Little Red Riding Hoods mother tells her to take some food to her Granny who is sick.

Little Red Riding Hood meets the wolf and she tells him where she is going.

A woodcutter kills the wolf and rescues poor Granny.

The wolf goes ahead of her and eats her Granny and then waits for Little Red Riding Hood to come.

She screams and runs away.

Grannys features are rather big and Little Red Riding Hood asks her why when suddenly the wolf pounces on her

PARAPHRASING Effective paraphrasing involves a combination of such techniques as:

using similar words (synonyms), deleting repeated or irrelevant words, changing the structure of sentences (e.g. from the active to passive voice), changing the order of sentences within a paragraph, using reporting verbs 'argues', 'suggests' 'disagrees'), and (e.g. and

Changing word forms (e.g. turning verbs into nouns, also called nominalization).

When paraphrase or summarize, you are transforming the original authors ideas by expressing them in your own words. This is why these two methods can be viewed as note-taking techniques. While a paraphrase is usually similar in length to the original text, a summary is a restatement of the main points in significantly shorter form. When paraphrasing or summarizing, you need to ensure that the original meaning of the text is not altered and that your version is not too similar to the original, as this could count as plagiarism

DISCUSSION ON THE ELEMENT OF A GOOD STORY TELLING

Weve all experienced bad storytelling: the movie that was so boring you walked out in the middle, the book you could never seem to get into, the co-worker who always forgets the punch line to the joke, the uncle whos always going off on tangents until he loses his point completely. We sigh, we shift position in our chairs, we look out the window. When will this person stop talking? But weve also all experienced good storytelling: the novel that kept you up all night because you couldnt wait to find out what would happen, the movie you saw three times and then bought on videotape, the television show you look forward to all week, the friend who people tend to gather around at parties, the grandfather who makes up outlandish and wonderful bedtime stories off the top of his head. They hold our interest, we cant tear ourselves away, we lose track of the outside world. We are enthralled.

Those of us who want to tell stories whether in print, on film, or at parties look at stories and storytellers like these and wonder, How do they do it? Well, some of its just talent, but it also requires skill at using the five main tools of the storytellers trade:

Setting Where is this story happening? Character Whos the story about? Plot Whats happening? Backstory What happened before, to create and inform this situation? Detail Which specific things should your audience notice?

In this discussion, well briefly look at each of these tools to explore what they are, how they work, and how you can use them to tell better stories. Well approach the topics primarily from the viewpoint of fiction writing, though the same tools can be used with differing degrees of emphasis for any type of storytelling.

1. Setting The first tool in your storytelling toolbox is setting. Where is your story taking place? A story set in a prison raises very different expectations than one set at a Buddhist monastery. The setting tells your audience valuable information about the characters, and also about what sort of action they might expect to take place. You may (and hopefully will) surprise them, but at least youve given them a rug to stand on before you pull it out from under them.

One of the keys to writing good settings is props. Theres an old saying along the lines of If theres a gun over the mantle in Act 1, it has to go off by the end of the play. Now, a gun over the mantle has become a clich, but its a good example how setting can enable plot. If that gun hadnt been over the mantle in Act 1, no one would have had the opportunity to use it later in the play.

In writing your setting, you have the chance to create the opportunity for later action and drama in your story. You might include something large, like a pit, or a lion. Or it might be something small, like a pearl earring sitting on the coffee table. You might not know, when you place it in your setting, what purpose the item will serve. But characters often have minds of their own, and if you set them loose in an interesting setting full of potential for action, youve increased the chances of something interesting happening. Whatever you choose to create, your setting and the items within it can play an important role in helping your story take shape and move forward in interesting ways.

Character Nothings going to happen without characters. Characters make the story happen; they perform actions, make choices, interact with their setting to cause interesting results. So who is your story about? And why should your audience care about what happens to them? If youre telling a story about a boring person, its going to be difficult to hold your audiences attention, no matter how fascinating the setting. So youll make your own task easier you create a character who interests you, makes you (and, likely, your audience) curious to learn more.

One good way to create an interesting character is to create a character whose personality includes some contradictions. In the real world, there are few purely good or purely evil people, few who are purely selfish or purely rational or purely anything. People are complicated. Thats what makes them interesting. And so characters should be complicated, too.

