Proposal Argument

Today we will cast your essay into the proposal argument forms. A proposal argument is essentially identifying a problem and then proposing a solution to it. In its simplest form, it looks like this:

We should do X because ...

And then you fill in the reason for X and your evidence supporting it.

Here's an example of a proposal argument.

We should get out of school early today because a 30-foot tall pygmy shrew is destroying the city.



1. You can present proposal arguments in three different forms. The first is called the categorical claim. It looks like this:

We should do X because X is a Y.

For example:

We should eat pygmy shrew for dinner tonight because eating it is a demonstration of community pride.

2. The second is called the causal claim (in other words, one thing causes the other). It looks like this.

We should do X because X will lead to good consequences.

For example:

We should eat pygmy shrew for dinner tonight because eating it will lead to a more sanitary neighborhood.

3. The final proposal argument is the resemblance claim (in other words, one thing is LIKE the other). It looks like this.

We should do X because X is like Y.

For example:

We should eat pygmy shrew for dinner tonight because smelling the rotting corpse of the 30-foot pygmy shrew the National Guard shot down is like living next to a sea of rancid diapers.

Your assignment for the day is to cast your argument into these three versions of the proposal argument: the categorical, the causal, and the resemblance versions.

When you are finished, please let me take a look at it. Then email it to me by copying the text and pasting it into the the email body.

I am happy to assist you at any time.

Thursday fun

All right, me lads and lassies. During the past two days we've put together two very important elements for our essays.

1. We've got ourselves a thesis

2. We've got ourselves a few supporting quotes and citations.

Now let's put them together into a mini essay.

This is how you do it.

1. Write an introduction. The introduction will:

a. Grab the reader's attention.
b. Tell the reader what your thesis is.

2. Write 2 body paragraphs supported by your evidence. A body paragraph will:

a. Quote the evidence
b. Cite the evidence.
c. Show why the evidence supports your thesis.

3. Write a concluding paragraph. This paragraph will sum up the information and reiterate the thesis statement.

Let me give you an example of how one of these mini-essays might look:

Hey. did you just fart? I can't believe you! Don't you know that farting will hasten the ice age?

It's true! According to a study performed at Stanford University, places with high incidence of farting are prone to be colder than places scoring low on the fart index. Don't you see? The more you fart, the colder it will get.

If you don't believe me, go to www.putacorkinit.com. It tracks the fart index of every capital city in the United States. Minneapolia, Minnesota and Pierre, North Dakota - the two coldest capital cities in America - also score highest on the fart index. Isn't the correlation obvious?

So remember, before you let one rip, consider the damage you will do.

Email me your mini essay by the end of the class.

More To Do

Today you will receive your thesis to argue. So your job for the hour is to start researching.

I would like you to come up with three quotes that support your argument.

"Put the relevant quote in quotation marks"

Then make the citation by writing:

1. The name of the web site

2. The name of the article.

3. The name of the author (it there is one)

4. The URL

Email me the three quotes and citations in the body of the email (not as an attachment) by the end of class.

To Do List

1. Google this: "4-day school week"

2. Read through at least 5 of the articles that come up.

3. Make a list of the concerns these articles bring up.

4. Make a list of the arguments in favor of the 4-day school week.

5. Make a list of the top three (3) concerns and the top three (3) favorable arguments you'd like to address in your essay.

6. Send the list you made for #5 to my email: carters@uinta6.k12.wy.us I will make assignments based on these lists. Hopefully you'll all get something you want to work with.

The Plan for the Term

You will put together one (1) paper, at least three (3) pages long arguing for the schedule of your choice.

The paper will address one (1) thesis.

The paper will be argumentative in structure.

The paper will incorporate original research done by you.

The paper will include at least one (1) graphic that clarifies the information you are
presenting.

Your thesis and research will be different than anyone else’s.

You will put together one (1) short speech (30 seconds long) based on your paper.

The speech will be argumentative in structure.

The speech will incorporate at least one visual element meant to clarify your information.

You will present the speech to the class.

You will present the speech to the school board during their January meeting.

The Results

Turns out that the block schedule wasn't as popular as everyone thought it was.

Taking a vote from each class, we came up with the following tallies:

Traditional Schedule: 4 votes

Block Schedule: 4 votes

4 1/2 Day Schedule: 23 votes

So it seems our job is to convince the board to institute the 4 1/2 day week.

Block vs 4 1/2 day

Today Mr. Limoges came in to discuss block scheduling since the school board has been considering implementing it in the school.

Mr. Limoges is against implementing block scheduling for two reasons:

1. He found that block schools tend to perform 4 percent lower on the PAWS test than traditional schools.

2. He found that a student would miss more class time with certain classes on a block schedule than he or she would on a traditional schedule (though the student would also tend to get to more of certain other classes).

The students said they liked the block schedule because they would have less homework since teachers would tend to instruct for 60 minutes and let the class do homework for the remaining 30 minutes.

In response, Mr. Limoges argued that the students would be losing 60 minutes of instruction time each week, which he thought was unacceptable.

The students responded that they would have more access to the teacher during the homework process, which would be of more benefit to them than the extra direct instruction.

Mr. Limoges didn't agree that this facilitated homework time was as educationally effective as direct instruction time. Thus, this is a point we have to gather data on if we want to convince Mr. Limoges.

The class also argued with Mr. Limoges' assertion that block schools had lower PAWS scores. Since block schedule schools tend to have a lower dropout rate, they would tend to keep students that didn't perform well in school. These students would tend to depress their average PAWS scores, whereas traditional schools could get rid of those low performing students and increase their average PAWS scores.

At the end Mr. Limoges proposed the 4 1/2 day school week. In this schedule the student would still take 8 slightly longer classes, but skip two of them each day. They would also get a 20 minutes study hall period. On Friday the students would go to all 8 classes (though they would be shortened) and then leave at 12:30.

A lot of people really liked the 4 1/2 day schedule.

World Poverty Part 2

Today we discussed the rest of Peter Singer's argument.

During World Poverty Part 1 we put together a list of concerns about Singer's argument. They were:

1. We don't think the money we donate will actually reach the needy.

2. Most people don't donate their money, why should we?

3. So I'm never supposed to have fun again?

Being a good arguer, Singer had already anticipated these concerns and addressed them in the second part of the essay.

1. (We don't think the money we donate will actually reach the needy.) The $200 estimate was made with the knowledge that there are sometimes dictators that hijack supply planes, administrative costs, embezzlement, etc. All of those eventualities were accounted for in the $200 estimate.

2. (Most people don't donate their money, why should we?) Basing your morality on other people's morality is fallacious. It's called following the crowd. You alone are responsible for your own morality.

3. (So I'm never supposed to have fun again?) Think about it this way. Every $200 you spend over your needs could have saved a child. What is more valuable, $200 or the life of a child. At the beginning of the argument you agreed with me that the life of a child is not only more valuable than $200 but more valuable than a million dollar car. Life is more important than stuff. Therefore, every time you spend money on a luxury, you have chosen to not save a child's life.

During the course of our discussions the main concern we voiced that Singer was unable to answer was: "Give me the hard numbers. Show me that my money will make it to the needy." Since Singer was writing for The New Yorker, he wasn't anticipating an audience that would want lots of numbers to go through. Had he been writing for a more academic publication he certainly would have included the numbers.

The most interesting thing about the discussion to me was that everyone in the room agreed that a life was more important than stuff (and that, by extension, a life was more important than $200), but that everyone fought against applying that principle in a practical way. No one was willing to forgo their X-box or their new prom dress to save a life.

New Reading Day By-laws

To help you all take better advantage of reading days, I am instituting the following by-laws:

1. One reading day = 10 points. This means that if you don't read during a reading day, the points you can get on your book report decreases by 10 points.

2. You must read the book you are going to report on during reading time.

3. People who do not want to read during reading day will write essays instead.

These new by-laws go into effect immediately and will apply to the next book report.

