Novella

 

This project is titled as the Novelette, classes that support this project are Art and Language arts. We previously learned about the revision process

and the layout to an effective Vignette, or a short story of five hundred words or less. We then began looking at different apoplectic events. Choosing one in the group we were assigned, my group and I decided to create a story based off of a paranormal apocalyptic. Individually we filled out a dossier (or an information sheet) on our main character, creating multiple vignette in the view of that character. This way we really connect to the character as if he or she were alive. Then we made a minor character to support our major, which required us to make another dossier and vignettes in their view. After that we shared our characters to our group. Once everyone in the group was familiar of what we had to work with, we begun the creation of the first draft of our story board. We followed a ‘W’ shaped line to represent the development of our story. Act one is triggering an event and flows down to the first turning point (conflict/introduction to story) which is the second point. It then rises into the middle of the book which is the Act two (being the third point of a W) being the ‘pop’ moment of the book. Then it deepens into four (the worst point) which is the turning point; this is where it gets better and then the conflict is resolved being the end of the book (Point five on the W). We would write down events along the line in class that we would then follow when each member created a chapter at home. This allowed us to keep track and connected to the story we were forming.

 

Below there is a link presented that is connected to my teams final story, of which, my chapters are in the view on my character; Shay. The story has been the result after many revisions and drafts requiring working well with my other group members to contribute our best work to create a strong and appealing story. Most of our brainstorming took place when creating a story board that we constantly revised and followed while forming our individual chapters. While creating this story in Language arts, I also created a cover for the story in my Art Class. My final being presented below, there were few guidelines giving us a max amount of freedom to produce an appealing book cover that represents the story.

 

My biggest struggle was creating run on sentences and switching my verb tense too often. This struggle was resolved over time mainly through the use of daily preps in class to practice and review the proper grammar. I believe doing these practices and reviewing them at home are my main points of improvement. However the biggest thing I learned during this project was how to write a story with other group members, all while supporting solid characters and creating an understandable theme. I think that this is really important skill to learn and I agree that I will be benefited from it in the future. Not only for upcoming school projects but even extending my flexibility in a future career.

 

The quality I grew in was Collaboration. Collaboration is working with the people around me and supporting them in a way that they and I can grow to complete the task. This project spanned across twelve weeks with an assigned group, revealing a situation that required a lot of decisions. Collaboration is a must to create something individually, for example, chapters and then combine it in such a way that works in Unity with what my group members have created. Overall that collaboration guides us to reach the common goal of finishing the apocalyptic story. Another way that collaboration was crucial was when creating a story board. My group had different opinions when drafting those key events that the story will strictly follow. But instead of fighting for all of our individual ideas; we found a common ground. For example creating a combination of all of our ideas, or taking the one that truly made the story better, purposely blind that there was an owner to the idea.