This male lion rests in the soft grass on a gloomy day in South Africa .

1. In Port Lockroy, Antarctica, two newly hatched gentoo penguin chicks get a quick look at the outside world as one of their parents stands up on the nest for a moment. (This photo and caption were submitted to My Shot.)

2. This male lion rests in the soft grass on a gloomy day in South Africa. (This photo and caption were submitted to Your Shot.)

3. I hiked several hours through the night in Patagonia to find a tree I had seen a few days earlier and photograph it with the night sky. This photo and caption were submitted to the 2013 National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest.

4. Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we would like to stretch out over the whole of time. Albert Camus

5. I wanted to destroy something beautiful I'd never have. Burn the Amazon rain forests. Pump chlorofluorocarbons straight up to gobble the ozone. Open the dump valves on supertankers and uncap offshore oil wells. I wanted to kill all the fish I couldn't afford to eat, and smother the French beaches I'd never see. I wanted the whole world to hit bottom. I really wanted to put a bullet between the eyes of every whale or dolphin that gave up and ran itself aground.

6. Your Task… Construct two + paragraphs in which you create an original character who deeply loves an object but also wishes to destroy this object. In the final sentences, you will decide the fate o f the object. You must consider the following: a) what does your character want most? b) why does he want it? c)what will be lost in the object’s destruction? d) what will be gained? Your purpose here is two-fold: 1) To inform the reader and 2) To understand writing as a process

7. Structure: Paragraph 1 : Describe your object in great detail, highlighting those qualities which make it “beautiful.” Paragraph 2: Develop your character further by discussing the complex feelings he has for the object. Final sentences: Decide the fate of your object, explaining the character’s rationale for his decision.

9. The Object • Select the most salient features • Choose the most specific adjectives • Decide on an order of details: top to bottom, left to right, visual spatial, relational

10. Starfish

11. On one corner of my dresser sits a smiling toy clown on a tiny unicycle--a gift I received last Christmas from a close friend. The clown's short yellow hair, made of yarn, covers its ears but is parted above the eyes. The blue eyes are outlined in black with thin, dark lashes flowing from the brows. It has cherry-red cheeks, nose, and lips, and its broad grin disappears into the wide, white ruffle around its neck. The clown wears a fluffy, two-tone nylon costume. The left side of the outfit is light blue, and the right side is red. The two colors merge in a dark line that runs down the center of the small outfit. Surrounding its ankles and disguising its long black shoes are big pink bows. The white spokes on the wheels of the unicycle gather in the center and expand to the black tire so that the wheel somewhat resembles the inner half of a grapefruit. The clown and unicycle together stand about a foot high. As a cherished gift from my good friend Tran, this colorful figure greets me with a smile every time I enter my room.

12. The Character Character is revealed in different ways: speech, actions, gestures, dress, beliefs. However the question that helps us best understand someone’s character is a simple one: What does this person want very badly? All sorts of questions begin to emerge from this question:

13. What does this person want very badly?

14. Miss Duling dressed as plainly as a Pilgrim on a Thanksgiving poster we made in the schoolroom, in a longish black-and-white checked gingham dress, a bright thick wool sweater the red of a railroad lantern--she'd knitted it herself--black stockings and her narrow elegant feet in black hightop shoes with heels you could hear coming, rhythmical as a parade drum down the hall. Her silky black curly hair was drawn back out of curl, fastened by high combs, and knotted behind. She carried her spectacles on a gold chain hung around her neck. Her gaze was in general sweeping, then suddenly at the point of concentration upon you. With a swing of her bell that took her whole right arm and shoulder, she rang it, militant and impartial, from the head of the front steps of Davis School when it was time for us all to line up, girls on one side, boys on the other. We were to march past her into the school building, while the fourth-grader she nabbed played time on the piano, mostly to a tune we could have skipped to, but we didn't skip into Davis School. What does this person want very badly?