World Poverty Part 1

Tuesday we read and discussed a few pages of Peter Singer's essay "The Singer Solution to World Poverty," which you can read by clicking on the link.

In the essay he gives us the story of Dora,

"Dora is a retired schoolteacher who makes ends meet by sitting at the station writing letters for illiterate people. Suddenly she has an opportunity to pocket $1,000. All she has to do is persuade a homeless 9-year-old boy to follow her to an address she has been given. (She is told he will be adopted by wealthy foreigners.) She delivers the boy, gets the money, spends some of it on a television set and settles down to enjoy her new acquisition. Her neighbor spoils the fun, however, by telling her that the boy was too old to be adopted — he will be killed and his organs sold for transplantation."

"Should Dora go save the child?"he asks. To which we replied, "Of course." Then he continues, "Is there a moral difference between Dora buying a television at the cost of a child's life, and an American buying a television when he knows that the money he will spend on the television will save a child's life?"

Pretty much everyone in the class thought there was a huge difference. Encapsulated, most of us argued that we are not aiding the killing of children through our purchase the way Dora did.

Singer then gives us the parable of Bob and his Bugatti.

Bob is close to retirement. He has invested most of his savings in a very rare and valuable old car, a Bugatti, which he has not been able to insure. The Bugatti is his pride and joy. In addition to the pleasure he gets from driving and caring for his car, Bob knows that its rising market value means that he will always be able to sell it and live comfortably after retirement. One day when Bob is out for a drive, he parks the Bugatti near the end of a railway siding and goes for a walk up the track. As he does so, he sees that a runaway train, with no one aboard, is running down the railway track. Looking farther down the track, he sees the small figure of a child very likely to be killed by the runaway train. He can't stop the train and the child is too far away to warn of the danger, but he can throw a switch that will divert the train down the siding where his Bugatti is parked. Then nobody will be killed -- but the train will destroy his Bugatti. Thinking of his joy in owning the car and the financial security it represents, Bob decides not to throw the switch. The child is killed. For many years to come, Bob enjoys owning his Bugatti and the financial security it represents.

Pretty much the whole class thought Bob had done the wrong thing. Many of us said we would not be able to live with ourselves if we had committed such an act. "If you have the chance to save a child, you should," we argued.

And that's where Peter Singer gets us. He tells us that it takes only $200 to save a child's life in a third-world country and then gives us the phone numbers of two organizations that we can donate to.

If you still think that it was very wrong of Bob not to throw the switch that would have diverted the train and saved the child's life, then it is hard to see how you could deny that it is also very wrong not to send money to one of the organizations listed above.

Singer has essentially put us in the role of Bob. We are standing at the railroad switch whenever we have $200 above and beyond our needs. Every time we spend $200 on a commodity, we are letting a child die.

The reaction to Singer's idea was pretty unanimous. No one in class liked it. "What?" we were saying, "you mean that we can't buy books or a new CD or a computer game because to do so would mean that we're deliberately letting a kid die?" Most of us were unwilling to live under the weight of this moral onus.

We'll see how our discussion continues next week.

Weak Logos

Today we watched a clip from The Awful Truth where Michael Moore tries to get presidential candidates to jump in a mosh pit in order to get the show's endorsement. He goes from candidate to candidate without any luck until he meets up with Alan Keyes who does indeed body surf on the mosh pit.

We decided that Moore's thesis was that a person who was willing to dive into a mosh pit would make a good president.

Moore's ethos was right on for most of the classes. We tended to like Moore's "normal guy" ethos. He doesn't dress well, he's not too handsome, he's kinda big, but he doesn't seem to care. Many students said they identified with him more, and trusted him more because of this ethos. Other students were completely turned off by him, however.

Moore made good use of pathos as well, bringing in music from Rage Against the Machine to get our blood pumping, and structuring the show along good storytelling lines ending with the victory of getting Alan Keyes to jump into the pit. He also encouraged our disdain of all the candidates who were too stuck up to jump in.

It was Moore's logos that seemed to suffer. Though he presented a clear thesis, "a person who can jump into a mosh pit would make a good president," he didn't bring up any reasons why this is so.

Some students pointed out that the reasons were presented subtly. For example, they argued that a person who is willing to be a normal, fun loving person would be able to gain the trust and loyalty of Americans more easily than a stuffed shirt. They also argued that such a candidate would be able to work well with the nation's youth.

Three Puppets

Tuesday we made logos, ethos and pathos concrete in our minds by channeling them through puppets.

I started things by arguing that farting in public would lead to the next ice age. I established my ethos by putting on a puppet with a uniform and having him be Colonel Sanders, head of Homeland Security. He used his drill sergeant voice to bring us to attention and then told us that the study we were about to hear had been conducted over 30 years and had cost 50 million dollars.

This established a few things in the audience's mind. First, a guy as important at Colonel Sanders was standing behind this project. And second, that a lot of time, thought and money had gone into the findings. This is a good ethos, it makes us more willing to believe the actual argument.

Next I took out a doctor doll and used her to say that she had been studying weather patterns for 30 years and had found a definite link between public farting and the chilling of the atmosphere. She also said that public farting was the leading cause of the progress of the ice age, even more so than the flapping of butterfly wings.

This is good logos because the doctor gave actual reasons backed up by data.

Finally I brought out Bobby Sue Ellen McGee, a mother of 10 children who all wanted to go to Disneyland with all their sweet innocent little hearts. Bobby had been saving for this trip for years. But if the ice age comes too soon, they won't be able to go to Disneyland and the hearts of her children will be broken beyond repair. "For the sake of the children, stop farting in public," she plead.

This was good pathos because it was aimed at our emotions. No one wants to disappoint 10 little kids. Especially when their mother has scrimped for so many years to help them fulfill their dream of going to Disneyland.

Logos, Ethos and Pathos on Parade

Today we watched a segment from Michael Moore's television show "The Awful Truth." The story was about how an HMO wouldn't pay for a life-saving pancreas transplant for Chris.

Moore does a number of things to get the HMO to change its mind: he invites the head honchos and the employees to Chris's funeral and then holds a funeral rehearsal outside the HMO's headquarters. The HMO finally agrees to pay for Chris's transplant.

As we watched this show we noted how Michael Moore used logos, ethos and pathos to persuade us.

He established his ethos immediately by showing us that a real person's life was on the line. Not only that, but a real person with a wife and two young daughters. He gave us every reason to believe that anything that could be done to save this guy's life was worth it.

Next, Moore went on to solidify our commitment to him by showing Chris giving his two daughters a push on the swing set and then cutting to an interview where Chris says, "I have two daughters. They need a dad," and then breaks down. This is how Moore used pathos to appeal to us.

To appeal to the logical (logos) side of us Moore gave us facts and figures about how much money Humana makes, how much its corporate officers make , and how many pancreas transplants that kind of money translates into.

Moore also makes excellent use of story structure to invest us in Chris's plight. He casts Chris as the underdog, unjustly oppressed by a rich, heartless corporation. We know from earlier in this class that the more opposition a hero has to overcome, the more we invest in that hero. It also really helped that the PR guy Moore and Chris took on came across as being so callous.

We did notice, however, that Humana was never given a chance to represent itself. Did Humana have a really good reason why it wasn't willing to pay for the transplant? We will never know. Perhaps Humana's reason was so good that Moore's case would have been destroyed.

On the other hand, a sure way to boost your ethos is to let the other side have its say and then show how their reasons don't hold up. Then the audience says to itself, "Hah. Even when given a chance, the opposition cannot defend its decisions." You'll have the audience totally on your side if you are able to do that.

Logos, Ethos and Pathos

Today we talked about logos, ethos and pathos. They are the three elements that go into persuasion.

We illustrated each of these elements by telling a story about Bob.
This is Bob. He has four arms and four legs, which makes it difficult to get a girl to go out with him. But finally he finds one on MySpace named Maude, and he doesn't want to ruin his chance.

