The Old Story

This is an exercise in quick, rough writing to get the gist of a story. If you like this story, you may decide to  revise it and continue working on it later. However the intent is to allow you to write roughly and quickly, focusing on plot and character.

Draft a quick narrative (3-5 pages) about a person challenged by this failing American Dream—it can be a parent, sibling, yourself as college student, or a fictional amalgam. For example, a unusually smart and motivated student, suddenly stalls and can’t seem to get any work done, learns that this is a classic depression scene, and then upon reaching out to parent or counselors, discovers the remedy is drugs and getting back to work. No one is making room to explore the causes of the behavior…  Or a hard-working auto worker is suddenly laid off and loses family medical insurance. He discovers a neighbor just bought a foreign car (which is better quality, but undercuts local jobs)…

Try to focus on the challenges and explore some options the character tries to address the challenge or crisis. In what way is the system failing this person, and how is the person responding to this failure? In our current system, individuals are often maligned and blamed for the friction they created in a poorly working system so that no one notices the collapsing system. Can you show this i a story? TIP: You can base your story on a news event, or a real incident.

Find a related jpg image and crop it exactly to 1024 X 768 px, and add it to your post’s “featured image” (in the lower right side of the post editor); you can do this by uploading the image after you are sent to the Media Library.

• Post Title: Friction—FirstL  (First=your first name, L=last name)
• Post Format: Standard
• Post Category: Stories
• Post Tag: Assignment1