English IV Midterm Review

Creative Writing Midterm Review

Part 1 - 75 fill in the blank

Literary Terms and Techniques

Setting, Character, Plot, Theme, Style, Tone, Irony, Symbolism

Imagery, Denotation, Connotation, Allusion, Understatement, Hyperbole, Paradox, Simile, Metaphor, Personification, Apostrophe

POV

Point of view, omniscient, subjective, objective, first person, second person, third person

Poetry 

Accent, alliteration, anapest, antithesis, apostrophe, assonance, ballad, ballade, blank verse, caesura, classicism, conceit, consonance, couplet, dactyl, elegy

Figure of speech, hyperbole, feminine rhyme, masculine rhyme, foot, iamb, heroic couplet, free verse, epic, haiku, iambic pentameter, idyll or idyl, lay, limerick, lyric, hexameter

Metaphor, meter, metonymy, narrative, ode, onomatopoeia, pastoral, pentameter, personification, poetry, quatrain, refrain, rhyme, rhyme royal, romanticism

Scansion, senryu, simile, sonnet, spondee, stanza, stress, synecdoche, tanka, terza rima, tetrameter, trochee, trope, verse

Name each type of “foot” → iamb, spondee, and trochee

Drama

Drama, theatre, theater, classic theatre style, realistic and naturalist theatre styles, comedy, high comedy, low comedy, farce, slapstick comedy, tragedy, catharsis, tragic hero, anagnorisis, hamartia, hubris, nemesis, peripeteia, mise en scene, round characters, flat characters, mystery or miracle plays, morality plays, allegory, masque, antimasque, pastoral, comedy of manners, commedia dell’arte, sentimental comedy and drama, melodrama, problem plays

No Exit

Existentialism, absurdism, power relationship, natural sounding, unnatural sounding

Part 2 - 25 short answer questions

Archetypes 

The big brother of the symbol in literature. The original pattern or model. 

• Created by Carl Jung - collective unconscious - understanding realities on a primordial level

• Character Archetypes

  • The Hero

  • The Villain

  • The Good Mother

  • The Terrible Mother

• Symbol Archetypes

  • Water = rebirth

  • Darkness = evil

  • Forrest = evil; loss of innocence

  • sun/light = enlightenment/hope

• Situation Archetypes

  • Quest: characters know what they want or have to do, but don’t know how they’re going to get there - know the goal, but not the means

  • Task: characters basically know the steps and ultimate goal, but they face pitfalls along the way - pitfalls from internal or external hindrances

  • Initiation: character wants to be a part of a group and must gain access by doing specific things (either successful, or the character backs away from wanting to be in the group)

  • Coming of age/loss of innocence: a story where a character experiences an internal realization or an external change throughout the course of a story (generally younger character, but can be any age)

Vonnegut and Pixar

The Short Story 101 by Kurt Vonnegut

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is just a glass of water.

4. Every sentence should do one of two things – reveal a character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters are, make awful things happen to them – in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling

Rules are only rules. They can be broken. Many times, they are. 

Creating a character

Step 1) Physical Traits/Characteristics

• Gender, age, height, noteworthy physical characteristics

Step 2) Space

• Where do they live and work?

• Where are they most comfortable?

• Where are they least comfortable?

Step 3) Dilemma/Conflict

• “The conflict” - main problem

• Scope of problem

• Is it an internal dilemma or conflict - emotional/mental anguish?

• Is it an external dilemma or conflict - physical characteristics, space, or another character?

Step 4) Style and Dialogue

• How the characters speak and act

• Narrator’s relationship with other character(s) - does it change?

He/she/they are the sort of person who…

Dialogue

1. Tone

2. Avoid “ahs…” and “ums…”

3. Do NOT repeat from narration to dialogue

4. Denote journals/e-mails from the general text

5. Use italics with interior monologue

6. Generally dialogue in a short story is very final. If you need to show a short or long passage of time, leave an extra space or an extra space with ****

7. Go back and read your work. Do the characters sound different?

8. Dialogue must be set up correctly - “This is my pet turtle,” she said. 

9. Dialogue is there to move the story along (not dispense info)

10.  Use real speech patterns with intent - echoing, interruptions, shifts in pace and tone, as well as pauses and silences

11.  Does your dialogue sound like how people would speak?

POV

1st person + … → omniscient, subject, or objective

2nd person + … → omniscient, subject, or objective

3rd person + … → omniscient, subject, or objective

Documentation

Underline or Italicize 

• Books, periodical titles, long poems, plays, movies/tv series, painting/sculpture, ships

“Set in quotation marks”

• Chapter titles, essays, articles in periodicals, short poems, TV episodes, title of web pages

Grammar

Affect (verb) | Effect (noun)

• Sometimes EFFECT can be a verb - Please effect a total makeover of your essay (“to bring about” or “make”)

• Sometimes AFFECT can be used as a noun when denoting feelings or emotions - Herbert exhibited no affect when I gently explained how his pet frog ate his pet dragonfly. 

