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These activities were taken from the "Fiction Writer´s Workshop" classroom guide distributed by USA Weekend in connection with their 1999 Student Fiction Contest.

Discuss: The perspective, or point of view (POV) of a story, must be obvious to the reader. The reader should understand who is telling the story. It is this concept that your students must understand.

Explain: Perhaps the easiest and most natural POV for students is first-person singular, where the "Iv character witnesses and reports what happens. If students use first-person they must understand that the first-person POV does not represent the author but, rather, a persona in the story. Students can read Richard Price´s ´Ouija" or Dean Koontz" "Pinkie" from the Summer Fiction Series to understand what first-person singular sounds like.

Students may choose to write in third-person POV, using "he," "she," or "they" rather than "I." This is the method Brad Meltzer uses in "Final Farewell," his story for the summer fiction series. With third-person POV, students can write objectively where the reader does not enter the character´s head. They can also write subjectively, giving the reader access to a person´s thoughts and feelings as well as what they observe.

There are other POV methods, including "we" and "you." Students may want to use these for a fresh approach. If they combine a few different methods, the pattern must be established early and made clear. Read Gloria Naylor´s "Grandma Blue" to see how she alternates between "I" and "We."

Activity: Have students choose a story from the newspaper. A crime may be good for this assignment. They can rewrite the events in the story from the first-person POV as if they are the criminal. Then they can write the story again from a different POV, perhaps the law enforcement officer´s, or the victim´s.

Activity: Students can find examples of different POV uses in the newspaper. Read some excerpts aloud to the class and tell why they chose that one. You can discuss the difference in point of view between editorials and news or feature stories.

Discuss: Have your students ever found a good friend in a book? Have they met a character they felt they knew, or would want to know, as a friend? Perhaps they have seen themselves reflected in someone they´ve read about. Talk with students about the importance of fleshing out their characters.

Explain: Characters should face choices. The plot is often about those choices and the way they are handled. You can invent an internal or external conflict for a character. That conflict can form the plot and give the character dimension, complexity and passion. Characters should be convinced that his/her world view, desires, objectives and so are forth are "worth dying for."

When portraying characters your students´ goal is to paint pictures of people. If the character is a famous Hollywood star, for example, they will want to write about the person - not their persona. Ernest Hemingway explained it this way, "A writer should create living people; people, not characters."

Use quotes to make their characters come alive. Their choice of words can convey mood and attitude. The personality of each character will dictate his/her style of speech.

Brainstorm: If time allows, have students create character profiles and include all basic information: name, date of birth, parents´ situation, education, job and martial status and so forth.

Discuss: Where can students find fictional people to write about? Writer Laura Zigman, author of USA WEEKEND´s short story, "The Pickle," gets her ideas from "my own sorry little life. Whatever is happening to me I feel like it´s happening to a lot of other people." She observes people and events she has experienced and writes about them. After getting an idea, she´ll research the details by reading newspaper accounts of similar events in order to get information to flesh out her characters.

Students can write about other people they have encountered or they can make them up. When writing about people they don´t know it´s important to write of real passions so that the characters come across as real people. They should portray people they would want, or perhaps be afraid, to meet. It´s almost as if the author takes each character into a separate room and privately gives him/her a different story. Each character will then react from own perspective, different from the others.

Explain: Students may choose to use the autobiographical method in which they project themselves into the characters. They may also choose to paint characters biographically, in which they use people they have observed as a source for fictional characters. They may create one character from the traits of several people. They can even combine several of the methods above and use a bit of each in their stories. The goal is to show, rather than tell, what the character is like.

Activity: Have students read Laura Zigman´s "The Pickle." Talk about the methods she employs to tell about the traits of the main character. One method is to use the character´s interior monologue to get to know the character. Then have students select someone from today´s sports section and write an interior monologue that person might have. They can glean supporting details from the article.

Activity: Image isn´t everything, but it helps when portraying a character. Have students choose a photograph of a person from the newspaper. They should write a description of what that person looks like, is wearing, may be thinking - anything that would help a reader interpret the character from his/her appearance. From this they can learn how to use bits of appearance as triggers for storytelling. They may want to try this exercise a few ways. They can use description so the reader sees the character as nervous, happy, artistic, rich or poor.

