Senior High School

Creative Writing
Quarter 4 – Module 11

Craft Essay
 Creative Writing – Grade 12 Alternative Delivery Mode Quarter 4 – Module 11:
Craft Essay

First Edition, 2020

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Published by the Department of Education

Secretary: Leonor Magtolis Briones

Undersecretary: Diosdado M. San Antonio

Development Team of the Module

Writer: ELLAINE F. SEE

Editor: ACE BENEDICT P. LACAP
Reviewer: JAMES V. HENSON
Illustrator:
Layout Artist: Jaime Agustin G. Garong IV
Management Team: SDS Zenia G. Mostoles, EdD, CESO V
ASDS Leonardo C. Canlas, EdD,
CESE ASDS Rowena T. Quiambao, CESE
CID Chief, Celia R. Lacanlale, PhD
SGOD Chief, Arceli S. Lopez, PhD
June D. Cunanan, EPS-I, English
Ruby M. Jimenez, EPS-I, LRMDS

Published by the Department of Education, Schools Division of Pampanga

Office Address: High School Boulevard, Brgy. Lourdes, City of San Fernando, Pampanga
Telephone No: (045) 435-2728
E-mail Address: [email protected]

Introductory Message
For the Facilitator:
 Welcome to the Creative Writing Alternative Delivery Mode (ADM) Module on
Craft Essay.
This module was collaboratively designed, developed and reviewed by educators
from public institutions to assist you, the teacher or facilitator in helping the learners
meet the standards set by the K to 12 Curriculum while overcoming their personal,
social, and economic constraints in schooling.
This learning resource hopes to engage the learners into guided and
independent learning activities at their own pace and time. Furthermore, this also aims
to help learners acquire the needed 21st century skills while taking into consideration
their needs and circumstances.
As a facilitator you are expected to orient the learners on how to use this module.
You also need to keep track of the learners' progress while allowing them to manage
their own learning. Furthermore, you are expected to encourage and assist the learners
as they do the tasks included in the module.

For the Learner:

Welcome to the Creative Writing Alternative Delivery Mode (ADM) Module on
Craft Essay.
This module was designed to provide you with fun and meaningful opportunities
for guided and independent learning at your own pace and time. You will be enabled to
process the contents of the learning resource while being an active learner.

What I Need to Know

This module will assist you in encouraging the learners to read the literary work
intensively. The learner will write a reflection on how the writer uses writing strategies,
genre elements, and contextual elements to have a creative construction of his or her
literary work.

Please help the learners in sharing their ideas and knowledge from their experiences,
so that there will be collaboration and learning will be easy.

Answers are written at the back of this module. Inculcate to the learners the value of
honesty while answering this module.

Socrates said, “An unexamined life is not worth living”. We should reflect on the things
that we are doing to correct and fix our mistakes.

We should look back on the way we live our lives, so we can plan on the new
ways to improve ourselves.
At the end of this module, you are expected to:
1. Recall the genre elements, writing strategies and contextual influences
2. Enumerate the techniques in writing a craft essay
3. Write a craft essay demonstrating awareness of and sensitivity to the
different literary and/or socio-political contexts of creative writing
 What I Know

Read the following sentences. Check the number that describes what a craft
essay is.
_______1. It discusses matters of creative construction of literary work.
_______2. It is an essay that reflects on the writing strategies of the writer.
_______3. It is an essay that discusses or defines a concept.
_______4. It is an essay that explains your position on an argument.
______ 5. It is an essay that provides how the writer uses the elements of genre
of literary work.

Lesson

11 Writing a Craft Essay

Writing a craft essay allows you to examine how the literary work has been
written, applying the writing strategies, the genre elements and the contextual
influences.

