Pressing on toward the First Draft; Outline Revision

This afternoon, please redo your outlines as they are not formatted correctly.

If your outline is not in the proper format you will receive no grade for it. Sometimes formatted counts a lot to publishers. It's also a good skill to have. Most students got the "gist" of the idea, without reading or looking at the examples as to how to set up the outline. Shame. Learn. That's your job as a student.

Use Roman numerals for major things like: Title, character, plot, setting, theme, etc. Use #'s for details headings under this: Under CHARACTER, you might put: 1. John, 2. Peppie, 3. Snashza

Under these, use letters to add details 1. John: a. Hobo, b. friendly, c. Protestant, d. 50-55 years old, but looks younger.

Outlines should always be parallel--in other words if there is a #1, there has to be a #2. If you have an A., you need a B.

More help on outlines:

How to Create an Outline
Creating a Plot Outline
Outlining a Story (tips)

Tips from your questions/problems:

Low self-esteem & finding motivation to write
Finding motivation for characters
Organizing scenes & moving plot & plot motivators

Once you have your outline corrected and turned in, please continue working on your story draft. Complete a "ticket out the door".

If you do not finish your draft today in class, please complete it on your own time over break. Additionally, please complete the short story collection you have been reading and be prepared to take an exam on the book when you return from break. This will be an open-note exam, so taking notes may be a good idea.

HOMEWORK: See above. Have a great spring break! Woo-hoo, sunshine!

Short Story Project: Outline due!; Working Through the Middle

Today, please turn in your outline. Mark the # of words you have completed so far and at the end of the period.

Take 10-15 minutes to discuss the short stories you read from last class! Decide with your group what stories to read for next class!

After the Beginning: now what? Working through the middle

You began typing the moment you had an idea. You started off strong. Now three sentences in, or three paragraphs, or even three pages, you've reached your first stumbling block: what happens next?

With prompts and experience, most writers can get started. What's difficult is continuing through a murky middle. Here are some tips to slog through the worst part of your writing experience:

1. Most of the time we get stuck when we don't know what our characters want. Give your character a motive (a desire, or goal, etc.) to keep him/her moving forward.

2. Forward march: Move the plot forward by adding conflict and action. Involve your characters in a specific action or direct conflict with another character. This is particularly helpful if you are bored.

3. Put yourself in your protagonist's shoes: go inside a character's head. This is a common error that young writers constantly forget to do. Get your character's perspective. What would you think in a similar situation? What would you see if you were in this scene? What would you notice? What would you say? What would you do?

4. Skip forward in time. No one said this story has to be chronological. Advance the time period and move forward with the plot. Skip a line to indicate you've changed time (either forward or backward).

5. Skip to another setting/location. Move your character to a new setting. What happens there? Describe the setting/location, and the actions of minor characters. Skip a line to indicate change of setting.

6. Skip to a scene happening at the same time, but in a different location. Skip a line to indicate a change of setting.

7. Skip to a different protagonist or the perspective of a new character. Skip a line to indicate a change of POV.

8. Press forward: If you need more time to research details and don't want to stop to look up a fact or information, indicate what you need to look up by BOLDING or CAPITALIZING a note to yourself. You can also insert NOTES using your word processor feature under the insert menu.

9. Skip to the next major plot point. If you know where the story is going, but don't know yet how to get there, skip a line and write the next scene.

10. Go back to brainstorming. Use your journal to try out some new things. If you don't know (or are stuck on):

• Your characters: write a character sketch, draw a picture of your character, or develop your character's background history
• Your setting: draw your setting, find a picture of an appropriate setting on the internet, describe your setting using imagery--what sounds, smells, tastes, textures, and sights would one experience in the setting
• Your plot: list possible challenges or problems that a character might face in a similar situation or setting. Decisions characters make (or don't make) often create conflict. Create a mind map or use a graphic organizer to focus on plot elements.
• Your theme: create a premise for your story. What do you want to communicate about the human condition? What lesson or experience are you trying to relate?

HOMEWORK: Work on your short story on your own, in your own space. Short story drafts (complete or incomplete) are due Friday. Please read the stories your group assigned.

Outlining; Short Story Discussion; Getting Started

After our short story discussion with your groups, please return to the lab (or log on) and brainstorm an idea for your own short story.

One tool for writers as generating ideas or in the first stage of the writing process is:

Outlining

An outline is a very useful tool to use before writing a formal essay. Some students love them, others don't. If you are having trouble figuring out or organizing your essay, try using one. For this assignment, please try using an outline for your plot points. Your story should have AT LEAST three scenes: a beginning, a middle, and an ending!