That doesnt mean you need to know everything about your character, especially not at the very start. Maybe you just come up with the idea that shes very kind, but also vain ... or that hes stubborn, ethical, and has a weakness for blondes. But make sure to leave some room for your character to develop, because another thing that makes a character interesting is potential for change, whether that potential is ever realized or not. Its the potential that matters, because it helps to keep your audience interested, wondering what this character is going to do next.

So, say youve got a rough sketch of a character whose personality includes some contradictions, and who seems to have some potential for change. Now what do you do with her? How do you communicate to an audience these ideas youve expressed in your mental character sketch? Thats easy. Youve got three primary sub-tools within characterization:

appearance dialogue actions

Your characters appearance, though the least powerful of these three sub-tools, can communicate some useful information to your audience. Is his hair dyed green? Is she wearing a ballerinas tu-tu? If she is wearing a tu-tu, is she a svelte twenty-year-old or a pudgy five-year-old or a frail eighty-year-old?

Dialogue communicates character even more effectively to your audience, since it allows your characters to speak for themselves. Does she use dialect, jargon, or slang? Does he have a stutter? Does she make rude, judgmental pronouncements? Does he talk for long stretches without letting anyone else get a word in edgewise? What your characters say and how they say it can tell your audience a lot about them.

Your characters actions the third sub-tool define them most powerfully of all. A character may be young and handsome, smile winningly, describe himself as kind, and talk charmingly with every other character in your story, but if he then savagely kicks a helpless old woman, your audience will draw their own conclusions.

Plot Plot is what happens in your story, and your characters actions are an important part of it. An old saying among fiction writers is Character is plot, meaning that all good plots develop as a result of choices and actions resulting from the interaction of personalities in a story. Plot should not be something imposed upon characters, but rather something that grows out of their choices.

And yet, as I said, your characters actions are only one important part of plot. Plot is

something more: Its the overall arc of your story, including external events that happen to the characters as well as and in combination with their own actions and choices.

One easy way to think of plot is as a 3-step process: 1. set-up 2. build-up 3. pay-off So, in the early part of your story, you need to set up your plot: introduce the characters and setting, communicate to your audience the situation in which the story begins, and present some sort of problem or tension. You then build up that tension, perhaps with events that challenge the characters in unexpected ways. And finally, often after a few rounds of build up, you must provide your audience with some sort of pay-off.

Since fairy tales are good examples of nearly pure plot, we can walk through these three steps using the familiar tale of Cinderella: 1. Set-up: Cinderella is at the mercy of her evil step-mother and step-sisters. There is going to be a ball, which they dont want to let her attend. 2. Build-up: a. Cinderella finds a way to attend the ball in disguise. b. She meets the prince and they fall in love. c. She flees at midnight and returns to her slavery, without the prince ever learning her identity. d. The prince searches and searches, but cannot find her. 3. Pay-off: The prince finally does find her and makes her a princess.

One of the most important keys to plot is motion. You must make sure to keep your story in motion toward some end. Notice how each stage of the build-up not only escalates the tension, but keeps the plot moving toward the pay-off. Without motion, action, tension, and change however subtle your story will stagnate. Your audience will begin to squirm in their seats, look out the window, and wonder when the story will end. And that is not a happy ending to any tale.

One of the other keys to plot is significant consequences. Your audience will still get bored with your story if its in constant motion, but the motion has no potential to cause changes that will truly matter. The consequences dont have to be earth-shattering they dont have to mean the difference between a life of slavery and becoming a princess but they do need to matter in the world of the characters, and you do need to build toward them from the very beginning and throughout your story.

Yet another key to writing good plot is coherence. The plot of your story should hang together as one piece, regardless of the number of sub-plots or mini-climactic moments. Your audience should feel that they are hearing one coherent story, with a beginning, middle, and end. The amount of digression you can get away with along the way depends primarily on the length of the story. In a 500-page novel, you can probably tell numerous sub-stories, including various sub-plots that dont relate directly to the central movement of the story. But if youre telling a 5-minute anecdote at a party, digressions will glaze your listeners eyes over before youve even noticed whats happening. When in doubt, stay on track: stick with plot events that move the action forward toward the pay-off.