Than | Then

Numbers

• Write number symbol for years and prices

Possessive

Contractions

• Fine in dialogue, avoid in narration

Exclamation Points

Dashes

• Longer pause than a comma - more informal than parentheses

• “Em dash”: longer dash 

• “En dash”: shorter dash (between years)

Verb Tenses

• Simple present:  they walk

  • Present perfect: they have walked

• Simple past: they walked

  • Past perfect: they had walked

• Future: They will walk

  • Future perfect: they will have walked

• Be CONSISTENT

Active vs Passive Voice

• Write in the active voice: subject is doing the action

Avoid too many adjectives and adverbs

Editing and revision

Revision: change sin conceptualized portion of the writing (plot, character, climax, end point, POV)

Editing: change to the superficial elements of a work (spelling, grammar)

1. Consistency → setting, character, time frame, point of view, genre

2. Organization → best story order? How does it begin? Is there a better POV or character/narrator choice?

3. Content

4. Is the story EVEN → beginning, middle, and end have equal time

5. Grammar and Usage → verb tense, active, proper formatting, 

Poetic devices → identify each of the poetic devices/vocabulary listed in the vocab section

Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats → early 1800’s → world bent to the poem

Ode: a form of stately and elaborate lyrical verse; more formal and formulaic, now vast (originally a chant/a poem meant to be sung and accompanied by an instrument)

Grecian urn: decorated old time brita filter - bowl/Grecian urn and urn

• Written about the painting in the center of the urn

  • Young man pursuing young woman in front of an ancient greek festival

• Keats is a romantic

• topics/themes → love, beauty, truth, friendship, passage of time

Stanza 1 → ask questions

Stanza 2 → begin describing story

Stanza 3 → even in the greatest of moments, there are negatives - focus on positive love and overstimulation

Stanza 4 → background of urn - party for town - cow sacrifice - last 2 lines are more negative - death is final

Stanza 5 → zoom out

YOU’RE ONLY A MEMORY

Item emblematic of a person

Truth

Shakespearean Sonnets

Playwright and a prolific poet → 150 sonnets during his lifetime

English sonnets = Shakespearean sonnets

• Love, beauty, friendship, and the passage of time

• Known for his couplets

• Queen Elizabeth’s scottish accent has been compared to posh english - most tried to imitate the monarch’s speech

He wrote them for parties with peers in 10 years time

Often referred to as numbers

Many are conceits

Op: original pronunciation

• Nearly ⅔ of shakespeare’s sonnets hae rhymes that do NOT work in modern english

Format

• 14 lines

• 3 quatrains and one couplet at the end

• Each line has 10 syllables

• Abab cdcd efef gg

EE Cummings  → poetic license

Purposeful deviation from poetic devices/rules

Freedom with capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and spacing

• “I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)”

• Imagist poetry that hinges upon physical objects

  • Different from before WWI - people began to seek image creation

Imagists → EE Cummings, Ezra Pound, William  Carlos Williams

• Art influencing culture, poetry, and politics

Playwriting

Upstage: sets, background characters, foreshadow something hidden

Center: uninterrupted flow of play

Downstage: monologues, private convos, something subtle that needs to be seen

Stage Direction

1. Tell what we see

2. Tell what we hear

3. Write in present tense

4. Give only enough direction to understand the characters

Enclosed Space are ideal for 1-act plays → focus on action and movement of characters

Socially enclosed: meeting, school, interview

Physically enclosed: plane, elevator, bank vault, NYC public bathroom

Key Elements

1. For a 10-age 1-act play, 1 to 3 round characters

2. Between 1 to 3 flat characters (extras need to be in the cast list too)

3. 1 location that is enclosed, but they can easily leave

4. Avoid many location changes

5. 1 main conflict that is solved

6. Scope of conflict is your decision

7. 1 to 3 pitfalls along the way

8. Natural character dialogue

9. Avoid naming the characters with the same first initials

Fairytales (Grimm v Disney)

