• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

John August

  • Arlo Finch
  • Scriptnotes
  • Library
  • Store
  • About

Writer Emergency

How classes use Writer Emergency Pack

October 11, 2022 Education, Follow Up, Writer Emergency, Writer Emergency Pack

Since the launch of Writer Emergency Pack in 2015, we’ve partnered with youth writing programs to get decks into classrooms and after-school groups. By far our biggest partner is NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program.

With the arrival of Writer Emergency Pack XL, I asked NaNoWriMo’s executive director Grant Faulkner for an update on how the original decks are being used.

JOHN: A lot of people are familiar with National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), but what is Young Writers Program?

GRANT: It’s a version of NaNoWriMo, just for kids. When I was a kid, I didn’t dream of writing a novel (and I was bookish). Because of our Young Writers Program, though, now nearly 100,000 kids write novels each year, and educators from over 9,000 classrooms around the world participate.

The challenge is, like NaNoWriMo, to draft an entire novel in November. We believe that giving kids agency and making writing fun is the best way to learn. For 30 wild, exciting, surprising days, kids get to lock away their inner editor, let their imagination take over, and just create! You might say our pedagogy is rooted in joy.

What are students doing in the program?

We provide teachers a virtual classroom so they can do things like read student novels and create chat topics. And then we also provide kids with free classroom kits — which include Writer Emergency Packs! — workbooks, and Common Core-aligned K–12 lesson plans.

Kids set word-count goals for the month (appropriate to their age and capabilities) and then draft their novel right on our site. They track their progress, and then they also get support from published authors and an international community of fellow novelists.

photo of high school classroom, students looking at teacher

How are teachers using Writer Emergency Pack in the classroom?

I’ve heard so many stories. I’ve heard of teachers who weave cards into the mini-lessons they might do on things like conflict or characterization. I’ve heard of teachers who hand out cards to students who might have hit a wall and have writers’ block. I’ve heard of teachers who give the cards to groups of students and have them use the cards to collaboratively create a story together and then tell it to the class as a way to warm up to write in November.

There is one commonality, though: all teachers make the cards part of the classroom, which is important, because the classroom becomes a writing community during NaNoWriMo.

What feedback have you gotten from teachers about the decks?

They love them! The cards are encouraging, approachable, and fun! They provide the same lessons a book might—but in a single illustrated card. Like NaNoWriMo itself, the cards are all about sparking the imagination, making writing not about a teacher’s red correction marks but the joy of storytelling.

Do you think the new decks will have the same reaction?

I do. I think the size of the cards makes them more inviting. All of the relevant information is now on a single card, and with 52 cards there’s enough for every student in class, even bigger classes.

And, just one more thing: I know adult writers who use the cards as well (me).


Writer Emergency Pack XL is now on Kickstarter. For every deck we send to backers, we’ll be sending a deck to our youth writing program partners, including NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program.

Photo by Kenny Eliason/Unsplash

Pretty much everything is on sale

September 7, 2020 Apps, Bronson, Highland, Weekend Read, Writer Emergency, Writer Emergency Pack

Every fall, we put many of the products we make on sale. Typically, it lines up with Back to School or Labor Day, but the notions of “time” and “seasons” and “school” don’t seem to match the actual experience of 2020.

Still: bargains!

Through Sunday, September 13th all of the following are half off —

The upgrade to Highland 2 Pro, now just $25 USD.1

The upgrade to Weekend Read is $5.

Bronson Watermarker PDF is just $10.

Writer Emergency Pack is $10 on Amazon and in our store.

We’re also clearing out the remaining stock of our game One Hit Kill from our Pennsylvania warehouse. It’s a great card game for just ONE DOLLAR plus shipping.

  1. Both Highland 2 and Weekend Read are free to download. The upgrade is an in-app purchase, with prices varying a little bit internationally. ↩

Fight the Giant, or Moving Up the Showdown

July 10, 2015 Story and Plot, Writer Emergency, Writer Emergency Pack

In most stories built around a heroic quest, the big confrontation comes at the end. The heroes face off against their well-established nemesis, and likely prevail. After that, there’s a little time left for wrap-up and rebuilding.

This is the common pattern for most feature films, with a battle or competition happening in the third act.

But it’s not just movies. In novels, the showdown generally happens in one of the final chapters. In series television, the quest to defeat the Big Bad might span a whole season, but the main event comes in the finale. In videogames, this stage even has a name: The Boss Level. The player finally has the skills and hit points to kill Diablo.

Whenever you see such a clear narrative pattern, there’s a great opportunity to subvert it.

card

Moving the fight earlier can take both your reader and your hero by surprise.

card

There are three basic structures for getting the fight to happen earlier than expected.