Backstory Remember that pearl earring I mentioned back in the section on setting? Well, its unlikely to be of much use in your story unless it has some backstory, some history behind it. Perhaps its evidence of the husbands illicit affair, or the teenaged daughter stole it from her mothers jewelry box, or it bears a curse which will affect its wearer, or

whatever your imagination comes up with. This backstory might never be explicitly stated in the story, or it might be openly discussed. Either way, it crucially affects the progress of the story.

One example of effective usage of backstory for setting comes from the film The Blair Witch Project, in which the three characters hear tales early in the film of a man who lived in an isolated house where he killed several children in mysterious circumstances. When the characters late in the film happen upon a deserted old house in the woods, the audience remembers the backstory and understands the significance. This example shows backstory (the tales of past murders) working together with setting (the abandoned house and its contents) and plot (the characters arrival at the house and their behavior within it) to create potential significant consequences.

In fact, significant consequences often depend largely on backstory. The consequences of a mans discovery of the pearl earring on the coffee table would vary widely, depending on who the earring had belonged to and how it got there. Its a rare story that starts at the true beginning. Most stories throw their audience into the middle of events, when things have become interesting, when a turning point is near, and that means theres plenty of backstory.

And backstory continues to accumulate as a story charges ahead. Half-way through the story, your character receives an antique sword. Well, where did this sword come from? Whats its story? Your hero meets an enchantress. Where did she come from? Whats her story? You dont necessarily need to explicitly tell your audience the backstory, but it should be there, leaking through to inform and develop the characters (What happened to them in their lives before this story began?), the settings (What happened here before? And how does it affect the present drama?), and of course the plot (What important events preceded the beginning of the story? And how do all of these backstories work together to create significant consequences?).

Detail Like backstory, detail interacts with all of the other tools in the storytellers toolbox. You must give details about the characters, setting, events, and backstory of your tale in order to bring your story vividly to life in the imaginations of your audience. The good storyteller throws in plenty of juicy details the way a character walks, the color of the living room rug, the expression on a characters face, the song playing on the radio. But there are two main questions to ask yourself when putting detail into a story:

How many details do you need?

and

Which details do you need?

As with the coherence of plot, the answer to the first question lies primarily in the length of the story. A 500-page novel allows for levels of detail that would be simply ridiculous (and impossible) in a 5-minute anecdote told at a party. You dont want to leave your audience confused by the vagueness of your tale, but neither do you want to give them a 30-minute description of a landscape where a relatively unimportant, 5-minute scene will take place. While in a novel you might be able to explore and describe the subtlest details of a characters psyche, in a brief anecdote you may only be able to single him out as the guy with the cigar. And, depending on the intent of your story, that will probably be fine. In order to get the punch line of most jokes, an audience doesnt need to hear a lot of descriptive details, and in fact they would overwhelm and ruin the effect. So you must gauge the appropriate number of details for your story, based on its length and your intended audience reaction.

But even in a 500-page novel, a storyteller must choose details carefully, because they focus the audiences attention. Mystery writers love to detail unimportant props and actions, in order to prolong the mystery by misleading their readers. The reader quite naturally thinks, consciously or not, That vase on the nightstand must be important, or why would they have mentioned it? If that vase actually isnt important, dont tell us

what color it is, or reveal a characters thoughts about it, or describe the moment when the hero places it there, or otherwise call attention to it, unless like the mystery writer you have a darned good reason for doing so. Misleading your readers about what is important in your story is okay, as long as its intentional and purposeful, but you should try at all costs to avoid confusing your audience accidentally through superfluous detail.

Putting It All Together Clearly, good storytelling does not mean using these tools setting, character, plot, backstory, and detail separately and in isolation from each other. Rather, a good storyteller weaves them together to produce a story in which they are often indistinguishable to the rapt audience.

Think again about the various types of stories people tell every day think back to that story I mentioned, about why you quit your job. Well, even a simple story like this uses the same general techniques as the Great American Novel. You want to tell your audience a bit about the office and your co-workers, describe your former boss a bit, quote some of the annoying things she said to you, describe some of the small events that led up to that fateful day, and end with the big scene where you stormed out of the building and slammed the door. You want to give a bit of backstory throughout where necessary, without straying too far from your point, and make sure to throw in a few good details (remember the vein bulging in your bosss forehead?). Using the tools from the storytellers toolbox, you take the people and places and events in your mind in your memory and in your imagination and you sift through them, choose the ones that are relevant, condense them, organize them, and turn them into a tale that rewards your audience for listening, and make them want to hear more.

