The Writing Strategies Book 1st edition by Jennifer Serravallo ISBN 032507822X 978-0325078229

Acknowledgments

Getting Started

Goal 1: Composing with Pictures

Strategy 1.1: Talk (as You Draw)

Strategy 1.2: Point Around the Pictures

Strategy 1.3: Reread Your Pictures So It Sounds Like a Storybook

Strategy 1.4: Reread Your Pictures to Teach

Strategy 1.5: Add Detail to Make Pictures Easier to Read

Strategy 1.6: Label Your Pictures

Strategy 1.7: Look Back and Say, “How Can I Make This Clearer?”

Strategy 1.8: Make Your Picture Look Like the Picture in Your Mind

Strategy 1.9: Left to Right

Strategy 1.10: You Can Come Back to a Piece and Do More

Strategy 1.11: Drew the People? Draw the Place!

Strategy 1.12: Writing Across the Pages

Strategy 1.13: A Series of Pictures to Show Change

Strategy 1.14: Circles and Sticks

Strategy 1.15: Drawing with Shapes

Strategy 1.16: Touch, Then Draw

Strategy 1.17: Draw (the Best You Can) and Move On!

Strategy 1.18: Imagine It, Make It!

Goal 2: Engagement: Independence, Increasing Volume, and Developing a Writing Identity

Strategy 2.1: Create Your Best Environment

Strategy 2.2: Picture the End! (Or, Imagine It Done)

Strategy 2.3: Listen. Praise.

Strategy 2.4: Use the Room

Strategy 2.5: Decide a Piece Is “Finished” (for Now)— and Self-Start a New One

Strategy 2.6: Writers Are Problem Solvers

Strategy 2.7: The Pen Is Mightier Than the Sword

Strategy 2.8: Keep Your Pencil in Your Hand/Fingers on the Keyboard

Strategy 2.9: Partners Can Give Gentle Reminders to Stay on Track

Strategy 2.10: Silence the “It’s No Good” Voice

Strategy 2.11: Make a Plan for Writing Time

Strategy 2.12: Reread to Jump Back In

Strategy 2.13: Keep Objects Close

Strategy 2.14: Set a “More” Goal for the Whole Writing Time

Strategy 2.15: Break Up Your Writing Time into Smaller Chunks

Strategy 2.16: Stuck with Writing? Read.

Strategy 2.17: Imagine Your Audience

Strategy 2.18: Keep a Side Project

Strategy 2.19: Consult a Fellow Writer

Strategy 2.20: Experiment with Change

Strategy 2.21: Why Do You Write?

Strategy 2.22: One Bite at a Time

Strategy 2.23: Your Aim: Black on White

Strategy 2.24: Make It a Habit

Strategy 2.25: Live Like Someone Consumed by a Project

Strategy 2.26: Write to Vent, Then Turn to Your Project

Strategy 2.27: Be Realistic

Goal 3: Generating and Collecting Ideas

Strategy 3.1: Important People

Strategy 3.2: Moments with Strong Feelings

Strategy 3.3: Observe Closely

Strategy 3.4: Photo Starts

Strategy 3.5: Mapping the Heart

Strategy 3.6: Reread and Look for Patterns

Strategy 3.7: Writing to Change the World!

Strategy 3.8: Walk Your World

Strategy 3.9: Interview to Dig for and Uncover Topics

Strategy 3.10: Scrapbook Your Life (to Write About It Later)

Strategy 3.11: Mine Mentor Texts for Topics

Strategy 3.12: These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

Strategy 3.13: Start with a Character

Strategy 3.14: Listen for (and Write!) Music

Strategy 3.15: Jot Today, Write Tomorrow

Strategy 3.16: Give Yourself Exercises/Assignments

Strategy 3.17: Get Sparked by Setting

Strategy 3.18: Tour Your Home

Strategy 3.19: Always Times, One Time

Strategy 3.20: Ideas for Other Genres Might Be Hiding (in Plain Sight!)

Strategy 3.21: Borrow a (Spark) Line

Strategy 3.22: Found Poems

Strategy 3.23: Over and Over

Strategy 3.24: Wonder, “What If . . . ?”

