Class #1 January 30th Room 6-215
First day of class. Syllabus online at courselog. Premise and concept of story. Read stories as per calendar for next week’s class.
Stories due Feb. 13th or sooner, for workshop on the 20th.
Assessed on portfolio and on journal.
Journal entries should include stuff as listed on the course log. Portfolio is comprised of drafts (min 3) and three stories w/total 20 pages.
Story reviews and story analysis in MLA format. Essays re character, theme, etc., elements 2 critiques for mid/2 for final.
3 stories, 4 story critiques, and journal.
El professore explained the ability based system.
Exercise: Write a list of all that happened yesterday.
Woken with a kiss she was, and grumpy from the dark. No moon, a slit of light intruding on the dreams of other things that took her far away from stumbling down the black hall to the kitchen. A roll and meat and cheese and some quite red and green hot peppers slapped together under mustard. Wrapped in crinkly clean saran wrap like her heart. Pick an orange, the one with the little black rotting mark–he was so nasty to her before he went to bed.
Alone and sitting eating bonbons, ice cream and peaches for the breakfast meal.
Lists of what happened: Narrative is a sequence of events that happens, implying a certain cause and effect structure. We live forward into time. Linear sequence of what happened, but none of it is story.
Story is about change, usually significant change. Lists have some change in space. When patterns change, there is a dramatic difference.
(Dramatic and edge)
Point of view. First, second and third. Each story can be told from a different point of view and each would demand a different approach.
Story arc: provides info about change. Betty begins in one state, changes (married) mid point, another state, split, another state and arc is complete.
Early in story we’re introduced to the main character, the protagonist. Rising action, rising tension–complicating elements or conflicts follows an arc that the reader follows in rising interest. Hit climax, conflict overcome, tension is relieved and comes to resolution.
Another way of thinking about arc (J. Michael Strazinski) The hero has to want something. How bad does he desire it? Something must inhibit it, some force in the way. What will he do to overcome it.
Character must be sympathetic so that we are interested in what he’s going through.
Premise: are they escape stories, youth to adult stories, what is the basis of its conflict, a story of survival.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology