LEARNING ACTIVITY SHEET IN CREATIVE NONFICTION

Worksheet No. 4, Quarter 3

Learner’s Name: ________________________________________________

Strand/Track/Section:________________________________________________
Date: ________________________________________________

USING THE LITERARY CONVENTIONS OF A SHORT STORY

I. LEARNING SKILLS
A. Most Essential Learning Competency
Write a draft of a short piece using any of the literary conventions of genre
following the pointers (choosing a topic, formulating a thesis statement,
organizing and developing ideas, using any literary conventions of a genre,
ensuring that theme and technique are effectively developed).

B. Objectives
1. write a short literary work of your choice (using any writing convention of a
genre);

II. INTRODUCTORY CONCEPT

Throughout your stay in school (that’s from elementary to senior high), you
must have had countless experiences writing your very own formal and informal
compositions. How was your writing experience? What did you remember about
theme writing? In this lesson, you will be adding another writing experience in your
school life. This time, you will be doing it with an awareness of the different literary
conventions, while being meticulous about the writing process-- from pre-writing to
publishing, so that you will get to enjoy the experience and be able to succeed as
a writer.
Later in this lesson, you will be asked to write a short literary work using any of
the writing conventions of a short story. To be able to do that, read the following
pointers.

Short Story Tips: 10 Hacks to Improve Your Creative Writing (Jerz Literacy
Weblog, est 1999)

Writing short stories means beginning as close to the climax as possible —

everything else is a distraction. A novel can take a more meandering or indirect
path but should still start with a scene that sets the tone for the whole book.
A short story conserves characters and scenes, typically by focusing on just
one conflict, and drives towards a sudden, unexpected revelation. Go easy on the

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exposition and talky backstory — your reader doesn’t need to know everything that
you know about your characters.

1. Get Started: Emergency Tips

● What does your protagonist want?
● When the story begins, what morally significant action has your
protagonist taken towards that goal?
● What obstacles must the protagonist overcome in order to reach the
goal?
● What unexpected consequences — directly related to the protagonist’s
goal-oriented actions — ramp up the emotional energy of the story?
● Show Don't (Just) Tell (What details from the setting, dialog, and tone
help you tell the story?)
● At the climax, what morally significant choice does your protagonist
make?
● Drawing on your own real-life experiences, such as winning a big game,
bouncing back after an illness or injury, or dealing with the death of a
loved one, are attractive choices for students who are looking for a
“personal essay” topic. But simply listing the emotions you experienced
(“It was exciting”, “I’ve never been so scared in all my life”, “I miss her so
much”) is not the same thing as generating emotions for your readers to
experience.
2. Write a Catchy First Paragraph. Your narrative should catch your reader’s
attention with the unusual, the unexpected, an action, or a conflict. Begin with
tension and immediacy. Remember that short stories need to start close to their
end.
3. Developing Characters. In order to develop a living, breathing, multi-faceted
character, it is important to know way more about the character than you will
ever use in the story. Imagining all these details will help you get to know your
character, but your reader probably won’t need to know much more than the
most important things in four areas:
a) Appearance. Give your reader a visual understanding of the character.
b) Action. You can show the reader what kind of a person your character is, by
describing actions rather than simply listing adjectives.
c) Speech. Develop the character as a person — do not merely have your
character announce important plot details.
d) Thought. Bring the reader into your character’s mind to show them your
character’s unexpressed memories, fears, and hopes.
4. Choose a Point of View. As a writer, you need to determine who is going to tell
the story and how much information is available for the narrator to reveal in the

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 short story. The narrator can be directly involved in the action subjectively, or
the narrator might only report the action objectively.
5. Write Meaningful Dialogue. Each speaker gets his/her own paragraph, and
the paragraph includes whatever you wish to say about what the character is
doing when speaking.
6. Use setting and context.
a) Setting includes the time, location, context, and atmosphere where the plot
takes place. Remember to combine setting with characterization and plot.
b) Include enough details to let your readers picture the scene but make sure
these are details that add something to the story. (For example, do not
describe Mary locking the front door, walking across the yard, opening the
garage door, putting air in her bicycle tires, getting on her bicycle–none of
these details matter except that she rode out of the driveway without looking
down the street.)
c) Use two or more senses in your descriptions of setting.
d) Rather than feed your readers information about the weather, population
statistics, or how far it is to the grocery store, substitute descriptive details so
your reader can experience the location the way your characters do.
7. Set Up the Plot. Jerome Stern says that it is how you set up the situation,
where the turning points of the story are, and what the characters do at the end
of the story.
a) Explosion or “Hook.” A thrilling, gripping, stirring event or problem that
grabs the reader’s attention right away.
b) Conflict. A character versus the internal self or an external something or
someone.
c) Exposition. Background information required for seeing the characters in
context.
d) Complication. One or more problems that keep a character from their
intended goal.
e) Transition. Image, symbol, dialogue that joins paragraphs and scenes
together.
f) Flashback. Remembering something that happened before the short story
takes place.
g) Climax. When the rising action of the story reaches the peak.
h) Falling Action. Releasing the action of the story after the climax.
i) Resolution. When the internal or external conflict is resolved.
8. Create conflict and Tension. Conflict produces tension that makes the story
begin. Tension is created by opposition between the character or characters
and internal or external forces or conditions. By balancing the opposing forces
of the conflict, you keep readers glued to the pages wondering how the story
will end.

