Lesson video

Hello there, great to see you today.

My name's Mr. Barnsley and thank you for joining me as we continue to do some study of English language.

Today, we're gonna be focusing on an extract from "After Dark" by Murakami.

This is the opening extract from chapter one of the novel, so do make sure you have access to this.

And we're gonna be using this to inspire and support us to do our own creative writing.

We're gonna be writing some really interesting descriptive openings using omniscient perspective and using extended metaphor, two really interesting techniques that will make our writing pop.

So I think it's time for us to get started.

I'm really looking forward to working with you today.

Let's go.

So let's have a look at today's outcome then, shall we? By the end of today's lesson, you are gonna be able to write an engaging descriptive opening paragraph and you're gonna use an omniscient perspective and an extended metaphor.

And we'll look very shortly at what those terms mean.

So there are gonna be four keywords and phrases I want you to look out for in today's lesson.

The first is omniscient, which we saw in the outcome, and that means all knowing.

Okay, so we're gonna be writing from a perspective that knows everything or can see everything about what we're gonna be describing.

We're gonna try and write some really immersive descriptions here and immersive means to allow someone to be completely absorbed or involved in something.

And I did say we're gonna be using extended metaphor and this is a metaphor that extends over several lines of the text.

So it's not just be one metaphor in our opening paragraph, we're gonna want to extend this metaphor across our opening paragraph.

And finally, we're gonna be using some personification and a quick reminder of what that means, that's where we attribute human characteristics to non-human things.

All right, so let's keep an eye out for each of these words and phrases in today's lesson and let's get started.

So in today's lesson we are gonna be basing our writing on Murakami's "After Dark", a really fantastic text and we're gonna be breaking the lesson down into two learning cycles.

Firstly, we're gonna be thinking about this idea of perspective and then we're gonna be writing our own engaging opening.

So let's start by thinking about perspective.

So over to you then to kick us off, what do these two opening extracts tell you about the difference between a third person and first person perspective? So let's look at two examples then, shall we? The first example comes from "The Wizard of Oz".

Let's read through this together then.

"Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife.

Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by waggon many miles.

There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room and this room contained a rusty looking cook stove, a cupboard for the dishes" and it continues.

Let's look at a second extract and compare it to "The Wizard of Oz".

This comes from "Wuthering Heights", let's read this together.

"1801, I have just returned from a visit to my landlord, the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.

This is certainly a beautiful country.

In all England I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society, a perfect misanthropist's heaven.

And Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us." Okay, I'm gonna hand over to you then and I want you to tell me what is the difference between the perspective in "The Wizard of Oz" and the perspective in "Wuthering Heights"? Okay, can you work out which is third and which is first person? And then can you tell me like what's the effect? How does the change in perspective change how or what we get from these as a reader? All right, over to you for this one.

If you've got a partner, you can discuss with them, otherwise you can just work through this independently.

Pause the video, have a think, have a discuss and press play when you've got some ideas.

Welcome back.

I heard some fantastic discussions going on there.

I heard lots of you saying something similar to this, that the third person perspective in "Wizard of Oz" allows us to get a better understanding of the scene as a whole.

However, the first person perspective in "Wuthering Heights" really allows us to get a much greater insight into the character's feelings.

I feel like I already know more about the narrator's mood and emotion in "Wuthering Heights" than I know about Dorothy or Henry or Aunt Em.

I feel quite distant from them, although I feel like I've got a really good understanding of where they are and where this text is set.

So hopefully you can see there the perspective we choose is going to have a slightly different effect, a different impact on our reader.

So in "After Dark", Murakami uses the third person perspective.

He describes the city through the eyes of a bird.

Why do you think then is a bird such an interesting narrative perspective? Over to you again for this question.

Pause the video, have a little bit of a think and press play when you've got some ideas.

Welcome back, I heard lots of you using that keyword.

Well done if this was you saying a bird's perspective is an omniscient perspective.

A bird sees everything.

If you think about a bird's perspective in the sky and they look down on the city, they can see so much more.

They have a greater knowledge and understanding of everything that's happening in the city than I or you would if we were just standing on one corner or on one street.

So let's have a think then.