ELEMENTS OF GOOD STORYTELLING

This is some elements that build a good storytelling.

1. A central premise.

2. Strong three-dimensional characters who change over time.

3. A confined space -- often referred to as a crucible.

4. A protagonist who is on some sort of quest.

5. An antagonist of some sort bent on stopping the hero.

6. An arch in everything -- everything is getting better or worse.

7. And perhaps most important -- Conflict.

1. PREMISE

A premise is the point of the story, like "Power corrupts," or "Bad people can be turned to good," or "Saving the world is worth the effort," or even things that may not be true in the real world like "Good is the same as evil." By the time the audience reaches the end of the story, they should get this point. In fact, the whole object of everything in the story is to build a case for this point.

To illustrate this, imagine a story that tries to say that "evil is bad," yet shows evil people getting off without a penalty. This will feel wrong at best, and most likely downright stupid. How would you feel if the Empire won at the end of the original three

Star Wars movies? If your point is to say that good triumphs over evil, then damnit, by the end of your story it had better triumph!

Many stories have more than one part to the premise, for example, "power corrupts, but goodness can redeem the corrupted" -- in fact, this very combination is perhaps what makes the first Star Wars movies so satisfying.

Characters have their own premises as well -- mainly in the from of what they believe about themselves, even if it's not entirely true. It defines their beliefs, convictions and wants -- all of which can be summed up in one or two statements such as "hard work is important" or "I always tell the truth." If characters violate their premise --for example, a hard-worker who suddenly slacks off for no reason, or a truth-teller who tells a lie-- we feel immediately that something is wrong, since we no longer are able to match their actions with the stories they have been telling us about themselves. (It is usually considered a contrivance if a character is set up one way by the writer, then suddenly abandons this premise in favor of something entirely different -- unless the point is to show how they are self-deceived).

You can tell that a story has a clean premise when it is easy to say what the story is about in just a few sentences. If you can't do that, then it probably has no central premise at all. And believe me, that is one of the main reasons why many computer games seem so lame when it comes to storytelling. There is no point!

If a game developer really wants to induce reality into the mind of the player, then the player has to see a point in being inside the game other than "Hey, check out all the new ways you can frag these robots before they frag you!" Pick something you want to say, and then say it in as many ways as you can from the beginning to the end. Unless you make your point, your game will get raked for having no reason for existence.

2. CHARACTER

After the premise has been nailed down, the story design process moves to developing strong, engaging, and believable characters who we will come to care about, root for, despise, or even hate.

We first see the story as characters who show up and do things. If we do not care one way or the other about the people in the story, we will certainly fail to care about anything that's happening to them -- or in the case of computer gaming, the player will have no desire to continue the game.

A lot has been written about the differences among 3D characters, 2D stereotypes, and one-dimensional wallflower extras. All of this has to do with how much a character is developed. Main characters need to be as fully developed as the time and space of the story will allow. A lesser "2D" or "one-scene" character (like a tavern keeper) may only reveal one aspect of themselves --and this is all the audience would expect. The rest float around as a backdrop to keep the place from feeling too empty -- and if they were to say or do anything very noticeable it would simply distract from the story.

But what is this thing called character development?

Quite simply, the audience starts out blank and as the story unfolds they learn more about the main characters. And what they learn, and how this begins to induce a sense of the character's personality, is what writers call character development. If done well, the audience quickly comes to understand who these people are, and based on this understanding they will either root for them to succeed, or hope for them to fail.

The effect of creating a character in the minds of the audience is tricky -- perhaps the hardest part of creative writing -- because the characters can only reveal themselves during the course of events -- that's all we really have to work with -- letting them be quiet, or aggressive, or thoughtful, or stupid, or evil, or whatever -- as events unfold. If

characters behave according to their underlying premises then they will reveal themselves properly, and when this happens no one will throw up their hands in disgust saying, "why the hell did he do THAT!"

Being consistent is only the beginning, though.

