Sample Exercises

Writing Exercise #1

This is a two-part exercise about first-person point of view:

• Pick a familiar fairytale or folktale and retell it in first person from the point of view one of the characters.
• Then tell the same story again, in first person from the point of view of another character.

Writing Exercise #2

Skim two chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird and note every place where Harper Lee shifts from writing in-scene to writing out-of-scene, or vice versa.

Now go back to the out-of-scene sections. What does Harper Lee accomplish by pulling out of scene? Some of the possibilities from the video lesson include:

• Providing exposition or background information
• Conveying necessary information
• Moving the story along or skipping ahead
• Establishing tone and voice