So, he showers thoroughly, making sure to wash all four armpits well. Then he puts on a good suit that downplays his extra limbs (but still has enough pockets for each hand, plus one). He is stylin'.

On his way to Maud's house he stops by the florist and picks up a single perfect rose.

When he gets to Maud's house he holds the rose out to her with a flourish. She sighs and says, "Oh, Bob, it's so beautiful," to which Bob replies,

Bob has successfully used all three elements of persuasion.

Ethos is how a person presents him or herself. For example, the ethos of KISS (makeup, leather, spiked boots) is much different from the ethos of Brittany Spears (makeup, leather, spiked books ... wait). Bob took his ethos very seriously. He wanted to make himself as attractive as possible to Maud. Perhaps he even found out what colors she liked and chose his outfit accordingly.

Pathos is how a person works with emotions. Bob chose a single perfect rose because he knows girls love flowers, especially perfect ones. Flowers never fail to make a girl happy. And he wanted her to be happy when she saw him.

Logos is one's ability to reason and appeal to logic. Bob knew that his answer to Maud's declaration of the beauty of the flowers left the perfect logical opening for him to say the perfect thing.

Bob will no doubt have his hands (all four of them) full trying to use his logos to convince Maud that having a man with four arms and four legs is a good thing, but we have no doubt he will do well, because he clearly understands how to use the three elements of persuasion:

Ethos: presentation of oneself
Pathos: prowess with emotions
Logos: logic and convincing power
If Bob didn't have one of these bases covered, his plan would have fallen apart. Without ethos, he might have shown up looking like he just finished fixing his car, or smelling bad. Without pathos, he would not have been able to appeal to Maud's emotions. Without logos he'll never be able to convince her that a man with only two arms is no man at all.

So remember: the suit, the rose and the speech bubble.

What Dr. Doom can teach us about essays

Today we followed the exciting adventures of the Fantastic Four who had just been captured by the diabolical Dr. Doom.

Our job, as members of the Future Supervillains of America club, was to devise a room that could hold all members of the Fantastic Four simultaneously, while keeping them alive to serve our nefarious schemes.

We came up with some good stuff, like locking them in an Adaminium cage (to keep The Thing from breaking out), suspended over a very deep canyon by magnets (so that Mr. Fantastic couldn't stretch himself to saftey. The cage would be alloyed with napalm so that if the Human Torch combusted and tried to fly out he would sizzle all his friends.

We then looked at what the real Dr. Doom did in issue 5 of the Fantastic Four comic book. He threw a net over the Fantastic Four's building. The net was made of asbestos so that the Human Torch could not burn through it. It was also electrified so that the Thing couldn't rip it apart. (We're not sure why Mr. Fantastic couldn't stretch himself thin and get through the holes, though.) In this way Dr. Doom captured the Fantastic Four.

Which leads us to the first thing Dr. Doom can teach us about writing an essay:

You must capture your audience at the very beginning.

Dr. Doom then took Susan Storm hostage and sent the rest of the Four on a mission to steal Blackbeard the Pirate's treasure. When the Four returned with the treasure, Dr. Doom locked them in an airless chamber. Thus, the Human Torch could not ignite, not to mention the fact that none of them could breathe.

However, Dr. Doom was not keeping a good eye on Susan Storm, who managed to short circuit Dr. Doom's machine and save her compadres.

Dr. Doom did not take every one of the Fantastic Four into account. Otherwise he would have won, and Marvel Comics would not have made millions of dollars on the Fantastic Four franchise.

Thus we come to the second thing we can learn from Dr. Doom about writing essays:

You must take every single member of your audience into account, otherwise, one of them will find a way to blow up your essay and set the other people you have captured free.

And you wouldn't want that.

Reading Assignment

The reading assignment for this term is to read 4 books or 800 pages. Whichever you prefer. The two requirements for book eligibility are that 1. the book have over 40,000 words, and 2. the book be approved by me.

I am instituting this assignment because 1. Lyman has low reading scores, and 2. We have lost the 20 minutes of reading each day that we had last year.

Since I know that many of you have busy lives outside of school, I am providing in-class time for you to read. We will read during class on Mondays and Fridays. This plan has been endorsed by Mary Thrasher, the district's reading consultant.

To get credit for your reading you need to fill out a Book Report Sheet.

Make sure you pick books that you will enjoy.

Since I am providing in-class time for this assignment I am going to require that you finish a book and turn in a book report on these dates:

Book 1: November 16

Book 2: December 7

Book 3: December 21

Book 4: January 11

Late book reports will not be accepted.

The Essentials of Argument Structure

An argument is:

A claim with reasons to support the claim.

In the music video "Fat," the big guys accuse Weird Al of not being fat. Weird Al makes the claim that he is fat and gives them reasons to support his claim.

Reason 1

My zippers bust, my buckles break,
I'm too much man for you to take.
The pavement cracks when I fall down
I've got more chins than Chinatown

Notice that these reasons are pretty small time. They are easily refutable. After all, haven't all of us broken a zipper or a buckle at one time or another? Thus, we have the jab. It's a small flurry of reasons, meant not so much to convince the reader as to tenderize him/her.


Reason 2:

Well, I've never used a phone booth
And I've never seen my toes
When I'm goin' to the movies
I take up seven rows



These reasons are more convincing. Especially the one at the end. It would be pretty impossible for anyone to take up seven rows unless he or she were truly fat. Thus, we have the cross punch. Jabs have only the weight of the arm behind them. the cross punch has the weight of the whole body.


Reason 3:

When I walk out to get my mail
It measures on the Richter scale
Down at the beach I'm a lucky man
I'm the only one who gets a tan
If I have one more pie ala mode
I'm gonna need my own ZIP code



This is the final blow. There's no way to get out of this reasoning. Science backs up Weird Al's claim with the Richter scale, and the government is backing him up with the promise of a zip code.

Save the best reason for last and knock your opponent flat.

Note that essay structure very closely follows dramatic structure. There's a protagonist (the writer) and the antagonist (the audience). The protagonist starts with small conflict (reasons) and escalates to larger conflicts (reasons).

In summary:

When you start an essay think of a claim, and reasoning to back it up. Start with the smaller reasons (the jabs), go to the bigger reasons (the crosses), and end with the best, most irrefutable reason you have (the upper cut).

Dialogue Exercises

From: CHARACTER MAKES THE STORY
By Sol Stein

Dialogue is a foreign language, different from whatever language a writer has grown up using. It can make people unknown to the writer cry, laugh and believe lies in seconds. It is succinct, can carry a great weight of meaning in few words, and, above all, it is adversarial. That doesn't mean shouting. Adversarial dialogue can be subtle. It also has modes that are akin to pitches in baseball, fastballs, curve balls, sinkers. Let me give you a couple of examples.

Here's an Elmore Leonard character propositioning a woman with a curve ball: 'Let's get a drink and talk for a few days.' A sinker is useful for comedy: 'Are you going to let go of me, or shall I scream and let the neighbors see you in your undershirt?'

Characters reveal themselves in dialogue best when they are under stress and blurt out things they never meant to say.

What counts in dialogue is not what is said, but what is meant.

Dialogue is not at all like recorded speech. Evidence: Court transcripts are recorded speech, and awfully boring.

Exercises:

1. "Writers get a great weight of meaning in few words"
Go through your script. Remove half the words from each dialogue line without losing any meaning.

2. Curve ball: 'Let's get a drink and talk for a few days.' A curve ball is when the audience thinks it knows where a line is going, but is surprised by where it ends up. Go through your script and put in a curve ball.

3. Sinker: 'Are you going to let go of me, or shall I scream and let the neighbors see you in your undershirt?' A sinker is when a character pitches a line in such a way that the antagonist is unable to hit it back. Go through your script and put in a sinker.

Benchmarks We've Covered This Term

For your viewing pleasure, following are the benchmarks we have covered during the term.

