Introduction
A good writer can write in the voice of someone unlike himself. This is what professional authors do all the time. They take a fictional character and give him voice and thought and sell it to the reader as something believable. Middle school students can do this very task, if given the right instruction and right models. This unit is designed to exemplify uses of voice in young adult contemporary realistic fiction. Realistic fiction offers a voice that is similar to someone you might have as a friend. This genre imitates the way people speak and often uses first-person point of view. This is a voice that a student can relate to and therefore model in his writing. Creating a character in realistic fiction requires that the author use a technique that mirrors human nature. This is not so if the author is writing fantasy, in which case he could create a completely unique and non-human speech pattern and thought. Realistic fiction style of writing provides a wealth of models for professional writing using voice. This curriculum unit is designed for an eighth grade literacy classroom that is implementing the readers/writers workshop. By introducing and discussing various use of voice in young adult novels, students will be able to apply that knowledge to their own writing strategies and write from different voices/different character voices. The goal is for these middle school students to use voice as a means of writing fiction through the perspective of characters unlike themselves.
The voice a student knows best is his own. Asking a student to write an autobiography or personal narrative is generally not too difficult. After all, the subject matter is one with which he is familiar. This unit proposes to teach students to write in the voice of a fictional character different from their own. To do this, students must be willing to step outside of themselves and use imagination. In using this imagination they must also, however, be consistent not only with the makeup of the character but also with the makeup of human behavior. Writing from this outside voice allows students to strengthen themselves as writers.
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