Short Story Two

Create a Short Story-  length: 4 double spaced pages.  To receive full credit, your short story must include the following elements from below:  You will be graded on your progress in class and the final product as well.

There is also a homework assignment that is to be completed by next class, Share through e mail or written.

A. Using the perspective of the character that you have been assigned and have developed, describe your setting(assigned).  This character will explain the time period that they exist in and what their world looks like.  Be conscious of the way a personality communicates their surroundings. Plan the details that they will include and how they see and describe their surrounding.

Part A should be at least one and a half pages of double spaced typed pages.

You may write this from the third person if you so choose, as long as you are including the character and an expression of their character in your work.
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B.  What conflict will the character have in their environment?  Write this into the story.
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C.  Finish this short story by concluding with a logical and feasible closure to the story, with a substantial point.

Homework-  Read the first 5 pages of "Electric Moon", from an earlier post.  Explain the character, conflict and setting.  Due tomorrow.

Setting Research- finishing Character Description

If you have finished your character description from the last blog, research the setting that you will receive today.

You must find at least one page of information about the setting, of your own notes.  Include this information in the document that you created and completed on the Description of your character.

This will be the setting and character for your next short story.

Character Description

Journal Writing- 10 minutes
Describe a character from a movie or a book that you have read or seen; explain the physical characteristics of the character.  Describe the clothes they wear, how they walk and act.
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Blog Activity-You have been given a personality slip.  From that personality definition, explain the physical characteristics of the character you will create.  Describe the clothes they wear, how they walk and act.  Create a name for this character as well as background information.

Be as thorough as possible to express this character to your reader.

Keep in mind, you have already practiced the skill of narration in the previous unit; moving the character around in an environment will express their personality more effectively than just only describing their physical characteristics.

Share this assignment with me in Google docs- due by the end of this period.

Identify- Characterization, Setting, Conflict

Explain the character, conflict and setting.

ELECTRIC MOON

 

Searching

He could feel that his clothes were soaked through.  It wasn’t just wet.  His socks were drenched.  But Owen was at the point where the wet was becoming less irritating.  It wasn’t cold enough to do any harm.  He could still move his fingers and toes and he was close to the deer he had been following. 

His dark hair was thick and longish now.  For years now, he cut his own hair when it was burden.  He couldn’t remember the last time he had actually sat down and let someone else do it.  That event always seemed like an awkward 15 minutes of trust.  A complete stranger- stranger-to-stranger, searching for meaningless small talk.  This moment was a substantial part of society in a smaller more concentrated form.  He had made this comparison for at least four years before he finally decided to leave Atlanta. 

It would be dark soon, half an hour. 

Luckily, there hadn’t been any long stretches of open space for it to make progress in evading him.  And he had been so silent.  His stealth was embarrassing; like a secret he had never shared.  Owen could move through the forest more silently than most animals half his size.

Something moved in the brush up the incline from Owen.  It was too close to be his prey; perhaps it was a bear or a bobcat. 

Owen knew that he had to be careful in woods such as these.  This was a territory where loggers were missing frequently.  Perhaps, they were just transients who picked up and left.  Tourists fantasized that bears were the culprits.  A body could disappear a long time in some of the caves around the mountains. 

A bear would have made more noise.  It was too loud to be a bobcat. 

Maybe another hunter?

He made an ascent to the right.  He decided to flank the straight way up. He would find a way up to the cliff above, for a view of whatever it was.  If he could move fast and quietly enough, he would assume the advantage.  This was not a place where ownership and wealth dictated the winners; mostly it was the opposite.  The smaller animals had to be fierce.  But this was not the pit of a ghetto.  If you were hungry, you would go out and get what you needed.  Everything was simplified into survival’s basic form. 

But where had the deer gone?  It was this unassuming creature he was counting on.  There were only so many shrubs and potatoes he could eat.  He was starting to feel lighter.  He thought about the Native American shamans who starved themselves for enlightenment. 

From the cliff, he might be able to see both, his prey and the other.

As he moved up, he could hear whatever it was- definitely not a bear- move up and to the right.  This was going to make it much more difficult.  He would have to make a larger arc around to the cliff, and faster.

He moved, glided from flat rock to flat rock. 

