This document discusses different methods for showing rather than telling in writing, including through action, speech, appearance, and thought. It provides examples from published works that effectively use these various methods of showing to convey character traits or emotions in just a few lines. The examples analyze how specific word choices or brief depictions of actions, speech patterns, physical appearance or thoughts serve to reveal aspects of characters without directly stating them.
Sample of a book of poems sampling what I've squeezed out of life that past years. Please support self publishing by picking up a copy at Lulu. Thanks, enjoy.
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/electric-chair-for-the-sun/12305241
Sample of a book of poems sampling what I've squeezed out of life that past years. Please support self publishing by picking up a copy at Lulu. Thanks, enjoy.
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/electric-chair-for-the-sun/12305241
Death Drop aims to celebrate gender fluidity and ‘weirdness, beauty, and diversity’ within a ‘normal’ environment to its practical application in the form of interviews, photographs and design gathered together in magazine format.
The power of the magazine not only entertains its target audience but also triggers personal reflection and gives a better understanding of ‘otherness’ which will lead to acceptance.
The story of The Tatami Galaxy follows an unnamed third year university student in Kyoto, Japan and what he views as his wasted time in a particular club (also called "circle") at his university. He meets Ozu, another student, whose encouragement sets him on a mission of dubious morality. He contemplates his affection for a second year engineering student, Akashi, and makes promises to her, usually of and within a romantic subtext. The culmination of his dubious missions often conflict with his interest in her in some way. The story is one of a number that draw on the author's experience in Kyoto University.
Whore 1: You will suffer dearly for your sinsRichard Porter
He pushed her against the wall of the dilapidated, deserted building that was destined to be razed for another renewal zone in New York City at the beginning of the 20th century. The new electric streetlights softly lit up her face. She was young thin and frightened. Her body was so small that from a distance, she looked like she might be alittle child, but upon closer inspection, the curves of her tiny frame convinced him that she might be 15 or 18.
Death Drop aims to celebrate gender fluidity and ‘weirdness, beauty, and diversity’ within a ‘normal’ environment to its practical application in the form of interviews, photographs and design gathered together in magazine format.
The power of the magazine not only entertains its target audience but also triggers personal reflection and gives a better understanding of ‘otherness’ which will lead to acceptance.
The story of The Tatami Galaxy follows an unnamed third year university student in Kyoto, Japan and what he views as his wasted time in a particular club (also called "circle") at his university. He meets Ozu, another student, whose encouragement sets him on a mission of dubious morality. He contemplates his affection for a second year engineering student, Akashi, and makes promises to her, usually of and within a romantic subtext. The culmination of his dubious missions often conflict with his interest in her in some way. The story is one of a number that draw on the author's experience in Kyoto University.
Whore 1: You will suffer dearly for your sinsRichard Porter
He pushed her against the wall of the dilapidated, deserted building that was destined to be razed for another renewal zone in New York City at the beginning of the 20th century. The new electric streetlights softly lit up her face. She was young thin and frightened. Her body was so small that from a distance, she looked like she might be alittle child, but upon closer inspection, the curves of her tiny frame convinced him that she might be 15 or 18.
My Father’s Silence - A Personal Account of Trauma and its Origi.docxgilpinleeanna
My Father’s Silence - A Personal Account of Trauma and its Origins
Thomas Reissmann Travel videographer, writer and documentary filmmaker
Family Constellation therapist Mark Wolynn once said: “Just as we inherit our eye color and blood type, we also inherit the residue from traumatic events that have taken place in our family. Illness, depression, anxiety, unhappy relationships and financial challenges can all be forms of this unconscious inheritance.”
The same analysis can be utilized in reference to the history of chattel slavery, trauma and systemic racism in America. It was an inhumane system whose historical attributes can be still found in the American prison systems of today. This history has left hurtful and paralyzing residues of trauma, passed from one generation to the next within African American communities. There has been long-term collateral damage and an ongoing psychic wound which deserves to be healed with Radical Self-Care and by providing the emotional resources for the personal as well as the collective well-being of African American communities. Mark Wolyn teaches that “traumatic memories are transmitted through chemical changes in DNA”. There is a need to understand the conscious and unconscious inheritance of terror and systemic racism long-term.
My Father’s Silence is the true story of Houston resident Hitaji Aziz, who tells her story in the documentary Adversity and the Art of Happiness. It reflects the epigenetics of a family and the humanity of all families.
I grew up right outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in a town called McKee’s Rocks in the 1950s. McKee’s Rocks was a large Italian community with smaller pockets of old world European immigrants. We also had Gypsies, Jews, one Chinese family and even smaller pockets of Blacks that had migrated from the south and its terrors.
I was born out of one of those Black families that migrated from the same place where they were owned. Their plantation was based in Evergreen, Alabama. The journey was headed by my great grandmother Sally and her husband William Liddell who died just before they reached Pittsburgh in the late 1920s. They were part of the great migration of ex-slaves and Blacks looking for more freedom and less terror. They were running; running hard for their lives, leaving all their possessions, except what they could pack and what they wore on their backs. My father’s family got to there on the same emotional journey, migrating from Atlanta, Georgia; running for a dream called Pittsburgh.
