Chautauqua BluePrint Exercise

Kathi Appelt gave a workshop on writing your memoirs and talked about her book, “My Father’s Summers.”

She used the following “Blueprint Exercise” which would also work well for a fiction story too.

1. Draw a room/house/location as if you are looking down on it.

2. Label the places in the location…ie…Mom’s bedroom. Favorite tree.

3. On a different sheet of paper, draw five vertical columns.

4. Quick as you can, pick five places on your “blueprint” and jot down all the words that come to mind. Think about sensory words and emotions too.

5. Pick one of the columns or one of the words and phrases in the columns and write. You could start with “I remember.”

Chautauqua Storyboard Exercise

During the week at Chautauqua, I attended two workshops given by Joy Neaves, editor at Front Street. In both workshops, she referenced an exercise called, “Storyboarding Emotions” which was created by Carolyn Coman.

The exercise will work for short stories, picture books, or novels.

Carolyn draws a blanks square for each of the story’s main scenes. Underneath each picture, she writes one sentence or phrase that captures the scene or chapter. At the top of the square, she writes the emotion of the scene or chapter. And in the box, she draws a picture of the scene or chapter.

Read Carolyn’s exercise.

Scholarships to Attend Chautauqua

If you are interested in attending the Highlights Founders Workshop at Chautauqua but don’t think you can afford it, you might be interested in knowing about the scholarships offered.

Articles from Highlights Founders Workshops

If you are looking for a boost in the craft of writing, check out these articles from talks presented at The Highlights Founders Workshops.

Highlights Foundation History

 Resources from Highlights

If you are interested in learning a bit about the history of Highlights Foundation:

“The Inside Story About Highlights for Children, Boyds Mills Press and
Calkins Creek Books” with Kent L. Brown Jr.
http://www.institutechildrenslit.com/rx/tr01/brown.shtml

Chautauqua Poetry Workshop

During the Chautauqua Highlights Foundation Writing Conference, Kathi Appelt presented a great poetry workshop. One of the new, innovative ways to display poetry is action animated poems by Billy Collins.

If you want to find more of Kathi’s poetry exercises, she has written two great poetry books:

Poems from Homeroom

Just People and other poems for young readers

The following are a couple of Kathi’s exercises for poetry.

Exercise #1-Telephone Poetry

1. Write down your phone number vertically on the page.

2. Underneath that number, write down a friend’s phone number vertically on the same page.

3. Topic of the poem: Self-Portrait–Who are you? What memories do you have?

4. Each line should be the number of words that correspond with the phone number on that line. For example, if your number is 425-3345 then the first line should have 4 words, the second line 2, and so on.

5. Give yourself five to seven minutes to write the poem. The idea is to write fast and don’t let your brain think too much. Just write what’s on the heart.

Exercise #2–Writing Off the Line

1. Gather a collection of poems

2. Read poems and choose one line from the poems which speaks to you

3. Use that one line as a starting place for your poem

Kathi recommends this poetry exercise as a way to start your writing day.

Exercise #3

1. Brainstorm a topic such as summer

2. List all the words associated with summer you can think of

3. Choose one word and write an acrostic

For Example (This was my poem for Summer/Fireworks)

Flashing fire

In the sky

raising my

eyes upward

Wow!

Orange

Red

Kaboom!

Sparkles in the night.

Highlights Foundation Writers Workshop at Chautauqua

I had the privilege of attending the Highlights Foundation Writers Workshop at Chautauqua this past week. When completing the workshop survey (and receiving a free year’s subscription to Highlights Magazine for completing the survey…WOW), I was thinking about what to post about in my blog.

Should I share the wise words of wisdom we received from faculty like Bruce Coville, Kathi Appelt, or Kelly Milner Halls?

Should I post about the fun meals laughing with Candace (Candy) Fleming and Eric Rohman?

Or what about the dinners at the golf club, the BBQ’s at the Lake, or the inspiring speakers at the Atheneum Hotel Banquets?

Or even post about the setting in this place called the Chautauqua institute?

I reviewed my notes from each workshop which included workshops on sports writing, memoir writing, poetry, and theme and decided to post some of the exercises that we were given in each workshop, because for me, what I find, is that it’s not the wise words I remember as I write, it’s the exercises. The times when the presenters asked us to apply the information or look at something new in our writing by trying an exercise or two.

So, for the next few posts, I will share with you the exercises that were given to me and hope that you’ll try a few and see where it leads you!