What’s In

Elements of Drama. Match Column A with Column B. Write the letters of the correct
answers on your notebook.
Column A Column B
1. It describes the character‘s actions, words, and the props on A. Aside
the stage and other sensorial embellishments.
2. A single character who delivers a long speech. B. Catharsis
3. A long speech is delivered as though the character is speaking to C. Dialogue
himself or herself alone on the stage.
4. Characters speak to and with one another. D. Monologue
5. When character steps out of the scene for a while to confidentially E. Pathos
address the audience, perhaps to comment
about the scene or another character
6. It is an emotional release in the audience caused by fear and F. Tragic Hero
pity.
7. The protagonist in tragedy is called G. Tragic Fall
8. It is the weakness of the protagonist H. Tragic Flaw
9. It is the result of the weakness of protagonist I. Spectacle
10. It is mere sentimentality J. Soliloquy

What’s New

Multiple Choice. Write the correct answers on your notebook. Refer to the choices given.

1-4 Which of the following are the elements of genre? (4pts.)

Audience Character Citation Exposition Plot Theme Setting

5-7. Which of the following are writing strategies? (3 pts.)

Developing Generating Pass it on Publish Revising Write an Write

and Ideas your work and Explanation what you
Organizing Editing want
Ideas

8. Which among the choices is a contextual influence that deals with society and politics?
(1pt.)
Authorial Critical Historical Literary Philoso- Sociopolitical Socio-
context Context Context context phical Context historical
context context

What is It

Craft Essay – It is an essay that discusses matters of creative construction that may
include reflections on writing strategies, genre elements, and contextual influences.

In Writing a Craft Essay, remember the Acronym CRAFT

C - Context - Read the literary work and identify what is the context or setting of the
story
R - Role- Remember your position or perspective as a writer.
A - Audience- Be mindful, for whom is the writing being produced.
F - Format- Choose what style, what genre, what type of creative writing you will craft
an essay
T - Topic- What is the writing about?

Techniques in Writing a Craft Essay

1. Have a good introduction by writing few sentences to catch the attention of your
readers. Provide a short background about the literary work being reviewed. Example:
Begin Again: On Endings in Nonfiction by E.V. De Cleyre
Talking, or writing, about endings is hard—whether it‘s the end of a marriage, the end of
a life, or the end of a book (lest one spoil the conclusion). Life rarely offers sudden and
definitive endings or epiphanic conclusions. Rather, events leading up to the end seem
to be a slow unfolding, occasionally bleeding into a new beginning. For writers of
nonfiction, dealing with actual occurrences often means there is no definitive end, and
even if there were (such as a death), there comes the aftermath—the grief, the coping,
the rebuilding.

How does a writer of nonfiction decide where to place the punctuation mark when lives
—grief, love, loss, and even joy—are ongoing?

Reference: De Cleyre, E.V. (2019) Begin Again: On Endings of Non Fiction. Retrieved (May 27, 2020) from:
http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/begin-again-on-endings-in-nonfiction/

2.In the body of your essay, present how the writer uses the genre elements, what are
the writing strategies used and what is the contextual influence used to make his/her
writing creative.

Example: Begin Again: On Endings in Nonfiction by E.V. De Cleyre

Marie Mutsuki Mockett‘s latest publication, Where the Dead Pause and the Japanese
Say Goodbye: A Journey, deals with the aftermath of more than one tragic event. The
author was still processing the loss of her father, three years earlier, when her Japanese
grandfather passed away in January of 2011. Only a few months later, a magnitude 9.0
earthquake struck off the coast of Japan, triggering a tsunami and resulting in
unfathomable devastation.

Mutsuki Mockett‘s relatives owned a temple only twenty-five miles from the Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear power plant, where the radiation levels were so high, the family could not
bury the grandfather‘s bones.

The author journeys back to Japan to re-connect with family—exploring the ways in
which communities are coping, witnessing both devastation and reconstruction, while
examining her own grief. The book‘s publication marked four years since her
grandfather‘s death and the earthquake. The catastrophic event is still fresh in people‘s
minds, the rebuilding efforts continue, and the grief surrounding it could be eternal.
Forget the mechanics of writing an ending—how does one reconcile writing ―the end,‖
when life is still unfolding?

