Reality Writes! A Project-Based Curriculum for Aspiring Writers

Reality Writes! is a self-paced curriculum that ends with a novel. Juniors, seniors, and advanced middle school students choose a real historical subject, verify it, and write 18,000 to 25,000 words. They design the pages and publish on Amazon. The student sets the pace. The finished product is the novel.

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A high-school student can spend a year writing papers that no one outside the house will read. Reality Writes! is the other assignment. The student picks a real historical subject, proves it in the record, and writes a short historical novel of 18,000 to 25,000 words. Then the student designs the pages, lists the book on Amazon, and writes a marketing plan for it.

The course is self-paced. A parent or mentor signs the gate at the end of each module. Mentoring is not required to finish the book. Optional workshops are not part of this handbook.

Seventeen modules take the work from subject to listing:

1. Choose a subject that can be checked. 2. Build a research plan and a source log. 3. Read three novellas and four short stories for structure, not plot summary. 4. Write the logline, synopsis, and outline before the long draft. 5. Look at the market for that subject. 6. Write the draft. 7. Edit it, with a cap on kept AI rewrites. 8. Get a peer read. 9. Lock the final manuscript. 10. Design the cover. 11. Lay out the interior. 12. Open the KDP draft and order a proof. 13. Mark the proof. 14. Apply the marks. 15. Build the formats you will sell. 16. Write a small marketing plan. 17. Launch.

The reading list is John Steinbeck’s The Pearl and Of Mice and Men, Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, and short stories by Steinbeck, Hemingway, Edgar Allan Poe, and Jack London. Students may write about any historical subject. The book does not assume a war.

Each module lists the West Virginia Grade 11–12 English language arts and social studies standards it meets, plus computer science and entrepreneurship standards where the work calls for them. Citation is not an endorsement by the West Virginia Board of Education.

Zac Northup has written and published under his own name and for clients since 1996. He holds an M.A. in History from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He lives in Putnam County, West Virginia.

Printed copies of the three novellas are not included. Adobe Creative Cloud is not included. An adult must open the KDP account if the student is under 18.