Story Structure Exercise, English homework help

FIRST PART DUE ON WEDNESDAY 2/10 THE REST CAN BE COMPLETED BY FRIDAY 2/12/16

PLEASE DO NO ACCEPT IF YOU CAN NOT FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS.

Flannery O’Connor famously said that as story has a beginning a middle, and an end. That can sound brilliant or it can sound obvious. This exercise is intended to make you think through O’Connor’s ideas.

This is a four-part interactive exercise to help you think creatively and structurally about stories. You’re going to be generating ideas and releasing them to your classmates, so if you have something near and dear to your heart you are considering for the fiction assignment, you might want to post something else.

  1. Decide an ending of a story — e.g., the ship sinks, or the lovers ride off into the sunset, or the unwanted child is abandoned in the forest — and then write the last two paragraphs of the story. (DUE WEDNESDAY)
  2. Take ONE of your classmates’ posts and respond by writing the first two paragraphs of their story. You have to think about how to set up the beginning of a story knowing how it ends! Use the “voice”  and the general style of the initial post. Post as a response to the original post by Friday. (SEE ATTACHED STORY)
  3. Take one of the pairs of posts from two of your classmates and write a description of the middle of the story. How do we get from point B to point A? You don’t have to assume “voice” as much as you do think through how the story could work. Post as a response to the original post by Sunday. Post the three parts as a single post so that we can read from start to end:
    • Writer B’s beginning (verbatim)
    • Your middle
    • Writer A’s ending (verbatim)

You will be posting on numerous different threads in this topic.This is a really cool exercise if everyone gets on board with attending to the different deadlines.

Each of these deadlines is 11:30 PM ET on the date listed. Your work in Week 6 will need to be posted back to this conference, located in Week 5 (but linked to Week 6).