During Project Ink, they will practice the five steps to the writing process: prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing a finalized story. As students work through the five steps of the writing process, they will successfully complete the following objectives:

Prewriting  

Students will learn to make their own choices. During our pre-writing sessions, we will provide the time and teacher-supported prompting to help students thoughtfully bring to life each element of their story. Students will practice asking questions and making the logical connections needed to successfully brainstorm the following:

The Setting

• Use the setting as an influencing factor on the characters and make choices on which landscape, architecture, or geography will be featured to have a significant impact on the plot

• Build description and elaboration through concrete and sensory details, imagery, and figurative language while eliminating fluff, cliches, and repetition

• Create contrasting setting moods through implied detailed description to build emotional arcs

Character Development

• Determine which characters will remain flat/static (simple one-trait characters) and which ones will be complex/dynamic (characters with layers of both good and bad or characters that undergo change)

• Create three-dimensional backstories to define the characters as relatable, believable, and original

• Differentiate characters through unique appearances, personal tastes, actions, thoughts, and speech

• Give characters strengths and weaknesses as driving forces behind the conflict and the resolution

• Build characters with a personality and voice. Students can choose to do so through an intimate first-person perspective or an omniscient narrator who unbiasedly or biasedly reveals the characters’ thoughts and feelings

The Conflict and Resolution

• Choose between a selection of conflicts that will position the protagonist against society, the setting, a social group, or another character

• Play around with the sequence of events by building a story that includes flashbacks, flashforwards, or a discordant timeline

• Construct a plot that reflects a theme that is important to them

• Complexify the conflict with different points of view, where the characters might not agree with each other on the best way to solve the problem

• Determine if the story will be a happily-ever-after, an unanswered cliffhanger, a comical ironic twist, or a story that comes to a bitter end

Drafting

Students will start with a workable and mendable outline that we provide. Teachers will give continuous direction while students craft sentences to ensure they do not fly by their plotline without detail or explanation. Students will be encouraged to draft their initial stories with their original intentions in mind, as outlined in their prewriting. But students can make changes as the story develops. Students will:

• Effectively use their prewriting as the skeleton to organize writing

• Learn to use Google Docs and appropriate organizational tools to keep track of the story’s flow from the beginning, middle, to end

• Find and fill holes or illogical gaps in the story with new information

• Eliminate wasted words and space by incorporating active word choice through power verbs, aiming to write with fewer words but with words that create the greatest impact

• Add specific tone through descriptor phrases

Revising  

Students will revise their final products multiple times. This allows students to see their writing improve each time we review, add, move, or eliminate. We work through revisions by giving students individualized comments and one-on-one conferencing with each student. The discussions will determine where and when students can do any of the following:

• Add extra elaborative details to ideas that have not been fully developed

• Revise word choice that is awkward or not impactful enough

• Incorporate dialogue and interior monologue to break up longer descriptions and to give the reader a personal connection to the characters

• Find places where transition phrases will create a clearer storyline

Editing

With general editing tools, students will take the lead on finding their own mistakes. Students will practice the habit of self-checking for spelling mistakes, misused or forgotten punctuation, formatting mistakes, and grammatically incorrect sentences. For students who lack confidence in this writing step, the teachers will work with the student to identify mistakes. Students will:

• Practice the use of correct editing marks

• Develop the habit of reading their writing multiple times

Publishing  

We want our students to walk away from the project with a final project that they feel carries the value of all the work put into it through the prewriting, drafting, and multiple revisions. Students will be able to embellish their story before a final print, adding graphics, a creative cover, table of contents, dedication, about the author, and back-cover summary. Our students will finish the project with the satisfaction of being able to share their story with loved ones.