Overview: You are going to write a story using Book Creator. This story will have pictures as well. Think of this story as helping a younger version of yourself make the transition from middle school to high school (or childhood to young adulthood). You will be the main character. Before you start writing in Book Creator, you will need to storymap your idea with a plotline. You will loosely base this story on you and your life, but you may need to exaggerate the conflict to make this story more interesting—no offense. The final kicker is you can use any setting and genre you wish: future, past, sci-fi, fantasy, reality, mystery, action-adventure, humor, etc.
Some ideas you could write about are as follows:
bullying
social media
friendships
parents
teachers
peer pressure
classes
Siblings
parent/teen issues
stress/anxiety
body image
depression
overcoming obstacles
academic challenges
dealing with failure
like (love) interests
social norms (and not knowing them)
the future (the overwhelming idea of it)
not knowing your path in life (figuring it out)
being too hard on yourself
letting things slide
dealing with conflict
anger issues
confidence issues
figuring out who you are as a person
taking a small step into the adult world
dealing with—or learning—responsibility
knowing how to be a good student
treating yourself with kindness
Imagine the story in Book Creator to look something like this: every other page will have text and the accompanying page will have a picture. You can even draw on Book Creator if you wish or more likely you will import pictures from Google Images. Or, you could actually take pictures yourself and use them. I imagine this story will be around twenty pages. Don’t panic. The text size will be larger here, so all in all maybe three-four pages on a normal doc. Think of this like an older kid’s book.
Plot Line (Make notes under each plot even). Note, each plot event will most likely control multiple paragraphs:
Pre-Exposition: what were you doing before the conflict began. This gives the reader a sense of who you are before the conflict, and that is crucial so that the reader can see how you changed as a result of the conflict.
Exposition: the conflict will begin toward the end of this plot event; this is the moment you go from normal life to life in conflict, a conflict you must deal with.
Rising action #1: the conflict is underway, and you initially try to deal with it.
Rising Action #2: the conflict has gotten more serious, and you are scrambling to find a way out of it.
Rising Action #3: the conflict has really heated up and taken over your life. Part of you wants to panic and part of you is actively looking for a solution. The tension is high.
Note: You may have up to eight Rising Actions. Use this space for more R.A. plot events.
Climax: the moment you face the conflict with a solution. You will either succeed or fail, but the conflict will be dealt with here. (Remember: we usually learn more from failiures than from victories): This is the most emotionally charged part of the story. This is the turning point for the main character. It is the point that the character changes. They go from being character A to character B. They are wiser, beat up, more able to get through life as a result of dealing with conflict.
Resolution (optional): I am not always a fan of these in short stories. To go too far past the Climax will diminish the power of the Climax. Sometimes it’s better that the reader infers your fate. That way, our imaginations keep churning with ideas about the story. You end the story to completely, our imaginations shut off. It’s up to you. Some stories need resolutions. You will be able to tell, and at the end of the day, you’re the artist here, not me.