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 Yourke’s Conflict Checklist
a) Mystery. Explain just enough to tease readers. Never give everything away.
b) Empowerment. Give both sides options.
c) Progression. Keep intensifying the number and type of obstacles the
protagonist faces.
d) Causality. Showing how an event (the cause) gives rise to or causes
something else to happen (the effect) ; the idea that a prior happening can be
important and sufficient for a subsequent event to occur.
e) Surprise. Provide enough complexity to prevent readers predicting events
too far in advance.
f) Empathy. Encourage reader identification with characters and scenarios that
pleasantly or (unpleasantly) resonate with their own sweet dreams (or night
sweats).
g) Insight. Reveal something about human nature.
h) Universality. Present a struggle that most readers find meaningful, even if
the details of that struggle reflect a unique place and time.
i) High Stakes. Convince readers that the outcome matters because someone
they care about could lose something precious. Trivial clashes often produce
trivial fiction.
9. Build to a Crisis or Climax. This is the turning point of the story–the most
exciting or dramatic moment.
While a good story needs a crisis, a random event such as a car crash or a
sudden illness is simply an emergency –unless it somehow involves a conflict
that makes the reader care about the characters.
10. Find a Resolution. The solution to the conflict. In short fiction, it is difficult to
provide a complete resolution and you often need to just show that characters
are beginning to change in some way or starting to see things differently.
Yourke examines some of the options for ending a story.
a) Open. Readers determine the meaning.
e.g., Brendan’s eyes looked away from the priest and up to the
mountains.
b) Resolved. Clear-cut outcome.
e.g., While John watched in despair, Helen loaded up the car with her
belongings and drove away.
c) Parallel to Beginning. Like the beginning situation or image.
e.g., They were driving their 1964 Chevrolet Impala down the highway
while the wind blew through their hair.
Her father drove up in a new 1964 Chevrolet Impala, a
replacement for the one that burned up.
d) Monologue. Character comments.

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 e.g., I wish Tom could have known Sister Dalbec’s prickly guidance
before the dust devils of Sin City battered his soul.
e) Dialogue. Characters converse.
f) Literal Image. Setting or aspect of setting resolves the plot.
e.g., The aqueducts were empty now and the sun was shining once
more.
g) Symbolic Image. Details represent a meaning beyond the literal one.
e.g., Looking up at the sky, I saw a cloud cross the shimmering blue
sky above us as we stood in the morning heat of Sin City.
https://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/creative1/shortstory/)

III. ACTIVITIES (Note: Use a separate bond paper for your answers in
practice tasks 1-3 and assessment.)
A. Practice Tasks
Task 1: A MEMORABLE LITERARY WORK

Recall some literary works which you have already read, they may be from the genre of
fiction, drama, or poetry. Enumerate at least three (title, genre, and author) that left an
impact to you as a reader? What do you think made them memorable?

Task 2: A MEMORABLE LITERARY WORK IN DETAILS

Choose a literary work (fiction or drama) which you have read. Identify some
specific details of its literary elements. Write your answers on the table below.
An example is given to guide you.

Title of Literary Work: The Little Prince (Antoine De Saint Exupery)

Genre classification: novella

Genre Specific Answers

Element
Characters The little prince, the narrator (pilot), the rose, the fox, the snake, the
baobabs, the king, the vain man, the drunkard, the businessman, the
lamplighter, the geographer, the railway switchman, the salesclerk, the
roses in the rose garden, the three-petaled flower, the little prince’s echo,
the Turkish astronomer
Plot The narrator, an airplane pilot, crashed in the Sahara desert. The crash
badly damaged his airplane and left the narrator with very little food or
water. As he was worrying over his predicament, he was approached by
the Little Prince, a very serious little blond boy who asked the narrator to
draw him a sheep. The narrator obliged, and the two became friends. The
pilot learned that the Little Prince came from a small planet he called

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 Asteroid 325 but people on Earth referred to as Asteroid B-612. The
Little Prince took great care of this planet, preventing any bad seeds from
growing and making sure it was never overrun by baobab trees. One day,
a mysterious rose sprouted on the planet’s ground and the little prince fell
in love with it. But as the rose became more and more difficult to please
and to understand , he grew lonely, thinking that his love for the rose
was not returned, and decided to leave. The prince set out to explore
other planets and to find cure for his loneliness.
Conflict Internal conflict - the conflict that arises near the end of the book is the
need for the narrator to let The Little Prince go
Setting Sahara Desert
Point of First person (told by the pilot)
view
Theme The importance of looking beneath the surface to find the real truth.