Within a few short minutes, crouching, he perched on the corner of the cliff with sincere interest.  He wasn’t an excessively large man but dense and compact. Owen had wide shoulders and corded, defined muscle.  He had been a Jai Lai athlete once.  Throughout law school, Owen worked as a carpenter.  His build was meant for and created by an evasive aspect of strength, controlled movement.  At just under 200 lbs, he was an agile 6’. 1”.  Even the barroom brawlers didn’t usually choose a physical confrontation with him because of the perceptibly even balance of physicality and demeanor.  His expressions were considerate without being overly sensitive, analytical without awkwardness.  His eyes were gray and alert.

Despite his status as a rapidly advancing trial lawyer, Owen had given up the days of suits and clean-shaven sophistry for the life of a recluse.  He was almost thirty, living off of savings, killing and curing deer for survival.  Living in this manner was more of an act of principle than actual necessity.  It seemed to Owen that most people lived in irresponsibility, rooting from a lack of awareness.  Most of his friends thought he had gone mad and feared for their own sanity.  He had an inward satisfaction; he knew that he had surpassed debt, secured his comfortable liberty and escaped social slavery.  The money he had made at Jai Lai and Law was enough to last him a modest lifetime in consideration of the compounding interest.  He made money while he existed in this state of self-sufficiency.  Maybe someday he would return; but not today. 

The deer that he had been tracking stepped out of the foliage across the grassy landing.  Unwittingly, he had been forced closer to his prey by finding this vantage point.  He was somewhat concealed from the deer and above the path of his second query.  He could hear it getting closer.  Definitely not a bear.  Man size- no shoes; it wasn’t kicking rocks around like your typical hiker either. 

His first priority was food.  He remained very still, even as he slid an arrow from his quiver and brought the compound bow off of his shoulder.  The arrows head was wide (two flat surfaces intersecting each other) with four razor edges.  This arrow could accomplish the predatory necessity he had been pursuing for half a day.  It came down to this, not going through banal motions each and every day.  Weighty consequences were decided in unforgiving instants. 

The deer took two steps into the clearing.  It bent down for grass.  That was the complicated part.  To get a clean shot at the heart, their head had to be up which meant that it could be aware, looking in his direction.  Luckily, he wasn’t off to the side. 

On the path below, he could hear it getting closer.  Now, it was a matter of seconds before the deer would be aware, not of Owen but the traveler on the lower trail.  He started to feel sweat, mixed in with the rainwater.  The shot would have to be timed perfectly; as soon as the deer’s head was up, paying attention to the sound on the lower trail, he would have to release the arrow. 

No, he had to let it go before that. Owen would anticipate the animal’s reaction.

For the first time, he got a full view of the deer.  As he had guessed, from the hoof prints, a bit over 200 pounds.  The muscles in its shoulders and back gleamed electric gray.  Its eyes, he imagined, were a yellowish brown.  Owen knew which leg the deer would lead off on and which back leg it would push itself to the side with.  The shot had to be timed perfectly. 

Owen pulled the bowstring back slowly, an inch each second.  Finally, the feathers of the arrow were almost touching his ear. Stability.  He had to keep every muscle still.  The stillness would make him invisible, but not for long.  He was fully aware that he was a kind of gray reverie, an assassin, a shadow barely breathing.

It got closer on the trail below.  Owen inhaled.  He was a sensory machine, taking in each small piece of sound and smell.

Dusk lingered as the clearing darkened. The moon was up and full in the sky.

An eerie feline hiss issued from the lower trail.  Owen exhaled and let the arrow fly.  Now, he had done everything he possibly could for the shot.  He would not have another.  After the shaft left his fingers, he turned to peer down the cliff face.

What Owen saw was something he would have a difficult time explaining to someone else.  And it was directly underneath him, scaling the rock face by grasping small trees, growing from the crevices and spaces.  It was apelike but with hands that were a cross between a hand and a paw.  The nails were thick claws.  As it peered up, it snarled with a doglike maw.  Its eyes were oddly human-bluish green.  Its nostrils flared as it hissed and got ten feet closer; no time to wonder.  Owen had to act.  He could feel the adrenalin begin to course through his arms and chest.  He would have two to three shots before it reached him, depending on how accurate the first two were.

