Fiction Syllabus with Creative Writing Exercises - Lesson 5: Plot Structure

This is Lesson 5 from the CWN fiction writing syllabus, which includes creative writing exercises and activities that you can use for your own teaching. (To go to Lesson 1, click here).

The stories used as reading assignments in this syllabus come from the book A Relative Stranger by Charles Baxter.

Creative writing Lesson Plans - 5: Plot structure.

Lecture material: Your Story Road Map.

In-class activity: 10-minute writing about one of the following topics:

  1. Your character wants to get engaged to his/her partner. His/her partner thinks things are moving too fast and wants to slow down. Your character develops a plan to push the engagement forward...

  2. Your character is a teenager and desperately wants to borrow his/her father's cool sportscar to go to a party. The teenager thinks this car will be the key to social success. Your character's father says that borrowing the car is out of the question. Dad loves the sportscar and is convinced that the teenager will wreck it. But the teenager is not about to give up so easily...

Homework: Students develop their in-class writing assignment at home and read "Shelter" by Charles Baxter. They should also bring one of the character profiles they have developed for previous lessons to the next class, where it will be used in a group activity.

See more creative writing lessons from this syllabus:

Continue to the Lesson 6 of this writing syllabus (topic: plot structure, continued).

Go to a complete list of creative writing lessons.


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