1. When we were doing critical thinking bell work we covered these benchmarks:

Reading Benchmarks:
10.1.A.1: Uses context to understand figurative, idiomatic and technical meanings of terms.
10.1.A.2: Extends general and specialized reading vocabulary.
10.1.A. 3: Understands writing techniques used to influence readers.
10.1.A.4: Understands the philosophical assumptions and basic beliefs underlying an author's work.
10.1.C.4: Analyzes techniques used to convey viewpoints or impressions.
10.1.C.5: Uses discussions with peers as a way of understanding information.
10.1.C.6: Uses text features and elements to support inferences and generalizations about information.

Writing Benchmarks:
10.2.A.4: Evaluates own and other's writing.
10.2.A.6: Writes expository compositions.

2. When we did story sheets as bell work we covered the following benchmarks:

Reading Benchmarks:
10.1.B.2: Analyzes the use of complex elements of plot in specific literary works.
10.1.B.5: Understands the effects of author's style and complex literary devices and techniques on the overall quality of a work.

Writing Benchmarks:
10.2.A.1: Uses a variety of prewriting strategies.
10.2.A.1: Uses a variety of strategies to draft and revise written work.
10.2.A.4: Evaluates own and other's writing.
10.2.A.5: Uses strategies to adapt writing for different audiences and purposes.
10.2.A.7: Writes fictional, biographical, autobiographical, and observational narratives.
10.2.B.6: Organizes ideas to achieve cohesion in writing.

Viewing and Media:
10.4.A.1: Uses a range of strategies to interpret visual media.
10.4.A.2: Uses strategies to analyze stereotypes in visual media.

3. When we learned story structure, outlined, wrote and revised our screenplays we covered the following benchmarks:

Reading Benchmarks:
10.1.B.2: Analyzes the use of complex elements of plot in specific literary works.
10.1.B.3: Knows archetypes and symbols.
10.1.B.4: Understands how themes are used across literary works and genres.
10.1.B.5: Understands the effects of author's style and complex literary devices and techniques on the overall quality of a work.
10.1.B.6: Understands relationships between literature and its historical period, culture and society.
10.1.B.7: Makes connections between his or her own life and the characters, events, motives and causes of conflict in texts.

Writing Benchmarks:
10.2.A.1: Uses a variety of prewriting strategies.
10.2.A.2: Uses a variety of strategies to draft and revise written work.
10.2.A.3: Uses a variety of strategies to edit and publish written work.
10.2.A.4: Evaluates own and other's writing.
10.2.A.5: Uses strategies to adapt writing for different audiences and purposes.
10.2.A.7: Writes fictional, biographical, autobiographical, and observational narratives.
10.2.B.1: Uses precise and descriptive language that clarifies and enhances ideas.
10.2.B.3: Uses a variety of sentences structures and lengths.
10.2.B.4: Uses a variety of transitional devices.
10.2.B.6: Organizes ideas to achieve cohesion in writing.
10.2.C.1: Uses the parts of speech accurately and effectively in writing.
10.2.C.2: Uses conventions of language in written compositions.
10.2.C.3: Uses commonly confused terms in written compositions.
10.2.C.4: Uses standards format in written compositions.

Viewing and Media:
10.4.A.3: Understands the connection between context and values projected by visual media.
10.4.A.4: Understands how images and sound convey messages in visual media.
10.4.A.5: Understands effects of style and language choice in visual media.

It's the Final Countdown

I've been impressed by the quality of the stories you've put out. Structure-wise, they are better written than a lot of the writing I saw in graduate school.

The term ends on Friday. 70 percent of your grade hangs on how well you do on your screenplay. You have Monday through Friday to complete your screenplays and polish them.

Today I am emailing all of you my commentary on your screenplays. I have the computer lab reserved for Monday through Friday. Take advantage of this time. If you don't feel like you can complete your work at class, I strongly suggest that you do some work at home.

Friday is the absolute final day you can turn in your polished screenplay. That's not my edict, it's the school district's. Please refer to the rubric to see what I will be grading on. It's a good idea to do a self-evaluation against the rubric before turning in your screenplay.

I look forward to reading your work.

Analysis Sheet

Name:

Period:

Analysis Sheet

Write the protagonist’s name.


Summarize the protagonist’s goal.






Write the antagonist’s name.


Summarize why the protagonist and antagonist are in conflict.






Summarize the protagonist’s dramatic need.










Go through the script and mark when the scene changes without a location line by writing “LL” next to where the location line should be.

Go through the script and mark with an “A,” the places where action lines slip into the heads of the characters.

Go through the script’s action lines and find the places where dialogue lines should be located but are not. Mark these places with a “DL.”

Summarize the three escalating events from the screenplay

1.





2.





3.





Find the place where the protagonist fulfills his/her dramatic need. Summarize 1. What ACTION the protagonist takes to fulfill his/her dramatic need, and 2. What SACRIFICE is required for the protagonist to take that action.

1.








2.

Screenplay for Analysis

The Librarian

INT: LIBRARY - DAY

Lippy, a librarian, scuttles down an aisle of books. She’s thinking about where she should place a book in her hands.

She passes by an eight year old boy. He’s reading a book. Ohhh, I’m going to get this kid, she thinks.

She walks up to the kid.

LIPPY
Now young man, you know you aren’t allowed in
the adult section of the library.

BOY
But there’s nothing good in …

LIPPY
No lip from you, sonny. Get out!

She throws the boy out. He tumbles down the outside steps of the library.

Lippy growls and adjusts her glasses.

LIPPY
Now to get that book where it belongs.

She walks down another aisle and runs into a short man with glasses a mustache. He’s reading the same book the little kid had been reading. She looks hard at the short man and then grabs the book out of his hand.

The man jumps back. He’s thinking, oh no, she caught me. Lippy snatches the glasses off, revealing the little boy. He snuck in again! She chases him around the library, upstairs downstairs, through the museum. And finally she catches him.

She takes him by the ear and throws him out the door.

LIPPY
And don’t you come back!

INT: LIBRARY – NIGHT

The library is empty. LIPPY walks down another aisle and finally finds the shelf for her book. But it’s way high up. She stands on her tip toes, but still can’t reach. She climbs up the book shelves.

Suddenly the shelves start to teeter.

LIPPY
Oh no!

The shelf tips over and dumps books all over her. An especially large book falls last, knocking Lippy on the head. Her eyes close. She’s unconscious.

A man walks by. He’s very tall. He has glasses and a mustache.

MAN
(in an unusually high voice)
Are you OK?

Lippy doesn’t answer because, of course, she’s knocked out and unconscious people can’t talk.

The man takes off his pants, revealing long stilts underneath. Then he whips off his glasses and mustache. It’s the little boy!

He jumps down from the stilts and takes the books off of Lippy.

Lippy’s eyes flutter open. Where am I?

BOY
Are you OK, Mrs. Librarian?

LIPPY
You saved me!

The boy blushes.

BOY
It was lucky I walked by when I did.

INT: LIBRARY CIRCULATION DESK – NIGHT

Lippy signs a card and hands it to the boy. The card says

CARD
ADULT LIBRARY CARD

The little boy smiles at her. He places a book on the counter. It title says:

BOOK

Great Librarians Throughout the Ages.

Lippy beams at the boy and runs the book under the scanner.

The End.

Screenplay Rubric

Though I already passed these out three weeks ago, I am posting the rubric for the screenplays here. Remember that the screenplay is worth 70 percent of you grade (if you want to remember why, go to the syllabus). So take a look and decide how you think your work stacks up. As always, I'd be happy to help you improve your screenplay. We still have another week for you to revise your screenplay in class.

You can increase the size of the image by clicking on it.

Rough Drafts Due Wednesday

Rough drafts of your screenplays are due Wednesday, October 17 at the end of class. We will have the computer lab during Wednesday's class, but not Tuesdays. If you are pretty far behind, I'd suggest you work on your screenplays at home. Especially since 70 percent of your grade hangs on how well your screenplay works out. (Don't worry, we will critique the screenplays and have a week to revise them. So your rough draft will only have to be rough.)