            Automatic, analytically, he placed the arrow into its left shoulder.  An unnerving half hiss half snarl spat from its snout.  Owen felt like running.  He knew, however, that this thing would make it to the top and he would have to kill it.  It was fast; it would catch him. 

He shot again; this time, at its head.  The arrow pierced through its snout into the lower jaw.  It was still coming.  This shot was only to target its left eye. 

After he released the shaft, he pulled the hatchet from his pack and dropped the bow.  He had to keep it from getting onto the landing. 

A clawed hand clutched the top of the cliff.  Owen brought the hatchet down, almost cutting the paw-ish hand in half.  He didn’t dare to peer over.

Silence.

He waited.  Breathing deeply.

Then, he could hear it growling in what sounded like human anger, like the tone of a curse.  The adrenalin was all throughout his body.

Now, both paws pulled and then pushed the thing’s torso and large head above the surface of the cliff face. 

They were face to face.  Its doggish lips snarled and twitched, showing its large canine teeth.  An arrow protruded from its left eye.  Another arrow stuck out of the left side of its snout.

Owen brought the hatchet down onto the side of its head, hard with most of his body weight; he felt nervously strong as it sunk into its skull.  The hatchet was buried only a couple of inches from where it connected with the handle.  The creature’s right hand went instinctively to the hatchet but clutched the arrow that happened to be in the way.  As the right side of its body began to fall, the only thing that was holding it on the cliff was its attachment to the hatchet, as Owen tried to pull the weapon back out of its skull.  Now, both paw hands were at its eye and left side of its head.

Owen let go of the hatchet.  He thought about tying to pull it out for another strike, but more than anything wanted this thing away from him.  It tumbled down the cliff face and back to the ground, still clutching its head as it ran off into the woods.

He sat with his back against the tree.  Breathing.  Confused.  After he had stopped shaking and began breathing more evenly, he remembered the deer. He also noticed that it would be dark very soon. 

Picking up his bow, he looked across the clearing to see that his shot had indeed done what was intended.  A bit more than twelve feet into the foliage, the rather large deer lie dead with one razor backed arrow buried in its heart.

The light was almost completely gone.

Transitions

Owen’s cabin was so far back into the woods that it was a twenty-minute hike to the dirt road where he kept his Volkswagen Van.  This was the van that Owen was sleeping in while he built the rough cabin haphazardly situated on un-level ground.  He rarely had guests, except his friend George.  George was large and clumsy; his presence was always announced.  Today, however, Owen didn’t notice his guest until she spoke.  He was startled, as he looked up from his garden, crouched and probing in the soft dirt for a potato.

“Didn’t mean to surprise you.”  She loomed over him smiling with a Cheshire grin and penetrating eye contact, iris to iris.  She touched her fingertips together and then moved the fingers on her right hand as if she was touching the strings of a harp. Her hair was a dark black.  She was wearing a summer dress, a green print.  Owen noticed her sandals, strong calfs, well-proportioned hips, shapely breasts, tan arms and full lips.  His embarrassment was evident as she was aware of the inventory he had just exercised. 

Something tingled in the back of his mind.  A rasping deep feminine voice whispered, “so, so, subtle.”  The s’s were repeated and elongated with the sound of a snake.  He though was imagining the voice. 

She didn’t back away, however.  She crouched closer as Owen backed up two or three inches.  He had an odd feeling of seduction and being devoured all at once, like he was about to be bitten.

“I’ve never noticed this cabin before.  It is…..hidden.  Barely here.”  She backed up a bit, stretching to her full height and looked around, more at the tree line than the cabin or the garden.  “How long have you been here?”

At this, he stood up and introduced himself.  “I’m Owen.  And…uh who are you?”

“Oh, yes, I’m Marnie.  I was hiking through here and noticed your cabin.” 

“Do you live around here?”

“ Yes, in the village.”  He noticed now that she didn’t have a pack, stood at about 5’9” and had hazel eyes with flecks of yellow in the irises. 

“ I moved here a couple of years ago.”  He was about to explain why he had decided on such a peculiar lifestyle.  The questions were inevitable.  She just nodded, smiled and shook her head.  It was a knowing expression.  Once again, he felt as if something very foreign was once again in his head.

“Yes, it’s much simpler here. Isn’t it?  No bosses and civilization games to play.”

“ Uh, yeah. I guess so.”

