Writing Through the Wardrobe
$15.00
Author and professor Jonathan Rogers of Grammar for Writers teaches high school students how to improve their own creative writing by examining the literary elements of Narnia.
Part of the new Creative Writing with Jonathan Rogers series. This product is only available in a streaming digital format.
Description
Writing Through the Wardrobe is a video-based self-study, made with the assumption that attentive readers can improve their own creative writing. Join Jonathan Rogers on a journey into the literary elements of Narnia. Admire the description, dialogue, concision and pacing of the classic The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Dr. Rogers has written The Wilderking Trilogy, The World According to Narnia, and other books.
Writing Through the Wardrobe is part of the new series Creative Writing with Jonathan Rogers. Purchase the whole series or explore one of the other lecture sets for your homeschool:
Additional information
| Age | 13+ |
|---|---|
| Age/Grade | |
| Lessons | 18 |
| Lesson Length | about 26 minutes |
| Teacher | Jonathan Rogers |
| Format | Streaming |
| Runtime | 7hrs, 52 minutes |
| Addl Mtls | Supplemental Writing Exercises |
Lessons
- Narration and Point of View (0:35:17)
- Inversion and Juxtaposition, Characterization (0:35:17)
- Showing and Telling, Description (0:29:29)
- Dramatic Irony (0:23:59)
- Exposition (0:21:46)
- Some Guidelines for Dialogue (0:19:52)
- More on Dialogue and Characterization (0:23:41)
- Description and Figurative Language (0:22:59)
- Desire, Choice, Consequence (0:35:15)
- Concision (0:19:45)
- More on Figurative Language (0:20:37)
- Symbolism (0:29:47)
- Character-Driven Action (0:30:50)
- World-Building (0:31:37)
- Action and Motion (0:25:44)
- Allegory (0:13:28)
- Slowing Down (0:30:57)
- Abundance (0:27:12)
Sample Lessons
Sample Exercises
Writing Exercise #1
Your suggested writing exercise for this lesson revolves around narration and point of view.
In Luke 15, Jesus tells the Parable of the Prodigal Son using an omniscient narrator. The narrator sometimes shows things from the younger brother’s perspective, sometimes from the older brother’s perspective, and sometimes from the father’s perspective (though the narrator doesn’t really get into close third-person except possibly with the younger brother, when we get a little peek at his inner monologue).
Your writing exercise is to retell this familiar story from the point of view of one of two main characters.
Retell the parable using the older brother as a first-person narrator. Or, retell the parable in close third-person from the perspective of the father.
Remember, whether you’re writing in first-person or close third-person, you’re only showing and telling what your point-of-view character can see and hear. You have the option of telling what’s going on inside your point-of-view character’s head, but you can also choose only to show what your character sees by looking out. That’s up to you. However, according to the rules of close third-person and first-person narration, you can only get inside the head of one character (your POV character).
Writing Exercise #2
In one paragraph, describe a person (fictional or real). But here’s the catch: You can’t describe the character directly. You can only describe one room in the character’s house. To put it another way, describe a room in such a way that the reader feels that he or she knows the person who lives there.
6 reviews for Writing Through the Wardrobe
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danielle.nesteby –
My 12th-grade son and 10th-grade daughter just finished this course, and it was so interesting and fun. We started off doing all the writing assignments, but then did about 1/4 of them towards the end, only because we wanted to speed up the course so we could also finish The Hobbits course as well. I watched along with my students, and it was so fascinating and helpful. I recommend this one, along with The Hobbit one. (We didn’t get a chance to do the other two in this series.)
Brandy –
Through a combination of lectures and exercises, Writing through the Wardrobe not only explores how to create characters and setting, but it has helped our son in further developing the characters and setting within his own works of fiction. Then… after taking this course, our son started reading (of his own accord) The Abolition of Man because of a reference to “men without chests.” This was one of many fascinating discussion points in our drive to church as our boys mulled over ways that Edmund and Eustace both represented men without chests. I’m all for a writing course that causes my children to voluntarily read and discuss other {challenging} literature that isn’t even assigned! Fantastic course!
You can read more about our experience with this program at https://www.halfahundredacrewood.com/writing-through-the-wardrobe-writing-with-hobbits/
Andrea –
My son took the Writing Through the Wardrobe class, but at the time it was just the videos with no additional writing assignments. He was squeezing in one last writing course as he was nearing the end of his senior year. He really enjoyed the videos and he said it gave him a whole new insight to writing. He had previously taken Grammar for Writers and he already enjoyed Jonathan Rogers and his teaching style. So even with out the writing assignments, he felt the course was beneficial!
Amy –
Just started the Wardrobe course and we love it!!!!! More please!!!
Media –
Excellent!!
Andrea –
We are using this course not even so much to learn creative writing, but as a tool to better analyze and understand literature. We are only a few weeks in, but so far, this material has exceeded my expectations and enhanced our study of literature.