062Y55AFX 02/03/09 Beginnings, Middles & Ends

To-day was mostly spent hearing the stories you had come up with - that is, the ones we hadn't heard in the last class. I had given you three lines:

A female goes overseas
She meets a male
She goes back home

and asked you to base a story on those three lines. I've given these same three lines to a number of different classes - including the Drama class who had to base a short play on them - because they are actually the basis of many, many movies and books. It has been interesting and sometimes hilarious [extremely funny] to listen to some of the stories you have come up with.

Now, remember in "How to Write An Essay..." I stressed how important the Title was? In this exercise the three lines above were important too: You will notice I used the words "male" & "female" - not girl, boy, lady, man, woman, etc. etc. There was a reason behind this.

Both those words can be used as both nouns and adjectives.

We might talk about a "male dog" (though, to be strictly correct the word dog actually refers to a male, while the word bitch is the one used to refer to a female) or a "female bird" (the correct word for a female bird though, is really Hen, while the male of any bird species is referred to as the Cock), to distinguish between the genders of two animals - because not many people actually know the correct words to use: and I'm talking about native English speakers, here!

So I was only giving you the gender here: that meant you could have made your protagonist [main character] a baby, a small child, an old woman, or even a female cat. By using the word Male you could also have made the person she met a male rabbit, or wizard or mouse or beggar. Then, by stating that the protagonist went overseas, you also had the choice of making your story about the journey itself, or a magical land, or even into another dimension or time.

The fact that she came back again was also important as it suggested this did not have to be limited to a "happily Ever After..." ending. It could have introduced a choice, an added complication, a difficulty, a solution or a lucky escape.All the best stories contain some sort of difficulty or problem or choice as part of the plot, so the fact that our protagonist went somewhere and then had to come back again, was a way of introducing your plot.

Although we have all seen hundreds of movies, and read many books, and heard heaps of stories they all contain these basic things: - a protagonist, a journey and a solution. Think about it: -

Titanic: - Rose goes on a journey overseas on a ship. She meets Jack. She finally gets back home again.

Pride & Prejudice: Elizabeth meets Darcy, she goes on an inward journey of romance and finally reaches the safe haven/home of Darcy's arms. Jane meets Bingley, they voyage through the turbulence [ups and downs; rough times] of falling in love and finally reunite to set up home together, & Lydia meets the wicked Wickham, journeys from being a young girl to a woman and ends up setting up house with him together.

Harry Potter: Goes on a totally unexpected journey to Hogwarts school, meets many different male and female witches, wizards, monsters, animals, and ends up at home with his horrible Aunt, Uncle & Cousin - until the next book where it starts all over again.

Even Monkey Magic is a story about a protagonist (a very cheeky monkey) who goes on many different journeys and always manages to escape and get back to his cave or home again.

By now you will probably have realised that this is exactly what you read about also in How To Write An Essay: There's a Beginning where you introduce your protagonist; a Middle, where you tell us what happened to him/her and an End where s/he either lives happily ever after, or his/her life is changed forever.

Someone came up to me after class and told me that they couldn't make up a story because they didn't have an imagination! But see - everyone can tell a story (or write an essay, or a letter). All you need is a beginning, a middle and an end.

It's silly to tell ourselves there are things we "can't" do. As long as we have confidence in ourselves we realise that, in fact, we can do just about anything.

The more knowledge we have the more things we can do - and once we realise that, we will find our confidence grows. And the more our confidence grows the more things we do. And the more things we can do the more we want to learn how to do other things.......and so it goes on and on.

Hey, most of us could probably rule the world one day!!

Vocabulary:
up-market...expensive, high status
obsessive...involved with something so much we forget about/ignore other things
moralistic...containing a moral or a guide to living a good life
fascinated...unable to take our eyes of someone/thing; intrigued by; a little bit obsessed with
glittering...shiny
intrigued...fascinated by, interested despite doubts or reservations
gig...informal way of saying pop concert; performance
over-the-top... exaggerated, unsuitable, too much
to want some space...time to oneself; a break; private time
Papua New Guinea... a country north of Australia and East of Indonesia
frightened out of one's wits or scared to death...to be very afraid.