Title of Literary Work: ________________________________________________

Genre classification: ________________________________________________

Genre Element Specific Answers

Characters
Plot
Conflict
Setting
Point of View
Theme

Task 3: A CLOSE LOOK AT A NONFICTION TEXT

Read this creative nonfiction work then answer the questions that follow.

We raced to the hospital. When we arrived, my four uncles, my three aunts

and my step-grandmother were already there. My mother and I knelt by the bed.
His eyes were open, and we couldn’t close them because all the mucus or
whatever it was clumped so the eyelids wouldn’t budge. The funeral home people
came to take his body. It was an incredibly painful experience. When they
straightened his body out, I realized what a tall man he had been. They covered
him up in sheets and I thought that he was about to scream: “Will someone get
these damn sheets off me!” because that’s what he would’ve done if he were alive
and covered in sheets. We accompanied the funeral people to the elevator. The

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hospital staff had done an announcement that a deceased and his family were
going to pass and that everyone come out and stand solemnly at the side of the
hallway. Back in the room, my mother had given me a locket with a bit of his hair in
it so I could at least have a bit of my grandfather with me.
That evening the whole family (we are a very big family) went to St. Hubert
which was my grandfather’s favorite restaurant. At the end of supper my uncle
Ollie asked the waitress if he could take home two of the St. Hubert wine glasses
since it was his deceased father’s favorite restaurant, the waitress said yes, so it
wasn’t technically stealing.
(From Sara Goertz (2019), “Last Memories of My Grandfather”)

1. What is the excerpt/topic about?

2. What was highlighted in the excerpt?
3. How did the writer focus on the moment of experience?
4. If you were to rewrite the piece, what changes will you do? Why?

IV. Assessment
Directions: Be ready to craft your own narrative. This task will be
accomplished following three phases.

Using the 10 Hacks to Improve your Creative Writing, write about a real
experience/ account/story using some elements of fiction. It should
showcase characters, setting, and plot. As you write your piece, have a
topic, theme, and technique in mind. Be guided by the following
standards:

1. Choose a topic that interests you.

2. Formulate a thesis statement.
3. Organize and develop the ideas.
4. Use any of the literary conventions of a short story discussed.
5. Ensure that theme and technique are effectively developed in your
piece.

V. RUBRIC

Criteria Indicator Rating

Genre (10 pts) The narrative contains characters, setting, and plot that are
very realistic and could truly happen in everyday life.
Organization The plot is thoroughly developed. The story is interesting
(15 points) and logically organized; there is clear exposition, rising
action, and climax. The story has clear resolution or surprise

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 ending.
Setting (5 The setting is clearly described through vivid sensory
points) language.
Characters (10 Characters are well-developed through dialogue, actions,
points) and thoughts.
Dialogue (10 Dialogues sound realistic and advances the plot.
points)
Conflict (10 The conflict is clearly established, developed, and resolved
points) after a gripping climax.
Point of View Maintains a consistent point of view.
(10 points)
Figures of Uses carefully chosen figurative language to help the reader
Speech (10 visualize.
points)
Theme Theme is distinguishable throughout the narrative; the writer
and Technique employed literary techniques to make theme evident.
(10 points)
Grammar There are few or no errors in grammar, usage, mechanics,
and or spelling.
Mechanics (10
points)

IV. REFERENCES

De Guzman, Joyce T., Creative Nonfiction Quarter 1 – Module 5: Using the

Literary Conventions of a Genre in Writing. DepEd,
ROV.connectplus.pasco.k12.fl.us.
Bold Action Fiction Story Scoring Guide (pdf). Retrieved from https.
connectplus.pasco.k12.fl.us.com
Lumzy, Kimberly. Realistic Fiction Writing Rubric. Retrieved from https. //
teacherspayteachers.com
Prepared by:
RHEA J. DOLLESIN, T-III, Sorsogon NHS, SDO Sorsogon City

Quality Assured by:

ANNE E. MANCIA, Assistant Principal II, Sorsogon NHS, SDO Sorsogon City
CLEOFE D. ARIOLA, EPS, SDO Sorsogon City

Reviewed by:
CHERRY LOVE B. BAÑAGA, MT-I, Victor Bernal HS, SDO Cam. Sur
BELINDA T. NELLASCA, MT-I, Calabanga NHS, SDO Cam. Sur
CHRISTINE H. TEPANERO, MT-I, Sta Lutgarda NHS, SDO Cam. Sur

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Validated by:
ANGUSTIA P. ORAA, P-I, Visita de Salog HS, SDO Cam. Sur
PRECIOSA R. DELA VEGA, EPS-I, SDO Cam. Sur

Layout Artist:
MARY JANE S. SAN AGUSTIN, T-II, Fundado ES, SDO Cam. Sur