Mutsuki Mockett answers that she ―didn‘t want to write a book that was a bummer,‖
and the question of where to end the book remained in the back of her mind throughout
her journeys to Japan. Fortunately, Japanese tradition offered an apt solution:
“The Japanese psychoanalyst Kawai Hayao has proposed that in many Japanese
fairy tales, the conflict in a story is resolved by what he calls „the aesthetic
solution.‟ In his book Dreams, Myths and Fairy Tales in
Japan, […] Hawai writes, „in the West, the hero‟s virtue is rewarded by a
happy ending. But in Japan, beautiful endings are much preferred to happy
endings.‟”

Mutsuki Mockett‘s solution begets another question: how does one do justice to the truth
of the story, whilst resonating with readers (one hopes, on a positive note)? Would the
truth of the book be undermined by a sugar-coated ending? How can a writer honor the
reality of events at the conclusion with the understanding that lives are still unfolding?

Rachel Cusk‘s memoir Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation begins at the end of a
marriage. She writes, ―The etymology of the word ‗aftermath‘ is ‗second mowing‘, a
second crop of grass that is sown and reaped after the harvest is in.‖ Aptly named,
Aftermath does not retrace the marital undoing, but the new beginning—the grieving
but mostly the rebuilding, the learning to live on one‘s own again, the newness of single
parenting and seismically shifting relationships. In this way, it is forwardlooking,
choosing not to rehash what happened, but examine what is sown and reaped after the
harvest.
“If someone were to ask me what disaster this was that had befallen my
life, I might ask if they wanted the story or the truth. […] I might explain
 that when I write a novel wrong, eventually it breaks down and stops and
won‟t be written any more, and I have to go back and look for flaws in its
design. The problem usually lies in the relationship between the story and
the truth. The story has to obey the truth, to represent it, like clothes
represent the body.”

By the end of the book, one gets the sense that Cusk is still reaping the remains,
processing ―the new reality.‖ Separation or divorce does not end when the
possessions are removed, assets split, and papers are signed. The effects are ongoing.
The learning to live anew, learning how to interact with this person you once knew,
takes time. There is no knot or bow that may succinctly mark the end of it. Yet one has
to end the book, to provide some sense of closure for the reader. Cusk accomplishes
this with a dizzying, disorienting shift in perspective. Given that the entire book is written
in first-person, the sudden arrival of third-person and the introduction of a new character
is jarring. One can only imagine it‘s as jarring as divorce: suddenly there‘s this new
person, suddenly everything has changed—except it isn‘t so sudden, when one stops to
think about it. Only at the end does Cusk allow readers a glimpse into what came before
the aftermath, and though it does not offer answers or point to a responsible party, it
does leave one with the sense that growth has occurred, if not resulted, from such a
split. No longer is it about the ―I.‖

Evan Osnos‘s National Book Award-winning Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth,
and Faith in the New China, chronicles a rapidly evolving nation, offering some sense of
permanence to a country that‘s still in flux. The book is not centered around Osnos‘s
personal experiences, but the end of the reporter‘s eight-year stint in China offers a
convenient conclusion—a departure that fittingly corresponds with the beginning of a
new friendship. Claudia Rankine‘s Citizen adds new lines to page 134 each time it goes
to print—honoring the deceased. There is an interesting and inherent tension in
memoirs rooted in current events or the author‘s life, knowing a life or lives are still
unfolding. The lines between the life and the story become blurred.
“He says, narrative is the aftermath of violent events. It is a means of
reconciling yourself with the past. He says, the violence in the Odyssey is
a story told afterwards, in a cave.
I want to live, I say. I don‟t want to tell my story. I want to live.
Z says, the old story has to end before a new one can begin.” (Cusk)