Remember that we're shooting for the 7 page mark.

Make sure to email your screenplay to yourself so you have it at school.

I look forward to reading your stories.

Method behind my madness

A student asked me an interesting question the other day.

"What in the world does screenwriting have to do with me passing PAWS and the SAT next year?"

It's a good question.

I have a philosophy of teaching that is different from most. What I see going on in most English classrooms is teachers presenting stories to their class and saying, "Lo, here is a perfect story sent to us from on high. Praise it." And then the class needs to write about characterization this, setting that, language the other thing.

So the students are always consumers of literature. The literature is always above them waiting to be worshiped.

I have a different approach. I want to make all of you into producers of literature. I want you to be writers before you become analyzers. I want you to experience, first hand, what it's like to write a creative work. I want you to take it from conception to outline to draft to finished product. Once you have done that, you will know what it's like to be a writer.

As writers yourselves, you can approach literature as a fellow craftsman rather than as a worshiper. You know what it's like to write a story. Thus, you can use your own experience to analyze it. Because you KNOW what it's like to create a story. You've done it.

Instead of assuming that the story in front of you is perfect and needs only praise, you can actually look at the writer's craft and tell what is working and what isn't. And believe me, from time to time, I'm going to give you some lame stories to read. I'll expect you to be able to say, 'This is a lame story," and be able to back up your assertion with good, craft-founded evidence.

It's kind of like me and cars. I barely know how to open the hood of my car. I have only the vaguest notion of what goes on inside the engine. The only way I could tell the difference between a Kia Sephia engine and a Ferrari engine is by what name is printed on it. I can only use engines; I have no idea to how construct them. So if you made me try to analyze engines, I wouldn't get too far. I'd probably just parrot back what the teacher said.

However, if I actually learned to build an engine, if I made one of my own, I'd be able to analyze engines much better. I could tell when one wasn't working. I could tell how powerful an engine was. I'd know better how to fix an engine

That's what we're doing. We're building engines.

Screenplay format

Screenplays are different from essays, novels or short stories in that they are used exclusively as directions to the shooting crew and actors. Therefore, all the language in a screenplay is visual. In other words, it tells us what we can see on the screen. It does not tell us thoughts or attitude. Only what we can see.

There are three elements to screenplay format:

1. The Location Line. This line appears whenever the scene changes. It tells us three things:
A. Whether we are inside or outside.
B. What kind of place we are at.
C. Whether it is daytime or night time.

For example, if the scene is in Billy Bob's Bowling Alley during a league tournament we could write:

INT: BILLY BOB'S BOWLING ALLEY - NIGHT

If the scene is at a water park we could write:

EXT: WATER PARK - DAY

The location line is used whenever the scene changes. It is written in ALL CAPS.

2. The Action Line tells us what we see on the screen. It does not tell us what the characters are thinking, it does not tell us what their goals are. It only tells us what we see.

For example, for the scene in the bowling alley we might write this:

LuAnne holds a pink bowling ball up to her mouth. She breathes on it three times and then mutters something lovingly into one of its finger holes.

Or if we are writing a scene at the water park, we might write:

Shay takes a running start and jumps cannonball styles into the wave pool. A giant splash goes up, soaking a pair of girls sunning themselves on the deck. They scream.

Notice that neither of these two lines tell what the character is thinking or what their goal is. That is because action lines are visual. The action lines, well written, can convey a character's attitudes.

3. The Dialog Line is for letting the actors know what they should say and (when its important) how they should say it. The name of the speaker is always centered, and the speech itself will have three inch margins on both sides.

For example, we could write some dialog lines for LuAnne at the bowling alley:

LUANNE
(whispering to bowling ball)

Go to glory on guilded wings my little rolling man.

Or the recently wetted girls could have their say:

GIRL

Who did that? Whoooooo did that!

These are the three elements of screenplay format.

1. The Location Line
2. The Action Line
3. The Dialog Line

For an example of how they work together to make a screenplay, CLICK HERE.

Some tips to get you started

Today we're starting on our 7-page screenplays. You should have already put together a "Dramatic Need Story Sheet" during class to guide your writing.

If you're having a hard time thinking of what to write:

1. Take out your Dramatic Need Story Sheet.

Look at #7: Scene Setup. A. Is it inside or outside? B. Where does it take place? C. What time of day is it? D. What is the character doing?

Use A, B, and C to write your location line:

INT: SMALL LAME APARTMENT - NIGHT

2. Now use D to write your first action line:

Mike, twenty something, unshaven, take a black t-shirt out of a closet filled to the gills with black t-shirts.

3. Now look at your first event. What does the character do? Write it down using action lines. Remember, these are instructions to the shooting crew and the actors. So write visually.

He turns the phone off and drops it on the table as he plunges to his top dresser drawer. He digs around and finally comes out with a spiky leather collar. He inspects the spikes and finds one that doesn’t meet with his standards. He licks it and polishes it with his shirt.

4. Do any of the characters say anything? Put it in a dialogue line:

MIKE
(growling Zombie style)
Luna, Luna, Luna, you will be mine soon-ah.

Now just keep following your Dramatic Need Story Sheet. Translate what it says into visual language.

If you want to see what a screenplay looks like, CLICK HERE.

A story with a dramatic need

Today we put together stories that with a protagonist that has a dramatic need. A dramatic need, you remember is something that is broken about the protagonist's heart. An internal part of the protagonist that needs changing. The dramatic need is usually in conflict with the protagonist's surface goal.

In one class we made a story about a truck driver who is obsessed with getting as many miles and as many jobs as he can. We decided that a guy who is obsessed with his work probably tends to ignore his family. So we made his dramatic need to make room in his life for his family.

Thus, the antagonist is the truck driver's family. They will be working against the truck driver's goal of getting a lot of miles. However, their actions against his goal will work toward his dramatic need. This is the dual nature of the antagonist in the drama: he or she works against the protagonist's goal but for his/her dramatic need.

We brought him through through three events on the Dramatic Need Sheet. In the first
event, he says goodbye to his family to go on a long haul. The kid reminds his dad that his musical presentation at school is coming up, and thenpeppers him with so many questions that he makes the truck driver late getting started.

So, the kid worked against the truck driver's goal of getting a lot of miles, but he also started the truck driver on his way to fulfilling his dramatic need to spend more time with his family.

In Event #2 the truck driver takes another job at the end of his route that will keep him away for much longer than he had anticipated. That night on the phone, his wife tells him that their baby took her first steps today. This awakens the truck driver to the reality that he's missing out on his family, and that he wants to be with them. He loses sleep that night worrying about his predicament, and the next day he doesn't driver as far because he's so tired.

Once again, the family worked against the driver's goal, but now he realizes that he really wants to be with his family. A step in the direction of fulfilling his dramatic need.

Event #3 is where we show the change in the protagonist. The protagonist has to show his change through action. We do not believe characters who merely say, "From now on I will pay more attention to my family." They need to actually do something about it. In fact, they need to sacrifice to fulfill their dramatic need.

So we put gave the truck driver the very thing that will fulfill his goal: a job with double pay. But he has to take it now, and he will have to miss his son's musical performance. With this decision we will see what the truck driver really values: the money, or time with his family.

A powerful story will face its protagonist with two things that he really really wants, but he will have to choose which one he wants. It is in this way that we see what his character truly is and if he fulfills his dramatic need.

In this case, we decided that not only did the truck driver not take the job, he also drove all night to make it home in time. We see through this action that he has fulfilled his dramatic need.

Dramatic Need

Today we began to learn a little bit about "dramatic need."

A dramatic need is a part of the protagonist's heart that is broken or immature. The purpose of the story is to help the protagonist fulfill his/her dramatic need. In other words, to help the protagonist fix what is broken or to mature in a particular way.

We approached the concept of dramatic need by watching "Ausreisser" (which is available on iTunes for $2). If you haven't watched it yet, go do so. I don't want to ruin the ending for you.