Although the main characters need to be true to themselves, they do not have to be "normal" to be believable. In fact, nobody in the audience wants to see a story about average people. Average people do not change much. Average people do not get in over their heads. Average people are boring and should never be the subject of any story unless they're merely starting out as ordinary people only to grow from that point. When we first meet Luke Skywalker he is a fairly whiny and boring kid. But as his past quickly catches up with him he is forced onto the path of becoming who he was always meant to be -- a Jedi knight. But if he had stayed a whiny kid, we would have hurled and left the theater.

One of the classic problems of a writer is how to reveal these extraordinary characters. We want in the worst way to have them stand up and tell the world about themselves -but some of the most terrible writing on the planet is the self-revealing monologs peppering Sci-Fi movies and games. It simply violates a basic rule of human hardwiring for someone to launch their guts for no reason. No character in fiction --worth respecting-- publicly reveals their innermost thoughts unless they are compelled by extreme circumstances.

For characters to become truly believable in the minds of the audience, they must speak mostly through their actions. Princess Leah could have spewed forever over her love for Han Solo -- but when she stuck her neck out to rescue him at the beginning of Return of the Jedi only then could we be sure it was true.

Tons more could said here, but for now I'll leave you with this to chew on...

> Dialog is no substitute for action. For the most part characters can only get away with saying what we already could have figured out from what they do. People experiencing a story don't want to find out anything new by simply hearing the characters tell us out of the blue.

> The main characters should be larger than life in some way -- but still within the possibilities for humans (even if the story is about and ogre, a donkey, and a squirrel). Something about who they are or what they do must stand out as being unique or extraordinary. The audience must see them as distinct and unforgettable.

> The main characters should barely have the strength to take on their quest at any given point. Characters who are too strong never can convince the audience that they are up against any real challenge. And this goes for both the main hero and the chief "bad guy."

> Characters that don't change are boring. Also, characters that get stronger for no good reason are not believable. Characters should only grow as a result of having survived a peril or suffered some sort of loss. Nobody changes in a significant way except through extreme experiences.

> Characters must have a life story (or back story) that gives some sense for their origins. Who they are comes into focus best when we have some sense for their past. Also, events in the past often can be used to justify how a character might exhibit certain behavior in the present -- especially extremely evil behavior.

> Characters should have some weakness or ghosts from the past which threatens to derail them on their quest. Even the lamest, overblown, and completely unbelievable hero of all time --Superman-- has his problems with Kryptonite.

3. CRUCIBLE

The premise answers the question of what the story is all about. The crucible answers the question of why it is happening with these particular characters.

For a story to have a chance at making a point, it has to eliminate all extraneous details, focus on one overall setting and on one group of characters who have a good reason for being there.

It is very difficult to induce a believable feeling of reality if the wrong people show up, or if the setting is out of place. Why is the story happening here? Why are these characters here? Why do they stay? And what is so special about this time, this place, and the events that seem to be happening?

If one wishes to melt metal, the heat must be concentrated. And in the same way, a story can only heat up if the events are contained within boundaries of some sort. A story that wanders around, or unfolds into a set of unrelated circumstances, will confuse the audience with useless details.

Imagine if the Stars Wars movies included hours of documentary footage on the aliens living on all the planets in the area of the action. Perhaps it could be argued that this would be good background information. But it never works. There is no time for it. And worse, the audience can no longer easily tell what is important from what is mere drivel -- if they haven't already passed out in their seats from utter boredom.

Good stories can be confined by many things such as a time period, or life on a ship, or the workings of a small clique of people organized for a purpose. Islands and small towns work well, too. Epic stories happen to a lot of people in many interrelated settings. Simple stories happen to fewer people and usually in just one place.

The size of the crucible is not as important as how there must actually be a crucible. At its time of production, Heaven's Gate was the most expensive fiasco in Hollywood history because of how the movie was nothing more than an assemblage of disconnected settings and events. At the other extreme, Apollo 13 had a nearly claustrophobic setting for much of the movie, and it worked well because it confined the vast danger of space travel into a volume far smaller than my office -- an inescapable world unto itself and the central focus of everyone's desire to get these astronauts home alive.

