- This is an additional Reading Text for the Animation degree programme at QUST/Bradford
- It is uncontroversial to say that reading is probably the best way to extend your vocabulary and the more you read, the greater your vocabulary will be
- Words from the AWL are in BLUE
- The reading material and exercises on this page will help you prepare for your Writing Coursework
Stage 1 – Description of Location
We have started work on a major writing task – the mini-saga. This project started with careful consideration of the setting. We studied examples of mythical locations from famous legends to help generate ideas for our own setting for our mini-saga. This work will be invaluable when we come to write our mini-sagas because we can use it to set the scene at the start of our stories. This will provide important contextual information to help our readers understand the background to the story. When we are working on stage three (see below) the first frame will be setting the scene and we will be able to use the stage one work we completed for this purpose. It is very important that you complete the contextual description of the location where your mini-saga will take place.
Stage 2 – Planning the Narrative
The next step will be to decide who is in the mini-saga. We need to identify the characters who will participate in the story. Will they be famous characters from myths and legends that you know, or will they be new characters that you create specially for this project? What will they look like? What kind of personality will they have? It might be useful to draw some sketches of your proposed characters and to write down a description of them.
You will also need to plan a basic plot outline. What will happen to the characters in your mini-saga? This plot outline will establish how the story will progress, which will help you to write a narrative account of the mini-saga. A plot typically consists of three main parts: beginning, middle and end. The beginning sets the scene (i.e. you can use the work you did for stage 1 above) and establishes some kind of problem or conflict that the heroes are facing (e.g. a bad guy causing trouble, a volcano erupting, aliens invading, etc.). The middle part develops the story, telling the reader what actions the heroes take to overcome the problems and challenges that were established in the beginning. A good middle part will build the dramatic tension – perhaps the problem is becoming steadily more severe (e.g. a zombie apocalypse) or perhaps the heroes have a strict time limit and are running out of time (e.g. diffusing a time bomb). The middle part ends as the tension escalates to a climax (a bit like the end of level baddie in a computer game). The end part of a story includes the climax and ties up any loose ends (i.e. what happens to the characters involved in the story after the events have finished). The most famous way of tying up the loose ends in a fairy tale is the simple declaration that ‘they lived happily ever after’.
Stage 3 – Writing the Narrative as a Storyboard
Finally, we will finish this project by writing the mini-saga narrative as a storyboard for a proposed animated cartoon. In this way, we can combine our English language skills with our artistic skills and knowledge of drawing up storyboards. The first frame of the storyboard will be the location setting that you established in Stage 1 of this project. Thereafter, you will need at least three more frames – one for the beginning, middle and end of your mini-saga story.
If the students put some effort into this, it should be a very interesting project.