Explain: "A good story," says writer Brad Meltzer, "asks us to step into someone else´s life." Plot lets the reader follow in that person´s footsteps. A tradtional straight-line plot moves chronologically from beginning to end. Other plot techniques move forward and back through the storyline as the story progresses. Some writers use flashbacks and let different characters take over the narrative. Students are probably familiar with the movie Titanic, in which flashback was used.

Help students understand that the opening scene is an important element of the plot. It has to capture the reader and requires careful attention. Students should pay close attention to the initial situation and setting.

Once the story is underway, the plot may move forward by means of physical, external actions which occur as the characters do things or act in certain ways to reach the goal or resolve the conflict. The plot may also consist of mostly internal, psychological actions. The story will end when the character either succeeds or falls in achieving the goal, or resolves or is destroyed by the conflict. The characters must be passionate about something in order for the plot to succeed.

Discuss: One reason why newspapers are such good examples of great writing is because they tell compelling stories. "What a news story does wonderfully is, it´s news but it´s also a good story," says writer Meltzer. "The good ones are narrative. Newspapers ask you to step into the world of, say, a ball-player or a politician to see what it´s like. The kicker in newspaper writing is how the personalized detail that the reporter gets adds to the plot."

Activity: Most news stories contain six key points-Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. Three of these elements can form the plotline for a fictionalized version of the news story. Those are: what, how and why. Students can select an intriguing news story from the newspaper and find those three elements. Have them write summaries of the story and embellish it with fictional details.

Discuss: Writer Honore de Balzac spent hours every day walking the streets of Paris in order to create vivid settings for his novels. Charles Dickens strolled the streets of London to gather material for picturesque descriptions. Detailed description adds a great deal to any story. While writers do not want to bog readers down in unnecessary detail, stories do need a strong sense of place.

Explain: Setting answers two of a journalist´s six questions - where and when. Both are extremely important. In a good story, the place, the people and the action are smoothly integrated. Setting or mood also help in character development. By adhering to the principal "show, don´t tell," writer´s can present vivid descriptions of the scene around them.

Brainstorm: Have students think of several two-word, adjective-noun descriptive "snapshots" of scenes they see in the newspaper.

Activity: Students can select some pictures of ordinary items or familiar scenes from the newspaper. Instruct them to view the objects or scenes as though they were strange and unusual. This exercise helps students to control their distance from what they are describing. If they are too close they may not see the shape; too far and they might not see the details. Help them shift their focus so that they see things in a fresh way. Use a cinematic metaphor and to ask students to imagine they have a 35mm camera and are taking a picture of something from several different vantage points.

Activity: Workplaces make perfect story settings because they make it easy to integrate the place and the character. The people shape the place and the place shapes the people. Have students select a workplace from the Help Wanted ads in the newspaper. They can write vivid descriptions of the place without actually naming it. If, for example, they are writing about a candy factory, can the reader tell it´s a candy factory by reading the description? That is the goal.

Explain: Reading the newspaper can provide students with ideas for fiction stories and problems that characters can tackle. They can begin with something real, then change the elements along the way into a more entertaining version. Writer Dean Koontz finds newspapers inspiring sources of fiction. "Newspapers are part of the world," he says. "They reflect our contemporary scene and stories spin out of them." He just wrote a book about a man with a skin condition that forces him to avoid daylight and only venture out at night. He first read about this condition in the newspaper and thought it was so interesting he has written three books on the subject.

Brainstorm: Have students select articles from the newspaper and spend about one minute brainstorming story outlines based on each one. This is a great way to get the creative juices flowing.

Discuss: Students need to search for a seed, or an idea, and then use their curiosity or enthusiasm about the subject to germinate it. They can put their story idea to the gossip test. If it is a subject they would tell their friends about, they probably have enthusiasm to write about it.

Activity: Encourage students to keep a journal as they read the newspaper. They can summarize and react to events reported. They can jot observations that come into their minds as they read. The main goal of the journal is to record things in the newspaper they wonder about and might use in their writing.

Activity: Hand out clipped headlines from the newspaper and have students extemporaneously construct quick stories based on those headlines. Have them share their stories aloud.

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