Making your book

Today print out new copies of your writing for your book.

Design a cover page with a TITLE and PICTURE and your name as author:


TITLE

PICTURE

BY ___________________

CHOOSE THE COLOR OF YOUR COVER STOCK AND BACK PAGE

Monologues and Dialogues

Sample Dialogues

Dialogues are conversations between two or more people and are written in the style of a play or drama.

Remember that DRAMA requires CONFLICT.

Sample 1- Dependability   “Life in a Fast Food Restaurant”

Jesse just arrives at the fast food restaurant for his shift.

Manager:  Jesse, I’ve been meaning to talk to you.  Do you have a second?

Jesse:  Sure Mike, What’s up?

Manager:  Let’s go back to the office and sit down before you get into uniform for your shift.

Jessie:  OK!

(Jesse thinks to himself that he is really in trouble now but goes back to the manager’s office

and sits down.)

Manager:  I was just doing the payroll for the last pay period and I noticed that you signed in

 more than 15 minutes late on 3 out of your last 6 shifts.  Are you having a problem getting

here after school?

Jesse:  Well, yes, I have been having some trouble with my math class which is last period and sometimes I have to stay a few minutes after class to be sure I understand the homework assignment.  That causes me to miss the first bus so I have to wait for the next one and that is what is causing me to be late.

Manager:  I’m sorry you are having problems with your math class but you have to understand that I have a business to run and when you show up late it is an inconvenience to the other workers who sometimes have to stay overtime until you get here.  What do you suggest we do to try to solve this problem? The bottom line is I need you here and ready to work when your shift starts.

Jesse:  I guess I will just have to forget about math and bust out as soon as the bell rings so I can make that first bus. I’m sorry I’ve let you down a few times.  I really need this part time job so I won’t let it happen again.

Manager:  Why not see if your teacher is available at lunch or nutrition or before school so you can get your questions answered then.  Math is an important class for anyone like yourself who is thinking of going into business.  We want you to be successful at school and at work, OK?

Jesse:  Yep, I’ve got to make some adjustments, so I can get here on time and not inconvenience my co-workers and let you down.  Thanks, Mike for talking with me, instead of just firing me.

Manager: Just consider this a warning and I’ll be doing payroll again in two weeks so I will keep a close eye on your time card.  But I think you know what you have to do, and you will do it. I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.

Jesse: Thanks again, Mike, I guess I better hustle and get changed.  I see the customers are lining up

Sample 2- Willingness to Learn   “Life in an Office”

Maria just arrives to her after school office assistant’s job.

Nancy (the office manager):  Hi Maria, I’m glad you could get here right after school today cause I’ve got a ton of filing for you to do.

Maria:  Oh great, looks like we will all be here late again tonight. Guess I better get busy.

Nancy:  The IT manager was just down here to let me know that they are going to be converting all the office computers to a new system.  That should turn our lives upside down for a while.

Maria:  Wow, and I was just hoping that I could spend some time learning the current system.

Nancy:  He did say that the company that we are getting the new hardware and software from is going to be offering some training classes. Are you interested?

Maria:  Of yes, that would be a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor and have equal knowledge with the rest of the office staff.  Count me in.  When are the trainings?

Nancy:  Well, unfortunately most of them are going to be next week in the mornings when you are in school, so you can’t go to those but they are having all day training downtown at headquarters in two Saturdays.

Maria:  Oh no, that is my little sisters birthday and I promised her that I would take her to a new movie. (pause) Well maybe if I talk to her we can do it on Sunday instead so I can take advantage of the computer training.  How do I sign up for the Saturday class?

Nancy:  I’ll e-mail your registration for you and give you all the details when they come in. And by the way the company will pay you your hourly rate for taking the class on Saturday.  You may just be looking at a promotion after your graduation!  We really appreciate the way you always want to learn new things about the company and how we run this office.

Maria:  Thanks for letting me know about it. I’d do it for free just to get the experience but if they want to pay me too that is a real bonus.  I want to get as many new skills as I can so I can get that raise by this summer.

Nancy:  You’re a real go-getter; so let me shut up so you can get going on that filing.

Elements of Fiction

Elements of Fiction

Agenda:

What Makes a Story?
Who,
What,
Where,
When,
Why
How


Elements of Fiction

The Elements of Fiction

Plot, Setting, Character, Conflict, Symbol, and Point of View are the main elements which fiction writers use to develop a story and its Theme.

Because literature is an art and not a science, it is impossible to specifically quantify any of these elements within any story or to guarantee that each will be present in any given story.  Setting might be the most important element in one and almost nonexistent in another.

Just as a Crime Scene Investigator cannot approach a crime scene looking for a specific clue (e. g., shell casings), you as a reader cannot approach a story deciding to look for a specific element, such as Symbol.  To assume could blind you to important elements.  Both the CSI team and you must examine the entire “area” carefully to determine what is present and how it is important.

With that understanding, let’s examine the elements.

PLOT

Literature teachers sometimes give the impression that plot is not important, that anyone interested in plot is an immature reader. 

Of course plot is important.  It was what got us interested in reading in the first place.  It was the carrot on the string that pulled us through a story as we wanted to see what would happen next.

That said, let me emphasize that plot is rarely the most important element of a good story.  As much as I’ve always loved surprise endings, if the only thing a film or a story has is a great twist ending, it doesn’t have anything on a second look.

