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Narrative cliches and how to avoid them


Helloooooo, students.

Not to freak you out, but we don't have a lot of time left in the semester. As a result, we have much information to cover and little time to cover it in. You will see some days when lectures are in two parts. YES, you are required to read both of them because they contain vital information about Project #3.

Additionally, because of the limited time, if you are worried about your grade, if you need additional help, if you have questions or concerns, you need to speak with me NOW and not after it is too late. If you are sure you have completed

Last night you submitted P2 D3. I will be grading them and getting your feedback back to you as soon as possible. You will have an opportunity to revise P3 if you wish. Just complete the Revision Memo before November 18.

TODAY, before 11:59 pm, you should post your P3SA1:Narrative Proposal on your P3 Wix page and upload the correct links to Canvas. On Wednesday Nov. 13 before 11:59 pm, P3SA2:Character Sketch is due.

Once you receive feedback on your Narrative Proposal and Character Sketch, it will be time to get to work on your Narrative!

***I AM MAKING A BIG CHANGE TO P3 ****

After wrestling to upload a short story to WattPad, I realized that maybe not everyone in our class is ready to take on a new and temperamental platform. If you have used this program in the past or feel ready to take on the challenge, please contact me for clearance to use it. For the rest, I am changing the requirements. Instead of WattPad, add an additional page to your Class Wix page. That page will only have your narrative and appropriate artwork (like one of your advertisements).

I repeat, you need an additional page on your Class Wix for ONLY your narrative and appropriate, design-friendly artwork.

I also changed the minimum posts for promoting your narrative. If you want to see these changes, check out the Class Wix Project 3 page, or look at examples of previous students work on Class Wix's ePortfolio tab.

Now, onto writing the narrative.

Some things to consider about these small assignments. Small assignments are designed to help you develop the information you need in order to complete the project. With the Character Sketch, I am requiring you to complete one sketch for your primary character. However, if you have multiple characters, you need to complete the character sketch for those character so you will know who they are. If you know who they are, you will be able to coordinate their actions.

Do not forget to review the Short Story examples even if you chose not to complete the extra credit assignment. These will give you an idea of what a short story looks like, how dialogue should be formatted, and the shape a story might take.

We will be meeting next week for conferences #3 -- our last conference together! Sign up as soon as possible if you want a good slot.

This Week's Twitter Assignment: In a series of 10 tweets, paint a word picture of your hometown

Writing a narrative is different from writing a personal essay. In a personal essay, you are telling your version of events as they appear in your brain. Writing a narrative, you have to paint a word picture of what is happening in the scene. This means you need to get outside of your character's brain and how they feel and instead describe what is happening in the moment. How do you imagine the scene in your brain? What does it look like? Where are your characters standing? You are creating a text-based narrative, so your word choice is important here.

When describing these scenes, ask yourself what order to these scenes need to happen?

This semester, you have been asked to properly outline your papers in order to organize your thoughts. One of the ongoing debates among writers are the virtues of the outline. Some swear by it while others find it limiting. This is where you have to find the system which works best for you.

Did you find the outlining process we have used in this class helpful? Do you need a list, a storyboard, or can you start writing and let the road take you where it leads?

Consider what makes you feel most comfortable.

Some of you may have discovered that I am a creative writer of short stories, personal essays, and am in the process of completing a novel. I outline, but it looks like a flexible list of events. I write down everything which I believe must happen in the story from beginning to end. The list can and will change as I work on a project. Sometimes events will be placed on the list which I will never write, but I will know they exist. Sometimes the list of events begin years before the first actually scene. The chronological timeline may not be the same order as how the scenes will be appear in the final product.

Know that as you work on a project, everything must remain flexible. Because my projects are often long and require me to spend a considerable amount of time staring at boring Word documents, I look for opportunities to take things off screen. When it comes to supplementary projects like outlines, I like to draw them out by hand rather than spend my time typing on another computer screen. Perhaps you like sticking with your computer or tablet, you can also use Powerpoints, Prezi’s, Excel files, or Good Notes. When you take the project off the standard Word doc, the project is now exciting to view. The string board on detective shows create a visual perception of thought. It also gives the creator a tactile process for arranging thoughts.

