WWI Creative Historians
Project Reflection
This project was about WWI and WWII. We started the project by reading a book called All Quiet on the Western Front. This book introduced the way of fighting in WWI, which included; trench warfare, weaponry, and transportation. After reading this book we analyzed the cause of the war and where it took place. When we finished studying WWI we started another book called Slaughterhouse 5. This book was about the Dresden bombing in WWII, but also time travel and aliens. When we finished the book we dove deeper into WWII and its methods of fighting, we compared the two wars and looked at similarities and differences. When we had finished the books Stephen announced we would be writing short stories for our project. We started preparing by picking a general scene and making research notes which got us to know our area we chose. After this we started writing our story. We went through a great amount of revisions to prepare our stories for a grade and exhibition. When they were finished we did our exhibition which was reading a five minute excerpt from our stories at Maria’s Bookstore. We turned in our stories two days later and officially finished the project.
I believe my story did the best job of showing not telling. Showing not telling is using descriptive language to show a scene instead of using just a few non-descriptive words. I tried too use this in my story because I believe it is a very important aspect in order for the reader to enjoy my work. “I was standing still, gaping at the once beautiful city, while the bitter wind gently mixed the smells of gunpowder and death.” This section is a strong example of this because it gives the reader a feel of the atmosphere around the character. This section shows the destruction of the beautiful city of Stalingrad. This is important because a large part of my story was the destruction that took place in the city.
The biggest literary element I struggled with in the revisions was plot. I had trouble making it flow from one event to another. After going through many revisions I was able to fix this and my story made much more sense. This element was difficult for me because I had a lot of scenes or flashbacks so I had to connect them all. To overcome this I took away a few scenes. I also changed the scenes so made more sense and events transferred well.
“Too me war has always been a bad seed, more of a demon than an angel, it killed my father, and shortly after my mother killed herself.” For this revision I showed an emotion instead of telling it. Originally I had, “I’ve never liked war…” My other big revision was the very end when my soldier dies. I added a whole new paragraph to describe his death. “I know this won’t change anything, I’m already dying, I can feel my chest, wet with blood, going numb to the pain. I start crying, not from pain, but fear. As time slips away I feel a strange peace, I see my family laughing as I close my eyes, I pray the lord keep them safe.”
My Exhibition
http://youtu.be/tB0-hZpZVtM