4. PROTAGONIST

The role of the protagonist is to carry the audience through the story -- which is why this is the most important character. The protagonist sees more clearly, understands sooner, makes the good guesses more often, and takes the right path when everyone else says he's crazy.

Traditionally, this is the main "good guy" character -- but not always "good" in a conventional way. In fact, we may not even find him to be very likable at all, such as Harrison Ford's character in Blade Runner who is dark and brooding while on the case, but we root for him anyway because if nothing else he is the most likable person in the film -- given the other characters.

Sometimes the protagonist is astounding by simply doing what is sensible in the face of evil -- despite the risks. In Schindler's List, for example, the factory owner is hardly a saint, but compared to the Nazis, he is someone worth caring about given how he has chosen to resist them.

The most believable protagonists always have problems and flaws that gnaw at them constantly. The battle for them is as much against the demons within as any hurdles in the outside world. And as the hero struggles forward against the demons from both directions, it somehow gives eyes to the audience through the magic of our human

storytelling hardwiring While the main character pushes ahead in the quest, the audience experiences the same relief and satisfaction as though they were their own quest.

Here are some things to consider when creating your protagonist...

> The protagonist most wants the object of the quest, has the best reason for wanting this goal, and is the one most often willing to work the hardest to get it.

> The protagonist starts out mostly ignorant of what lies ahead, and must learn and grow in order to survive long enough to get to the end of the quest.

> The protagonist can not be passive, nor can this character whine too much or seem too wimpy -- at least not for very long. The audience will only root for a potential winner willing to work for it, and someone who wins by accident, or while not giving a hoot, will still be viewed as a loser.

> Sometimes the "protagonist" is a group of like-minded people all working for a common goal. But usually, it is much easier to set things up with one main hero and a strong supporting cast, rather than confuse the audience with having to follow and root for more than one lead character.

> The protagonists is best understood as simply the main person we want to see win rather than "good" in any absolute sense.

5. ANTAGONIST

The main role of the antagonist is to stand in the way of the hero. The story can not end until the protagonist defeats this guy or what he represents in some fitting way. Unfortunately, this character is often under-created, and so the desire to see him or her fail is poorly induced. Worse are the antagonists who are not even human -- like a computer or alien being showing no human characteristics. Can fully non-human "bad guys" give us a believable reason for why they would want to defeat the hero? Not usually.

But this is not to say that the antagonists has to look human. It can be a computer programmed with a replication of human personality. It can be a god who is half human. It can be a dark force with human characteristics taken from the mind of a very evil human. So long as the antagonist has human evil, or human pride, or corrupted ego, or the need for power, then the hero is up against something the audience can understand. Otherwise there is no way to figure out why the antagonist would want to stop the hero.

Just as the protagonist has the biggest reason to succeed in the quest, the antagonist has the biggest reason to prevent this success. And it can't just be that he is a bad person. It has to upset his plans for conquest. It has to prevent him from fulfilling his lifelong goals. It has to piss him off way down deep where it hurts the most. Darth Vader took it very personally when Luke Skywalker stood in his way because he had big plans.

Both the protagonist and antagonist must desperately wish to succeed, and their will to succeed --and even their abilities to do so-- must be very closely matched. If the antagonist is too strong --and loses anyway-- then the hero's success is absurd. And if the antagonist is too weak, we have no need to root for the hero.

As hard as it may feel, the writer must put as much effort into designing a formidable and believable antagonist as creating a capable and realistic hero.

Here are some things to chew on when creating your antagonist...

> The antagonist has a reason for being who he or she is. Bad, evil, and corrupted people are usually made, not just born. The antagonist will be far more convincing if there is a good reason for why they have become this person.

> What the hero wants must be the opposite of what the antagonist wants, and must stand in the way of the antagonist just as much as how the antagonist stands in the way of the hero.

> The antagonist should have a soft spot or "human" side -- a sort of weakness for being good in some way. He can not be entirely evil and still be believable.

> The antagonist must grow in the same way as the hero -- through adversity and struggle. An antagonist can not grow stronger for no good reason.

> Sometimes the antagonist is merely a powerful concept or idea, rather than an expressed character. But even still, it must have human qualities of some sort, and in some way seem to exist almost purely to stand in the way of the hero.