The story is about Walter, a man who is approached by a little boy who claims to be his son. The man rebuffs all the boy's attempts at a father/son relationship, constantly on the lookout for a way to get rid of the kid. Eventually Walter finds out that he really IS the boy's father. He also finds out that the little boy he has been rebuffing all this time was actually the little boy's ghost who came to lure Walter to his comatose body. At the boy's bedside Walter undergoes a change of heart.

The protagonist has the dramatic need

It was difficult at first to get a hold on who was the protagonist. Many in the class argued that the little boy was the protagonist because he had a stronger goal than Walter did and was more active. This was a good argument.

However, the one thing that set Walter off from the boy is that Walter experienced the greatest range of change. In other words, he was the one with the dramatic need. The boy only had a goal (to lure Walter back), Walter had a goal and a dramatic need.

Walter's dramatic need was to make room in his heart for a son he had abandoned long ago.

Dramatic need is often in conflict with the protagonist's goal

What interesting about a dramatic need is that it is often in conflict with the protagonist's goal. Walter was only interested in getting rid of the little boy, but in order to fulfill his dramatic need, he had to become a willing father to the boy.

Revelation of the Dramatic Need usually comes late in the story

However, Walter was not aware of this. Protagonists are rarely aware of their dramatic need until very late in the story, usually because they are too interested in obtaining their goals. Usually the audience isn't aware of it until later in the story as well, for the same reasons.

The Antagonist often works against the goal, but FOR the dramatic need

Walter was the protagonist, and the little boy was the antagonist. He was constantly thwarting Walter's goals. However, the little boy was also helping Walter, little by little, to fulfill his dramatic need. Antagonist's often play this dual role in dramas: they work against the protagonist's goal, but toward the protgaonist's dramatic need.


The above schema shows how a dramatic plot works. Notice that the goal is on top (as usual) but the dramatic need is on bottom. The protagonist is working to obtain his/her goal, while the antagonist works to keep the protagonist from his/her goal. However, each event pushes the protagonist closer and closer toward his/her dramatic need.

Dramatic need is the key to a great story

The dramatic need is what separates OK stories from great stories. We're willing to root for someone with a goal, but we're willing to feel with someone who has a dramatic need. Mainly because there's a lot more at stake. Someone with only a goal only has the goal to lose. Someone with a dramatic need is often dealing with something much more important. Their own soul.

Perfect '"gun on the mantle" execution

Today we watched a short animation about a mechanical gorilla who climbs to the top of a tower, fighting off helicopters as he goes and finds a banana attached to a sign at the top. Just before he grabs it he sees a female mechanical gorilla. He picks the banana, holds it out to her, then eats it himself. So the female gorilla punches him off the building.

This was the first event, we constructed two more.

One student used Chekov's "gun on the mantle" principle perfectly in his two events.

"The gun that is placed on the mantle in the first act must be shot in the third act."

In the second event the gorilla is climbing up the tower to apologize to the female, but she takes the sign and hits him back to the ground.

In event three the gorilla makes it to the top of the tower to find the female gorilla being attacked by the helicopters. He jumps in and saves her. They fall in love. Etc.

This student used everything that had been introduced in the first event: the sign and the helicopters. (The banana had already been used.) A perfect application of the "gun on the mantle" principle.

Remember, good storytellers are like Native Americans cleaning buffalo, not a single part should be wasted.

Severing stories from "What really happened"

An interesting conflict came up today when we were working with our Hegelian stories (Hegelian stories, you remember, are stories where two equally weighty points of view come into conflict. We discussed this structure in "The Moon and the Son" post.)

Many of you had written stories from your own life, so often one side (the student's own) was more heavily weighted than the other side. One side drew more sympathy from the reader than the other.

When one side is more sympathetic than the other, it tends to reduce conflict. If the problem is easy to solve, the conflict suffers. So we often went into the stories and changed them around in order to give both sides equal weight. But when we did that, some of you said, "But that's not how it happened."

Here is a tremendously important rule about stories. It's a good idea to start from your own life to begin a story, but after that, if you want good conflict, you need to sever all ties between the story and your life. Because a good story is a story with good conflict. It is your job as a storyteller to create compelling conflict, not to defend your life.

Remember that: a storyteller's job is to imbue a story with conflict. Look for how you can increase the conflict at all times.

The Gun on the Mantle

Today we focused on two aspects of story: the gun on the mantle and the conflict becoming the solution.

We watched a brief animation called "Doodle of Doom" where a boy limping on a crutch fantasizes about becoming a mighty warrior and saving a damsel in distress. We used this scenario as event #2 in a three-event story.

Many of us came up with the idea that the protagonist could be kicked by a bully during a kick the can game, thus hurting the protagonist's leg and leading us to the events of the animation where the warrior defeats the dinosaur. We figured that the warrior represented the protagonist and the dinosaur represented the bully. The warrior was able to defeat the dinosaur using his spear.

Well, if the warrior represented the protagonist and the dinosaur represented the bully, what could the spear represent? How about the crutch?

So now, from the dream, the boy can get the idea to use the crutch as an extension of his arm in the kick the can game and thus become a legendary kick-the-can player, effectively overcoming his hurt leg and the bully.

The Gun

This story follows the rule articulated by Chekov, a Russian playwright, who stated: "The gun that is placed on the mantle in the first act must be shot in the third act."

The Buffalo

In other words, good storytellers are like Native Americans cleaning buffalo, not one part should be wasted. If we introduce a gun, it must be used. If we introduce a crutch, the audience expects us to use it. We prove our storytelling mettle when we not only use it, but use it creatively.

The conflict becomes the solution

This leads us to the idea that in a good story the conflict becomes the solution. The crutch, which represents the conflict the protagonist is having, becomes the solution. At first it holds him back, but then he finds a way to use it to his advantage.

Audiences love it when the conflict becomes the solution. We also had another plot where the girl is attracted to the protagonist because of his drawings, which he never would have drawn had he not been injured.

Escalating Events

Events come in two parts:

1. an attempt by the protagonist to reach his or her goal and

2. the action the antagonist takes to prevent the protagonist from reaching his or her goal.

As the story progresses, each event should be more intense than the previous events. Thus, they are called escalating events.

For example, if we set up a little girl who is trying to keep her happiness despite some mean hearted actions by a little boy, the three escalating events will be the attempts the little boy makes on the little girl’s happiness and how she overcomes each of them.

So for the first event you could have something like; “The little boy knocks over her tower of blocks. She ignores him and makes a bigger tower.”

Then you would escalate the intensity of the boy’s attack in event #2 (we always have to escalate the action, otherwise we lose the audience’s attention). For example, he could kick dirt at her, which she could put to use in a sand castle.

The final event determines whether the story is a drama or a comedy.

If the story is a comedy the character makes no change but usually gets what he or she wants in an unexpected way. If it is a drama, the character changes even if he or she doesn’t get what he or she wants.

So the final event could be something like: “Little boy runs up to kick little girl. But he trips, falls and gets a bloody nose.”

At this point we could have either a comedy or a drama. If it were a comedy, the little girl could laugh. If she does this, she hasn’t changed, but she has achieved her goal of keeping her happiness. If it were a drama, the little girl would help the boy up and doctor his nose, showing that can rise above his petty attempts at saddening her.

To sum up:

Escalating event

1. An attempt by the protagonist to attain his/her goal, and the antagonist’s action to prevent the protagonist from gaining the goal.
2. Each event escalates in intensity.
3. The final event makes it clear whether the story is a comedy or a drama by whether the character changes or not.

Hegelian Structure

Today we began work on a possible story for our screenplays using the structure from "The Moon and the Son."

The structure of "The Moon and the Son" is what I call a Hegelian structure. Which means that two competing stories come into conflict with each other, and both are valid. Remember that in the animation life with dad really WAS hard. But Dad's life was also hard, and he was doing his best.