Reference: De Cleyre, E.V. (2019) Begin Again: On Endings of Non Fiction. Retrieved (May 27, 2020) from:
http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/begin-again-on-endings-in-nonfiction/

3.Summarize your essay in the conclusion with a strong ending to help your readers
reflect on the literary work.
Example: Begin Again: On Endings in Nonfiction by E.V. De Cleyre

In literature, we have a chance for closure. We can put the punctuation mark wherever
we like, whether it marks the end of grief, the beginning of a relationship, the birth of a
child, the end of a life, or the decision to live again. The aftermath, Cusk writes, is ―life
with knowledge of what has gone before.‖ Writers are not seers. Armed with the
―knowledge of what has gone before,‖ we mold events, truths, into narrative, and hope
and know that the last punctuation mark is not the end, but the invitation to begin again.

Reference: De Cleyre, E.V. (2019) Begin Again: On Endings of Non-Fiction. Retrieved (May 27, 2020) from:
http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/begin-again-on-endings-in-nonfiction/
 What’s More

Independent Activity 1
Songs are one of the orientations of creative writing. Write a short introduction for
your craft essay using these lyrics of ―Heal our Land‖ sung by Jamie Rivera.

Heal Our Land Jamie Rivera

If my people will humble themselves

Humble themselves and pray
If they seek my face and humble themselves
And turn from their wicked ways
I will hear from heaven and forgive their sins
I will hear from heaven and heal their land
Lord, heal our land
Father, heal our land
Hear our cry and turn our nation back to You
Lord, heal our land
Hear us oh, Lord, and heal our land
Forgive our sin and heal our broken land
Lord, we vow our knee, we humble ourselves
Humble ourselves and pray
Lord, we seek your face and humble ourselves
And turn from my wicked ways
Father in Your mercy, forgive our sins
Father in Your mercy, come heal our land
Lord, heal our land
Father, heal our land
Hear our cry and turn our nation back to You
Lord, heal our land
Hear us oh, …

Complete the table. Write your answers on your notebook.

Introduction Sentence
Few sentences to catch reader‘s
attention

Background Information about the

literary work

Independent Assessment 1
Write the introduction of the craft essay using this love letter. Write your answer
on your notebook.
Dear Jay,

We have been together for many years. You know what, every time I see you,
my heart is pounding so fast. It looks like I am in a race. I can't look directly into your
eyes because if I do that, you may notice the sign that I am not comfortable. I cannot
tell you directly what I feel. I am afraid that I will lose you if I reveal my true feelings for
you. You know what, I am very jealous, whenever there are girls around you. I want
them to disappear so that I can be with you. But since I am your best friend, I am not
going to admit my love to you. I will continue to love you secretly because I know if I do
that, we can be together for more years.
Lovingly yours,
Annie

Introduction:
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
________________________________________

Independent Activity 2
Using the same lyrics of the song ―Heal Our Land‖, fill in the blanks. Write your
answers on your notebook.
The writing strategy of the writer __________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________

The writer used _____________ an element of poetry that ____________________.

He/she also used ___________. This element adds __________________________.

The type of context used in the literary work is ___________________________ this

context helps the reader to _________________________________________.

Independent Assessment 2
Using the same love letter above, write the body of your craft essay. Write your
answer on your notebook.
Body:

______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________

Independent Activity 3
Using the same song lyrics ―Heal Our Land‖, fill in the blanks. Write your
answer on your notebook.

In the end the writer wants to _____________________________It only shows that

_____________________________. We should remember
_____________________________
Independent Assessment 3
Write a conclusion for your craft essay using the same love letter above.
Conclusion:
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________

What I Have Learned

Reflect on what you have learned after taking up this lesson by completing the
chart below. Answer in 2 to 3 sentences. Write your answers on your notebook.