6. ARCHES

For a story to feel satisfying to the audience, everything and everyone must change from "pole to pole" -- as they say in the biz. If the protagonist starts out clean-cut and snooty, then he must end up grubby and humble. If he starts as a drunk, then he must end the story sober. If he is angry in the beginning, he must wind up a Mr. Nice Guy. If he is physically strong at first, then in the end he must be beaten up and hardly able to walk.

Nothing tells a story more clearly than change. Not a single element should be allowed to stay the same as the story develops. The weather must get colder or rainier or darker. The sound must get louder or softer or more sinister. The phases of moon must change. The snow gets deeper. The plans of the antagonist must become more evil. The protagonist must face ever harder challenges.

This change from one extreme to the other is often called "the arch" of the story. It is the shape of a continuous line drawn from the North pole to the South pole. In ET, for example, Stephen Speilberg uses flowers to convey the failing health of the alien. In Apollo 13, the Earth keeps getting bigger as time is running out. In Gone with the Wind, the mansions of the South fall into disrepair, and with all the slaves gone, the plantation owners themselves have to plant their own vegetables. The weak-minded get smarter. The wise get stupid. The unlucky catch a break. And the hidden evil is brought to justice.

Nothing stays the same.

7. CONFLICT

There is no satisfaction in a story where someone says what is on their mind for no reason at all. But during an argument or a fight people will say just about anything -including huge lies, the naked truth, and a whole lot of other things they might not like other people to think about or remember. If you need to have a character say something important, first make sure that he or she is angry or upset in some way. That is when characters let things slip out in the most believable way.

Overall, people should not get along very well in stories. Conflict and tension increase suspense since we have no idea how these people will behave with each other in the next moment. In the Perfect Storm, two fishermen are at each other's throats for most of the voyage. But when one of these guys gets snagged overboard on a long line, his

nemesis is first into the water to save him. These two longliners may have hated each other, but when push comes to shove we learn how true Gloucestermen will do anything to save each other's lives at sea.

Use conflict to give your characters a good reason to say something important, and also use it to create opportunities for characters to transcend our expectations of them. If you want to induce a powerful sense of reality, then give your characters a chance to prove themselves in a tough situation.

Parts of Speech
There are thousands of words in any language. But not all words have the same job. For example, some words express "action". Other words express a "thing". Other words "join" one word to another word. These are the "building blocks" of the language. Think of them like the parts of a house. When we want to build a house, we use concrete to make the foundations or base. We use bricks to make the walls. We use window frames to make the windows, and door frames to make the doorways. And we use cement to join them all together. Each part of the house has its own job. And when we want to build a sentence, we use the different types of word. Each type of word has its own job. We can categorize English words into 8 basic types or classes. These classes are called "parts of speech". Some grammar books categorize English into 9 or 10 parts of speech. Here, we use the traditional categorization of 8 parts of speech. It's quite important to recognize parts of speech. This helps you to analyze sentences and understand them. It also helps you to construct good sentences.

Nouns

A noun is a word that denotes a person, place, or thing. In a sentence, nouns answer the questions who and what.

Example: The dog ran after the ball. In the sentence above, there are two nouns, dog and ball. A noun may be concrete (something you can touch, see, etc.), like the nouns in the example above, or a noun may be abstract, as in the sentences below.

Example 1: She possesses integrity. Example 2: He was searching for love.

The abstract concepts of integrity and love in the sentences above are both nouns. Nouns may also be proper.

Example 1: She visited Chicago every year. Example 2: Thanksgiving is in November. Chicago, Thanksgiving, and November are all proper nouns, and they should be capitalized. (For more information on proper nouns and when to capitalize words, see our handout on Capital Letters.)

Pronouns

A pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun in a sentence.

Example: She decided to go to a movie. In the sentence above, she is the pronoun. Like nouns, pronouns may be used either as subjects or as objects in a sentence.

Example: She planned to ask him for an interview. In the example above, both she and him are pronouns; she is the subject of the sentence while him is the object. Every subject pronoun has a corresponding object form, as shown in the table below.

Subject and Object Pronouns Subject Pronouns I We You She He It Me Us You Her Him It Object Pronouns

They Them

Articles

Articles include a, an, and the. They precede a noun or a noun phrase in a sentence.