Strategy 3.25: Mix and Match Story Elements

Strategy 3.26: Word Mapping

Strategy 3.27: If It Could Go on Facebook, You Can Jot It in a Notebook

Strategy 3.28: Ask Yourself Questions (and Then Answer Them)

Strategy 3.29: Collect Triggers

Strategy 3.30: Subtopics Hiding in Topics

Strategy 3.31: Purposefully Wander

Strategy 3.32: Abstract Issues, Specific Examples

Strategy 3.33: Scan the Newspaper

Strategy 3.34: Read Something on an Unfamiliar Topic

Strategy 3.35: Person vs. Nature

Strategy 3.36: Find Characters and Ideas in the World

Strategy 3.37: Defining Moments

Strategy 3.38: Start with an Outlandish Claim

Goal 4: Focus/Meaning

Strategy 4.1: Make Your Pictures and Your Words Agree

Strategy 4.2: Focus in Time

Strategy 4.3: Find the Heart

Strategy 4.4: Write a Title

Strategy 4.5: Write About a Pebble

Strategy 4.6: Zoom In on a Moment of Importance

Strategy 4.7: Ask Questions to Focus

Strategy 4.8: Find Your Passion to Focus

Strategy 4.9: Imagine Your Audience and Consider Your Purpose

Strategy 4.10: Write a Poem to Try On a Focus

Strategy 4.11: Cut It to the Bone

Strategy 4.12: Underline One Line (That Says the Most)

Strategy 4.13: Their Topic, Your Idea

Strategy 4.14: Use a Search Engine to Find Connections

Strategy 4.15: Focus on an Image

Strategy 4.16: Find a Theme in Your Collection

Strategy 4.17: Craft an “Elevator Speech”

Strategy 4.18: Craft a Thesis

Strategy 4.19: The “So What?” Rule

Strategy 4.20: Write “Off the Page”

Strategy 4.21: Focus on an Issue

Strategy 4.22: What Problem Are You Solving?

Strategy 4.23: Experimental Draft to Find Focus

Strategy 4.24: Let Available Sources Steer Your Focus

Strategy 4.25: Shape Your Focus with Active Verbs

Goal 5: Organization and Structure

Strategy 5.1: Pattern Books

Strategy 5.2: Say Say Say, Sketch Sketch Sketch, Write Write Write

Strategy 5.3: Add a Page, Subtract a Page

Strategy 5.4: Move a Page to a New Place

Strategy 5.5: All About or One Time?

Strategy 5.6: Teaching Texts: How-Tos

Strategy 5.7: Organize in Sequence

Strategy 5.8: Uh-Oh . . . UH-OH . . . Phew

Strategy 5.9: Beef Up the Middle

Strategy 5.10: Question–Answer

Strategy 5.11: End in the Moment

Strategy 5.12: End with Last Words from the Character

Strategy 5.13: Start with a Table of Contents

Strategy 5.14: Parts of a Topic: Features and Characteristics

Strategy 5.15: Parts of a Topic: Kinds

Strategy 5.16: Moving from Chunk to Chunk

Strategy 5.17: Line Breaks

Strategy 5.18: Start with a Plan in Mind

Strategy 5.19: Create Urgency

Strategy 5.20: Nonfiction Leads

Strategy 5.21: Lead by Addressing the Reader

Strategy 5.22: Audiences for Information

Strategy 5.23: Draw Your Layout

Strategy 5.24: Outline, Reoutline, Outline Again

Strategy 5.25: Lay Out Pages to See the Architecture

Strategy 5.26: Take Scissors to Your Draft

Strategy 5.27: Draw Out (Don’t Summarize) to Build Suspense

Strategy 5.28: Repetition/List Structure

Strategy 5.29: Multiscene Storyboarding

Strategy 5.30: Problem–Solution Structure for Persuasive Writing

Strategy 5.31: Moving Quickly (or Slowly) Through Time

Strategy 5.32: Take a Piece, Rework the Genre or Structure Several Times

Strategy 5.33: Headings, Subheadings, Sub-Subheadings

Strategy 5.34: Weigh the Parts of Your Piece

Strategy 5.35: Coming Full Circle

Strategy 5.36: Seesaw Structure

Strategy 5.37: Conclude with the Big Idea

Strategy 5.38: Parallel Story

Strategy 5.39: Write the Bones, Then Go Back to Flesh It Out

Strategy 5.40: Leading with Contrast

Goal 6: Elaboration

Strategy 6.1: Pictures Teach, Words Teach

Strategy 6.2: Add More to Your Pictures (Then, Maybe More to Your Words!)

