Weekender Narrative Writing Assignment

Vignette: A small impressionistic Scene in which you, the writer, are trying to execute a chunk of archetypal narrative.

1. From the list of Vladimir Propp choose one or many chunk(s) of archetypal narrative.

Ex. Member of the Family leaves home – Hero is introduced.

Illustration of Narrative Archetype #1: Member of the Family Leaves Home – ProppFocus: Dialogue, Description, Character development

1. Establish two different characters. 2. Three different tones: Character 1, Character 2, Narrator. (You will be asked to identify your tones when you submit your audio portion of the assignment.)3. Your characters can speak with dialect or informally, make certain you adjust the spelling and language to account for these speech patterns. Must be consistent!4. Use three new words as a descriptive narrator. Highlight them RED so I can see how you are utilizing them. 5. TOPIC: Should address a form of art: Painting, Writing, Dance, Music, Sculpture.6. Remember the goal: to introduce your protagonist. Make certain your audience knows he has left home. Show it. Disguise the archetype with context, tension, drama, technique, and style. 7. Have a title.

College Adjustments

“Kandinsky does a lot with perspective, and I love that he has a theory.”“He has a theory?”“Yes, based on language I believe. I used to have his book.”“Which book?”“Point to Line and Line to Plane.”“Oh, I don’t know it.”“Well, I like that it gives parameters and structure to his art. I mean, how many artists have a detailed structure or method and then pour emotion on top of it?”“I don’t know…A lot? Sounds cliché to me…”

John stood in the doorway of a two-bedroom apartment in Costa Mesa, California analyzing a print his friend had bought from the local art store. He looked around the apartment: worn carpets showing shadows of stains in different degrees. Some from water, some from wine, all leaking into each other and spackled with bits of primary reds and yellows. In the kitchen, an assortment of day old bagels, muffins, and pasties spilled across the counter; left overs from Jimmy’s part time

restaurant gig. Jimmy suddenly finds himself stuck, fixated not on the print, but on the frame surrounding the print.

“What do you think John?”“I think the frame is all wrong”“How so?”“The print is new. It looks new. The frame looks—““The frame I found in the alley, the print is new. I like the…the contrast. I like the contrast because I believe that beauty can be elicited from both the pristine and the worn.”“Sounds like a lot of big words for, “I’m to poor to afford a frame,” John scoffs.“Why should I dumb down the way I speak? It’s evidence that I am educated. Maybe my humanities degree didn’t land me a high paying job, but that doesn’t mean I have to succumb to a lower standard. Besides, didn’t you go Ivey League?“Yes, Princeton. I fact did have a quality education. I just don’t know what I want to do with this Engineering degree. I mean, most job offers are for 70K a year. I went to Princeton, doesn’t that count for something?“Sure, you have taste…a vocabulary, critical thinking skills, you have the organizational tools to be successful. “Well, at least we have taste…” “We have a lot more than taste John. We have opportunity.

The phone rings—cuts into the conversation and Jimmy grabs the receiver from the counter. John, uncomfortable, scans the room and locates an acoustic guitar. He strums it and decides that it is completely out of tune. He then proceeds to surf his phone in boredom. Just as he is starting to be entertained with some clever meme, Jimmy bursts in the room and flash’s the key’s of the once family cruiser, now graduate commuter, 2001 Beige Oldsmobile. Jimmy had only been away to college for six months, but the newfound freedom of living away from his family and having a car at his disposable never resulted in anything less than joyful enthusiasm.

Stephenson 2018