Article
Caro Clarke

Caro Clarke: Pacing Anxiety, or How to Stop Padding and Plot!

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
This is the seventh installment of a series giving advice to the author who is new to writing novels. This article focuses on how to take your characters and use them and their conflicts to develop the plot of your story. W.9-10.3b...
Handout
Yale University

Yale University: Elements of the Short Story

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
This unit from the Yale University on elements of the short story is designed to develop student comprehension skills, particularly making inferences and generalizing. It also involves students in reading a number of short stories to...
Unit Plan
TES Global

Blendspace: What Makes Stories Scary?

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
A learning module that includes fourteen links to websites, videos, and activities on writing scary stories. Lessons focus on vocabulary, plot and character development, elements of gothic stories, tone and mood, suspense, and more.
Lesson Plan
Writing Fix

Writing Fix: Rolling With the Animals

For Teachers 9th - 10th Standards
After reading Duck on a Bike by David Shannon, the writer will plan an original story where an animal (other than a duck) finds itself in a human mode of transportation (other than a bike). Three other animals will react to the unusual...
Handout
Sophia Learning

Sophia: Complication

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
Notes that introduce complication in plot and show examples of how the conflict becomes more complicated throughout the rising action of a story. Examples are provided from Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and Virginia Woolf's "The Duchess and...
eBook
Other

Online Statistics Education: Graphing Distributions [Pdf]

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
This is the second chapter of a statistics e-text developed collaboratively by Rice University, University of Houston Clear Lake, and Tufts University. It looks at many different types of data displays and the advantages and...
Professional Doc
AdLit

Ad lit.org: Classroom Strategies: Story Maps

For Teachers 9th - 10th Standards
Story Maps are used for teaching students to work with story structure for better comprehension. This technique uses visual representations to help students organize important elements of a story. Students learn to summarize the main...
Article
Caro Clarke

Historical Fiction: Who Rules?

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
This is the fifteenth article in a series designed to help the new novel author. This article focuses on the genre of historical fiction and the role of the author. Is the author a researcher or a story-teller?
Article
Caro Clarke

Caro Clarke: What Is Conflict?

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
This is the sixth in a series of articles designed to help the new writer with their novel. This article focuses on conflict and how it effects the characters and the plot of the story. W.11-12.3a Narratives
Unit Plan
Texas Education Agency

Texas Gateway: Writing Literary Text With an Engaging Story Line

For Students 7th - 9th Standards
A learning module that teaches students how to write an engaging literary text in six lessons: Introduction, The Narrative Hook, Setting, Conflict, Plot, and Ending.
Activity
Caro Clarke

The Art of the Unspoken: Saying More by Describing Less

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
This is the thirteenth article in a series that was developed to help the new novel author. This article focuses on how good descriptions aren't necessarily connected with a lot of words, good descriptions are clean and to the point.
Article
Naxos Digital Services

Naxos Digital Services: A to Z of Opera

For Students 9th - 10th
Use the left navigation to access a solid history of opera as developed in various countries. You can also find synopses of opera stories, full opera libretti, and an index of opera composer's works.
PPT
Sophia Learning

Sophia: Characters and Setting

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
This lesson introduces the connection between characters and setting in fiction writing.
Article
Caro Clarke

Not Stopping the Reader: How to Avoid Stumbling Blocks

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
This is the eighth article in a series that focuses on helping the new novel author. This article looks at how the author can avoid creating stumbling blocks that disrupt the flow of the novel.
Article
Caro Clarke

Explaining Too Much: Why More Is Less

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
This is the eleventh article in a series that is designed to help the new novel author. This article focuses on how to eliminate needless information in your novel. The key is to not explain too much about the action.
Article
Caro Clarke

Caro Clarke: Writing Advice: Beginner's Four Faults

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
This site is a personal site from Caro Clarke. The third installment in this series looks at the four major mistakes made by beginning authors. The main idea of this article is that the author needs to be able to combine dialogue with...
Unit Plan
McGraw Hill

Glencoe Literature Library: "Heart of Darkness" and "The Secret Sharer" [Pdf]

For Students 9th - 10th
Explore Joseph Conrad's novella, "Heart of Darkness," and his short story, "The Secret Sharer," with the help of this study guide. It provides pre-reading material (author biography, vocabulary, introductory article), reading activities,...
Lesson Plan
Louisiana Department of Education

Louisiana Doe: Louisiana Believes: English Language Arts, Grade 10: Macbeth

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Students explore the ideas of ambition and failure. They learn that conflicts serve as the basis of a text's meaning and that identifying the internal and external conflicts of a story reveals the motivations of complex characters. They...