Poetry Critiques

By: Katria Hale

Transcribed By: Cary Carr

The basis of all poetry is the meaning of the words, and how they come together to invoke emotion in the reader.

When critiquing poetry, focus on how each word makes you feel, and what each word adds to the meaning and feeling of the work as a whole.

Look for repeated words and phrases, alliteration, and similar word constructions, as all of these can indicate greater meaning in the piece.

Poems do not have to rhyme in order to be poetry, but they should have some form of rhythm to them.

Example Critique from the Workshop on the Poem Abandoned Farmhouse:
The objects spoke, and it painted a picture of the people that used them. It is figurative language.
Repeated words and phrases: Something went wrong, he was not a farmer, the word “broken”, and words like leaky or empty. All of these showed that something happened to break the farm and the family that lived there.
The overall emotion of this piece is emptiness and desolation. Something went wrong, and everything is broken now.
Alliteration: good, Godfearing man; plum preserves; dolls in overalls; and lilacs and oilcloth.
Source: www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/237648

Being Unique

Is your story unique enough? Is your character original?

Plot: Pick out a couple stories who have a similar plot to yours. List the differences between your plot and theirs - then decide if it's got enough to make it a new story.

Protagonist: Ask yourself these questions about your character.
1. What makes them different than the other people around them?
2. What makes them act differently than someone else would, in a certain situation?
3. What little things make them interesting - their pet peeves, their fears, their quirky habits?
4. If there is a romantic subject, what makes this character different than what would be the "typical" character? In other words, think of the "typical" character type out there that your protagonist would be most like, and identify what differences there are between the typical, and your original.
(You First Novel --Ann Rittenberg & Laura Whitcomb)

Antagonist: Our bad guys need originality too.
1. First thing to check: Is your antagonist just bad, because he is the bad guy? Usually you want him to have slightly-relateable drives. I.e. Voldemort wants to avoid death. Basically every other character in Harry Potter (as well as each of us) want to avoid death too. Gollum is drawn (addicted) to the power of the ring. Practically everyone else is too. The Wicked Witch of the West is upset that Dorothy's house killed the Witch of the East (You would be upset too if someone killed your friend, right?)
**Your bad guy needs humanizing / relatable / somewhat-understandable characteristics or motives**
This helps them feel real.
2. Think about the story from their perspective. Maybe they want to keep power. Maybe they honestly believe that pure bloods are better than muggles and that the world is better without muggle-borns.

Characters - Realistic & Exciting

Orson Scott Card makes a clear point in "Characters & Viewpoint" that your characters need to be interesting enough to have a story, but ordinary enough to be relatable and to avoid being over the top.

"[R]eaders tend to like a character who is at least superficially like themselves. But they quickly lose interest unless this particular character is somehow out of the ordinary. The character may wear the mask of the common man, but underneath his true face must always be the face of the hero." - Orson Scott Card

Okay, this is a funny post you might enjoy about a female writer trying to write a realistic guy:
http://blog.liviablackburne.com/2011/02/on-writing-realistic-male-characters.html

Here's one website on writing from the POV of the opposite gender:
http://learnasyouwrite.com/how-to-write-pov-for-the-opposite-sex/

I think sometimes we use the stereotypes too much, and other times I think they can help us - because sometimes stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason.

Character Development Writing Exercises:
http://www.pgtc.com/~slmiller/characterexercises.htm
http://writerstrust.blogspot.com/2007/10/character-development-exercises.html
This is a fun little step-by-step get-to-know-you-character exercise I found:
http://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Realistic-Fiction-Character

Story Telling & Children's Literature

Alex gave us a great lesson this week on Children's Books - Here are my notes:
This is going to be very helpful information for our service project, writing children's stories for some orphans in Mexico.

Story Telling in general –

Why is story telling so effective? How especially for children?

Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm

-          Part of our nature to tell stories

-          Life is a roller coaster of conflict & resolution (stories mirror life)

-          Most important thing about stories is: Stories make us feel.

(the information that makes you feel is the most important. It makes it interesting.)

How do they affect children?