“So, what do you do for…. fun ….around here?  Must get boring sometimes.”  She said fun like it was a word in a foreign language, like she was imitating the idea.

“Reading, sometimes.  And I‘ve got a guitar.”  Owen also spent a lot of time drinking with his buddy George who also helped him sell deer meat to the local butchers.  George was his connection to the world.  He sold the firewood and made all of the connections, so that Owen had money- the only thing that he couldn’t free himself from.  Owen was trying to live in a very idealistic and self-sufficient world rather than the one that he had come out of.  So far, so good. 

“Well, maybe sometime I could come and listen to you play.”

“What is it that you do, in the village?”

“I don’t really.  My father died and left me all the money I need.  It’s charming.”

“Must be.”

Familiarity

She never really did return to listen to him play. 

Owen would sit on the back deck he had built in an old Adirondack chair, also his own creation, and pluck and strum on his crisp but bassy sounding Gibson.  He would experiment with any sound and rhythm he and the vibrating strings could make.  Phasing from harmonics to bar chords and further, he would pour his innovation into what could only loosely be defined as a song. 

One night, he played for hours.  He could feel himself being drawn into the sound that he was creating, like a trance.  The song emanated from him as it poured out into the woods.  It loomed in the thick air.

Two yellowy eyes glimmered deep in the growth of moss and dim silhouetted leaves.  It rasped lowly.  Its attention gravitated toward the sound as it skulked through the wet leaves.  The strings rang out in deep chords.  They were more than strings.  They were six voices, sometimes agreeing, sometimes in piquant contrast.  The voices would make one lingering rush of emotion after the next.  The voices would push all at once.  Then, the full low ones would began as the high slight ones would end.  Then, the whispering middle would hum out as the low and high joined in.  Naz, the glowing eyed thing, felt denser as he lay in the leaves.  His eyes blinked more rapidly as the tempo quickened and chords became exact, each voice becoming more distinct and separate. 

Owen’s hands moved up the fret board, reaching chords at a higher octave.  His strumming hand phased to picking notes in singles and doubles.  The hand slowly and seamlessly changed its finger positions.  The voices rang into other voices, shining and disastrous.  They were impassioned warnings, pleading the ignorant.  The hand eased back down the fret board along the six thick threads, scratching and buzzing as it went.  It was a warning that could not be heeded. 

The next chords were somber, cruel, and direct.  Waves crashed on the beach.  The land tore away into a great chiasma.  Naz got closer, heart pounding, sharp teeth grating across each other.  The muscles in its legs and forearms flexed, as his nostrils flared. 

Owen in double and single notes again, lower and more staccato.  The single and double voices contended against each other.  Another chord tumbled down over them, absorbing them. It was as if an impossibly heavy sharp triangular rock was falling closer and closer…His skin and nerves bristled as he crept closer still.  Naz breathed through its nose as it peered over the bushes to view the shadowy form, folded comfortably in the v of the Adirondack chair.  The candle on the railing glowed and reflected off of the face of the guitar.  The sound changed into jagged and abrupt movements as Owen stood up, delivering three final chords.  He stood looking directly at the bush where Naz was concealing himself. 

Owen felt her sensation as his fingertips throbbed.  It was as if she were standing right in front of him, listening

Owen would have that familiar tingling feeling for a moment or two and he would remember her; he would have a recurring dream of her crouched over him with those predatory hazel eyes.  She was smiling when her face would shift to that of a very old woman’s, gaunt and bitter.  He awoke to the flapping of wings.  The sound was in a slow deliberate cadence accompanied by a rasping voice saying his name.  

Naz, picking himself up from the wet leaves, ran back into the darkness, riveted and terrified.

UNFINISHED

Continuing Description

Description is one of the most powerful tools in creative writing because of the dimension that it adds to characters, settings and more. The most important thing to remember about the use of this skill is to appeal to the senses of your reader. When you go about describing a certain character, setting or even an object, think about the sense of smell, vision, sound, touch and sometimes taste. Below are two activities that will exercise your ability to “show” your reader what you mean. Complete these on your Google documents.

1. Convey an emotion or impression from the second group about a thing in the first group. You may do as many of these as you’d like but the degree with which you show me the emotion or impression without telling me will dictate your success.

