I found this exercise to be very fun and interesting. My favorite exercise was the From Situation to Plot exercise. I choose to write about the sixteen year old girl in the hospital. This sixteen year old girl was at, not a normal hospital, but a abortion clinic. She was going against everything her parents had told her and was going to get an abortion. As she is in the office, she begins to wrestle with the different opinions in her head. She knows that she is to young to have a child, but at the same time knows it is wrong to have an abortion according to her values and beliefs. She is torn because of this. As the door opens and the nurse calls her name, her heart sinks and she begins to second guess her descision. Finally, she decides that maybe an abortion is not what she really wants.
I had fun with this exercise because you can choose so many different things that could be wrong with this girl. She could be having a baby, she could be finding out she has a fatal disease, etc. You have so many different angles that you can go with such and open subject. I was really shocked at myself that as soon as I read that exercise I knew immediatly what I wanted to write about and how I was going to describe my character. This was a great exercise and I fully enjoyed it.
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I too, chose that same character option for my story, but I left this one off of my blog since the others related to my initial story. There were so many angles to go with this character. My thoughts with this was for the patient to be a boy who was donating a kidney to a family member. My thoughts with this were that after the initial worry that this boy has about the surgery and if he really wanted to do it, that I could then go into what if the kidney he donated was rejected by the other character's body and the boy's thoughts on that.
ReplyDeleteI like your ideas for your character! I'm reminded of Juno!
Sixteen years old and having a abortion! Wooweee! It is hard to imagine that this could be a real life senario. Scary, especially when you think it could happen to your own child. Although very got development of a story. Keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteI am looking forward to reading this story. That is a huge choice on so many different levels for someone at a young age to make. I can't wait to see what you do with it.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great example of how a single prompt can create many very different stories. The scenario lends itself to the medical crisis being the focus of the story -- but for this girl, it's only the context for a much deeper struggle -- her wrestling with this very difficult decision. It's also a great example of a situation in which the character herself would need to carry the story -- there would be a risk of this becoming a story about abortion, instead of a story about this girl's struggle. Key, then, would be really getting a sense of who she is -- and how her choices are unique to her and her life, her history, her worldview. Instead of "a girl" struggling with a decision, we'll want to see this particular girl struggle.
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