My father Jack Kirkland, was one the first African American men to be hired in the steel mill near our government owned low-income housing in those days. We called them the “projects” and it was the first time we had an indoor toilet. We lived by the sounds of the steel mills. The sirens of the steel mills were always in the background of our lives. We always knew when the work shift started and when it ended. Being hired in the mill was a big thing for a Black man in ...
Mitch Albom's For One More Day Book ReportAkmal Cikmat
An International English Testing System (IELTS) task given by the teacher.
the first book report made by me during the IELTS class.
please dont bother any grammatical error because everyone is a first timer.
Running head GRANDMOTHER1GRANDMOTHER5Grandm.docxwlynn1
Running head: GRANDMOTHER 1
GRANDMOTHER 5
Grandmother
EW
Grandmother
When thinking of the characteristics of a grandmother what does one think about? In the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor it is written from the perspective of the grandmother. With it being told from her perspective it shows how she feels and her opinion. Even if the grandmother looks down on someone she still can find the good in others, well if it is to her advantage. A characteristic of this grandmother is someone who tries to manipulate others to get her way.
At the beginning of the story, the grandmother tries to manipulate the son from going on vacation to Florida. She did not want to go to Florida; she wanted to go to Tennessee. She had friends she wanted to visit in Tennessee and was disappointed that she was not getting her way to go there. She had even noticed an article in the newspaper that her son was reading about how a guy “that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from Federal Pen and headed toward Florida” (Glaspell, 1916, p. 117). She gave this as a reason that going to Florida would not be a good idea. Neither the son nor the daughter-in-law listened to her, and she then turned to her grandkids in hopes that trying to scare them would make them upset and get her sons attention. The kids did not get scared but rather turned her manipulation back on her letting her know they did not care if she went on the trip. Her granddaughter June Star even stated the reason her grandmother would not stay home was that she was “afraid she’d miss something” (Glaspell, 1916, p. 117).
When the family first got in the car going on the trip, the grandmother hid her cat so it would not be left behind. Her son would not approve so manipulating the situation by hiding the cat was her best option. She wore a very nice outfit that she felt a lady should wear. Her daughter-in-law was dressed as though she was wearing clothing someone would wear to do chores around the house. The grandmother wanted everyone to know she was a lady by just looking at her. If they had a wreck on the way to Florida and she passed away, she wanted anyone coming up to the scene to know she was a lady when they first laid eyes on her. To pass the time she told the kids a story about how when she was a young lady a man named Mr. Teagarden, that she had dated would bring her a “watermelon every Saturday afternoon” (Glaspell, 1916, p. 117). She stated, “she would have done well to marry Mr. Teagarden” (Glaspell, 1916, p. 117) because he became rich when he was older. Even though she would be manipulative with something’s, she still was very interactive with the kids and kept them entertained.
When the family drove through the town of Toombsboro Georgia, the grandmother began to talk about a plantation that she used to visit when she was young. She started to describe the house and lied by saying it had a secret room that no one knew about, but the people living there. The gra.
2. Tell v. Show
• Naomi was painfully shy, especially at social
gatherings.
• Even with the party in full swing, with the
dancers twirling and busting a move, Naomi
stayed in her dark and lonesome corner,
blushing profusely and quietly refusing when
the jock of her dreams asked her to dance.
» Input provided by 1A…especially Oscar G and Krystin D
3. Tell: Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl
• “My father found all of this slightly
amusing. An intellectual who had
escaped his wealthy German-Jewish
family by coming to America in the
twenties, he had absolutely no interest in
things. He was a book designer who lived
in a black-and-white world of paper and
type; books were his only passion. He
was kindly and detached and if he had
known that people described him as
elegant, he would have been shocked;
clothes bored him enormously, when he
noticed them at all.”
4. Tell: My Dark Places by James Ellroy
• “Lloyd was a fat boy from a
broken home. His mother was a
Christian wacko. He was as
foulmouthed as I was and loved
books and music just as much.
Fritz lived in Hancock Park. He
dug movie soundtracks and Ayn
Rand novels. Daryl was an ….,
athlete and borderline Nazi of
half-Jewish parentage.”
6. Action: Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
• “His obesity, while disgusting,
was not enough to incur the
intense hate that we felt for
him. The fact that he never
bothered to remember our
names was insulting, but
neither was that slight, alone,
enough to make us despise
him. But the crime that tipped
the scale and made our hate
not only just imperative was his
actions at the dinner table. He
ate the biggest, brownest and
best parts of the chicken at
every Sunday meal.”
7. Storyboard this quote…zoom in…
• “His obesity, while disgusting,
was not enough to incur the
intense hate that we felt for
him. The fact that he never
bothered to remember our
names was insulting, but
neither was that slight, alone,
enough to make us despise
him. But the crime that tipped
the scale and made our hate
not only just imperative was his
actions at the dinner table. He
ate the biggest, brownest and
best parts of the chicken at
every Sunday meal.”