It is also helpful to write notes in outline format. It saves time and you can use your notes (reading or from classes) to prepare for tests or in composing essays.

How to do it? Look here.

Sample Outline

After sketching ideas for a story based on your chosen genre--remember to appease your audience by writing something that they may like--and using the writing exercises we did in class, come up with your own outline for a short story. When you have finished, go on to this next point:

Beginning a Story

A beginning promises more to come. It should hook our attention, allow us entrance into the world of the story. Beginnings need to be full of potential for the characters (and the reader). Some simple ways writers do this is the following (taken from The Fiction Writer's Workshop by Josip Novakovich)

Setting: setting sets the stage and raises our expectations, introduces us to location, time, and supports character, tone, mood and POV.

On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about half-way between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored hotel. Deferential palms cool its flushed façade, and before it stretches a short dazzling beach. Lately it has become a summer resort of notable and fashionable people.

Ideas: While this can sometimes be dry or essay-like, it can also characterize a speaker, a place, an important motif or tone of a story.

“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them…”

Imagistic or Strong Sensations: Imagery invites your reader to experience your narrative, giving you a good start. It also helps establish setting, usually.

1956. The air-conditioned darkness of the Avenue Theater smells of flowery pomade, sugary chocolates, cigarette smoke, and sweat.

A Need or Motive: Need is essential for all major characters. It is usually what drives the
conflict and characterization, also the plot in a story. Starting off with a motive or need is
the fastest way to learn what characters want.

On his way to the station William remembered with a fresh pang of disappointment that he was taking nothing down to the kiddies. Their first words always were as they ran to greet him, “What have you got for me, daddy?” and he had nothing.

Action: Action catches our attention.

The pass was high and wide and he jumped for it, feeling it slap flatly against his hands, as he shook his hips to throw off the halfback who was diving at him.

Scene: Usually in one sentence, combines action, setting, and character.

Card-playing was going on in the quarters of Narumov, an officer in the Guards.

Symbolic Object: Describe an object that has significance to your story, characters, plot. Usually a reader will recognize the importance of an object if mentioned in the first paragraph of a story.

An antique sleigh stood in the yard, snow after snow banked up against its eroded runners.

Sex: Sex sells. It also gets our attention.

After I became a prostitute, I had to deal with penises of every imaginable shape and size.

Character portrait: Introduces a reader to your protagonist or an important character.

The girl’s scalp looked as though it had been singed by fire—strands of thatchy red hair snaked away from her face, then settled against her skin, pasted there by sweat and sunscreen and the blown grit and dust of travel.

Character’s Thoughts: Like a portrait, this one’s internal.

If I am out of my mind, it’s all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.

Question: A direct way to motivate the reader, who often wants to know the answer to a posed question.

“Well, Peter, any sign of them yet?”

Prediction: Creating an ominous tone, a prediction foreshadows or hints at the ultimate ending of a story.

Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents’ divorce.

Anecdote: an anecdote (a short story) can introduce an important idea or theme, create a symbol, or set a particular tone.

The village of Ukleyevo lay in the ravine, so that only the belfry and the chimneys of the cotton mills could be seen from the highway and the railroad station. When passers-by would ask what village it was, they were told: “that’s the one where the sexton ate up all the caviar at the funeral.”

Activity: In your journal write a variety of "opening lines" for your story. Select the best one and use that to begin (remember to refer to your outline!)

Using the best opening, begin a short story. During the rest of class, write. See where this opening takes you. If you get stuck, get unstuck by going back to the planning process.

HOMEWORK: Continue reading the short stories in your collection. Meet with your group to decide how far to read for Wednesday's class.

Genre Writing: Generating Ideas, Fleshing Out Characters/Plot Advice

This morning, please take 10-15 minutes to read the handout article based on your genre study. If you do not finish the article during this time, please feel free to continue reading during your lab time or as homework.

In the lab: Please view the following videos (if you did not watch them last class):

A. Fantasy/Sci-fi: Creating Worlds & Tips for Writing Fantasy & Top Five Tips in Fantasy/Sci-fi

B. Writing Detective Fiction & How to Write a Mystery  & Thriller Crime Fiction #1 & Thriller Crime Fiction #2 & Episode 1: Writing Detective Fiction

C. Tips for Writing Romance & Writing Lovable Romance Heroes & How to Write Erotic Fiction & Romance Authors: About the Writing Process & How to Plot a Romance Novel/Story & Historical Fiction Advice

Generic writing advice:

D. Literary fiction versus commercial fiction & How to Write Fiction Stories 

E. Writing Historical Fiction tips & Memoir Writing

F. Don't Mistake Words for Writing & Bad Writers Have Nothing to Say (Tips for Screenwriters too!)

Limerick Exercise; Short Story Group

This afternoon, please try your hand at writing a limerick or two.

