Creative TAC choice #1
Breaking News!
Murder Mystery in Devon
You will create a newspaper that covers the events on Soldier Island in
Devonshire, England. Your specific assignment is to write three articles :
(1) a news piece about the murder mystery (2) a full feature profile piece
about one of the LIVING characters (3) an obituary about a different
deceased character
REQUIREMENTS:
 You may write this articles from any point in time in the novel;
however, all three articles must be from the same point in the
novel. For example, if you write these articles from the standpoint of
Chapter 10, your news coverage can only include events up through
Chapter 10, your profile piece would focus on a character still living in
Chapter 10, and your obituary would detail the death of a character
killed in any chapter up through chapter 10.
 Your newspaper style can be either serious (think of The Boston
Globe or The New York Times) or a tabloid/rag (think The Enquirer
or Star!). The tone of your writing should reflect the style paper you
present.
 Each of your three articles must have an accompanying image and
be presented together in some way. You may cut and paste on
construction paper or create a booklet digitally. Color is optional.
 The three articles will be uploaded to turnitin.com by the due date.
 The length: the news article and the profile piece should be about 2
pages each and the obituary should not be longer than a page.
 The rubric will be attached to your final product.
Pre-writing activity (done as a class)
 We will discuss the differences between a news article, a feature
piece, a sports article, a human-interest story, and an editorial.
 We will find examples of these types of articles in our local paper.
Creative TAC Choice #2
A Mystery in the Making
You will write an original murder mystery short story using elements of an American
Mystery or of a British Mystery or a combination thereof. Your story must include
all plot elements AS WELL AS the Six Elements of a Good Mystery (see website).
REQUIREMENTS:
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Your creative story must be clearly American or British in style.
Your creative story must have the six elements of a good mystery.
Your creative story will be uploaded to turnitin.com by the due date.
The rubric will be attached to your final product.
You will create a cover to your story that presents a significant or symbolic
image from your story
The Length: it should be about five pages but not more than 10.
English mystery:
The formula Conan Doyle helped establish for the classic English mystery usually involves
several predictable elements: a "closed setting" such as an isolated house or a train; a
corpse; a small circle of people who are all suspects; and an investigating detective with
extraordinary reasoning powers. As each character in the setting begins to suspect the
others and the suspense mounts, it comes to light that nearly all had the means, motive, and
opportunity to commit the crime. Clues accumulate, and are often revealed to the reader
through a narrator like Watson, who is a loyal companion to the brilliant detective. The
detective grasps the solution to the crime long before anyone else, and explains it all
to the "Watson" at the end.
American mystery:
At about the same time as the English murder mystery was establishing itself, a distinctly
different school of detective fiction emerged in America. This "hard-boiled" style of fiction
took hold in the 1920s, the era of American prohibition and gangster violence. Popularized
through the accessibility of the "pulps" -- cheaply produced, gaudy magazines that featured
short, violent crime stories -- the hard-boiled American detective contrasts distinctly with
the classic English version. This detective is not a gentleman hero, but a hard-drinking,
tough-talking "private eye," often an outsider to the world of upper- and middle-class
values. The classic setting is not a country house but the brutal and corrupt city, and
the suspects might be anyone at all in such a vast and anonymous place. The action does
not move in a series of orderly steps toward a logical solution, but, instead, careens from
place to place and scene to scene. As Dashiell Hammett, one of the originators of the genre,
explained it, "Your private detective does not want to be an erudite solver of riddles in the
Sherlock Holmes manner; he wants to be a hard and shifty fellow, able to take care of
himself in any situation, able to get the best of anybody he comes in contact with, whether
criminal, innocent bystander, or client."
Pre-writing activity (done as a class)
 We will discuss the six elements of a mystery in class.