8. Action: Russell Baker’s Growing Up
• “In that time when I had known her best, my
mother had hurled herself at life with chin
thrust forward, eyes blazing, and an energy
that made her seem always on the run.
“She ran after squawking chickens, an ax in
her hand, determined on a beheading that
would put dinner in the pot. She ran when she
made the beds, ran when she set the table.
One Thanksgiving she burned herself badly
when running up from the cellar over with the
ceremonial turkey, she tripped on the stairs
and tumbled back down, ending at the
bottom in the debris of giblets, hot gravy, and
battered turkey. Life was combat, and victory
was not to the lazy, the timid, the slugabed,
the drugstore cowboy, the libertine, the
mushmouth afraid to tell people exactly what
was on his mind whether people liked it or
not. She ran.”
9. Speech: Augusten Burroughs’s Running with Scissors
• “My mother is from
Cairo, Georgia. This
makes everything she
says sound like it went
through a curling iron.
Other people sound flat
to my ear; their words
just land in the air. But
when my mothers says
something, the ends
curl.”
10. Speech: David Sedaris’s “City of Angels” Me Talk Pretty One Day
• “I knew exactly what he was up to. I know the
rules, I’m not stupid, so I wrote down his name
and license number and said I’d report him to the
police if he tried any funny business. I didn’t come
all this way to be robbed blind, and I told him that,
didn’t I, Alisha?
She showed me the taxi receipt, and I assured her
that this was indeed the correct price. It was a
standard thirty-dollar fare from Kennedy Airport to
any destination in Manhattan.
She stuffed the receipt back into her wallet. “Well,
I hope he wasn’t expecting a tip, because he didn’t
get a dime out of me.”
“You didn’t tip him?”
“… no!” Bonnie said. “I don’t know about you, but I
work hard for my money. It’s mine and I’m not
tipping anybody unless they give me the kind of
service I expect.”
11. Appearance: Patricia Hempl’s “Memory and Imagination” I Could Tell You Stories
•
“My father gave me over to Sister
Olive Marie, who did look
remarkably like an olive. Her oily
face gleamed as if it had just been
rolled out of a can and laid on the
white plate of her broad, spotless
wimple. She was a small plump
woman; her body and the small
window of her face seemed to
interpret the entire alphabet of
olive; her face was a sallow green
olive placed upon the jumbo ripe
olive of her habit. I trusted her
instantly and smiled, glad to have
my hand placed in the hand of
woman who made sense, who
provided the satisfaction of being
what she was: an Olive who looked
like an olive.”
12. Appearance: Rick Bragg’s All Over But The Shoutin
• “He had always been a clean
drunk, a well-dressed drunk,
what people in that time
called a pretty man. He might
be cross-eyed drunk but his
shoes were always shined,
always the best-dressed man
in jail. His children and wife
might go without, but his
shirts were always pressed.
Some people had backbone
to lean on. Daddy had starch.”
13. Appearance: James McBride’s The Color of Water
• “Big Richard was a
tall, thin, chocolate-skinned man
with a mustache, who favored
shades, short-sleeved
shirts, shiny shoes, and sharkskin
pants, and always held a lit
cigarette between his teeth.”
• the blending of looks, dress and
gesture give us a quick but
complete portrait of a man
14. Thought: Anne Lamott’s Operating Instructions
• “In a very real sense, I felt that life
could pretty much just hit me with her
best shot, and if I lived, great, and if I
died, well, then I could be with Dad
and Jesus and not have to endure my
erratic skin or George Bush any
longer….Now there is something that
could happen that I could not survive:
I could lose Sam. I look down into his
staggeringly lovely little face, and I can
hardly breathe sometimes. He is all I
have ever wanted, and my heart is so
huge with love that I feel like it is
about to go off. At the same time I feel
that he has completely ruined my life,
because I just didn’t used to care all
that much.”
15. Thought: Mikal Gilmore’s Shot in the Heart
• “I remember the look on my father’s face
as he sat and held my mother’s hand that
night I found them in the kitchen. I
remember my mother hearing the news
of his death, and crying out from such an
astonishing place of loss and loneliness.
Yes, those two people loved each other. It
is plainer now in retrospect than it ever
was when they were alive. Or maybe I
can just see it a little better now, having
learned for myself what a bittersweet
thing love can be. From my vantage, love
– no matter how deep or desperate it
may be – is not reason enough to stay in
a bad relationship, especially when the
badness of it all is damaging or
malforming other people. But I didn’t get
to make that choice for my parents, any
more than I get to make it for you.”
16. YOUR Turn
Mixed Methods: Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl
• My mother had lots of energy and
education and not a lot to do. “If
only my parents had let me be a
doctor,” she often wailed as she
paced the apartment like a caged
tiger. She tried one job and then
another, but they never lasted.
“Nobody has any vision!” she
announced after being politely fired
as the chief editor of the
Homemaker’s Encyclopedia. “I really
thought that an essay on English
queens and their homemaking skills
was a brilliant idea.”
17. Work Cited
• Propp, Karen. “Showing Character.” http://www.karenpropp.com/stories/character2.htm