Macabre Writing Assignment: 4 October 2010 Macabre Writing Assignment: Major Grade! Today you will use the writing process (pre-write, rough draft, revise, edit, final draft) to write about the final words of a character from The Crucible who was hanged or pressed. Due end of class today.

Hanged and Pressed: a macabre assignment Inspired by the intersection of these two seemingly unrelated concepts, Robert Olen Butler wrote stories, each exactly 240 words in length, capturing the flow of thoughts and feelings that rush through a mind after it has been severed.   Your assignment is to write a 240-word vignette from the perspective of a character that was hanged or pressed in The Crucible. Choose a character and take on their persona. Think about who that person is, their personality, what they lived through, what they value, and what they may think about during their last moments of consciousness and of life. Examine how Butler uses punctuation in the examples, taking special note of how each piece ends without a period. You must capture “the flow of thoughts and feelings that rush through a mind” as it dies. First, choose a character. Next, pre-write/brainstorm. Then, write a rough draft of your vignette. Remember, you must have exactly 240 words. Finally, write your final draft on the paper provided, 8 words per line. You will staple your pre-writing and rough draft to the back of your final draft.

The Writing Process 1st – pre-write on notebook paper 2nd – write your rough draft on notebook paper 3rd – revise. What changes do you need to make to have only 240 words? 4th – edit. Check for spelling. (You don’t necessarily have to edit for punctuation since these words are someone’s thoughts and not a formal paper. 5th – final draft. Write each word on the lines. Then recopy the 240 words into final draft form below the lines. 6th – staple the pre-writing and rough draft to the back of the final draft.