Building on the success of Building Better Writers (Level 1), this class continues the systematic approach to writing by teaching and requiring different elements. The first class will contain a brief review of the devices from the first level, and the rest of the classes will subsequently build upon them by adding new requirements. 

Along the way, students will practice editing with proper proofreading marks, revising sentences, splitting longer writings into paragraphs, choosing words carefully, rewriting sentences to change their openings, and placing those pesky commas correctly. 

Each class will commence with a warm-up, followed by a mixture of instructor presentation and student practice. Students are encouraged to participate both by chat and orally. 

Week 1: Rewrites. Students will review the following grammatical and literary devices: relative clauses, dependent clauses, prepositional phrases, adverbs, alliteration, similes, metaphors, and the importance of strong words. Also, we will formally ban all forms of “to be,” along with a list of other weak words. For homework, students will take notes and rewrite three instructor-written paragraphs using the devices. 

Week 2: Writing from a picture. Students will have their choice of artwork as inspiration; their job is to either describe it using precise details OR to research the piece and provide expository information about the artist, artwork, and/or historical context. Besides the basic requirements, this must feature at least one planned-out sentence that students write before composing the paper. This will be given to the instructor along with the assignment. An example is elevating the sentence “She wore a golden dress to the ball” to “Her aurelian gown, diaphanous as a spider’s elusive web, shifted form as she wove around the unstable tables of the cacophonous ballroom.” 

Week 3: Summarizing from a short story. Students will read a short story (O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” and Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” will be supplied, but students may use any short story). Using a guided note-taking approach, students will retell the story in summary, being careful to use a variety of transition language. In this class, we will add the devices of appositives and parallelism, as well as focus on the importance of pronouns. 

Week 4: This week… students tell the story! They will be given the basic outline of a story (example: Susie went to the store. She interrupted a robbery. The police came. She saved the day!). Students will plan out the sequence of events, the details of the setting and characters, the dialogue, and how they will use the devices. This final project must show all of the devices that students have learned in class.