My Meaningful Composition co-author (my oldest child Joshua) and I have been writing a novel for, um, four years now. Well, truth be told, he has been writing it for nearly twenty years as he started outlining it when he was eighteen years old. It is finished actually, but Joshua is a perfectionist (at teaching, instructional writing, lesson plan preparation, and novel writing), so it isn’t finished in his eyes. We recently got it back out, dusted it off, and dug in to find his perfect spot again (and add in more technology…do you know how much things change in our world in four years?).
I have written seventy-five books in the past fifteen years—averaging 800 pages a book. The first forty were completely new books, and the next thirty-five have been re-writes and new books taken out of the original forty (i.e. half of the MC lessons came out of Character Quality Language Arts, for instance). But it has been a long journey nonetheless.
But it has been nothing in comparison to the difficulty, “how do I do this?” “out of my element completely” novel writing of this mere two hundred page young adult dystopian thriller that Joshua and I have written together.
In a nutshell, novel writing is hard work. Story writing is hard work. And not a natural skill by any means.
That is why I am so excited about our Twice-Told Tale lessons (called Piggyback Stories in CQLA). They make story writing pain-free (virtually) by starting out with a plot that students build off of.
They are incredibly fun for students, and they are my most Directed Writing Approach-infused lessons to date. (And all of my books are extremely Directed Writing Approach-focused!)
You can find some of these lessons in the list below….but here is a taste of a lesson I taught with one of them. Not for the faint of heart—but very doable for students. I love that!
Look for more of these lessons here:
- MC 5 II: Weeks 9 and 10—Piggy Back Tale of Country Mouse, City Mouse
- MC 6 I: Weeks 10 and 11–Piggy Back Story of Prodigal Son
- MC 7 I: Weeks 10 and 11–Piggy Back Story of The Prince and the Pauper
- MC 7 II: Weeks 2 and 3–Piggy Back Story of the Ugly Duckling
- MC 9 I: Weeks 10 and 11–Twice Told Tale Jungle Book
- MC 9 II: Weeks 11 and 12—Twice Told Tale Martin Avdeitch
- MC 9 II: Weeks 13 and 14—Twice Told Tale Gift of the Magi
- Write On, Mowgli—Level IV
- Write On, Peter Pan V (coming February 15th!)
- Write On, Belle and Beast V (in the video…coming mid February!)
Check out “Twice Told Tales” at our store below!
(Also available at CurrClick, Teachers Pay Teachers, and Teachers Notebook!)