Example 1: They wanted a house with a big porch. Example 2: He bought the blue sweater on sale. In example 1, the article a precedes the noun house, and a also precedes the noun phrase big porch, which consists of an adjective (big) and the noun it describes (porch). In example 2, the article the precedes the noun phrase blue sweater, in which sweater is the noun and blue the adjective.

Adjectives

An adjective is a word that modifies, or describes, a noun or pronoun. Adjectives may precede nouns, or they may appear after a form of the reflexive verb to be (am, are, is, was, etc.).

Example 1: We live in the red brick house. Example 2: She is tall for her age. In example 1, two consecutive adjectives, red and brick, both describe the noun house. In example 2, the adjective tall appears after the reflexive verb is and describes the subject, she.

Verbs

A verb is a word that denotes action, or a state of being, in a sentence.

Example 1: Beth rides the bus every day. Example 2: Paul was an avid reader. In example 1, rides is the verb; it describes what the subject, Beth, does. In example 2, was describes Pauls state of being and is therefore the verb.

There may be multiple verbs in a sentence, or there may be a verb phrase consisting of a verb plus a helping verb.

Example 1: She turned the key and opened the door. Example 2: Jackson was studying when I saw him last. In example 1, the subject she performs two actions in the sentence, turned and opened. In example 2, the verb phrase is was studying.

Adverbs

Just as adjectives modify nouns, adverbs modify, or further describe, verbs. Adverbs may also modify adjectives. (Many, though not all, adverbs end in -ly.)

Example 1: He waved wildly to get her attention. Example 2: The shirt he wore to the party was extremely bright. In the first example, the adverb wildly modifies the verb waved. In the second example, the adverb extremely modifies the adjective bright, which describes the noun shirt. While nouns answer the questions who and what, adverbs answer the questions how, when, why, and where.

Conjunctions

A conjunction is a word that joins two independent clauses, or sentences, together.

Example 1: Ellen wanted to take a drive into the city, but the cost of gasoline was too high. Example 2: Richard planned to study abroad in Japan, so he decided to learn the language.

In the examples above, both but and so are conjunctions. They join two complete sentences with the help of a comma. And, but, for, or, nor, so, and yet can all act as conjunctions.

Prepositions

Prepositions work in combination with a noun or pronoun to create phrases that modify verbs, nouns/pronouns, or adjectives. Prepositional phrases convey a spatial, temporal, or directional meaning.

Example 1: Ivy climbed up the brick wall of the house. There are two prepositional phrases in the example above: up the brick wall and of the house. The first prepositional phrase is an adverbial phrase, since it modifies the verb by describing where the ivy climbed. The second phrase further modifies the noun wall (the object of the first prepositional phrase) and describes which wall the ivy climbs.

Below is a list of prepositions in the English language:

Aboard, about, above, across, after, against, along, amid, among, around, at, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, between, beyond, by, down, during, except, for, from, in, into, like, near, of, off, on, onto, out, over, past, since, through, throughout, to, toward, under, underneath, until, unto, up, upon, with, within, without.

NOTE TAKING

Reason to take notes 1. It triggers basic lecturing processes and helps you to remember information. 2. It helps you to concentrate in class. 3. It helps you prepare for tests. 4. Your notes are often a source of valuable clues for what information the instructor thinks most important (i.e., what will show up on the next test). 5. Your notes often contain information that cannot be found elsewhere (i.e., in your textbook). Forms of Note-Taking 1. Outlining I. Topic sentence or main idea A. Major points providing information about topic 1. Subpoint that describes the major point a. Supporting detail for the subpoint 2. Patterning: flowcharts, diagrams 3. Listing, margin notes, highlighting

Guidelines for Note-Taking 1. Concentrate on the lecture or on the reading material. 2. Take notes consistently. 3. Take notes selectively. Do NOT try to write down every wordTranslate ideas into your own words. 4. Organize notes into some sort of logical form. 5. Be brief. Write down only the major points and important information. 6. Write legibly. Notes are useless if you cannot read them later! 7. Don't be concerned with spelling and grammar.

Tips for Finding Major Points in Lectures The speaker is usually making an important point if he or she: 1. Pauses before or after an idea. 2. Uses repetition to emphasize a point. 3. Uses introductory phrases to precede an important idea. 4. Writes an idea on the board.