Thursday, Oct. 13
Required: Outline Revision #2 ▼
The second draft of your outline.
Options:
Using traditional outline format (Traditional Outline ): write your climax and several key conflicts/disasters.
The Snowflake Method : Expand your sentence to a paragraph. Include the beginning, conflicts/disasters, climax, and end.
From Outlining #1
A provocative one-sentence description of my story: A young woman must come to terms with the failure of her marriage and put the pieces of her life back together so that she may trust love again.
Carson will play on her heart to get her to come back and help him raise this kid, if he can get Cheryl to give up rights.... Cheryl battles him and he realizes if he wants access at all, he will need to be a 'family' with her so he can raise this kid 'right'.
Taygen did not want to have children with Carson because she felt he would be too anal and controlling and that would be a poor environment for the children.... she would also feel she was protecting them from his overly anal, intolerant ways. She did not want him belittling her in front of them and taking away her power even more. Cheryl won't take that s***.
Bonus: Chronological Timeline ▼
Taygen packs up and leaves - she gets help from Thomas and some of his buddies and Myra. Myra tells her not to tidy up.
Carson goes that weekend to 'deal' with Cheryl (subplot) - he does not realize Taygen is gone until the morning (she had been sleeping in the spare room all week). Then he is pissed about the mess.
Taygen returns to help him clean up - he is being an asshole and she threatens to leave - this gets him to step up and play nice.
She leaves with the realtor - to avoid any discussion or bullying from Carson
Over the week - she gets a lawyer and gets ready for school
She works with Terri on Friday who invites her up after her shift on Saturday. She decides to go... and have some beach time.
Alex is at the same beach that weekend with friends - he meets her in the morning and brings his buddies down to hang with the girls later - in the evening they all meet up at a bar.
School begins and Taygen's first week focus is on school
On Sunday, they all go to the Eden Mills Writer's Festival
They all go to Word on the Street in the park - Taygen is intrigued by the fact that Alex is into this kind of thing. - "Are you sure you're not a woman?" Alex laughs and assures her he is not.
Part #2
October sets up routines for Taygen and her housemates - Sundays are for cooking together and planning - this starts after Thanksgiving.
Thoughts - does Taygen go with Carson to his family's place on Sunday - he has not told them that Taygen has left.... or is this the first event apart??
Thanksgiving - everyone has places to go - Taygen goes for the day to her Aunt and Uncle's place in Guelph, Alex goes to his family's gathering in Bracebridge where his grandmother lives (his parents are cooking, but they are coming down to Bracebridge to make it easier for the Grandmother). Myra and Thomas are going to her family on Sunday and his on Monday.... hers is in London, his is in Woodstock. Taygen will be in the house alone from Sunday morning until Monday evening - she plans and gets her creative writing club organized - it is starting on Wednesday that week.
I want a scene with the creative writing club - this is Taygen's contribution to the school and the success of this club improves the grades and morale of student's who love to write but are a little weak - this gives them a way to access their love of writing in a way that builds their confidence and has them taking greater risks in their writing in the classroom. Also a way to see how she interacts with these students
Taygen is also prepping for Nanowrimo - she attends a few events at the library - a planning session and a kick off event.
Alex attends the Kickoff / Halloween party with Taygen instead of going with Myra and Thomas to an event in Toronto.
He also goes to a few events with her over November - taking his school stuff to plan while she writes.
Alex goes to half way party and Thank God its over party as well.
December - Christmas - Alex goes to his family's place in Huntsville - he picks up his Grandmother and takes her up.
Extra stuff from the October Nano Prep:
Bonus: Literary Device: Chronology ▼
Brainstorm the best chronology(ies) for your story and work it(them) into your outline.
OPTIONS:
1. Linear Narrative - the story is told in the order the events occurred.
2. Non-Linear Narrative - the story is told out of order.
3. Reverse Chronology - the story is told backwards.
4. In medias res - the story starts in the middle, goes back to explain how it got there, catches up, and then resolves.
5. Flashback/forward - individual scene(s) that take place prior to or after the current action.
Note that the difference between these chronological devices can be minute. Read the examples below to see how most stories use more than one style of chronology. Your job is to plan the order in which you will tell your story to the reader. Don't get hung up in the nomenclature.
EXAMPLES:
Lord of the Rings is mostly linear. The events of the story are revealed to the reader as they unfold for the characters. Some flashbacks occur, such as when Gandalf tells the Fellowship how he defeated the balrog and what happened when he visited Saruman.
The hit TV drama "How to Get Away with Murder" begins in medias res, with a group of law school students burying a body. The rest of the story is generally non-linear because it routinely moves back and forth in time. The screen will display "3 months ago" on a series of scenes, and then flash back forward to the body-burying scene again, then move back in time to "2 months ago," using flashbacks to build the story for the viewer. Also, some scenes are repeated multiple times as flashbacks, often as visual-only scenes replaying while a character is explaining something to other characters or building a defense in the courtroom, but through careful camera angles or a few additional seconds of footage, the scene reveals more about the mystery than was obvious the first time the viewer saw that same scene. In this way, the show plants red herrings to fool the viewer and later prove their assumptions wrong.
The hit TV drama "The Walking Dead" is famous for beginning in medias res and then going back in time to explain how the characters got there. On an academic level, these opening scenes could also be construed as flash forwards because, much of the time, the scene at the beginning of each episode is not actually the climax, or the action in the middle of the story, but rather, it shows where the characters end up at the very end of the episode. In medias res is technically the middle, not the end.
One episode of "The X-Files" featured a character who woke up each morning to find that it was one day earlier than the previous day. On the "first" (last, for the character) day, he was on trial for murdering his wife. On the "second" (previous) day, he was meeting his attorney. The plot continued to move backwards in time until it reached the day of the murder, at which point, the protagonist had enough information to prevent the murder from occurring at all. This is an example of reverse chronology, a rare but effective tool for revealing mysteries.
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