How might using an omniscient perspective really help us set the scene in a piece of writing? Again, over to you, if you've got a partner, you can discuss with them, otherwise you can think through this question independently.

How might an omniscient perspective help set the scene? Pause the video, have a think, have a discuss and press play when you've got some ideas.

Some great ideas there.

I really want to shine a spotlight on something that I heard a few of you saying that an omniscient perspective really allows the reader to witness the entire scope, the scale of an environment.

And that can really help us create this rich and detailed image of the world, which, going back to one of our keywords, can really create this immersive experience.

Let our reader become really absorbed in all of the details of the world that we are creating.

Fantastic if you said something similar and of course you might have said something slightly different as well and that's absolutely fine.

Okay, so an omniscient perspective is a great perspective choice when you are writing a description, okay? It's not the only one, but it is a really good perspective that you could choose if you've been tasked with writing a description, because we know a description should do the following things.

It should paint a really vivid picture of something.

It should provide a really deep sensory experience.

It should allow the reader to visualise what's being described and it should allow the reader to immerse themselves in that scene.

They should be feeling as if they are part of the writer's world.

So I want you to think then, which narrative perspective allows you as the reader to get the most rich and immersive experience of a scene? Is it in first, second or third? Pause the video, have a think and when you've got an idea, do remember to press play and find out if you were right.

Over to you.

Really well done if you said third there.

We might associate a third person narrative perspective with an omniscient narrator.

Not all third person narratives will be omniscient, but if you want to use that omniscient perspective, then using the third person perspective is a sensible way to go.

All right then, so why is an omniscient perspective particularly suitable when writing a description? Is it A, that it allows you an insight into how a particular character feels? Is it B, it allows you to visualise the full scope, the full scale of a scene? Or is it C, it provides a narrow focus on one particular part of a scene.

Over to you for this one.

Pause the video, have a think and press play when you think you've got the right idea.

Yeah, really great job if you said B, it really allows us to visualise that full scope of a scene.

All right, over to you then for our first task in today's lesson and you are gonna complete the table below by outlining some potential narrators that we could use.

But I also want you to add how they could bring an interesting and most importantly, omniscient, all knowing, all seeing perspective of a city.

I've done the first example for you, so you might wish to choose to narrate your description through the perspective of a statue that has stood in the same position in a city over many years, potentially hundreds of years.

And why might this make this perspective so unique? Well, potentially it's witnessed so many different generations.

It's really seen how a city has changed over the years.

It's watched people grow up.

All right, over to you now to get creative.

Which different interesting omniscient perspectives could we write from and what would make those perspectives so unique? Pause the video, complete this table and press play when you've got some ideas that you are ready to share.

Okay, over to you, good luck.

Welcome back, I saw some real creativity there.

Really, really well done and well done for those people who didn't just put the first three ideas down that they thought of, they thought actually is this one significantly different from one of the other ideas I've had before they put it on the paper? That's what I like to see, not rushing in, taking a bit of time to be really, really thoughtful and deliberate in our choices.

So I've got just some ideas for you.

You can compare my ideas to yours.

You may even wish to add some of my ideas to your table if you wish.

So I thought a really nice idea might be thinking about the perspective from a river that flows through the town, 'cause this might give me an opportunity to describe the experiences of different communities that live in different parts of the city.

Maybe those who live right in the centre of the city and as that river meanders out to the suburbs and into the countryside, you know, I can really show that change, the distinct change between city and the surrounding areas.

I thought about a tree and it really gives an opportunity to paint the vibrant image of nature and particularly if it's an old tree, it can describe seasonal changes or it might describe how a city has become more and more built up and nature has been potentially destroyed or certainly minimised to help the city grow.

And similar to Murakami's, I thought, "Well, what else could be in the air?" And I really liked this idea of an aeroplane, 'cause they fly even higher than the birds.

So the scene can become so small and insignificant and it really helps create this idea that actually even in these huge sprawling cities, we as individuals feel so insignificant.

So it really helps provide that zoomed out perspective.

So these are some of my ideas.

You of course might have had some different ones and that's fantastic, but if you want to pause the video and if you want to take any of my ideas or share ideas with someone next to you and see if you can add any more to your table, now is the time to do so.

Pause the video, reflect on this activity and then press play when you're ready to move on.