Common Beginning Writer Cliches & how to avoid them Now, you are embarking on writing a story. Everyone loves a good story. But the last thing you want to do is fall into beginning writer traps which could cause your reader to turn away from your story. What are the beginning writer traps? 1. Introducing your character by name in the first sentence like it is a Facebook bio or essay Jeremiah Jacobson was a nervous kid. My name is Jeremiah Jacobson and I am 17 years old. This is the diary of Jeremiah Jacobson. In very few cases do stories which begin in this direct fashion work out and usually because something else more interesting is happening. "Call me Ishmael" from Moby Dick works only because his name isn't really Ishmael. 2. Opening with a dream sequence. My first short story when I was in college opened in a dream sequence, which had no relevance to the story and provided no character development. I thought opening in a dream sequence would be cool. It wasn't. The same goes with opening a novel with someone waking up, snapping from a dead sleep, the sound of an alarm clock, or the smell of breakfast. Your reader wants to see the primary character engaging in some type of activity. Sleep (even dreaming) is passive. 3. Philosophizing No one wants to be told how to live their life. It's never as charming as the writer thinks it is. 4. The Mirror This is a cliche because so many writers have used it as a device to let the reader know what the protagonist looks like. Often the character will assess their appearance and describe it as "not good looking but not ugly". The mirror is an overused device. Avoid it. 5. Landscape before character The reader wants to know the character first and then their surroundings. Spending a whole page describing the landscape or the world will only bore the reader. Character will be what drives the story. They will be making the decisions and the actions. Some stories have spectacular landscapes which are often considered "a character in the story", like The Moors in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, or New York City in Sex in the City. But the characters should be the first interaction the reader should have.

6. Excessive backstory How important is the past? Buffy Summers walks into Sunnydale High School and the most the viewer learns in that pilot episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer about her backstory is that she burned down her high school gym because it was full of vampires. And this occurs in a three line exchange with her new principal. The past is irrelevant. If it isn't, you need to start your story somewhere else. 7. Direct Address Speaking directly to the reader as if they are friends or like the writer knows them is too challenging of a task for beginning writers. Often it comes across as the writer trying to be "clever". Readers want a really good story more than an interesting technique. The same goes for writing in 2nd person. These attempts to make the reader feel like a part of the story rarely works. The noted exception to this rule is Bright Lights Big City by Jay Mcinerney, and even so, many readers complain about how much they hate the device. 8. Offensive, exploitive, scandalous or gratuitous content The most boring run of Game of Thrones was the Ramsey and Theon segments of season three. Because viewers got really sick of watching Ramsey torture Theon episode after episode. Those segments didn't really service the story. Everything you write should be in service to driving the story. Does what you are writing speak to character development? Does it take the character from point A to point B? Don't fall into the "I thought it would be cool" trap. 9. Writing something intentionally vague Yes, readers enjoy figuring things out for themselves. But they also want to understand the words on the page and feel like it is leading somewhere. Consider the television series Lost. The show broke all the narrative rules and kept viewers on the edge of their seat every week with unbelievable cliffhangers and endless questions to where all of it was leading. When would all the questions be answered? The finale was one of the most disappointing in television -- other than the finales for How I Met Your Mother and St. Elsewhere -- because the series finale did not provide answers. Viewers had been taken on a long strange trip and they did not appreciate the journey. Additionally, I will provide you this list from Writers Digest about cliche ways to begin your story. However, I also want to leave you with this list of wonderful ways to begin a story and great first lines to inspire you.

You may have never, ever written an original narrative before. Knowing how to properly format a story might feel confusing to you. Before you consult Dr. Google and type "How to write a story?" you should instead review the short story examples I have provided on our Class Wix or contact your local library and find a real physical book that you can hold in your hand and look at to see how it is done.

How to pick a reference text:

  • Consider the sub-genre of story you are telling. If you are writing a science-fiction story, you could learn a lot about formatting dialogue and chapter breaks from a romance novel, but why make it so hard on yourself? Look within your story genre so you can see how they write scenes from the lab, spaceship, or Mars.

  • Consider the form you are using. You are using short story models. So look to other short stories. The library is full of short fiction collections by writers like Joyce Carol Oates, George Saunders, Edward P Jones, and Carmen Maria Machado.

  • Find something you like. If you love, love, loved Harry Potter, then grab your copy of the Half-Blood Prince. Game of Thrones, Hunger Games, Philip K. Dick, Outlander... if you are a superfan of it and it comes in a text-based narrative, then seek your favorite scene and study why it is your favorite scene.

  • Don't read for content. This is tough. If you love a scene because freaking dragons fly out of the sky, then try not to get caught up in all the dragon excitement. You are reading this like a writer now, which means you are looking at how the words are being used. Remember all the tools and skills you cultivated during Project 2. Verbs, choreography (how characters move across the room in a scene), when paragraphs break, punctuation, adverbs, and dialogue structure, these are all style and design choices in service of the story or to connect you to the reader.

Don't Forget:

  • P3SA2: Character Sketch is due WEDNESDAY, November 13 before 11:59 pm.

  • Draft #1 of your Narrative is due FRIDAY, November 15 before 11:59 pm. You are expected to meet the minimum page count, 10 pages DOUBLE-SPACED.

  • If you have not signed up for P3 Conferences, do so now!


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