Master Study Monday #1

I know, Monday’s are like potholes in the road of life, but I hope that Monday Master Studies will brighten your day and help you build a mentor text resource.

I participated in Arree Chung’s 6-week Storyteller Academy and learned so much!  If you aren’t familiar with Arree, he is the author and illustrator of Ninja! (2014), Ninja! Attack of the Clan (2016), The Fix-it Man (2016), Out (2017), and many more wonderful books.  Arree, like most of us found his path to writing on a long and winding route.  He went from producing lots of spreadsheets to working at Pixar!  He has taken his experiences and turned them into a wonderful course for writers called Storyteller Academy.  The summer term is already underway, but I encourage you in joining me in enrolling in the Fall session.  You can find more information here.

One of the things I learned from the 6- week course is what Arree calls Master Studies.  He encourages you to read, read, read!  He breaks down the elements of a good story so that you can get better at writing your own stories. 

A great story has these elements

·        Character/setting

·        Inciting incident (what event starts the “ball” rolling)

·        Problem

·        Escalation (events that build in intensity to the climax)

·        Solution (how is the problem solved)

·        Theme /Hook (is there a universal theme: friendship, be yourself, etc…)

I have found that making this a habit extremely valuable.  I try and complete a minimum of 3 studies a week.   Taking it one step further, I created a form to “dissect” the story elements.  So they are handy, I print them out and  keep them in a notebook as a mentor text resource.  I hope that what I have created will help you as well. You can download the Master Studies form I created to use for your own personal study. 

Master Studies Worksheet PDF

 

 

Here is an example of my chart for Gemma Merino’s The Crocodile Who Didn’t Like Water (2013).

Each week, I will post the next week’s book so you can study it along with me.  So, go grab a copy of The Snurtch, by Sean Ferrell, and we will compare Master Study Worksheets next Monday!

 

Happy reading!

Julie