Tuesday, October 20th, in honor of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) sponsored National Day on Writing, every classroom in my elementary school took a few minutes to make a list of all the different ways people use writing at home, at school, and in their jobs. The number of items the students named surprised everyone. Everything you read was written by someone. Writing is everywhere!