How to teach your child to write a novel: Lesson 7: Analysis

The analysis exercise brings it all together.

You are reading part eight of a ten part series that shows you how to teach your elementary-age child to write a novel, and in the process become a wiser, more thoughtful reader of books written by others. Check out the preparation, the genre lesson, the hero lesson, the villain lesson, the conflict lesson, the setting lesson, the plot map, and then come back here for the analysis exercise.

Greeting:

Start your meeting, say your oath, and send your secret handshake around the table. Ask the kids which chapter book or movie they’ve seen or read the most times. Ask them each to settle on one book that they’re very very familiar with — that they remember really well.

Warm-up :

Pick a movie you know well and write the first and last lines of a book based on that movie. You don’t have to use “once upon a time” or even stick to the first scene of the movie, but think about the story and try to decide how you would begin to tell it. Which character would you start with? Which scene? And how would you end the story — with what scene would you leave the reader?

Analysis Activity:

This is going to be a very challenging activity for the children, but when they’re done with this, they will be well prepared to develop their chapter lists next week.

Follow the link to download a PDF of the analysis worksheet: Analysis Worksheet.

Print out two analysis worksheets for each child, and have them fill out one for the movie/book they are most familiar with, which they chose at the beginning of class. Then fill out one for their own novel. Filling it out for the movie/book they’ve chosen should be a breeze but they may need help simplifying their language and summarizing to fit the form.

When they move to working on their own books, you may find that they get stuck and frustrated. Always be cheerful, always be forward-moving, and do not indulge any negative behavior or language like “I can’t do it” or “I don’t have any ideas.” If you get stuck, skip that. Move on to what you know. Many of these boxes can be filled in by using information in worksheets the students have already done and pasted into their books, so you can always have them move on to something they can just fill in easily. Do not give answers. Do not give ideas. Ask questions, praise their efforts, encourage them, stay positive, and do not accept defeat. When this is done, they're going to feel a huge sense of accomplishment, and they should! Planning a novel is hard work.

Dialogue Activity:

To complete this activity, you need to record some of their dialogue on tape or with a computer. You don’t have to do it in secret, but don’t let them know that you’re analyzing their sentence structure, etc. Ask them to talk about something they’re interested in, preferably something they will get heated about. You could ask them to tell you, collectively, about an incident they will all remember. Or ask them to decide what to do later. Ask them to come to an agreement on which book is better: Harry Potter or Percy Jackson. Ask them to talk about whether everyone should have a pet. Something like that.

After you record the dialogue, play it back. Here are some points you can make about dialogue:

1. People don’t speak in complete sentences.
2. The person speaking is often not responding directly to the person who just spoke.
3. People interrupt each other all the time.

Now, it’s impossible to always write truly realistic dialogue, because it would be incomprehensible and awkward for a reader. But by taking some of these things into account, you can improve the way your dialogue “sounds.”

Homework:

Write a dialogue between two kids arguing over the rules to a game of tag, and show them resolving the argument.