Crafting a Story The nuts & bolts of making stories work

hi students and welcome to our second unit of the

year. Now that we have worked through, rhetorical patterns were

going to move on to the first of two short

story units that typically do with my freshman classes.

This is called Crafting a Story, and this is the

first of two videos we're going to do, and it

really does cover than the nuts and bolts of of

how a story comes together to be cohesive, to function

as as a standalone story you'll remember from our Rhetorical

Patterns unit.

We looked over the narrative form, which is telling a

story, has a beginning and middle and and goes through

a timeline of what's happening.

Well, that's a very, very simple version of this.

There are a lot of elements that need to come

together to make a story work well, so we're going

to go into death in these two videos.

We'll start with defining a story specifically by the length,

so we're looking at stories.

The shortest time we're going to come across is a

vignette. Now, Vignette is very interesting.

It focuses on a single scene or single mood, single

feeling, single idea.

This is the form of story that can vary from

that traditional narrative pattern of beginning, middle and end.

Because of that singular focus, then YYeTs tend to be

extremely short.

Could be as short as a few sentences and up

to about a page or so.

This typical for vignette.

We're going to see a version of this with a

story called Snow that will be reading for this unit.

Next up we have the short story, the kind of

a catch all term here.

But typically we're talking about a story that's under 7500

words. The other stories that we're reading in this unit.

So, for instance, a and P yellow woman, all of

those are gonna be considered short stories in the very

traditional sense.

Moving up in length, we have a novella.

A novella falls somewhere between a short story and somewhere

between a novel and length.

It's under 40,000 words.

Uh, do you think about this in terms of homework

assignments? Since that's how you're reading things.

A short story is something that you could read in

one sitting.

I might assign a short story for one single night.

Maybe, too, if it's a longer short story.

A novella, on the other hand, is going to require

more time.

Where is a full on novel?

We might do 4 to 6 weeks a novella, probably

2 to 3.

So that gives you some sense in terms of homework,

maybe a little more relatable way of defining.

And then finally, we have the novel, which is 40,000

words or more.

It's what you're used to reading in a middle school

English class and what you'll get in a high school

English class jump next.

Five elements.

Like I said, just because you have a narrative pattern

doesn't mean that you have a good story to make

a story cohesive.

To make it work, you're going to need to be

thoughtful about these five elements.

And when you're reading a story, you're also gonna want

to think about these five elements because it's the way

that we can dissect and analyze the quality of of

a story.

So we have character setting, plot, conflict and theme for

the remainder of this video.

We're gonna focus on character and setting, go into more

depth about those are next video will cover plot conflict

thing, but by the end of these two videos, you

should be able to talk at length about any five

of these elements for the stories that that we cover

this year, we'll get started with a closer looking character.

I put characters under here and start with the narrative

point of view because the person telling the story, the

character, the shares, this story with the audience ends up

being really crucial to how we as the reader, interact

with that store.

So for narrative point of view, you're gonna have a

1st, 2nd or third person story.

First person would be I I.

Typically, it would be a protagonist in the main character,

sharing a series of events with you, the reader through

Here's her its eyes.

Second person is probably the least common type of narrative

point of view.

That's the you you you type of story.

Where the narrator is speaking to the reader directly.

We're again.

We're going to see this in our unit here.

Just so you have an example of it, it isn't

something you're going to see frequently, and then third person

third person is sort of like a person of a

person from above looking down on these characters in the

story and telling you the reader, What's going on now?

Billy did this.

Joel did that.

This is a fairly common one about this Communist first

person and depending on the narrative point of view, there

some other things that you're going to want to consider.

One of those is the narrator's degree of objectivity.

So to be objective means to to not be influenced

by feelings, opinions, surroundings, et cetera.

So if you have an objective narrator, you have someone

that's giving you an unbiased version of the story.

It's a fairly neutral version of what's happening with the

characters in the story.

If you have the opposite of objective, it's called subject.

If you have a subjective narrator, that person's feelings come

out and then you're gonna want talk about narrators reliability.

So if you're a first person point of view story

and your narrator is not objective, you have in a

subjective narrator, then you're gonna wanna question your narrators.

Reliability is that.

Is that narrator telling you the reader what truly is

happening were just what they feel is happening?

Uh, this gets a little complicated, will dive into it

with different stories.

And again, you get to experience that with this mitt.

So when we look at character, the first thing we

need to think of is who is the narrator?

What point of use this story told from What's the

degree of objectivity?

And how reliable is this?

Narrator Do I trust what's being shared with me?

The reader now types of characters getting into the more

simplified version.

Here, your protagonist antagonised a dynamic character, static character, round

character, flat character, foil character.

So these you probably already heard of some of them

you might not have, will start from the top and

move away down.

A protagonist is simply a main character.

That's it.

That's, uh, the person, the object, the animal that whatever

it is that the main character of ah, of a

story and you will find that for first person narration

A lot of the time, the protagonist is the narrator,

but that's not always the case.

You, uh, next up you'll see antagonised.

The antagonised is the character who struggles against the protagonist.

So since action ah, comic book movies are very big

right now, Protagonist is the good guy antagonised is the

back. It gets a little more complicated than that.

But that's a simplified version of the antagonise.

Truthfully can also be a force.

I remember a middle school book that that I had

to read when I was in school called Hatchet.

The protagonist was a kid, that his plane crashes in

the Alaskan wilderness.

Well, since he's he's not up against another person.

The antagonise really is his environment.

So that gives you an example of an antagonised that

isn't just a person moving to see.

We have dynamic, so we're talking about characters you can

see a character is dynamic.

That means that that character changes during the story.

Things happen to that character that that caused them to

grow. Typically, a static character, in contrast, is, ah, character

that stays the same during the story that regardless of

the incidents that that character engages with, they don't change

from beginning to end.

I'm actually around around character has a lot of different

characteristics that we, the reader, get to know about.

Around character is probably someone has a reader.

You feel like you know very well in comparison to

that. We have flat a flat character.

Maybe we're only presented as readers with one or two

of a flat character's traits.

It's someone that we don't know that well.

They are perhaps overly simplified or there not very important

to the overall point of the story.

So they just kind of come in, come out without

a lot of detail.

And then, finally, we have foiled.

A foil character is used.

Teoh work in contrast with another character.

So typically, you see a foil character for the antagonised

or start for the protagonist eso it will be the

protagonist sidekick and the things that this sidekick, or is

we got the protagonist is good at Oh, are some

some variation of that so that certain characteristics of the

protagonist end up being highlighted by that foil character, Right?

Well, that's a lot for character and certainly will go

over in class.

That brings us to setting settings easy.

Not gonna spend a whole lot of time on.

This is where the story set that's it.

Nice and simple.

You do need to pay attention to sending, however, this

setting does matter.

So, for instance, if we have a story written in

2020 and it takes place in 18 50.

We would think about that a little differently than a

story written in 18 50 about 18 50.

A story that takes place in a fictional world provides

more opportunities for interesting things toe happen possibly, than something

that takes place in the actual world.

So we need to think about setting as having a

major factor in how our story is coming about.

But if you can tell me where a story takes

place, we're off to a good start.

All right?

That is the first of our crafting a story discussion.

Good job.

Crafting a Story The nuts & bolts of making stories work

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