Writing Diaries

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 Writing Diaries
Contents
3 What are Diaries?
4-5 Activity: Characteristics of Diaries
6-7 The Language of Diaries
8 Stories into Diaries
9-10 Diaries as Historical Documents
11-14 Writing Diaries
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 What are Diaries?

Diaries can take many different forms, but essentially they

remain a way of recording daily events. The more formal
kinds of diary can be log books of experiments or journals
of expeditions; however, the type with which most of us
are familiar is the personal diary which records our day-to-
day lives.

Activity
Look at the list of characteristics given on the next slide
and sort them into those which you think apply to diaries
and those which do not apply to diaries. Compare your
choices with the lists on the following slide.
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 Which of these descriptions apply to diaries?

incomplete exaggerated

formal honest
realistic
first person
casual
informal
subjective
third person
fictional detailed

unemotional
objective
true
personal imaginative
chatty dull

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You would expect diaries to be: You would not expect diaries to be:

first person third person

subjective objective
personal formal
chatty imaginative
informal unemotional
casual fictional

You would hope that diaries were: Some diaries may also be:
honest dull
true fiction incomplete
realistic exaggerated detailed

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 The Language of Diaries
The language of diaries can vary greatly: some diaries may be
written in enormous detail; some may be just brief notes of events;
the vocabulary may be kept fairly formal, or it may be written in
slang, using abbreviations and contracted forms of words.

Q: Why does the language used in diaries vary so much?

A: A diary is a very personal document, so the language of

diaries will have as many variations as there are people
writing them.

This means that writing a diary gives you an opportunity to express

your personality in the language you use. Some authors have
found that diaries give them the chance to develop the “voice” of a
character in fiction. For example, The Diary of Adrian Mole by Sue
Townsend shows how the diary form can be used humorously.

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 The Language of Diaries
You now need to think about the language and style
which would be appropriate for a diary if you were
writing it. You can, of course, use slang and
contractions which would not be appropriate in a formal
essay.
The following activity will help you to think about the
language which you would use in different situations.

Activity
Think back to your most recent school trip. You are going to
write two versions of this outing.
1. An account set as homework, for display in school.
2. Your diary entry for the day of the trip.
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 Stories Into Diaries
Activity
Using the characteristics which you have identified as being
typical of a diary, convert the following short extract into two
diary entries.
1. Amy is 12 years old.
2. Amy is 24 years old.

Amy was exhausted. She had spent the day rushing round in
the pouring rain, desperately trying to find a suitable birthday
present for her grandmother. It was all very well Gran saying
that she was too old for presents, but Amy knew that that did
not mean she would not be expecting any. Now, as she sat
nursing a mug of coffee and munching on a well-earned
chocolate biscuit, Amy found herself hoping that Gran would
like another house plant for her collection. Well, she would find
out tomorrow!
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Diaries as Historical Documents
Some of you may well keep a diary. Most people try to do
so at some time; however, many diaries are abandoned
after quite a short time.
Writing an account of your daily life may not sound very
exciting, but in three hundred years time, a record of
ordinary life in the twenty-first century could be fascinating
to historians.
Back in the seventeenth century a man called Samuel
Pepys kept a diary which happens to cover the time when
London was suffering an outbreak of plague. Pepys’ diary
reveals things about the lives of ordinary people which
official documents would never record. Who knows, in the
future, it could be your diary which reveals what daily life
was like in the twenty-first century!

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Diaries as Historical Documents
A much more recent example of a diary which has given
people an insight into a way of life is the Diary of Anne
Frank. This diary, kept by a young Jewish girl, tells of her
life in hiding during the Second World War. It gives a
human face to the statistics of those who died in the
Holocaust and makes us far more aware of the reality of
life in those conditions than any third person description
could ever do.
Extension Activity
If you have not read this book, try to do so: it should be in your
library. When you have read it, analyse why it is so effective as
an account of the war: many books have been written about
the war, what makes this one different from the rest?

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 Writing Diaries
We have seen that diaries can be a good way of learning about
someone’s life. They can also be a useful way of exploring a
character in a play or novel: by developing a piece of work which
is written using the “voice” of a character, you become much
more familiar with the way in which he or she thinks.
You are now going to write some diary entries using your
imagination.
On the slides which follow, there are three scenarios taken from
some of Shakespeare’s best known plays. You will use these
details and your own imagination to “get under the skin” of the
character concerned and write his/her diary entry for the events
described.
Use modern English and try to make the personality of the
individual show in the content and language of each entry.

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 A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Act I scene i Lysander and
Lysander: I have a widow aunt, a dowager Hermia are in love.
Of great revenue, and she hath no child: They wish to marry.
From Athens is her house remote seven leagues; Hermia’s father,
Egeus, has
And she respects me as her only son.
forbidden it.
There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee,
Egeus wants
And to that place the sharp Athenian law Hermia to marry
Cannot pursue us. If thou lov’st me then, Demetrius whom
Steal forth thy father’s house to-morrow night, she hates.
And in the wood, a league without the town, Hermia has been
Where I did meet thee once with Helena, told to obey her
father or face
To do observance to a morn of May, death.
There will I stay for thee. Hermia and
As Lysander, write your diary entry for the day Lysander plan to
you decided to run away with Hermia. run away at night.
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 Twelfth Night
Act I scene ii
Viola: There is a fair behaviour in thee,
captain;
And though that nature with a beauteous wall Viola has been
Doth oft close in a pollution, yet of thee shipwrecked in Illyria.
I will believe thou hast a mind that suits Her twin Sebastian who
With this thy fair and outward character. was with her has not been
I prithee -and I’ll pay thee bounteously,- found: they fear he has
Conceal me what I am, and be my aid drowned.
For such disguise as haply shall become Viola decides to disguise
The form of my intent. I’ll serve this duke: herself as a man and offer
her services as a courtier
Thou shalt present me as a eunuch to him:
to the local duke, Orsino.
It may be worth thy pains; for I can sing
And speak to him in many sorts of music
That will allow me very worth of his service. Write Viola’s diary for her
What else may hap to time I will commit; first night in Illyria.
Only shape thou thy silence to my wit.
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 Julius Caesar
Brutus: That you do love me, I am nothing jealous; Caesar recently won
What you would work me to, I have some aim: the civil war.
How I have thought of this and of these times, Brutus and Cassius
I shall recount hereafter; for this present, meet at Caesar’s
I would not, so with love I might entreat you, celebration of his
Be any further mov’d. What you have said victory.
I will consider; what you have to say Cassius thinks that
I will with patience hear and answer such high Caesar is too powerful
things. and intends to be a
Till then, my noble friend, chew upon this: dictator.
Brutus had rather be a villager Cassius tells Brutus
Than to repute himself a son of Rome that Caesar is no better
than he is and he must
Under these hard conditions as this time
stop Caesar.
Is like to lay upon us.
Brutus seems to agree,
Write Brutus’ diary for the day of at least in part, with
Caesar’s celebration parade. Cassius.
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