??Research?? (1 Viewer)

[Lord Ac]

How much research are we serously talking about here. And about WHAT? I mean, a fantasy-story that occurs in the head of some real-evil dude doesnt leave much to research on ...

Ac

 

[Jellymonsta]

research past real-evil dudes and the effects that their evil-ness has had on society. statistically analyse this, and make conjections at key intervals of the story, so as to anticipate the trends of your real evil dude. make up strange and exotic names, and then justify them as allusions to strange and exotic books, lands and foodstuffs. make a bibliography of as many people/authors/friends/strangers as you can. RL Stine, Paul Jennings, Noni Hazelhurst etc. Explain your reoccuring dream in which this evil dude is evil n stuff, and thus justify your story as emotional cleansing.

alternatively, ignore me. i didnt even wind up doing 4u. but thats (very vaguely) the kind of trash that they seem to expect if you do a story. or so i was told...

 

[Lazarus]

In addition to Jellymonsta's points, research the fantasy/adventure genre, and the typical archetypes and structures for a fantasy story. Check out "The Writer's Journey" by Chris Vogler (excellent) and "A Hero Has One Thousand Faces" (Joseph Campbell, I think).

Anything that is relevant to your story. If your fantasy world has magic, decide whether it's genetic, and if so, how? Recessive genes, or what? You can research how that works. You can research ancient Latin if you're attempting to name people or places and want to give a medieval feel. Research anything, research everything! Document it all in your logbook. And then throw in references to it in your reflection statement.

 

[alys]

yeah, that's the kind of stuff they're looking for. i also researched some stuff generally on form and writing, since i didn't write a particular genre. so i looked at a huge amount of short stories, and analysed them in my journal like i would for any english text, and also i wrote down whether or not they sucked, so that going back you can see what makes a good short story, and what elements are important and what you can be flexible with. i also looked at poetry for the writing styles and the imagery that it uses, but depending on your audience and the style of writing that you'd be using, that's not really necessary.

as well as all that, as jellymonsta said, they love your own experience. so you mention how you drew on dreams, or your relationship with your little sister, or a guy that you bumped into in the street when you were seven. different mediums are good - i stuck amelie and lantana leaflet things in my journal, because i liked the colours, and ended up justifying them as examples of great characterisation, which my teacher liked. i used newspaper articles about various people, and again called it characterisation research. anything - advertisements for movies, conversations with your grandma. oh, and i think you can also do research on how writers write. we had peter skrzynecki come to our school to give a lecture on his poems, and he ended up talking to the 4u people too about writing and stuff, so i stuck that in. basically, anything you see that you can connect to your story. lots of the links sound kind of tenuous now, but you'd be surprised at the things that end up influencing you. they just basically want you to seek them out and identify them.

 

[user]

Considering that unless you were planning to write a very contriversial piece of work, they won't even read your journal. They just have your journal sitting in front of them, but they're not allowed to read it unless two markers give the work very different marks.

Therefore, it seems logical that you should make your process journal as bit and fat as possible.

I printed off heaps of websites and articles from encarta, and more websites and several drafts. All on the school printer of course, like I would waste my printer ink cartridge and paper on this!

Anyway, if you've got a binder, have heaps of plastic sleeves and stick all the print outs in them.

The result: What appears to be a full year's worth of work, a hell o f a lot of research which hopefully will make a good reflection on the marker.

 

[Lazarus]

I used the scrapbook approach - had a giant bound book which I pasted everything into. Looked much more personal and effort-consuming than the typical plastic sleeve thing. user is right though

 

[Lord Ac]

Thanks guys, some real good stuff here!

Has anyone heard of this guy "Pol Pot", leader of the Khmer Rouge? He was REAL EVIL!!! Killed millions in the 70's.

I borrowed 6 FAT books on him today. Now *thats* research!

Ac

 

[user]

only if you photocopy stacks out of it and then write an annotated bibliography on how each one helped you blah blah blah.



try not to think of all the trees and the paper ur wasting.