Writing Class

My homework for tomorrow is to outline two plots for novels. Here they are.
15 January 2008

Mrs. Edwards Sorts the Family

Introduction: a happily married couple of 35 years. Having breakfast. Reading the paper and commenting on some of their children in relation to newspaper items. Husband retired. Wife still working part time as a speech therapist.

Rising Action: husband goes off to buy airconditioning unit for his study. He has a car accident. What is the outcome of this? He ends up in hospital severely injured. Wife goes to visit him. Son turns up. Children living away are notified and they turn up. Wife is going about in a daze. Children are worried about her. Everyone’s back story gets told through flashbacks in deathbed scenes with Dad. Dad dies after five days.

Crisis: All four children worried about what to do with mother. Mother announces after the cremation that she will be spending three months with each of her children in turn. Children are knocked sideways but feel that they can’t refuse. She makes it clear that she will not be with any one of them for more than their allotted three months. She says that they will all meet up back at the family home in one year’s time.

Falling Action: She starts her visits within a week and the next section of the book is about these three month visits. Each one could have its own crisis. Each little family has its own problems which she attempts to set right. This leads to conflict and the realization that you cannot fix other people and they cannot fix you. She comes away knowing herself much better.

Conclusion: A year later, the family meets up and the mother presents each one with a small jar with some of Dad’s ashes. They are each to scatter them according to how they think best. She saves a larger share for herself and announces that she will be taking them to her husbands homeland, South Africa, where she will scatter them.




Raising Annie

Introduction: A woman in her early 30’s is complaining to her husband about her lousy upbringing. She itemizes all the things her parents did and didn’t do to make her childhood a bad one. These are not instances of abuse or neglect, just the run of the mill criticism and lots of moaning. Her husband seems to agree with her. They are a childless couple.

Rising Action: The woman finds out that she could be a subject in a cloning experiment. She looks into it and agrees to do it as long as she can have the child that is produced. A baby is created which is an exact clone and she is given permission to raise it as her own. This is her dream come true. She can raise herself and undo all the mistakes her own parents made.

Crisis: Many incidents can be recounted during the ‘bringing up’ years. It leads in the end to the husband taking the child’s side against the mother to try to save the child from the influences of this woman who has gone bonkers. Can he do this without telling the child that she is a clone?

Falling Action: Many changes have to be made for this child to grow up in any kind of natural way. The parents, especially Mum, must rethink their lives and their choices.

Conclusion: Haven’t worked that out yet. Child grows up well and they live happily ever after? Child runs away? Parents live a life of regret?

I'm not sure which of the two to settle on. The first one would be easier because it is autobiographical, sort of. I know all the characters. The second one would be more interesting in a way but I would have to find out about cloning. I know you can't clone humans yet but I could pretend. Any comments are welcome.