Hi ,

Big news this week, reports are finally finished!

Plus the new NAPLAN text type has just been released... Persuasive writing.

Great news, I love persuasive writing. It is such a challenge, so clever and if you choose, you can be Very Cunning Indeed.

This newsletter is all about Step 3: Tightening Tension. So let's see how tension can be used in Persuasive writing.

The tension scene in a narrative is easy to recognize, it is the scene just before the big climax ending. E.g.

• the car chase scene in James Bond,
• the lovers' fight in Mills and Boon,
• the final war scene in Avatar.

A strong Tension scene in a story, means the ending creates a wonderful surge of joy, relief or excitement – 'YES they made it!'

In Persuasive writing, the arguments or ideas build up paragraph by paragraph to a powerful crescendo (the tension scene). Immediately after the power scene comes the ending – often a short 'clincher' or emotionally charged paragraph which closes the writing.

In great writing, people are changed or persuaded, mainly because of the strong 'crescendo' scene and the ending.

Here are some well known examples. I have included the ending as well as the tension build-up scene.

The Gettysburg Address
November 19, 1863
Abraham Lincoln

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

See also the 'Friends Romans Countrymen' speech by Mark Anthony in Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2, by William Shakespeare

IF
Poem by Rudyard Kipling
This is sage advice from a father to a son. The popular opening line is: If you can keep your head when all about you/ Are losing theirs and blaming it on you... Here is the tension/crescendo – and ending

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more – you'll be a Man, my son!

See also 'Ozymandias' by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Martin Luther King – I have a Dream

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Advertising – Clean Green

Tomorrow, do you need...
clean water for your children to drink?
clean air for them to breathe?
a clean world, a green world?

Today, tomorrow, next year, next decade...

Go Clean Green.

(Oh, ok, this one is not well known, I made it up!)

All our Seven Steps techniques can be applied to different text types – they are based on author skills, thus are broad based and easily found. So look around you in the world and find some terrific tension in your life.

Jen McVeity
National Literacy Champion, Churchill Fellow, Author

Send your students into the world and ask them to find an example of powerful tension scenes which build to a memorable ending in each of these genres:

• Speeches
• Poetry
• Advertising
• Songs
• Magazine articles
• Short stories
• Movies
• Books

Seven Steps Seminars – Term 3

Nine out of ten workshops in Term 1 AND 2 were booked out.

BOOK early for the Term 3 Seven Steps workshops!!!

• SUNSHINE COAST QLD
  Saturday, 14th August 2010
• BRISBANE, QLD
  Monday, 16th August
• GOLD COAST, QLD
  Wednesday, 18th August
• TOOWOOMBA, QLD
  Friday, 20th August
• MELBOURNE, BRIGHTON BEACH, VIC
  Wednesday, 25th August

  Download a booking form now - Queensland

  Download a booking form now - Victoria

'Practical.' 'Inspirational.' 'Fun.' The three most common words used to describe our Seven Steps seminars!

COST
$265 per person. (Including, morning tea, lunch, certificate of attendance and Teacher Manual. Our Teacher Manual alone is worth $180!)

You can use the ideas in your classroom tomorrow.

More Information

  Download a booking form now - Queensland

  Download a booking form now - Victoria

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