Practice Notecard
James Patterson Practice Activity
Copy and paste this section into your direct quote part of your notes:
SO HOW DO YOU GO ABOUT MAKING YOUR MATERIAL SO INTERESTING?
I’m big on having a blistering pace. That’s one of the hallmarks of what I do, and that’s not easy. I never blow up cars and things like that, so it’s something else that keeps the suspense flowing. I try not to write a chapter that isn’t going to turn on the movie projector in your head.
My style is colloquial storytelling. It’s the way we tell stories to one another—it’s not writerly, it’s not overdone. In the colloquial style, when you’re just telling a story to somebody—and if [you said] some of the stuff that a lot of people put into books—somebody would just say, “Will you please get to the point?” Or, “This story is putting me to sleep.” Or, “Could I move to sit next to somebody else at this dinner?” A lot of writers fall in love with their sentences or their construction of sentences, and sometimes that’s great, but not everybody is Gabriel García Márquez or James Joyce. A lot of people like to pretend that they are, and they wind up not giving people a good read or enlightening them.
HOW DOES YOUR BACKGROUND IN ADVERTISING PLAY INTO YOUR SUCCESS?
What advertising helped me to understand and get into my head very powerfully is that there is an audience out there. People go in and they think they know all the answers, and then they test stuff and find out that nobody paid attention, nobody cared; it was a blip on the screen. So you learn that there is an audience there. I’m always pretending that I’m sitting across from somebody. I’m telling them a story, and I don’t want them to get up until it’s finished. I’m very conscious of an audience. I’m very conscious that I’m an entertainer. Something like 73 percent of my readers are college graduates, so you can’t condescend to people. You’ve got to tell them a story that they will be willing to pay money to read.
Research Websites
So You Think You Want to be a Writer
Notecard Sourcing Videos
Steps of Research
* Google Link: Please have this pulled up with research.
These are the steps to use when doing your research.
Remember, you will need at least 1-2 sources for this research.
Step 1: Narrow topic (subtopics) and identify best sources, using the sources we've provided
Step 2: Source first book or website you will use in your Noodletools notes
Step 3: Link the source with the pulldown arrow in Noodletools.
Step 4: Put the pages you got information from in your notes if notes are from a book. Each bullet must have the page number it is from next to it.
Step 5: Take notes: text talk, bullet ideas, own words, know the meaing of every word you write, define special vocabulary, notes cover information needed by category
Suzanne Collins Author Video
Literary Reference Center Database
At Home Passwords
To access all databases, such as world events or history:
go to PRMS databases link in the right top box of the library homepage enter your student id (lunch/library number) as Username and prms as password
Then enter the specific database username/password for the specific database you need. Sirs, Ebsco, Global Issues in Context, and Science in Context are great for current events. For specific projects
Open your Project libguide, and type in the username/passwords listed below for the databases/encylopedias linked to that specific project.
PRMS Database and Encylopedia Passwords