Disney fairytales are traditional while The Brothers Grimm are politically correct/darker/ironic

Fairytale v children’s literature elements

Children’s Lit Elements: lesson, rhyme scheme, happy ending, illustrations, children/no adults, usually animals, adults generally mean or foolish, clear hero and villain or antagonist or foil

Fairytale Elements: events/characters happen in groups of 3, 5, or 7, lesson can be darker or ironic (grimm), the woods, magic, evil, non-humans, talking animals, royalty, possibility of a happy ending (usually a societal statement)

Fractured fairytale elements

One or more of the elements of an original fairytale are altered, deleted, or changed

• Can be for children or adults

Politically Correct Fairytales: sub-genre of fractured fairytales - utilize politically correct terminology to retell a classic fairytale

No Exit notes on characters and conflicts

written by John-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir

“Hell is other people”

Setting: 1944, Paris, during the Nazi invasion

• The play was performed as a protest

• Set in Hell/afterlife - specifically a Drawing Room in Second Empire Style

Characters

Why is it existential?

• There is potential for hope and happiness and it is ruined by other people

• In the beginning of the play, each character agrees to refrain from bothering the other in hopes of achieving the most pleasant situation possible. They each took responsibility for their own happiness, though their plan eventually failed. They continued to blame this lapse on each other in a cyclical manner, showing how people taint the happiness of each other. 

Why is it absurd?

• Garcin enters the play automatically searching for key aspects of his imagined “hell”. Therefore, when Estelle and Inez entered the room, they all believed there was hell and they were in it. Since they all believed, hell officially existed. 

Effect of translation from French to English

• Translated works can produce a different tone, character image, and reading pace. Also, many phrases would lose their true meaning and effect, as many phrases of one language most likely do not have a direct translation to another language

Crying and laughing conclusion

• Understanding the seriousness of their situation, becomes funny

• Faze of acceptance

  • Their situation has escalated to a point of desperation and seriousness that all they can do is laugh

Why don’t they leave when they have the opportunity?

• They don’t want the others to “win”

• “The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t”

• They want validation from each other even though they know they’ll never get it

  • Garcin doesn’t want Inez to think he’s a coward

  • Estelle want to be comforted by or impress Garcin

  • Inez wants to be with Estelle

Existentialism

Existentialism: there’s potential for hope and happiness, but is tainted/prevented by other people

• Coined by Gabriel Marcel and later adopted by Jean-Paul Sartre

• Existential crisis: moment when purpose questions the foundation of your life (meaning, purpose, value)

Absurdism:linked to existentialism. Something only has meaning if you give it meaning (works in meaning, fails in action)

Father of Existentialism: Soren Kierkegaard → philosopher from early 1800s → person must give their own life meaning

Existential writers and philosophers → Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor, Dostoyevsky, Albert Camus

Notes on famous names for western fairytales 

Charles Perrault

• Started writing in 1600 - focused on love poetry and some prose

• Retired from government at 67 and devoted time to his family + writing oral folktales for his children and grandchildren

• 1697 - Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals: The Tales of Mother Goose

  • His version of “Cinderella” influenced the Disney version. “Puss and Boots”, “Little Red Riding Hood”, “The Sleeping Beauty”

The Grimm Brothers/ “The Brothers Grimm”

• 1785 to 1863

• Jacob and Wilhelm

• Collected 211 tales to maintain oral storytelling of various folktales in regions of Germany and Austria

• Initially an academic text, but the publisher encouraged them to sell it as a children’s book

• Grimm’s Household Tales” → “The Frog Prince”, “Hansel and Gretel”, “Rapunzel”, German “Cinderella”, “Sleeping Beauty”, “Little Red Riding Hood”

• Grimm - Grimmaz in German – fierce and furious

Hans Christian Anderson

• Danish writer of poetry, plays, and prose - most remembered for his fairytales

• Grew up in poverty - his father encouraged him to read folktales from One Thousand and One Nights (Arabic tales)

• Make societal commentary using Danish children folktales

• Fairytales Told For Children → “The Tinderbox”, “Tom Thumb”, “Thumbelina”, “The Princess and the Pea”, “The Ugly Duckling”, “The Little Mermaid”...

  • 9 installments from 1835 - 1837

• Contemporary, but younger than Brothers Grimm

• Traveled to Berlin to visit Brothers Grimm