The hero rushes in. Perhaps the hero gets a tip that the villain is momentarily exposed. She is forced to make a decision: go in fast or wait for the next opportunity. She decides to strike now, for better or worse. Without the benefit of time and planning, she is forced to improvise.

The villain surprises the hero. Rather than wait for the hero to show up, smart villains often attack first. In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling lets Voldemort trap Harry so he can battle him face-to-face, breaking the expectation that the showdown would only happen at the very end. In the real world, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is an example of the enemy changing the narrative with a surprise attack.

Fate intervenes. Some outside force — the boxing commission, an avalanche, pure coincidence — puts the hero and the villain in the same space when neither was quite ready for it.

However your hero and villain end up battling, the outcome should have a huge impact on the rest of your story.

Letting the giant score an early victory helps in several ways:

  1. You’ve established what a powerful threat the villain is.
  2. You’ve knocked your hero down. Almost anything that’s bad for your hero is good for your story.
  3. You’ve warned the reader not to assume your story will follow conventional patterns.

Maybe you’ve even decided to Kill The Hero:

card

Sometimes, it’s fun to let your hero win this early battle. Maybe the presumed villain wasn’t the ultimate villain after all — or in killing him, the hero has unleashed something much worse. Perhaps That’s Not the Dragon:

card

In most cases, both hero and villain will survive this early brawl, but both will be changed by the encounter.

card

Using Fight the Giant

Like every card in Writer Emergency Pack, Fight the Giant can be used at both macro and micro levels of the story process.

Fight the Giant might be a key plot point on which your entire story hangs. Perhaps an unexpected, early defeat sends your hero’s allies packing, and he must now assemble and train a new army from the remnants.

On a sequence level, Fight the Giant is a great way to ratchet up the tension. Your hero had a plan for how this was supposed to go down, but the villain had a plan of her own. And she moved faster.

Finally, Fight the Giant can be a great focus in a single scene. Your cat-burglar hero was expecting three minutes notice when the villain would be returning to his penthouse, but suddenly he’s here in front of him.

No matter how you use Fight the Giant, make the most of its surprise factor. Catch your hero flat-footed, and keep your heroes on their toes.


Fight the Giant is Card 2 of 26 in Writer Emergency Pack, which you can find in the Store and on Amazon.

The Scriptnotes 200-episode USB drive

July 9, 2015 News, Writer Emergency, Writer Emergency Pack

For a limited time, we’re selling USB flash drives loaded with the first 200 episodes of Scriptnotes — including all the bonus shows, the Dirty Episode, and special interviews. They’re $20 and available in the Store.

usb drive

These custom-printed 8-gigabyte USB flash drives include:

  • Every episode in mp3
  • Full transcripts
  • Three Page Challenge pdfs
  • Boundless love and umbrage
  • Our autographs printed right on the side

usb drive back

As of Thursday at 4pm PDT, we have fewer than 50 left, so we’ll likely run out. If you’re a collector, a completionist, or survivalist planning for the post-internet future, this is your chance.

We’re shipping these from the same warehouse that handles Writer Emergency Pack, so if you want to get both, you can save yourself some shipping charges.

Both are available at store.johnaugust.com.

Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Newsletter

Inneresting Logo A Quote-Unquote Newsletter about Writing
Read Now

Explore

Projects

  • Aladdin (1)
  • Arlo Finch (27)
  • Big Fish (87)
  • Charlie (39)
  • Charlie's Angels (16)
  • Chosen (2)
  • Corpse Bride (9)
  • Dead Projects (18)
  • Frankenweenie (10)
  • Go (30)
  • Karateka (4)
  • Monsterpocalypse (3)
  • One Hit Kill (6)
  • Ops (6)
  • Preacher (2)
  • Prince of Persia (13)
  • Shazam (6)
  • Snake People (6)
  • Tarzan (5)
  • The Nines (118)
  • The Remnants (12)
  • The Variant (22)

Apps

  • Bronson (14)
  • FDX Reader (11)
  • Fountain (32)
  • Highland (72)
  • Less IMDb (4)
  • Weekend Read (34)

Recommended Reading

  • First Person (87)
  • Geek Alert (147)
  • WGA (123)
  • Workspace (19)

Screenwriting Q&A

  • Adaptation (66)
  • Directors (90)
  • Education (49)
  • Film Industry (487)
  • Formatting (129)
  • Genres (90)
  • Glossary (6)
  • Pitches (29)
  • Producers (59)
  • Psych 101 (117)
  • Rights and Copyright (96)
  • So-Called Experts (47)
  • Story and Plot (170)
  • Television (164)
  • Treatments (21)
  • Words on the page (238)
  • Writing Process (178)

More screenwriting Q&A at screenwriting.io

© 2023 John August — All Rights Reserved.