Making Our Stories Come Alive

In Writing Workshop we have been working on making our stories come alive.  We are trying to make our characters move and talk, and tell the "inside story."  We close our eyes and picture our small moment story like a DVD movie in our heads, so we can remember all the parts.

Adelyn closes her eyes to visualize her small moment story like a DVD playing in her head.

We have been noticing how good authors stretch out exciting moments bit-by-bit.  When an author gets to the most exciting part of the story, sometimes s/he slows down that moment and tells the exact actions.  We call this "exploding the moment."  We read a few books that were excellent examples of this.

The author stretches out the moment where the boy finds a marooned horseshoe crab and has to quickly flip it over in order for it to survive.

The author writes about when the main character gets a chance to ride a high-diving horse and stretches out the moment as the horse is diving from the high platform into the tank below.

The high-diving horse book is based on a true story from Atlantic City.

We also saw real footage of high-diving horses from the mid-1900s.

We were on the edge of our seats as we read how the little girl in the story got the chance to ride a high-diving horse!

After reading Crab Moon we also became interested in horseshoe crabs and how they have been around for 450 million years.  We also enjoyed watching videos of horseshoe crabs spawning on beaches.



We love to write like authors and share our stories!