This makes for great conflict, if both people are right but their stories come into conflict.

Here's an idea we came up with as a class for this structure:

Teacher vs. Student

Set Up: The student doesn't bring her homework in to class.

Teacher: "You know, you're going downhill fast. Here I give you a bunch of second chances and extra credit work, but you never do any of it. I'm bending over backwards for you! But you come in a wreck, you never have your homework, you sleep through class. Do you have no motivation? Do you want to be on welfare all your life? 'Cause I'm about to give up on you! Get your act together, sister!

Student: "My mom disappeared a month ago. I don't know where she is. There's not much food left in the house. I try to get money by washing dishes all night at the T and A, but that's just not cutting it. My little brother is always hungry and I'm worried about him. But I'm afraid to tell anyone. What if they send us off to foster homes?"

You can see how this story set up works. The teacher is right. She has done her utmost to help this student get a good grade, and the student seems to be shunning it all. But the student is also right. Her life is in chaos right now. She could no more do her homework than fly to the moon. And she can't let anyone know.

We officially have conflict here.

The next step, which we will be working on during the week, is to take these conflicting stories and find a way to make something new between them the same way the Son was able to in "The Moon and the Son."

Bell Work Makeup

Many people have missed class for athletics and other activities. If you want to make up your bell work for the day, what you need to do is to outline an original story (one you make up) using a story sheet. Each story you outline will make up for one bell work.

Of course, the rubric governing story sheets will dictate how many points each sheet is worth.

The Moon and the Son

Today we analyzed "The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation" (available for a mere $2 on iTunes).

We saw this story working in three parts:

Part I starts with John, the son, telling his deceased father about a dream he had where his father was the Man on the Moon. But as John was feeding him, his father turned into a snapping turtle and bit his finger.

"This is what is was like to live with you," John tells his father. "You were always angry.

The rest of part one is John listing his grievances against his father.

Part II is John's father telling his side of the story. We see that John's father had a difficult life as well, and that some of the difficulties John was complaining about, like his father going to jail for five yeras, resulted from his father making ill-fated attempts to provide a good life for his family and keep a promise he had made long ago.

This is an excellent way of setting up a story: to bring two conflicting points of view together, both of which are correct. John indeed had a difficult life with his father. But his father was trying to do a good job.


In Part III of the story John reinterprets his dream about his father being the Man in the Moon to make room for his father's side of the story. "I made you the Man in the Moon so that you would be too far away to hurt me," he says, "But I made you bright enough so that I would never forget you."

This kind of story structure is called the Hegelian Structure. The philosopher GWF Hegel once argued that history is made up of competing forces. But when these forces come into conflict, the conflict does not end with the total destruction of one or the other force, rather it results in the creation of something new between them.

This can be a way you put together the story for your screenplay. Find an incident where you have been in conflict with someone. Tell the story yourself and then let the other person tell his or her side of the story. Then, instead of saying one or the other is right, find a way to make something new between them. Try to find a way to make room for both stories.

Jasper Morello

Today we analyzed "The Mysterious Geographical Adventures of Jasper Morello" (which is available on iTunes for for a mere $2).

Multiple Goals can = Multiple Antagonists

One of the first things we noticed was that the protagonist had multiple goals. At the beginning Jasper wants to overcome his previous failure as a navigator, which had resulted in a shipmate's death. However, we also noticed that later on Jasper's goal changes to getting back home to his wife, who had contracted the sickness.

Interestingly, we found that there was a different antagonist for each goal Jasper had. His first goal, to overcome his past mistakes, was antagonized by the captain of the vessel. But later, his goal of returning to his wife was antagonized by the Dr. who was constantly either injecting Jasper with a sleeping serum, or convincing the captain to continue the voyage rather than return home.

Shape Shifter

This makes the Dr. an interesting character. The captain is reliably antagonistic toward Jasper the entire trip. However, the Dr. begins the trip as Jasper' s friend. It is later that the Dr. becomes Jasper's antagonist.

This kind of character that changes functions during the story is called a shape shifter. In other words, he is a friend who turns into an enemy.

Of course, shape shifters can also change from being an enemy to a friend.

Drama or Comedy?

Though we had to dig a little bit, we finally decided that this story is a drama. A drama, you remember, requires a change on the part of the protagonist.

Jasper's goal is to get home to his wife. Things look up when they find the bug that providedsthe cure for the sickness. But Jasper has to sacrifice his own life to keep the bug alive unti the ship reaches home.

Jasper obviously wants to be alive when he reached home so he can cure his wife and spend his life with her. Therefore, his willingness to sacrifice his life for the sake of his wife and others is an indication of change.

Multiple goals and a breach in comedy

Today we watched "Ward 13" written and directed by Peter Cromwell. We watched it because it is more complex than the short films we've watched so far. The main character has two goals (instead of one, as we've been used to), and there are many turning points (rather than a single turning point, as we've been used to).

The protagonist (main character) starts low on the graph as he has just been hit by a car and taken to a hospital. However, things get worse when he wakes to find that his nurse seems a little demented.

The next time he wakes up he tries to ring the nurse, but discovers that the cord has been cut. This starts him into

Goal #1: to find out what is going on. He reaches his goal when he finds a man who has been turned into slime monster. As he runs away, the protagonist realizes that his fate will be the same. Which leads him to

Goal #2: to get out of the hospital alive. He finds a bottle of strength pills and a cane which gives us some hope that he'll be able to accomplish his goal.

But he is immediately apprehended and brought to a surgery theater (down on the story graph). Though he is able to escape (up), he runs into the slime monster (down). He defeats the slime monster (up) but runs next into the Jason Nurse (down). However, he is able to defeat the Jason Nurse (up), only to run into the crazy guy where he has a battle on a speeding gurney (down). After this victory (up) the protagonist must fight three people, including the head doctor (down).

The head doctor is, of course, the most imposing foe. In fact, as we look back over the line of opponents, we realize that they have become more intelligent and more difficult to defeat. Thus, the head doctor takes the longest to defeat. The story made good use of escalation.

In the end the protagonist escapes momentarily but is knocked unconscious and is taken back to the hospital. Since the protagonist put so much work into escaping the hospital, only to be brought back, we concluded that, structurally, "Ward 13" is a comedy. One of the hallmarks of comedy is that the character doesn't get anywhere after all the the conflict.

Some of us were emotionally unsatisfied with this ending. The reason was because we became invested in the protagonist more deeply than a comedy normally lets us. Comedy only works when we don't believe any real suffering is going on. As long as the coyote is able to pull himself back into shape after being crushed by a boulder, it's comedy.

However, at the beginning of the movie we see the protagonist weep when he comprehends his plight. Watching a character suffer usually makes us sympathize with that character and invest in him or her. We believe that what happens to that character matters.

Thus, when the protagonist fails to escape, someone who has invested in the character may feel a sense of loss rather than a sense of irony.

Drawing a plot from a character

Today we started to work on putting together stories from the character sheets we drew up.

We noticed from the stories we put together that it was very simple to make a story. All we had to do was find a character with a goal and give him/her an antagonist who works against the goal.

One story we put together was about Lola, whose goal is to get a rainbow lollipop from a baby.

This is a great comedic setup because the antagonist (the baby) seems weak in comparison to Lola, but will turn out to be stronger.

Lola makes three attempts to get the lollipop from the baby but is thwarted each time by the baby's intelligence or strength. Lola gets meaner and meaner until she kicks the baby and takes the lollipop.

Of course, the baby cries drawing the attention of passersby and Lola has to give the lollipop back. As Lola walks away, sad and defeated, the baby offers her a lick of its lollipop. Lola sits down and they share the lollipop.

This is a great comedic ending because it goes against Lola's meanness, her defining characteristic. She couldn't get the lollipop with meanness; she could only get it when the baby kindly offered it. This is a basic form of comedy: "character gets something she wants, but in an entirely unexpected way."

Character-driven plot

Today we watched two animations that epitomized the character-driven plot.

