Middle East Narrative Project

Today, please write. Research. Then write some more. Read Sunrise Over Fallujah. Write. Research. Write again. 

Use your time in the lab to progress on your Middle East narrative project. You should have a draft completed by Friday.

To help you, consider these beginnings of stories that you have learned from previous classes:

1. Get in there! Start a story in media res or with an interesting hook.
2. Don't wallow in backstory (not in the beginning anyway). We don't need to know the history of your protagonist just yet. Start with action. Start with a decision. Give your protagonist a goal and a time limit!
3. Start a story in any of these ways:

Setting: setting sets the stage and raises our expectations, introduces us to location, time, and supports character, tone, mood and POV.
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.
Imagistic or Strong Sensations: Imagery invites your reader to experience your narrative, giving you a good start. It also helps establish setting, usually.
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.
Action: Action catches our attention.
Create a scene: In one sentence, combine action, setting, and character. Then move on with the advice above.
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.
Sex: Sex sells. It also gets our attention.
Character portrait: Introduces a reader to your protagonist or an important character.
Character’s Thoughts: Like a portrait, this one’s internal.
Question: A direct way to motivate the reader, who often wants to know the answer to a posed question.
Prediction: Creating an ominous tone, a prediction foreshadows or hints at the ultimate ending of a story.
Anecdote: an anecdote (a short story) can introduce an important idea or theme, create a symbol, or set a particular tone.

After the Beginning: now what?

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?

Endings:

Circular: The beginning and the end reflect upon one another, often using the same situation, setting, characterization, or even repeating the same line or idea presented in the opening. This provides a sense of parallelism in your story structure. It is best used when suggesting that the past and future of a character/story is similar.
Matching vs. Nonmatching: similar to a circular ending, the first image is transformed, and is repeated at the end. This is most like the pattern in music: theme and variation. The first image of the story foreshadows or suggests the last image. Sometimes this is obvious, othertimes the image is subtle.
Surprise ending: Often an ironic ending, or an ending that surprises the reader. The American writer O.Henry was a master of this kind of ending. It is often found in horror/suspense or mystery fiction. The "surprise" needs to be planned by the writer, who should include details that prepare the reader for the surprise, instead of "shocking" the reader, who usually resents this strategy.
Summary ending: A summary of the outcome of the story – this kind of story wraps the plot up very tightly, suggesting the future for the characters. No loose ends. This sort of ending has fallen out of favor lately, so use it at your own peril.
Open ending: used largely in contemporary fiction, the story doesn’t end nice and neatly (like the summary ending). Instead, it leaves an important question posed to the reader, so that the reader must interpret the ending. Caution: this can sometimes confuse a reader. It is best used for subtle effect.
Ending with an image/idea: ending a story with an important detailed image or idea that reflects the theme of the story can "stain" the idea or image in the mind of the reader. 

Got it? Good. Now write. Write now.

HOMEWORK: Catch up on Sunrise Over Fallujah. If you're not with us, you're against us. Read and catch up. If you're up to speed, keep reading.