Strategy 6.3: Speech Bubbles Let Your Characters Talk

Strategy 6.4: Act It Out . . . Then Get It Down

Strategy 6.5: “Nudge” Paper

Strategy 6.6: Teach with Diagrams

Strategy 6.7: See the World Like a Poet (Metaphor and Simile)

Strategy 6.8: Flaps and Carets

Strategy 6.9: “What Else Happened?”

Strategy 6.10: Prove It

Strategy 6.11: Take Notes from an Illustration or a Photo

Strategy 6.12: Cracking Open Nouns

Strategy 6.13: Show, Don’t Tell: Using Senses to Describe Places

Strategy 6.14: Show, Don’t Tell: Emotions

Strategy 6.15: Let Your Readers Know Who’s Talking!

Strategy 6.16: Read Mentor Texts with Two Lenses: Information, Aesthetic

Strategy 6.17: Research from People (Interviews)

Strategy 6.18: Keeping a Research Notebook

Strategy 6.19: Read, Sketch, Stretch

Strategy 6.20: External Character Description

Strategy 6.21: Write the “Inside Story”

Strategy 6.22: Support Your Facts

Strategy 6.23: Partner Facts: Ask Yourself, “How?”

Strategy 6.24: Use a Refrain

Strategy 6.25: Cracking Open Verbs

Strategy 6.26: Exploring Options for Setting

Strategy 6.27: Picture Your Character

Strategy 6.28: Tell What It’s Not (to Say What It Is)

Strategy 6.29: Be Patient, Go Slow

Strategy 6.30: Bring in the Periphery

Strategy 6.31: Use Empathy to Figure Out What to Add

Strategy 6.32: Writing Through a Mask

Strategy 6.33: How Does Your Character Talk?

Strategy 6.34: Character Dialogue and Dialect for Historical Accuracy

Strategy 6.35: Use Imagery to Make a Fact Come Alive

Strategy 6.36: Get the Sound (of Some Mentors) in Your Head

Strategy 6.37: Be Your Own Harshest Critic

Strategy 6.38: Mentor Sentence

Strategy 6.39: Talk to Yourself

Strategy 6.40: Character Gestures to Show Traits

Strategy 6.41: Anecdotes Can Teach and Give Evidence

Strategy 6.42: Rule of Threes

Strategy 6.43: Lie (to Tell the Truth)

Strategy 6.44: Weave in Symbolism

Strategy 6.45: Clue In the Reader to the Past (Flashback)

Goal 7: Word Choice

Strategy 7.1: Onomatopoeia: Sound Effects

Strategy 7.2: Write with Authority: Domain-Specific Vocabulary

Strategy 7.3: Precise Nouns

Strategy 7.4: Bring Objects to Life

Strategy 7.5: Verbs That Match the Meaning

Strategy 7.6: Shades of Meaning

Strategy 7.7: Alphabox

Strategy 7.8: Sneaky Sounds: Alliteration, Consonance, and Assonance

Strategy 7.9: Rhythm

Strategy 7.10: Read Aloud to Find “Clunks”

Strategy 7.11: Words That Match the Audience

Strategy 7.12: Revisit the Language Gems in Your Notebook

Strategy 7.13: Make Your Own Word

Strategy 7.14: Leave Only the Essential Words

Strategy 7.15: Rhyme Time

Strategy 7.16: Clever Titles, Headings, and Subheadings

Strategy 7.17: Hyperbole

Strategy 7.18: Vary Words to Eliminate Repetition

Strategy 7.19: Watch Your Tone

Strategy 7.20: Choose Your Pronouns

Strategy 7.21: Short → Long → Short

Strategy 7.22: Gut Check Each Word

Strategy 7.23: Not “So” “Very” “Nice”

Strategy 7.24: Know When to Keep an Adverb

Strategy 7.25: Work for More-Precise Language (by Taking Out Adjectives and Adverbs)

Strategy 7.26: Rewrite a Line (Again and Again and Again)

Strategy 7.27: Surprising Verbs

Strategy 7.28: Surprising Nouns

Strategy 7.29: Name Your Characters and Places

Strategy 7.30: Specific, Definite, Concrete: Allow Your Words to Call Up Pictures

Strategy 7.31: Omit Needless Words

Goal 8: Conventions: Spelling and Letter Formation

Strategy 8.1: Long or Short Word?