And it’s worth noting that recent fiction and film have deemphasized plot, frequently stressing character or conflict for example.  In film, for example, think David Lynch or Pulp Fiction.

SETTING

Stories actually have two types of setting:  Physical and Chronological. 

The physical setting is of course where the story takes place.  The “where” can be very general—a small farming community, for example—or very specific—a two story white frame house at 739 Hill Street in Scott City, Missouri.

Likewise, the chronological setting, the “when,” can be equally general or specific.

The author’s choices are important.  Shirley Jackson gives virtually no clues as to where or when her story “The Lottery” is set.  Examination suggests that she wants the story to be universal, not limited by time or place.  The first two stories you will read each establish a fairly specific physical setting; consider what each setting brings to each story.

CHARACTER

What type of individuals are the main characters?  Brave, cowardly, bored, obnoxious?  If you tell me that the protagonist (main character) is brave, you should be able to tell where in the story you got that perception.

In literature, as in real life, we can evaluate character three ways:  what the individual says, what the individual does, and what others say about him or her.

CONFLICT

Two types of conflict are possible:  External and Internal.

External conflict could be man against nature (people in a small lifeboat on a rough ocean) or man against man.

While internal conflict might not seem as exciting as external, remember that real life has far more internal than external conflict. 

Film and fiction emphasize external conflict not simply because “it’s more interesting” but also because it’s easier to write.  In a film script, you merely have to write “A five minute car chase follows” and you’ve filled five minutes.  How long would it take to write five minutes worth of dialogue?

SYMBOL

Don’t get bent out of shape about symbols.  Simply put, a symbol is something which means something else.  Frequently it’s a tangible physical thing which symbolizes something intangible.  The Seven/Eleven stores understood that a few years ago when they were selling roses with a sign saying, “A Rose Means ‘I Love You.’”

The basic point of a story or a poem rarely depends solely on understanding a symbol.  However important or interesting they might be, symbols are usually “frosting,” things which add interest or depth.

It’s normal for you to be skeptical about symbols.  If I tell you that the tree in a certain story symbolizes the Garden of Eden, you may ask “Is that really there or did you make it up?” or “How do you know what the author meant?”

Literature teachers may indeed “over-interpret” at times, find symbols that really aren’t there.  But if you don’t occasionally chase white rabbits that aren’t there, you’ll rarely find the ones that are there. 

In the film 2001, a computer named HAL is controlling a flight to Jupiter.  When the human crew decides to abort the mission, HAL—programmed to guarantee the success of the mission—“logically” begins to kill off the humans.  Science fiction’s oldest theme:  man develops a technology which he not only cannot control, it controls him. 

Consider HAL’s name.  Add one letter to each of the letters in his name.  Change the H to I, the A to B, and the L to M.  When you realize how close HAL is to IBM, the first response is disbelief.  But clearly the closeness of the names is either an absolute accident or an intentional choice.  As much as we are startled by the latter, we probably agree that the odds against the former—it being an accident—are astronomical.

Somebody thought that up.  Or maybe a computer.      

POINT OF VIEW

Point of View is the “narrative point of view,”  how the story is told—more specifically, who tells it.

There are two distinctly different types of point of view and each of those two types has two variations.

In the First Person point of view, the story is told by a character within the story, a character using the first person pronoun, I.

If the narrator is the main character, the point of view is first person protagonist.  Mark Twain lets Huck Finn narrate his own story in this point of view.

If the narrator is a secondary character, the point of view is first person observer.  Arthur Conan Doyle lets Sherlock Holmes’ friend Dr. Watson tell the Sherlock Holmes story.  Doyle frequently gets credit for telling detective stories this way, but Edgar Allan Poe perfected the technique half a century earlier.

In the Third Person point of view, the story is not told by a character but by an “invisible author,” using the third person pronoun (he, she, or it) to tell the story.  Instead of Huck Finn speaking directly to us, “My name’s Huckleberry Finn” and telling us “I killed a pig and spread the blood around so people would think I’d been killed”, the third person narrator would say:  He killed a pig and spread the blood…..

If the third person narrator gives us the thoughts of characters (He wondered where he’d lost his baseball glove), then he is a third person omniscient (all knowing) narrator. 

If the third person narrator only gives us information which could be recorded by a camera and microphone (no thoughts), then he is a third person dramatic narrator.

In summary, then, here are the types of point of view:

First Person Narrator

            Protagonist

            Observer

Third Person Narrator

            Omniscient

            Dramatic    

       

Different points of view can emphasize different things.  A first person protagonist narrator would give us access to the thoughts of the main character.  If the author doesn’t want us to have that access, he could use the first person observer, for example, or the third person dramatic.

THEME

Theme isn’t so much an element of fiction as much as the result of the entire story.  The theme is the main idea the writer of the poem or story wants the reader to understand and remember. 

You may have used the word “Moral” in discussing theme; but it’s not a good synonym because “moral” implies a positive meaning or idea.  And not all themes are positive. 

One word—love, for example—may be a topic; but it cannot be a theme.

A theme is a statement about a topic.

For example:  “The theme of the story is that love is the most important thing in the world.”  That’s a cliché, of course, but it is a theme.

Not all stories or poems (or films) have an overriding “universal” theme.