What I Can Do
 Write a 500-word craft essay. It should not only focus on the details of the literary
work but also its contribution. The essay should raise awareness on the importance of
the literary work. Write your answer on your notebook.
1. Song- Fight Song by Rachel Prove I'm alright song
Platten
Rubric: For Facilitator’s Use Only
Like a small boat My power's turned on
On the ocean Starting right now I'll be strong
Sending big waves I'll play my fight song
Into motion And I don't really care if nobody else
Like how a single word believes
Can make a heart open 'Cause I've still got a lot of fight left in me
I might only have one match
But I can make an explosion Losing friends and I'm chasing sleep
Everybody's worried about me
And all those things I didn't say In too deep
Wrecking balls inside my brain Say I'm in too deep (in too deep)
I will scream them loud tonight And it's been two years I miss my home
Can you hear my voice this time? But there's a fire burning in my bones
This is my fight song Still believe
Take back my life song Yeah, I still believe
And all those…
Criteria 4- Excellent 3- Very Good 2- Good 1- Developing
Content The essay discuss The essay The essay The essay did not
the creative discuss the reflect only on discuss the creative
construction by creative the genre construction of the
reflecting the genre construction by elements, and literary work
elements, writing reflecting on the did not include
strategies and genre elements the writing
and writing strategies and
contextual
strategies of the contextual
influences of the
literary work influences of
literary work the literary
work
Organization The introduction The The There is no
provides introduction introduction clear
background provides states the introduction,
information about background main topic. A reflection, or
the topic. The information and conclusion is conclusion.
reflection is relevant reflection included.
and presented in provides an
logical order. The overview of the
conclusion is strong. paper. A
conclusion is
included
Grammar and There are no errors There are one to There are three There are five or
Mechanics in grammar, two errors in to four errors in more errors in
capitalization, grammar, grammar, grammar,
spelling, and capitalization, capitalization, capitalization,
punctuation. spelling, and spelling, and spelling, and
punctuation. punctuation. punctuation.
Total Score

Assessment
 Answer the following questions. Write your answers on your notebook.
1. What is a craft essay? Define it in your own words.
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
2. What should you include in the craft essay?
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
3. What are the techniques in writing a craft essay?
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________

Additional Activities

Write a journal about your experience in writing a craft essay. Write your answer
on your notebook.
________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
 Answer Key

Answer may vary

Answers may vary What I Can Do Answers may vary
ssessment
1 ndependent A I Additional Activities
Answer may vary
Answers may vary What I Have Learned conclusion
E 10 A 5. on
reflection
.G 9 C 4. ndependent Activity 1 I summarize the
.H 8 J 3. Answers may vary on body and
What's More ssessment
3 ndependent A I
discuss the reflection
.F 7 D 2.
providing background,
.B 6 I 1.
Answers may vary introduction by
) Sociopolitical context(s 8 Write a good 3.
What’s In ndependent
3 Activity I
contextual influences
Organizing Ideas elements and
√ 5. and Editing, Developing and Answers may vary strategies, genre
) x ( 4. Generating Ideas, Revising 7 -5 ssessment
2 ndependent A I reflections of writing
You should include 2.
x) ( 3.
Character Answers may vary construction
√ 2. discusses the creative
√ 1. Plot, Theme, Setting, 4 -1 ndependent
2 Activity I
Craft essay 1.

What I Know What's New What's More Assessment

References
De Cleyre, E.V. (2019) Begin Again: On Endings of Non Fiction. Retrieved May 27,
2020 from: http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/begin-again-on-endings-in-nonfiction/

Platten, Rachel “Fight Song” Retrieved May 27, 2020 from:

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/rachelplatten/fightsong.html

Rivera, Jamie “Heal our Land” Retrieved May 27, 2020 from:
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/jamierivera/healourland.html

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Department of Education – Schools Division of Pampanga, Learning

Resource Management System

High School Boulevard, Brgy. Lourdes, City of San Fernando

Pampanga, Philippines 1200

Telephone No: (045) 435-2728

Email Address: [email protected]