Strategy 8.2: Talk Like a Turtle

Strategy 8.3: Consult the Alphabet Chart

Strategy 8.4: Write, Reread, Write, Reread, Repeat

Strategy 8.5: When’s It Big? When’s It Small?

Strategy 8.6: Penmanship Counts!

Strategy 8.7: Write Words You Know in a Snap!

Strategy 8.8: Vowel Charts for the Middles of Words

Strategy 8.9: Spell as Best You Can—on the First Go

Strategy 8.10: Use Your Resources to Spell

Strategy 8.11: Part-by-Part Spelling

Strategy 8.12: Chin Drops

Strategy 8.13: Visualize the Word and Have a Go

Strategy 8.14: Use Words You Know to Spell Unknown Words

Strategy 8.15: Read Your Writing Backward (and Catch Spelling Mistakes!)

Strategy 8.16: Circle and Spell

Strategy 8.17: Making It Plural (Consonants Plus -s or -es)

Strategy 8.18: Turn to Spell-Check

Strategy 8.19: Check for Homophones

Strategy 8.20: Apostrophes for Contractions

Strategy 8.21: To Apostrophe or Not to Apostrophe? (Possessives)

Strategy 8.22: Making It Plural (While Changing the Base Word)

Goal 9: Conventions: Grammar and Punctuation

Strategy 9.1: Make Lines for What You Want to Write

Strategy 9.2: Finger Space

Strategy 9.3: Read with Your Finger

Strategy 9.4: Repeated Rereadings to Check a Checklist

Strategy 9.5: Does It Sound Like a Book?

Strategy 9.6: Ellipses

Strategy 9.7: To And or Not to And?

Strategy 9.8: Guess What! Complete Sentences

Strategy 9.9: Don’t Overdo It!

Strategy 9.10: Colons

Strategy 9.11: Punctuating (and Paragraphing) Speech

Strategy 9.12: Pause for Periods

Strategy 9.13: Voice Comma

Strategy 9.14: Group Words for Comprehension: Commas

Strategy 9.15: Say It with Feeling!

Strategy 9.16: Paragraph Starters

Strategy 9.17: Read Your Draft Aloud and Listen

Strategy 9.18: Match the Number of the Subject to the Number of the Verb

Strategy 9.19: Knowing When You Need a New Paragraph

Strategy 9.20: Negative + Negative = Positive

Strategy 9.21: Irregular Verbs and Subject–Verb Agreement

Strategy 9.22: Eliminating Repetition with Sentence Combining

Strategy 9.23: Revising Run-On Sentences

Strategy 9.24: Creating Complex Sentences

Strategy 9.25: Creating Compound Sentences

Strategy 9.26: Dashes

Strategy 9.27: Play with Pauses

Strategy 9.28: I or Me? Us or We? They or Them?

Strategy 9.29: Parenthetic Expressions

Strategy 9.30: Verb Tense Consistency Within a Sentence

Strategy 9.31: Considering Sentence Length

Strategy 9.32: Semicolons

Strategy 9.33: Accentuate the Positive (Tightening Up Sentences)

Strategy 9.34: Rephrase for Clarity

Strategy 9.35: When Did the Action Happen? (Simple, Continuous, and Perfect Tenses)

Goal 10: Collaborating with Writing Partners and Clubs

Strategy 10.1: Use a Partner to Hear More Sounds in Words

Strategy 10.2: Using Partners to Make Writing More Readable

Strategy 10.3: Storytelling from Sketches

Strategy 10.4: Talk Around the Idea, Then Write

Strategy 10.5: Make Promises (You Can Keep)

Strategy 10.6: Partner Inquisition (to Get Your Thinking Going)

Strategy 10.7: Tell Me: Does It Make Sense?

Strategy 10.8: Partner Space

Strategy 10.9: Help Wanted/Help Offered

Strategy 10.10: PQP (Praise, Question, Polish)

Strategy 10.11: Tell Me: Does It Match My Intention?

Strategy 10.12: Interrupt Your Partner

Strategy 10.13: Dig for Fictional Details with a Partner

Strategy 10.14: Form a Club

Strategy 10.15: Storytelling to Figure Out Point of View and Perspective

Strategy 10.16: Tell Me: How Does It Affect You?

Strategy 10.17: Code the Text

Strategy 10.18: Written Response

Strategy 10.19: Changes and Choices

Appendix: Publishing and Celebrating Writing

Bibliography

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