A limerick is a  5-line poem (usually in anapestic meter) with a rhyme scheme of (AABBA). Limericks were originally meant to be obscene or dirty. They are still often meant to be humorous. The first, second and fifth lines are longer than the third and fourth in meter.

The form appeared in England in the early years of the 18th century and popularized by Edward Lear in the 19th century. The following limerick is of unknown origin:

The limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical.
  But the good ones I've seen
  So seldom are clean
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

Here's a dirty one: (anonymous)

A phobic young virgin named Flinn
Shouted before she gave in
   "It isn't the deed
   Or the fear of the seed,
But the big worm shedding its skin!"


Well, enough of that. Now on to some practical and (hopefully useful) advice about storytelling.

The Clues to a Great Story: Ted Talk with Andrew Stanton (author of John Carter of Mars, Wall-E & Toy Story)

TASK: Get together in groups of 2-4 and discuss Andrew Stanton's advice. Apply it to stories, movies, novels you have read this year or in the past. Share your ideas with your peers.

Then, please brainstorm plots, premises, and characters that would likely fall into your genre or style.

A. Characters: make a list of characters in your journal
B. Create premises for short story ideas. A premise is a 1-sentence description of the basic idea of your story.
C. Plot: create plot events for your story ideas. Include lists of plot events appropriate to your chosen genre.

During the second half of class, please make a decision as to which genre of short story you want to read and focus on in the next week or two:

A. Romance/Realistic Fiction (Cowboys Are My Weakness or What Am I Without Him?)
B. Fantasy (Fragile Things)
C. Mystery (Adventures of Sherlock Holmes)

For the remaining time in class...

Fiction Videos for Groups: (please watch and learn!--feel free to take notes in your journal!)

A. Fantasy/Sci-fi: Creating Worlds & Tips for Writing Fantasy 

B. Writing Detective Fiction & How to Write a Mystery 

C. Tips for Writing Romance & Writing Lovable Romance Heroes 

D. Literary fiction versus commercial fiction & How to Write Fiction Stories 

E. Writing Historical Fiction tips & Memoir Writing

F. Don't Mistake Words for Writing & Bad Writers Have Nothing to Say (Tips for Screenwriters)

HOMEWORK: Once you have decided please pick up these books from the library and begin reading one of the short stories in your collection. Complete at least 1 story from your collection. Decide on a group how many pages you will read for our next class. 

Samuel D. Hunter Master Class at MCC

If you did NOT attend the seminar today with the rest of the class, please complete the following:

1. Write a short play of at least 3-5 pages in play script format. Turn this in for participation credit.

2. If you finish early before we are back in school, please work on your portfolio. Write.

If you DID attend the seminar, I have taken attendance and you have received participation credit for the master class. You do not have to complete the play exercise the others who did not go to the master class had to complete.

Have a nice weekend! 

Geva Play Contest; MCC Field Trip & Other Events

Geva's Young Writer's Showcase:

Submit up to 3 of your 10-minute play scripts (after you proofread them) to this link:
youngwriters@gevatheatre.org

Please include a title page with clear contact information:
Name
Address
Phone #
Email

In the post below, please make a comment if you have entered your play so you can get credit from me.

Upcoming Events:

• March 15: Field trip/Master Class to see Hunter at MCC (5th period -8th period)
• March 19: period 2/3 - Master Class with Karen Thompson Walker, author of The Age of Miracles. Bring your journals and your imagination!
• March 25-28: Playwrights' Festival:
• March 25: Guest Writer's Panel on Writing for the Stage: 7:00 Black Box (free event)
• March 26: Play script readings: Please submit play scripts you would like to see staged and/or read! 7:00 Black Box (free event)
• March 27: 24-Hour Play Festival: if you are interested in acting, directing or writing, please let Ms. Gamzon or Mr. Craddock know.
• March 28: 24-Hour Play Festival Performance: Black Box ($5 admission/fund raiser for our department--tickets available at the door)
• Senior Coffeehouse: May 28 at 7:00