Things

A Car

A Dentist’s Drill

A Musical Instrument

A Painting or Photograph

A Season of the Year

A Landscape from Memory

A Dog

Emotion

Angry

Sad

Nervous

Fearful

Inspired

Happy

Apathetic

Any Other Emotion

2. Describe a place listed below in two different ways. Imbue this place with positive qualities and then negative qualities. You may choose two different locations but you must have both a place with a negative impression and a place with a positive. Each of the selections below can go either way. Do not tell me what impression you wish to create, show me.

Sunrise or Sunset

Fire

Night-time

A Tunnel

A Forest

A Door

A Wave

A Window

A Snowy Landscape

An Old House

Descripto

A. Journal Writing-  Imagine that you are walking down the block in your neighborhood.  Write your observations in which you describe everything you see along the way, from puddles to pieces of trash, from lost gloves to chipped paint on the curb.

Silently, for 10 minutes, no texting etc. 

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B. Blog Activity
OBJECTIVE DESCRIPTIONS

1.  Objective description of two simple items.

2. Object description- object with at least 3 parts, 1 moveable.- find this on the internet or from your memory, using the rules from the first object description. 

3.  Object description of an animal. (same as above)

4.  Object description of a landscape. 

  You will have to find some of these on the internet- find good ones

              describe them, spatial relationship, color etc, using your senses

After completing this, share it with me.

Finishing Stories from Your "Visual"

Now that you generated a plan for the story as a whole and have written four pieces of your outline, write the rest of the story today.  After you have finished the tale, delete your visual, outline and brainstorming sections.  You should only be left with prose paragraphs.

Ultimately, you should show your audience what happens in your tale and have some kind of definitive closure and even a point that the audience can understand from your tale.

Also, the work should have a significant title, be free of grammatical and punctuation errors, be two and a half pages in length (double spaced- 12 point font: times new roman).

Of course, this should all be worked into the original Google doc and shared with me by the end of class.

Good Luck.

Adding to your Short Story

Use the same process from the last post, March 9, to add two new vivid scenes to your short story, written into your Google doc.  Title this piece, if you haven't done so already.

This scenes must be completed by the end of the period, so that I may grade your work on this document, so far.

So, the bare minimum for this work is: the visual, the outline, the first scene, the brainstorming for the second scene, the second scene, the third and fourth scene (today's progress).  If you would like to add more than that, your score on this work will increase.

March 9- Another Piece of the Outline

A.  Journal Writing- 10 minutes, Silently and Solemnly
From your story outline, that you wrote from the visuals, last week, and that you also wrote one vivid scene, last Friday, select another piece of the outline to brainstorm for your Journal Writing today- you may write this into the document that you started for the Writing from Visuals assignment, that you should already have in your documents- outline and vivid scene.

B.  Blog Activity-  Use the brainstorming, from Journal Writing, to write a vivid scene for the part of the outline that you selected to brainstorm.  This vivid scene should be at 3/4 of a page, single spaced.  As you add this to that document that you have already shared with me, I will be able to see the work you add to it.  If you have not shared this doc with me, please do.

Have fun writing this....

Firsts and Drawings

Journal Writing

Remembering Firsts- there are many firsts in your life- the first tooth, first step, first word, first birthday, the first pet, first award, first day of school, a first kiss, etc.  Write about a special first that you remember clearly- express it in a sequence of events and describe it as much as possible.

Silently, for 10 minutes!

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Blog Activity

Using one of the visuals below, create a narration by making a list of events and write vivid scenes for each event.  At the very least, you should have an outline of the sequence of events for your eventual story.  This will be graded.  Whoever does not share this assignment by the end of the period will receive a zero.

Create a plot plan for a narration from one of the visuals above.

Favorite Movie and Visuals

Journal Writing 
Write  about your favorite movie; break down the film into a sequence of events.  List the actions or significant scenes that tell the story of the film.  Decide what the point of the film is.

Write for ten minutes, silently, in a google doc.
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Blog Activity
Select one or as many of the photos you will find below to explain through a narration- tell a story from the photograph-  this story must have a beginning that introduces a character and/or a setting.  This story should be at least a page and a half, single spaced, and shared with me in a Google doc.

DUE BY THE END OF THE PERIOD TODAY- March 4, 2015