Story assignment due 3/6

Creature Story Draft

Due Thursday, 3/6 posted in Blackboard by 3:05 P.M.

Required:

*Generous and well-focused concrete sensory detail focusing on action/motion.
*Clear story structure consistently focused on main dramatic question and story arc to climax.

CHOOSE ONE OPTION:

Option 1

This story is about a human creature, a “creature” because he or she is an outsider, in some way not normal, not proper, not fully formed.  Maybe a child, a teenager, somebody young who doesn’t know yet what he or she is or wants to be.  Or somebody else, young or old or in between, who is outside the mainstream of things, a creature on the outside looking in.  Someone who doesn’t seem to understand the “normal” world or doesn’t want to be a part of it.

This story has one main dramatic question that drives it through 4 or more stages of development.  It works on a simple quest pattern:

Will the protagonist get to the place or gain the object (X) that she/he desires? 

(And what will the protagonist realize once he/she gets it/there?)

(For an example of the pattern, see our O. Henry Awards 2013 book, “The Visitor” (p. 190).  Here, the mother wants to know what happened to her son in the war; that’s her “quest.”  The story builds up through the encounter with “the visitor.”) 

Think about what the outsider might want.  To find a safe place, a refuge from an unsympathetic or unhappy world?  To find out why the world doesn’t make sense, to get at the truth of it?  To find a way into the “normal” world because being an outsider is scary, lonely, impossible to keep up?   

Or maybe something else.  To find a friend?  To find a love?  To find a new vision of things?

See the Post "Here's a love story" for an example of the love story pattern.

Here's another example that's a combination of sorts--the "outsider"-type protagonist (her boyfriend is a robber)  takes on the identity of a creature (the bull) on her crazy quest for being real: the bull, aimee bender


Option 2

This story is about a nonhuman creature, in the real world or in a world of the imagination.  Check out the Proseworks magazine for examples—there are stories about mermaids, and one about a Phoenix.     

Link here for The Maidens, Imogene, both mermaid stories: see imogene 

Get your creature on a main storyline via the quest pattern—the creature or another character with 4 or more stages of action that lead to the story climax, attaining or failing to attain the object of the quest.

Some quest patterns:

It may be a creature that is exposed to dangers and that is on a quest to survive.

It may be a creature imprisoned on a quest to escape to freedom.
It may be a creature lost and exiled on a quest to return to its home.
It may be a creature that is lonely and on a quest for a friend or a love.
It may be a creature in search of new knowledge, a new vision. 

FIRST PHASE

Aim for 500+ words on this draft.  Set up your protagonist and signal the main conflict/dramatic question. Suggestions: use a quest plot or a love-story plot.

QUEST: The protagonist wants to obtain something, someone, or to reach someplace, and the story will track the stages of the protagonist's struggle to do so and at the climax succeeding or failing.     

LOVE STORY: The protagonist falls in love, and the story will track the stages of the protagonist's moving toward making the love real and at the climax succeeding or failing.

SECOND PHASE

Expand the story to 1500 words minimum, including the following:

1. Rising story arc from opening conflict/dramatic questions through 3-5 stages and then reaching

2. story crisis/climax where conflict/dramatic question reaches high point and is resolved

3. concluding with 1-2 paragraphs of story resolution where the protagonist recognizes the changed situation (in relation to opening point of conflict/dramatic question).