Okay, welcome back.

We've done lots of thinking, now it is time for us to write our own engaging opening.

However, before we do that, we're gonna really think about another technique that Murakami uses to craft his engaging opening and that is his use of extended metaphor.

So a reminder, this is one of our keywords, an extended metaphor is a metaphor that spans multiple lines of the text and the purpose of this is to create this persistent, continuous vivid image of something in the reader's head.

So we know that Murakami keeps this persistent vivid image of the city and he does this by comparing it to a living entity.

And in the reader's mind, we start to see this throughout the opening of "After Dark".

So I really want us to think about how Murakami constructs, how he creates his extended metaphor.

So how does he do this? How does he craft, how does he create this extended metaphor? Well, here are some of the things that he does.

At times, he has a real literal description.

He describes the city as a city.

This is important, if we just talk in metaphor, our work will become very confusing very, very quickly.

So it is important within any description that we have to have some literal description in there.

We have to describe, say what it is that we are describing.

So at times, you will see that Murakami describes the city as being a city, that's important.

But at times he uses personification, which is a type of metaphor.

He attributes human characteristics to the city.

And there are times when he uses this metaphor, he says the city is something else.

So he says it is a living organism.

And sometimes he uses other comparative techniques like simile.

So he compares the city to other things using simile.

So like an as.

And putting all of those techniques together are gonna be really, really helpful in A, creating this really vivid description of a city, but also helping extend a metaphor.

If we just take one metaphor idea and only use this metaphor over the course of many lines, yes, technically we are potentially extending a metaphor, but we're not doing it in a particularly sophisticated way.

And if anything, we might end up confusing a reader.

So to extend a metaphor successfully, we actually want to use a combination of different techniques, like literal description, personification, metaphor and other comparative techniques like simile.

So over to you then to see if you can find any examples of where Murakami have utilised any of the above techniques in the opening of "After Dark".

So you are gonna need to make sure you've got a copy of the extract in front of you.

Remember, it is the beginning of chapter one of "After Dark".

So make sure you've got access to that.

And yeah, over to you.

Pause the video and see if you can find examples of any of these techniques in Murakami's work.

All right, pause the video, give it a go and press play when you think you found some.

Welcome back, I saw some really close reading of the text there, some excellent detective work, fantastic.

I just want to share some of the things you might have found.

You will of course have found more than this.

So for personification, you could have said, "The city's arteries and blood cells can pulse and squirm." Okay, and we've got some comparative techniques there as well, saying that the city was like a creature or an entity of organisms. So well done if you selected any of these things.

Obviously, saying the city has arteries is metaphor as well, that's not literal.

So you could have said any of those things, used any of these words and of course, you might have found other things as well.

So your task today is you're gonna be writing an omniscient perspective and extended metaphor.

You're gonna use those techniques to write the description of a scene, but first I want you to decide what scene you are going to describe and the perspective you're gonna describe it from.

So things that you could write about, a forest, a city, like we've been discussing so far, maybe a specific area in a city like a bustling marketplace.

Different perspectives you could write from, you could write from different animals, obviously Murakami used a bird, you could use a squirrel, 'cause obviously they can dance around high up, but they can also be on the ground.

You could use a rat, you know, they are gonna be right on the floor in the gutter of a city.

We talked about it earlier, you might want to use a statue or of course, you could use any of the other different perspectives that you've already started considering in learning cycle one.

So Jacob, one of our Oak pupils, he says, "Well, I think I'm gonna write about a city, but I'm gonna write it from the perspective of a rat." So this is gonna be quite similar place as Murakami, but very different perspective.

Over to you then.

If you've got a partner, you can share some ideas together, otherwise you can just think through this independently.

What are you going to write about? What are you going to write about? All right, pause the video, have a little bit of a think here and then press play when you've got an idea.

Welcome back, I heard lots and lots of different ideas.

I'm really excited to see what you are going to write.

But before we start writing, we really need to think about the next step, which is to think about what extended metaphor suits our description.

Now, Jacob said that he was gonna write about a city from the perspective of a rat.

Let's have a think then.

If you were writing from the rat's perspective, how would a rat perceive a city? From the eyes of a rat, what would a city, looking up, what might it be comparable to? Why don't you pause the video and have a think about some ideas that Jacob could use.

Pause the video, have a think with a partner or independently and press play when you've got some ideas.

Again, I heard lots of creativity there.

I wanna shine a spotlight on what some of you said that perhaps a rat would actually perceive a city to be really large and threatening.

They're exposed to some really derelict parts of the city.

So actually they probably see a much more gloomy perspective than most other animals do.

And as a result of that, maybe the extended metaphor could be that the city is this kind of large, overworked, potentially quite faulty and dysfunctional machine.

Maybe it's like a machine in a factory, but a factory that's not used as much or a warehouse.

Okay, so you can see, I'm starting to think, actually if I was really low down or always seeing these derelict kind of sections of society, like would I have a really positive view of the city or would my extended metaphor actually want to be one that was quite negative? All right, so Jacob uses the following planning grid before he starts his paragraph.

He thinks about what literal description is he gonna have in there.

Remembering, it's really important we have some literal description, otherwise our description might end up becoming really confusing.

So Jacob wants to discuss the endless roads, so he's gonna mention the word roads.

Okay, so it's really clear that he's describing roads.

The metaphor, he's gonna talk about vehicles on those roads being like a cog in a machine.

The personification, he's gonna talk about the roar of the engines.

And the comparison, he's gonna say the endless roads are like fatigued conveyor belts.

So again, the conveyor belts kind of move by themselves along machines.

He's continuing, extending the idea of the road being or the city being this kind of faulty machine.

So this is how Jacob began his writing.

He said, "The endless roads stretch ahead like fatigued conveyor belts.

Hefty cogs rumble and roar, releasing intoxicating fumes." Let's check then, let's do a check for understanding.

Which of the following techniques does Jacob use here in his response? Does he use comparison? Does he use metaphor, personification or is this a literal description in this section of his response, "Hefty cogs rumble and roar, releasing intoxicating fumes?" Pause the video, have a little bit of a think and press play when you think you've got an idea.

There may be more than one correct answer.

All right, over to you.

Welcome back and really well done if you said both B and C.

So the description of the cars is metaphorical.

He says they are cogs, they're not actually cogs on the road.

And Jacob utilises personification, one of our keywords there, to describe the sounds of the car, that word roar.

Well done if you got B and C.

Okay, over to you then for our final task of today's lesson.

First, I want you to use the planning grid to plan the extended metaphor that will make up your scene description.

So think about what you will write about, think about your perspective and then think about how you're gonna craft that extended metaphor using literal, metaphorical, personification and comparison.

And then once you've done that, you are gonna write up one paragraph describing your scene.

Remember, things that we are looking for, that you are using a unique omniscient perspective and that your opening paragraph includes an extended metaphor.

All right, this one is over to you now.

So do pause the video, give this a go, I know you can do this and press play when you think you are done.

Welcome back, really fantastic to see you all being so creative there and writing with such confidence.

Really, really well done.

I also special shout out to anyone who checked their spelling, punctuation and grammar before they put their pen down.

That is what I like to see, well done.

All right, we're gonna pause our video now and take a moment to check our work and some questions I want you to ask yourself, to think about how successful your work has been.

Do you think you were really clear about what you were describing? Did you use an omniscient narrative perspective? Did you craft your extended metaphor using personification and comparison? And does your extended metaphor match well with the perspective that you have chosen to use? All right, over to you.

Pause the video, take a moment to reflect on the work that you've done and of course if you want to make any changes, now is the time to do so.

All right, pause the video, do some reflection and press play when you're ready to move on.

Okay, some fantastic work there.

You've done a really, really great job today.

It's been a pleasure learning alongside you.

Before we move on to our next lesson, I think we should take a moment to reflect on the learning that we've covered today so you can feel really confident before moving on.

So we've learned that using omniscient perspective allows the reader to be more immersed in a scene description.

We've also learned that an unusual choice of narrative perspective can make your omniscient perspective more engaging.

We've learned that an extended metaphor is an opportunity to add detail and depth to writing.

And an extended metaphor is most effective when explored in multiple layers using literal terms, comparison and personification.

Great work today, thank you so much for joining me.

I do hope to see you in one of our lessons again in the future.

Have a great day, bye-bye.