Meaningful context -

Familiar context -

Stories connect with us by presenting something familiar (anything familiar) in a meaningful way.

i.e. The Kissing Hand – we can relate: has a mom, kisses from his mom, going to school, afraid to first leave home, etc. Meaningful way

i.e. Pokemon: First Episode Pikachu is afraid/dislikes the pokeball. Ash lets him stay outside of the pokeball. In the beginning episode, he doesn’t like Ash. Ash is all excited to be a poke master, but his day is kind of an epic failure. But then Pikachu decides to join Ash’s side and they win.

- they didn’t get along, had to work with someone

- have the dream to be the greatest, but things aren’t working out perfectly for you

- faced with a hard moment, make sacrifices genuinely and work together & come closer together

- facing your fears

- dealing with bullies & things that don’t go as planned

Allows children to insert themselves in the story. (Pokemon has created many many more aspiring poke masters in real life)

Imitation Paradigm – they imitate what they see

-          You are great at imitating at age 1-2 years old (better than older children). Interesting…

-          That’s why these stories have such an impact on young minds

Law: You can’t have advertisements for a dora backpack before/during/after the dora episode – because the child feels like they have to i.e. learn their numbers AND get a backpack

Scientific Picture Books:

-          How to’s

-          Fictional books

-          Nonfictional books (i.e. learning about dinosaurs or bears)

Teach science in a lasting way:

Prepare – by teaching scientific principle (Possible lessons: observation, comparison, communication)

                It could be about anything – dinosaur bones or the Apollo 11 mission/space travel.

Involve – involve the children into the context learned in the story

(takes the connection that was formed when the child read the story)

Then they see how something in real life connects with what they learned in the story

Possible Lessons: measuring, classifying, predicting

Reach – only 10% of all scientists are black..

Minority groups are unmotivated – it goes back to prejudices/slavery/poverty stuff

targeted to racial minorities

*the main character needs to be the age of your targeted audience

- babies: baby animals/animals; children – children; pre-teens – preteens

*In general you want to put in as many things as possible that are familiar to them

 - i.e. use Mexican style for the houses – bright colors

*fables & legends

- maybe ufo stuff?

There is a distinct difference between the good & bad (clearly beautiful & then bad & ugly)

-          Snow white – evil queen turns into ugly hag (it’s kindof a true representation of her self/who she is)

-          Might have contributed in our society to seeing beautiful people as good & better

-          It’s a subconscious thing

-          Things that are gross are kindof bad

-          i.e. Tangled – the guys in the bar: they’re kinda ugly and rough and tough - but if you really know them, they’re great.

Great Books to Look at:

                Where the Wild Things Are – targeted to 4 or 5 year olds.

                The Polar Express – it’s got about a paragraph, 5/6 – 10 year olds

                Up (Jim LaMarche) – This has got more text on each page also, also 5-10

They can’t be toto complicated, but you can take a simple story and put something meaningful into it. I.e. Where the Wild Things Are: child is wild, sent to his room without dinner.

There are lots of children’s books that younger kids love, and they understand more when they’re a little older too. It’s fun to be a wild thing, but you can only be a wild thing for so long, til you get lonely, and he went home to be loved by his mom.

Openings for your story / novel

So last week we talked about openings. We talked about opening lines in January, and we continued this last week with talking about starting with a character that your reader can relate to. We talked about how you can get the reader to sympathize and empathize with them. It's also important to have motion at the very beginning of your book, so things start off interesting.
I can't put a lot on here for copywright reasons, but here is a bit of the exercise I wanted to have us try - if you are curious to see how your opening could be better, or just want to see how this goes, give it a try:
1st Sentence: open with a character in motion
Next 2 sentences: Explain more about the action
Next 5: tell about the setting , establish the mood with description
Next 3: go into the action with the established mood
Next sentence: how he/she feels with this action
Next 5: deepen the character by adding an element of the past to the current situation
Next 2: Trouble! The mood should lead up to this a bit
Next 3: Character's reaction

I've been reading James Scott Bell's book on Plot & Structure, and it has a lot of awesome things to know about plot. I'd definitely recommend it. Good luck writing this week!

Know Your Characters

This is a great post on how we should understand how are characters would act in different situations. :) Check it out!

http://www.publishingcrawl.com/2013/04/15/know-your-characters/

Creativity & Writing

We watched this brilliant Ted Talk with Elizabeth Gilbert about creativity and writing. She's got some great ideas that will help us with the pressures we sometimes feel trying to write and be successful.

http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html