Thursday, February 17, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
Reading to Write
One of the best ways to improve your writing is to - you guessed it - READ! Reading great authors will fill your head with examples of attention-grabbing opening lines, descriptive writing, character and plot development and all the other elements of excellent writing. This month's focus is on short stories. Reading short stories will allow you to see how authors condense all the elements of good writing into just a few pages. As Avi says in his introduction to Best Shorts: Favorite Short Stories for Sharing, "While a novel takes strength from it's many details, a short story takes strength from a few revealing details." Most of the writing you do in school requires those "few revealing details." We have many collections of short stories in the library that you may enjoy as you read to improve your writing. Here are a few:
Best Shorts: Favorite Short Stories for Sharing. Selected by Avi with Carolyn Shute
Horrowitz Horror: Stories You'll Wish You'd Never Read by Anthony Horowitz
The SOS File by Betsy Byars, Betsy Duffey and Laurie Myers
Friends: Stories About New Friends, Old Friends and Unexpectedly True Friends. edited by Ann M. Martin and David Levithan
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