First we watched "Guard Dog" by Bill Plympton. We saw in this animation a character whose defining quality was an overactive imagination. His goal was to protect his owner from the dangers he imagined might come from harmless animals.

Since protecting his owner was the dog's overriding goal, and since the plot was structured as a comedy, we knew that the dog had to be the one to kill the owner. Remember, in a comedy the character either doesn't get what he wants, or gets the thing he wants but is no better off for it, or gets what he wants in an unexpected way.

The second animation we watched was "Fallen Art" by Tomek Baginski. This animation also showed how an extreme character can propel a plot. The main character was a man who made a dance animation using fallen bodies. Without his particular psychosis, the plot would never have happened.

Creating extreme characters like these is an easy way to make a plot. Oddities are fun to play with and provide all kinds of possibilities.

In the 8th hour class we put together a story as a class. It only took a few elements to help us create a plot.

Our protagonist is a skater. The skater has a very long deathhawk. His goal is to impress a girl with his skating tricks, but the antagonist, another boy who also wants the girl's affections, mocks him the whole time.

The escalating events proceeded thus:

First, the protagonist's hair gets in his eyes and he rams into a tree.

Next, his hair gets caught in his wheels and his head is sucked to the pavement where his skateboard runs over it.

Finally his rival steps on his hair as he goes by, causing the biggest injury of all.

The antagonist thinks he's won, but it turns out that the girl doesn't like mean boys and she rushes to the injured skater's side.

It's a good story that uses the essentials of comedy. And it only took us ten minutes to make.

That's how easy it is to throw a story together. A character, a goal and an antagonist.

Two escalation analyses

Today we analyzed two animations.

In the first, "The Bombing of Candytown" we had a hard time nailing down a main character (probably because there wasn't one). However, we did a good job noticing that the airplanes were the most active characters and had an obvious goal: to bomb Candytown. They also made value shifts on the graph: being in the middle of the graph as they entered, going up when they killed Darth Vadar, going down when one of the planes is shot down, and finally going up when the last plane succeeds in destroying Candytown.

The other two candidates for main character were Chewbaca and Hello Kitty, who fall in love at the beginning, and Candytown itself. However, neither of these choices had a goal. So we discarded them.

In the second animation, "For Whom the Lunch Bell Tolls" we identified the students collectively as being the main character and the lunch ladies and the food they handed out as the antagonist. The students overcame the gross food by trading trays to get what they wanted.

However, we called the escalation into question. We decided that since the movie was trying to gross us out, the food placed on the trays should get progressively grosser. But we decided that grass is not grosser than a shoe, and that Barbie parts certainly aren't grosser than underwear. Thus, the progression of grossness was flawed.

But then we saw that the students ate their food in an escalating order of grossness that we felt was effective.

Story Starters

Today we started putting together conflicts from story starters.

The main story we dealt with was Roger's story. Remember that Roger has cleaned up his life, has a job, a family and a bright future. But then an old girlfriend calls. She says she's waiting in her car down the street.

What does she have to tell him? How will it change his life?

We came up with some interesting ideas like:

1. Roger's old girlfriend is finally telling him about a child he didn't know he had fathered.

2. She says she's going to kidnap one of his children.

These were excellent ideas because they take Roger's life and turn it upside down. They take him from being on the positive end of the graph to the negative end.

Then we wanted to know how to ratchet up the conflict further. Some of our ideas were

1. Roger's old girlfriend is finally telling him about a child he didn't know he had fathered AND he's sworn to kill the father that didn't raise him (Roger, that is).

2. She says she's going to kidnap one of his children. As hard as he tries to stop her, he fails, because Roger's WIFE is in on the plot.

In number 1 we take away Roger's familial stability, but at least he still has his life; so we try to take that away as well.

In number 2 there's a threat against Roger's family, but at least he has a family he can count on. But then his wife betrays him, thus he no longer has his family.

This is the essence of conflict escalation: find things that matter to the protagonist, and then threaten them. As the story goes on threaten things that are more and more important to the protagonist.

On Grading

Grade Recording Procedure

I record bell work at the end of each week, not each day. It would take waaaaay too long to record your work daily. So each week you'll be able to see how you're doing on bellwork and preparedness.

Early Term Grades

Some of you were concerned about having a low grade, and I think it's great that you want to get a good grade. Right now the only graded work we have done is bellwork and preparedness. So if you have missed any of these small assignments it will look like it impacts your grade significantly.

But that's not the case. Bellwork and preparedness is only 30 percent of your grade. Actual class assignments are work 70 percent of your grade. So when we start grading the class assignments you'll be able to have a better idea of how you are doing.

Making Up Bellwork

I know that many of you have excused absences for games and trips, but bellwork isn't available for makeup. Bellwork is an integral part of the curriculum as it frames our early class discussion and engages the class in thinking exercises that cannot be performed alone. If you aren't in class, you miss that discussion and exercise. It's much like missing football practice.

This will be my policy unless the students are able to present persuasive evidence that it is unsound academically.

Escalating conflict

Today we introduced the idea of escalating conflict.

Conflict occurs because we have a character with a goal and something gets in the way of that goal.

In order to keep the audience's attention, we need to start the conflict out small and make it larger as the story progresses. We need to escalate it. I gave the example of Die Hard where Bruce Willis destroys a helicopter at the beginning of the movie and destroys an F-16 fighter jet at the end. The jet is a bigger menace than a helicopter, therefore, Bruce needs to face it after he faces the helicopter.

We watched "Billy's Balloon" to see how Don Hertzfeldt escalated the conflict. He started with one kid being beaten up by a balloon, escalated it to the kid being dragged up into the sky and dropped, and then to seeing another kid being dragged up by a balloon to be hit by a passing jetliner. Then we saw more balloons attacking more kids until the entire screen was filled with the mayhem.

The conflict escalated. However, the conflict was limited because there was only one active character: the balloon.

To see what happens when two active characters come into conflict, we watched "Parking," by Bill Plimpton, where a plant tries to destroy a parking lot while the parking lot's owner tries to stop it.

The parking lot owner begins by merely pulling the plant out of the ground. But then he uses a mower, then a jackhammer and metal plate, then a cannon, then dynamite. He starts small and gets bigger. The plant reacts in the same way, each time sending back larger counter attacks: first in bug poop, then flying screws, then the cannon ball, then the dynamite.

The conflict HAS to escalate, otherwise, the audience loses interest.



The schema above shows how the basic story structure goes. The protagonist makes an attempt at reaching the goal, but the antagonist stops him/her. So the protagonist makes an even larger attempt at reaching the goal, thus, the conflict between the protagonist and antagonist is larger. Finally the protagonist puts his/her absolute all into achieving the goal, resulting in the largest conflict with the antagonist. In the last event we see whether the protagonist is successful at overcoming the antagonist and reaching the goal.

We also saw in "Parking," that the two contesting characters must reach a "point of no return" in order to really invest the audience in their conflict. It has to be an all or nothing affair, win or lose, no backing out. Otherwise we've limited the effect of the conflict.

The story graph

When a character has a goal we can plot her progress toward that goal on a graph. When things are going well for the character, we place a dot high on the graph, representing a positive value. When things are going badly, we place it low on the graph, representing a negative value.

For example, in the clip we watched from "Thank You For Smoking" Nick started low on the graph. Everyone in the television studio hated him. Thus, his goal was to get the audience on his side. By the end of the scene, through some fast talking by Nick, everyone in the studio is applauding him. He has achieved his goal, putting him high on the graph.

This is the basic building block of a story: A character starts either high on the graph or low on the graph. But in either case, she will be on the opposite side of the graph by the time the scene ends. If we start high, we end low. If we start low, we end high.

Up and down.

Thus, when you are writing a story, look at what your character's values are. What does she want? Then look at where she is on the graph. Is she high or is she low? If she's high, use the things she values to bring her down. If she's down, help her use her values to bring herself up.